Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
SECONDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE-THE COLLEGE AND THE DEVELOPING, MODERN EDUCATION SYSTEM - The region and the Church District - En Route to Differentiation
134 SECONDARY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE region. In this way, Miskolc eventually evolved into a city which, according to classification, joined the group of cities which comprised the third type of city in Hungary, that being a city having a location which rendered it advantageous as a collection and distribution centre. In the spirit of dynamic development, the population of Miskolc also began to increase. At the end of the 18th century, the town counted thirteen thousand people; by 1869, the population was twenty-one thousand and by 1910, it was seventy-six thousand. The once purely Hungarian populated and denominationally homogeneous town was transformed into a settlement of ethnic and religious mixture, a development which enhanced trade relations and helped settle industries and production process units in the town. During the course the 19th century, Miskolc became an important centre for Hungarian metallurgy, mining and machine building. Its advancement on the economic and geographic-economic level is closely linked with cultural and church administrative developments: a stone theatre was built, cafes opened, the public collections of the library and the museum increased in quantity and in what they could offer, impressive downtown buildings and shops appeared, all this giving evidence of a dynamically developing middle-class urban lifestyle. These developments were closely followed by changes in the organization of church administration. The perceptible shift in focus towards Miskolc during the Reform Era was now quite obvious. For Sárospatak, this trend became clearly visible in 1888 when the church district decided to reduce the number of yearly conventions from three to two and these were organized for every other autumn in Patak as opposed to every summer during the previous years. The debate lasted two years with the people of Patak fighting hard for their city. Among them, Gerzson Szinnyei was one who vociferously rejected all excuses. He was thoroughly disappointed when heat and summer labor were mentioned as factors in the decision. To support his argument, he conjured up memories from the past when the College in Patak was the site of a veritable Calvinist pilgrimage during the festive celebrations of the alma mater. Nonetheless, the representatives from Patak had little choice but to bow in defeat. In his annual bulletin of 1888-89, the director in Patak sadly expressed that it was his final hope that the relationship between the religious community and the College would perhaps not dwindle away permanently. In 1910, a sharp conflict erupted between Sárospatak and Miskolc, this bringing to the surface the rivalry and the hurt in Patak. The matter began when György Radácsi of the College wrote a rather harsh response to the exaggerations published in Miskolc newspapers. The topic involved István Fejes’ inauguration as bishop. According to the original plans, the official inaugurational worship service was to take place in Sárospatak but the city representatives in Miskolc wanted the event to take place in their city, claiming that Miskolc was the episcopal centre. Radácsi strongly disagreed. Citing the constitution of the church, he declared that the Reformed Church does not recognize the episcopal centre. Although most of the elected bishops were called to serve as pastors in the large congregation in Miskolc, Gábor Őri Fiilep, for example, never served as pastor in Miskolc. In addition - as Radácsi claimed - the city has neither an episcopal church nor a lodging for bishops, so Miskolc has no basis to to any exclusive right for being the site of the bishop’s inauguration. This simple György Radácsi
