Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Connections through Peregrination
121 differs in many ways from the average. As former student of Patak, Beregszászi arrived in Erlangen in 1790, to this small, newly-established institution which willingly supported him and his scientific ambitions. He was granted a doctoral degree for his linguistic research and the university assisted him in realizing different publications. He was also entrusted with community tasks (such as giving addresses at memorials) and later he was assigned to teach Hungarian to local professors and citizens - and even to ladies. His stay in Germany proved to be extremely successful, so much so that even the Society of Scientists in Jena accepted him as a member. His success did not go unnoticed in Sárospatak, either. When István Szentgyörgyi retired, he recommended that Beregszászi Nagy, his former pupil and talented linguist, be his successor. Nonetheless, one and a half years passed from the recommendation given in 1796 to the time Beregszászi returned to Patak. Despite mounting pressure from church leaders, he resorted to various excuses for not returning sooner from Erlangen. His fate as it played out was something he perhaps felt by instinct in advance: there was no success waiting for him in Hungary. He worked as head of department at the theological faculty for only five years. He ended up teaching theology because Rozgonyi was assigned the task of teaching philosophy upon Szentgyörgyi’s retirement once Beregszászi persisted in repeatedly prolonging his peregrination. As a teacher, he was never able to win the hearts of his students and he often fell ill. He eventually had to face the fact that his professional reputation in Erlangen was based on things which proved to be of very little worth in Hungary, such as his pursuing research to identify the links between the Hungarian and Arabic languages as well as between the Persian and Hebrew languages. His historical approach was well-suited to the approach used by the nobility of the late baroque period and probably would have made him widely acclaimed a few decades earlier. By the turn of the century, however, the situation had changed and the research on the interrelatedness of the Finno-Ugric languages gained momentum. Paradoxically, his extended stay abroad and the success he gained there not only isolated him from the latest findings of research but also strengthened his own beliefs. Thus, in returning to Hungary, he fiercely defended his out-of-date position. He sided with the conservative crowd during the language renewal movements and also faced Kazinczy in a series of cutting debates. Five years later he cited “covert harassment” as the principal reason for his departure from Patak. With this, he quit serving the church as well. Beregszászit case is an interesting example of how peregrination, in certain cases, could generate negative repercussions on one’s career. The peregrination of Ábrahám Komjáthy, another student in Patak, turned out to be much more fruitful and his fate more fortunate. From 1775 to 1785, he was “in hiding” in the Netherlands. On the basis of Kazinczy’s recollections, Komjáthy rose very high in the ranks and became the private teacher of a local government official’s son. Later on, he was elected to the position of dean of the Felső-Borsod area and joined the ranks of the church leaders. A similarly successful and worthy trajectory did the career of Lajos Zsarnay trace, it including the opportunity for him to attend the university in Göttingen in 1829 and 1830 and then to become a professor and bishop. The presenting of these examples, however, is not meant to conceal the fact that by the beginning of the 19th century the church district no longer had the Pál Beregszászi Versuch einer magyarischen Sprachlehre mit einiger Hinsicht auf die türkische und andere morgenländische Sprachen. Erlangen, 1797
