Miklós Telegdi, a Roman Catholic bishop of the reformation period, was an important figure of his generation. The confessional guide of his Agendarius, first published in 1583 in nagyszombat (Trnava, now in Slovakia), is particular as to its structure and content. in Hungary, this is the first penitential guide that was written in a unique style, including vernacular parts and containing exhortations in a large number. The confessional includes a text discussing the strict obligation on the seal of confession as well as a confession mirror which, according to its genre, is a tool of individual self-examination. In my paper, I attempt to answer the question whether Telegdi’s confessional guide is only unique from a national point of view or also in a wider, international context.
In my research, I analysed the printed yet so far unstudied European (French, German, italian, polish) rituals from the 15th–16th centuries that are contemporary with the Agendarius of Nagyszombat, all collected from a database called Usuarium. This database was created and developed by the liturgical research Group of Eötvös Loránd University. I searched for sources that can be seen as parallels to Telegdi’s penitential in the following aspects: the presence of vernacular texts; the appearance of exhortations inside a confession as a subgenre of the sermon (in relation to the preaching activity of Telegdi, focusing on its stylistic and thematic characteristics); additions on the seal of confession and the presence of a confession mirror, including the form and the contents of the latter one.