Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SPIRIT AND MOOD - Connections through Peregrination
FROM THE ENLIGHTEMENT TO THE END OF THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 120 Béni Egressy (1814-1851) composed music for The Szózat, a famous poem by Mihály Wörösmarty. He studied in Sárospatak Odera-Frankfurt, Marburg and Erlangen. Study visits to Basel and Geneva by students from Patak became less frequent, also. By the middle of the 19th century, the preferred destinations had again changed: Göttingen was less frequently chosen by students than Berlin and Vienna. This shifting and variation in destinations can only partially be explained by financial factors. Without doubt, less and less students were ready to commit to a major and lengthy European peregrination of two or three years, something which delayed their engagement into long-term employment. Study tours of a single year in length became increasingly common and less distant destinations seemed more and more appropriate within this perception. Cultural developments proved to also be a significant factor here. German-speaking universities evolved with unprecedented speed during the 18th and 19th centuries and caught up to other traditional intellectual centres. The universities in Göttingen and Halle were the first to achieve these levels; then - thanks to the reforms of Wilhelm von Humboldt - Berlin became world renown as the centre of modern science and research. The decrease in distance to be travelled to such a university centre did not mean a decrease in quality. Students could thus keep up with the latest discoveries and developments at these universities, also. The Habsburgs were also keen on decreasing these distances, this evidenced by Vienna outrightly forbidding or strongly restricting study tours for Protestant students to Western Europe for decades starting from the reign of Joseph II. At the turn of the century, Vienna, Marburg andjena were listed as possible destinations for such students. Furthermore, in 1821, a Protestant theological faculty was established at the University of Vienna, this serving as another tool for Habsburg absolutism to emphasize its preference for closer destinations. Not only had the destinations changed but also the number of students embarking on these study trips had decreased radically. As a consequence, the number of cases involving students who took part in the so-called academia promotion but opted not to go on peregrination increased in the Cistibiscan church district. With only slight exaggeration, it could be said that only seniors had the guaranteed means of accumulating the minimal finances needed for a study tour abroad, simply because the number of rural teaching positions had greatly decreased. These positions, had they existed, would have provided a decent income for two to three years for many young men after leaving College. By the 1830s and 1840s, only five or six congregations offered to rectors a large enough salary to have made it possible to save up enough money for a study tour abroad. Forty or fifty years previous to this, there were five or six times as many schools within the church district which were able to offer such a possibility. But even those fortunate enough to be in the “well-paying” districts often complained about their salary, for often it was paid in wine and grain instead of money which could mean that a year with a bad crop would wipe out all their savings. Overall, it is safe to say that even if all the teachers from those five or six congregations would have been able to go for a study tour abroad, only two or three of them could have actually gone out in any given year - a number which is rather far removed from the fifteen to twenty students who did go in the 18th century. There were only very few young men with such exceptional luck as Pál Beregszászi Nagy. He had an exceptionally long peregrination and his journey
