Csorba Dávid: "A sovány lelket meg-szépíteni” Debreceni prédikátorok (1657-1711) - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 5. (Debrecen, 2008)
ABSTRACT
IV. Debreceni Ember Pál hegyaljai prédikációi ABSTRACT In my book I examine the sermons in an essential period of 17th century Protestantism (1657-1711) and investigate the role and place of the famous professor, György Martonfalvi Tóth, as well as that of ‘Debrecenism’ in intellectual history. Thereby I establish a link to Graeme Murdock’s excellent monograph on Hungarian Calvinism (Calvinism on the Frontier. International Calvinism and the Reformed Church of Hungary and Transylvania, c. 1600-1660. Oxford, Basingstoke, 2000), which describes the history of the Reformed denomination in Transylvania and Partium between 1600 and 1660 within the framework of intellectual history. In international contexts, it is American New Historicism that identifies sermons as literary texts, thereby lifting them out of the net of theological explanations and folk culture. Furthermore, Gábor Kecskeméti claims in his monograph on the history of sermons (Sermon, Rhetoric, and Literary History [Prédikáció, retorika, irodalomtörténet. Bp., Akadémia, 1998]) that understanding the Baroque era necessitates both historical-stylistic and sociological researches, as well as examinations in intellectual history. The Hungarian researches of the 1990s show that sermons should be examined in a wider context of cultural history, including other disciplines as well, such as literary history, theology, and anthropology (exemplum research, history of rhetoric, reception aesthetics, sociology, cultural anthropology, etc.). The book establishes a clearer picture of the highly respected era of educational culture and cultural history of 17th century Debrecen. To illustrate the historical effects of Apácai’s encyclopedia and the Albert Szenei Molnár’s dictionary, I present several examples taken from the arguments of sermons, the source of which are unstated in the original works. I also investigate the lately found funeral speeches over Mihály Apafi, and set them among the Jeremy-like speeches at the end of the century. The micro-analysis of the so far unresearched diary of Pál Debreceni Ember and the catalogues of Martonfalvi's students prove Sándor Czeglédy’s concepts of educational culture. I include several points of view that belong essentially to the literature of sermons, but are not dealt with because of the scope of the book. Hence I only examine briefly the genre barriers of the encyclopedic characteristics of sermons; the astrological thinking of the era in connection with the comet-belief; and the collection of folk sayings. Further research is postulated by interference of prayers from the Middle Ages, as well as of 247
