Andrija Dudić

Andrija Dudić Orehovički (in Croatian) or András Dudith de Horahovicza (in Hungarian), (* February 5, 1533 in Buda † February 22, 1589 in Boroszló), was a famous humanist and diplomat in the Kingdom of Hungary.

Dudić was born in Buda, Hungary to a Croatian noble family. He studied in Wrocław, Italy, Vienna, Brussels and Paris.

In 1560 king Ferdinand I appointed Dudić the bishop of Knin, Croatia. He then participated in the Council of Trent (1545-1563) where, in compliance with the wish of Ferdinand, he urged that the cup be given to the laity.

Being appointed bishop of Pécs, Dudić 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 Anti-trinitarianism (the so-called Ecclesia Minor). Although he never declared himself officially a Unitarian, some researchers label him as one of the Anti-trinitarian thinkers.

After the election of Stephen Báthory as king of Poland, Dudić left Kraków and went to Wrocław and later to Moravia, where he supported the Bohemian Brothers.

Dudić maintained correspondence with famous Anti-trinitarians such as Giorgio Blandrata, Jacob Palaelogue and Fausto Sozzini. Mihály Balázs, an expert on Central-European Anti-trinitarianism, affirms that Palaelogue in Kraków lived in Dudić's house and departed from here 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 it came from Protestants or Catholics.

He died in 1589 in Wrocław and was buried in the Saint-Elizabeth Lutheran Church in Kraków.