a Polish and 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 Belarusian language. He was one of the leaders of the Polish Brethren.
Career
Budny was one of the first ideologists of the development the Belarusian culture in its native language, and had notable influence on the development of Belarusian national consciousness. In his "Cathechesis" (printed in 1562, Niasvizh, in Belarusian) Budny follows Francysk Skaryna in using native Belarusian speech to explain Christianity.
Religion
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.[1] 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 Byelorussian 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
Politics
Budny supported the limited educated monarchy concept of the state (with Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski), which would enable the development of the Sejm.
Grzegorz Paweł z Brzezin (Gregorius Paulus) and Palaeologus had been involved in a long heated exchange over the role of the Christian in the state since 1572, which had been kept unpublished. Though Marcin Czechowic in Dialogue XII of his Christian Colloquies, took Grzegorz Paweł z Brzezin's non-violent position. In 1580 Budny, then the leading minister among the socially conservative Lithuanian Brethren, published the whole correspondence, including Palaeologus' taunts of the pacifist position of the Ecclesia Minor Polish Brethren in his Defensio. The Polish brethren then asked Grzegorz Paweł z Brzezin to write a reply but he excused himself on the grounds of ill health, and the task fell to the then 41 year old Fausto Sozzini, which he did and published a defence of conscientious objection and separation from the state in 1581.