Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)

FLOURISHING AND SCATTERING THE REFORMED COLLEGE IN THE 17TH CENTURY - Turtur gemens - the College in exile (1672 - 1703)

at peace with their congregations and had strained relationships with the teachers, also. The school’s church and lay leaders were in disagreement on a number of issues and the students were taking advantage of this. Were they caught in the breach of some regulation, they would seek out their personal patrons among the trustees who then tried to paper over the given protégé’s transgression. The external condition of the buildings and surroundings showed signs of neglect. János Miskolci Szenei, the senior at the time, spoke up rather critically during a church assembly in Sárospatak in 1669. In addressing the assembly, he spoke of crumbling buildings and gates and of the stones which had been gathered on site in order to repair the walls but lay there in the courtyard untouched. The sight itself speaks volumes to the neglect and slackness evidenced here, without any need for words. Szenei, furthermore, expressed great concern about the “only two honourable teachers”. From the context it was to be understood that he was not complaining about the lack of pastors but pointing out the fact that, a decade previously, there were four teachers in the school, while now there were only have two who had university degrees.

Change, however, did not come as a result of the inner conflicts within the church or the school. The movement launched by the nobles failed and the emperor retaliated harshly. Ferenc Rákóczi I could consider himself fortunate for he was able to buy his life with money. Fie paid an immense amount - four hundred thousand forints - and he had to allow the emperor’s troops entry to his castles. In the spring of 1671, the German soldiers occupied Sárospatak and, on 5 August, they took possession of the church. A year later, they gave it back to the local landlord but it was never returned to the Reformed Church community; it was given to the Jesuits. Upon the orders of Ferenc Rákóczi I and Zsófia Báthory, the imperial guard occupied the College on 20 October 1671. The College’s buildings were given to the Jesuits, but they did not move in, opting to rent them out instead. The remaining members of a once denominationally Reformed and former ruling noble family from hereon began to persecute those Reformed-faith believers who lived and worked on their other properties.

Led by their teachers, the uprooted students went to Debrecen first and then to Transylvania. They were able to take the College’s printing press with them but only a limited number of books from the volume-rich library. Prince Mihály Apafi offered them refuge in Gyulafehérvár, in the empty buildings of the former academy, in this way establishing the second Reformed Church College in Transylvania, the first being the one in Nagyenyed.

TURTUR GEMENS - THE COLLEGE IN EXILE (1672 - 1703)

The College being forced to flee from Patak was not a unique phenomenon in the seventies of the 17th century. The event was but one small part of a sweeping and thoroughly brutal Catholic restoration process. Pastors and teachers who were Protestant became the target of persecution throughout the Hungarian Kingdom. Many of them were arrested and then convicted in a show trial, initially receiving death sentences which later were changed to imprisonment or to forced labour on sea-going galleys. Among the believers and martyrs suffering this fate, there were twenty-two former Patak students who could be identified

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Gyulafehérvár - Alba Julia