Symon Budny

Symon Budny (Belarusian: Сымон Будны, Polish: Szymon Budny, Russian: Симеон Будный) (c.1530, Budne – 13 January 1593, Vishnyeva) was a Belarusian humanist, educator, Hebraist, Bible translator, Church reformator, philosopher, sociologist and historian, active in the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was one of the first to promote the development of Belarusian culture in the Belarusian language. He was one of the leaders of the Polish Brethren.

Little is known about his place of birth. Though the common assumption is that he was born in Budne, Podlaskie Voivodeship, it is known that there were over 140 places with a similar name on the territory of Belarus. Though what is known is that he was familiar was the Belarusian culture first-hand and dedicated a big part of his life to promoting it. The family he was born into was a minor Belarusian szlachta. Symon Budny originally identified himself as a Litvin, which then was the term used mostly to describe Belarusians.

Symon Budny was an early figure in the party in the Radical Reformation which utterly denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Budny, along with the Greek Unitarian Jacobus Palaeologus, and the Hungarian Ferenc David, denied not just the pre-existence of Christ, which is what distinguished "Socinian" from "Arian" belief, but Budny, Paleologus and David went further and also denied invocation of Christ. Among these three Budny also denied the virgin birth. According to Wilbur (1947) it was his strong stance against the worship of and prayer to Christ that brought a separation with those like Marcin Czechowic who considered the views of Budny, Paleologus, and David as a revival of the Ebionite position and a form of Judaizing, and resulted in Budny's excommunication from the Minor Reformed Church of Poland., though subsequent Eastern European historians consider that in Budny's case it may have been on account of his note in the Belarusian New Testament stating that Jesus was Joseph's son, as much as the better known in the West letter to Fausto Sozzini (1581) to which Fausto Sozzini's answer is preserved in Volume II of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum printed by Sozzini's grandson in Amsterdam, 1668.

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