Báthory, though personally tolerant of differing religious views, is a strong-willed man and a Roman Catholic; he encounters considerable resistance from his subjects in his attempts to promote the Counter-Reformation and to strengthen his royal power.
Because the monarch has forbidden further innovations (changes in doctrine from beliefs held during Sigismund's reign), Ferenc Dávid's nonadorantist innovation has thus endangered the Unitarians' legal status.
Traveling to Transylvania, Socinus tries unsuccessfully from 1578 to 1579 to dissuade Dávid from his controversial renunciation of the worship of Christ.
Dávid’s attitude conflicts with the teachings of Blandrata, who has allied himself with Báthory and tried, with Socinus, to influence Dávid to moderate his position.
All reconciliation efforts fail, and Dávid's supporters separate themselves from the movement as Dávidists, or Old Unitarians, in opposition to Blandrata's New Unitarian faction.
Dávid, whose followers are also known as Nonadorantes, is charged with introducing Judaizing tendencies, partly because his refusal to accord adoration to Christ resembles the rejection by Judaism of Christ as a Messiah.
Dávid is brought to trial in 1579 as a blasphemous innovator and condemned to life in prison, where he dies on November 15.
