Sárospataki Füzetek 21. (2017)

2017 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK PATAKRÓL - Fórizs István: Vályi Pál egyházi szolgálatai személyes naplója alapján

Fórizs István

Pál Vályi s Pastoral Services According to His Diary

In this study, I would like to present a portrait of Pál Vályi, a pastor of the Reformed Church of Hungary in the 19th century, based on his personal diary. In his case, we are dealing with a pastor at the beginning of his service, who has just started to experience how the world surrounding him really works. He is still quite young and the experience of getting into a new congregation is still fresh, so is the feeling of leaving the College in Sárospatak. The diary I looked at is meant to visualize the feelings and emotions of its writer. The diary itself served as a tool for its young author to help him deal with the new life-situation, the fact that he left behind the town of Sárospatak. Another aim of the diary writing was to create an opportunity for the author to live as an intellectual in the countryside, which was culturally poorer relative to Sárospatak. Through this activity, he can flourish as an intellectual of the Hungarian Reform Era, of which he would have no opportunity otherwise in his stimulus free environment. The diary can be studied from many different angles. In this study, because of the size of the source material, I narrowed down the issues tackled to one question: what does the narrative of the diary reveal us about the church services of Vályi? It is my firm belief that in answering this question, we are not only getting insight into Vályi’s personal life but also into the life of the pastors and ministers of the Hungarian Reformed Church during the Reform Era.

128 Sárospataki Füzetek 21. évfolyam 2017-4