Petrőczi Éva: Holt költők társaságában. A Puritanizmuskutató Intézet és a Medgyesi Pál Puritán Kiskönyvtár emlékére - Nemzet, egyház, művelődés 9. (Sárospatak, 2014)

István Czeglédi, the Martyr-Preacher of Kassa and a Faithful Student of the Netherlands

PETRŐCZI ÉVA: HOLT KÖLTŐK TÁRSASÁGÁBAN

“After his diligent (early) years to Belgium (Holland!),

Was he sent by the town (by Debrecen!) to scholarly Lugdunum,

To learn the Jewish and Greek tongue in Leiden,

Where I was also present at the academy.”307

In this small and not very sophisticated poem we can find a very important element which brilliantly illustrates the true affections of the Hungarian students of theology towards Holland. In other words: it shows the intimacy with which they expressed not only their gratitude, but their somehow becoming and also remaining “honoris causa” Dutchmen, even after their return to Hungary. As you can see in the previous poem, Leiden is mentioned in the Hungarian text not only in its Latin form, Lugdunum, but also as “Lejda” which is a quasi-Hungarian nickname of their beloved educational nest.

We are fully aware of the unusually personal, un-canonized tone of this small paper on István Czeglédi, a life-long friend and disciple of the Netherlands, but the Readers will surely understand our intentions. Instead of producing a stiff and mute “waxen figure”, we tried — with some fragments translated from 17th-cenutry Hungarian texts - to re-vitalize one of the fighters (and also of martyrs) of our Protestantism, a great part of whose “intellectual and spiritual armour” was offered by the best theologians and educational institutions of contemporary Holland.

307 The laudatory poem of Mátyás Nógrádi = Czeglédi István 1675, “Ír. - In Hungarian: „Sok munkái után hires Belgiumban,/Küldeték Várastul , tudós Lugdunumban,/ Sidó s görög nyelven épülni Lejdában, /Holott jelen voltam Académiákban.”

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