Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
THE SCHOOL IN ITS “OLD NEST” AGAIN HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE BETWEEN1703 AND 1777 - From Kassa to Sárospatak
HISTORY OF THE COLLEGE BETWEEN 1703 AND 1777 58 majority. The members were respectable citizens who were committed to their church. Fifteen different chief lay officers served the congregation between 1736 and 1800, five of them working as city judges for years. The town had twelve guilds, the majority of these members were Calvinists. It is a significant fact that, despite the general ban on building new churches, the Reformed Church community was able to build a stone building in 1775, it requiring a serious financial sacrifice of fourteen thousand forints. The population of Nagypatak and Kispatak combined was three thousand three hundred thirty-nine in 1784. The church building permit was issued in 1774 for one thousand four hundred thirty-one believers and one thousand three hundred forty-two college students. Since children of denominationally Reformed families of the town were included in the student numbers, it can be concluded that the number of Calvinists made up nearly half of the population. FROM KASSA TO SÁROSPATAK The College took refuge in Kassa (Kosice), also. It is not known what the school operating in Kassa at this time may have learned about the events of the summer of 1703 which affected Sárospatak. The student András Gönyüi, however, had up-to-date information. Fie had signed the school regulations in 1693 in Gyulafehérvár and became the senior in 1701. In the following year, he became a student at the College-in-exile in Kassa and then the rector in Olaszliszka in 1704. From 1706 until his death in 1719, he worked in Patak as a clerk. Strangely enough, he was in Sárospatak when Pál Orosz discussed details of the restoration of Reformed religious practices with the town’s leadership. He visited the captain and requested the restoration of the College’s rights, which the officer granted him with a promissory note. It was on the basis of this note that Gönyüi initiated the return of the College from Kassa to Patak. Some of the students, led by Gergely Tornallyai Bata, returned in December, (it is interesting to note that Tornallyai succeeded Gönyüi as city clerk in Patak.) János Csécsi, however, remained in Kassa with the rest of the students, endured through the siege of the city in the autumn of 1704 and returned to Patak only the following year. Thus the school returned to its “old nest” and an ever-increasing number of students began to enroll. Twenty-one students signed the regulations in 1704, fifty-seven signed in 1705 and, up to and including 1711, a total of two hundred five students enrolled. During this period, twenty-five students arrived from Gyulafehérvár, also. The number of younger students who did not sign the regulations must have been significantly greater. For the most part, these younger students came from neighbouring villages and from Patak. There is thus little reason not to give credence to János Csécsi Jr.’s account within his biography that, when he became the teacher of the class at the age of eighteen in 1707, there were seventy-eight students enrolled for the second semester. Despite the wartime conditions, school life slowly reverted to its normal rhythm. János Csécsi Sr. held formal examinations in 1707, the first since the return of the school. The following year he became ill and died in May 1708. A successor to Csécsi, in the person of István Simándi, had been invited before Csécsi’s passing away.
