Novák László Ferenc: A „Mező Berényi Evang tótajkú egyházban létező” id. Kisjeszeni Jeszenszky Károly lelkipásztor számadáskönyve 1848-1890 - Chronica Bekesiensis 4. (Békéscsaba, 2011)

Képek jegyzéke

Immigration was motivated by both the good quality of the soil and the liberty of religion. The immigrants built their church here and brought their pastor and teacher to Mezőberény. The Slavs had the right to keep their religious and ethnic identity. The Hungarians belonged to the Reformed denomination and occupied the southern part of the Settlement. They built their church at the beginning of the 19th century.

In the first decades the Evangelical Germans and Slovaks formed a joint church in Mezőberény, but the Germans in 1745 organised an individual Evangelical ecclesia. Slovaks and Germans shared also the temple in the beginning, but necessarily got separated later in this field as well. The Germans completed their temple in 1789, the Slovaks, forming he majority of the town, in 1798.

The end of the 18th century (after the decade following Maria Theresa’s Robot Patent in 1767) saw the reorganisation of the serf-holdings. The size of the serf-holdings (sessio) was established in accordance with the area and quality of the lands owned by the serfs. Mezőberény was one of the settlements having the best quality lands.

Re-allocation of the surrounding lands was completed in the middle of the 19th century, following the Robot Patent of year 1853. At the time the serf-farmers’ holdings were consolidated. The special persons (e.g. pastors, school teachers) were also entitled for a certain amount of land.

Jeszenszky was the pastor of the Slovak Evangelical Chuch of district II from 1843. He organised, renewed the life of the ecclesiastical community, managed the church affairs, participated in the work of the superior ecclesiastical administration. He was responsible for the temple, the schools, supervised the teaching activities. He had to be a man of economy as well in order to manage successfully the land of the church and his own.

For coping with the complex tasks and responsibilities Jeszenszky was keeping a registration book (“household book”). He started putting down notes from 1848, when he got the senior pastor position, and continue his records until the 1880s. The diary contains 352 pages. At the time his son Károly Jeszenszky jr. was his co-pastor (from 1875).

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