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

of the 19th century, and became an important document of Hungarian Protestant martyrology.281

Before going into some details of the most important facts and also enumerating the most formative educators of István Czeglédi’s peregrination period in the Netherlands, let us come a little bit closer to a remarkable Hungarian Calvinist educational “nest”, the Reformed College of Sárospatak, the spirit and local colour of which impeccably prepared his mind and soul for the impressions and information’s offered by Holland, this remote, but always benevolent and helpful country of Western Europe.

A good summary of the profile and the features of the education in Sárospatak are given in one of the rare English books on our cultural history, edited in Hungary during the socialist era. Its title is: Comenius and Hungary. “This parish-church school became Protestant in the 1550s, and by the end of the 16th century it was the most important Calvinist school in Hungary, which provided the neighbouring areas in the Hungarian kingdom and the Principality of Transylvania with preachers and teachers in large numbers. Its first school regulations still extant date from 1621; they are a revision of earlier regulations introduced on the orders of György Rákóczi I. Significant reforms were brought into the life of Sárospatak school by János Tolnai Dali in 1650 and 1654. (It’s an incorrect data: Tolnai Dali became the rector of Sárospatak in 1639, one year after his return from England! E. P.) In accordance with the wishes of the Rákóczi family and their intimate, he was to reorganize the existing, relatively high-level Latin school into a new type which had never been realized before, the so-called Pansophic school.”282

Of course, we can’t neglect the fact that István Czeglédi left Sárospatak in September 1641, exactly nine years before the arrival of Comenius. But he studied there in the pre-Comenian period, for two years under the tutorship of the above mentioned head (rector) of the Reformed College of Sárospatak, János Tolnai Dali who at that time had already given an impetus to the Hungarian students to reach the Western European educational level. And Czeglédi’s interest towards the Netherlands could have been raised also by him, as Tolnai Dali in London belonged to the cultural-spiritual circle of Samuel Hartlib (a member of the Hartlib-Dury-Comenius Protestant ,,tri281 About his life and works: Zoványi Jenő 1977,116-117.

282 Földes-Mészáros 1973,168.

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