Dudith was born in
Buda, capital city of the
Kingdom of Hungary to a Hungarian noble family with
Croatian origins. His father, Jeromos Dudits, was a Croatian and his mother was an Italian. He studied in
Wrocław,
Italy,
Vienna,
Brussels and
Paris. In 1560 King
Ferdinand I appointed him
bishop of Knin,
Croatia. He then participated in the
Council of Trent (1545–1563) where, to comply with the wish of Ferdinand, he urged that the
Chalice be given to the laity. Being appointed bishop of
Pécs, Dudith went to
Poland in 1565 as ambassador of
Maximilian, where he married, and resigned his see, becoming an adherent of
Protestantism. In Poland he began to sympathize with
Socinian Anti-trinitarianism (the so-called
Ecclesia Minor). Although he never declared himself officially a
Unitarian, some researchers label him as an Anti-trinitarian thinker. After the election of
Stephen Báthory as king of Poland, Dudith left
Kraków and went to
Wrocław and later to
Moravia, where he supported the
Bohemian Brothers. Dudith maintained a correspondence with famous Anti-trinitarians such as
Giorgio Blandrata,
Jacob Paleologus and
Fausto Sozzini. Mihály Balázs, an expert on Central-European Anti-trinitarianism, affirms that Paleologus in Kraków lived in Dudith's house and left there to go to
Transylvania. The theories of Blandrata, Sozzini and
Ferenc Dávid had a great influence on him. Nevertheless he always remained an
Erasmian humanist, who condemned religious intolerance whether from
Protestants or
Catholics. Dudith died in 1589 in Wrocław and was buried in the Saint-Elizabeth Lutheran Church. ==References==