Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Famous Teachers
Ill to be a precise and enthusiastic individual. He announced his wish to leave in 1811 and subsequently returned to Jánosi to his original calling in a position which provided better pay. His case is unique in the sense that he was offered a position to teach in the newly-established Institute of Protestant Theology of the University of Vienna, thus spending the last three decades of his life teaching once again, although this time he did so in an institution far from his home. József Láczai Szabó arrived to teach in Sárospatak at practically the same time as Patay. A native of Sárospatak, he studied first in Patak and then in Kassa, later in Utrecht and Göttingen. Returning from abroad, he was appointed to be a professor in 1791 at the Reformed Church College in Pápa which hadjust previously been rebuilt. He left Pápa after nearly fifteen years of teaching. For a short time he served as a pastor in Fejér county and then, from 1808 until his death in 1828, he taught at the College in Patak while also tending to pastoral duties in his hometown parish. As a student in Patak, he had demonstrated a keen interest in poetry, this extending to his poems catching the eye of the head lay officer Gedeon Ráday, which resulted in his being offered a position in Pápa. Unfortunately, his poetry also set him at odds with Ferenc Kazinczy. This relatively conservative- minded poet first found himself to be at the receiving end of Kazinczy’s unjustly abusive critique and then he was accused - in all certainty wrongly - of making and circulating an anonymous, obscene leaflet which targeted Kazinczy. In the wake of this conflict he came to be one of the anti-Kazinczy trio (along with Sándor Kövy and József Rozgonyi) in Sárospatak and, as such, he often gladly distributed the Mondolat which was a tract dedicated to excoriating the language renewal movement. In one of his lectures he alluded to the poet from Széphalom (an unambiguous reference to Kazinczy) as an example of those academics who are to be admonished because of their pride. More significant, however, is that, through his work in Pápa and in Patak, he demonstrated that he was familiar with and embraced the principles of philanthropism. Not only did he denounce the one-sidedness and inflexibility of the educational curriculum but he also deemed it essential to teach the principles of fishing, hunting, farming, health sciences, etc., to form and shape patriotic, ready-to-work, intelligent individuals. Yet perhaps more importantly, it can be ascertained from his surviving notes that he was bold in formulating and discussing the burning questions of history. He sympathized with the different peasant movements in Europe and readily denounced the cruelty of the Habsburgs and their persecution of Protestants. His notes occasionally give evidence of independent thinking but he was hardly able to put this to much use during the initial decades of the 19th century, especially as an instructor of practical theology and moral ethics. According to the summary etched of him by Bajkó, despite all his positive achievements, it is only through his religious rationalism that József Láczai Szabó distinquished himself somewhat from the crowd. János Somosi was born in 1783 into a family with a long history of pastors. He was also able to supplement his studies at the College in Patak by taking classes in German in Lőcse and by peregrination in Erfurt, Göttingen and Frankfurt. Among the stations abroad, Göttingen proved to be a popular destination for Hungarian Protestant youth because the most renown professors taught there. Somosi worked in the College of Patak as a professor of human letters/literature between 1809 and 1813 before having enrolled for classes in German universities. János Somosi
