Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
János Ugrai: „THE PERIOD OF NATIONAL ADVANCEMENT” 1777-1849 - Rustic Patak and Romantic Zemplén
RUSTIC PATAK AND ROMANTIC ZEMPLÉN 81 While Pest-Buda, Pozsony and Sopron were rapidly developing to the level of Central-Eastern European cities, lying only two hundred fifty kilometers northeast of Pest was Sárospatak where life, as it were, had come close to a standstill. Two hundred years previously the settlement did not belong to the category of town-like settlements. The excellent economist and author, former student of Patak, András Fáy, remembers the site of his student years as being, for months on end, a sea of mud which embittered the lives of those living there. The majority of the local population earned its living from agriculture and lived in small, rickety village houses. It was only at the main street or in the vicinity of the castle that a hint of relative prosperity appeared with the first two-storey buildings but paved roads or street-lighting was nowhere to be seen. Because of the damage inflicted by the regular flooding of the closely-lying Bodrog River or because of the lack of proper drainage, the sight of mud and manure oozing in the streets gave the settlement more of a medieval atmosphere than that of nationally renown intellectual centre keeping step with its time, what is more, being at the forefront of progress. Being divided by the Bodrog River into Nagy- and Kispatak (“Large” and “Small Patak”), the market-town gradually merged to include two thousand six or seven hundred inhabitants, which by the end of the Age of Reforms increased to some five thousand inhabitants. As a comparison, the Hungarian city with the greatest population at the end of the 1700s was Debrecen, claiming to have close to thirty thousand inhabitants which increased to forty-five thousand by the end of the Age of Reforms. The backbone of Sárospataké economy was constituted by vineyards, grapes and wine, in a tradition extending back several hundreds of years. Animal husbandry, logging and the growing of grain crops also served as supplementary sources of income. Although the industrial output of Patak was not insignificant, only one or two sectors (the mining of millstones and the manufacture of pottery) exceeded the level of local demand. The economic significance of the College will be described in detail later on. All that is to be mentioned here in regard to this is that the presence of students was hardly of second-rate importance to the income of local residents given that a certain portion of the students enrolled at the College depended on board and lodging found in the town. Thus students spending almost the entire duration of a year in the town certainly eased the everyday needs of many families. As consumers with their various purchases, students also encouraged the functioning of handicrafts manufacturing. Although the economic base of Patak could not be considered as being one-sided, it was, nonetheless, evidently due to its wine that it could engage in the regional wine trade, even if only on a small scale. The wine of Hegy alja (“hill bottom”) which was renown and popular throughout and beyond the country lured the wholesale dealers and the travelling traders to Patak and helped lift it in 1805 to the rank of being qualified to host five national fairs per year in addition to maintaining its weekly markets. On the basis of this, it is no surprise that the majority of Sárospatak residents were not considered to be wealthy even though there were families which were well-off. From records it is known that there were local merchants, “entrepreneurs” of diverse description, who dealt with grapes or millstones András Fáy (1786-1864), the ’factotum of the nation’ was also a student in Sárospatak
