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 Scholarly Poet - János Erdélyi
143 Miskolc, then did his academic years of study in Patak. With his diligence and vast knowledge, he excelled among other students. He learned German in Igló (in the Szepes region). While there he lived in the home of the Lutheran superintendent; he gave private lessons in Krasznokvajda; his theological knowledge he deepened during foreign study tours in Vienna, Leipzig, Halle and Berlin; he first served as a pastor in Abaúj county and then, in 1849, the congregation elected him as pastor in Miskolc. As a church leader, his career eventually began to take an upward turn; he served as clerk of the church county in Abaúj, then as clerk and head clerk in Borsod county. He was elected to the office of bishop in 1866. From here he climbed one rung higher still for, from 1884 until his death, he chaired the meetings of the General Convent. At the beginning of his career he was a promising religious writer - even some of his secular plays and poems were published - but due to his ever-increasing workload he had to settle for writing funereal and other faith-related discourses of which he had several volumes published. Already earlier, in 1855, he published a volume entitled Religious Rhetoric. In the closing years of the Reform Era, he published his views - anonymously - on mixed marriages, where he declared as unacceptable the regulations pertaining to this in Hungary because many of its elements always gave preference to the Catholic practice over the Protestant practice. In his first encyclical letter as bishop, he wrote about the importance of public schools, the Bible and therefore the quality of the relationship between the two. The latter fact alone says a lot about Kun’s worldview as bishop and the consequences of this for the College. While he was the bishop, both Patak and the entire church district flourished. He proved to be a worthy successor to Pál Apostol (1848-1860) and Lajos Zsarnay. THE SCHOLARLY POET - JÁNOS ERDÉLYI János Erdélyi (1814-1868), born as a son to an educated farmer who owned a small private library, lived a very varied and exciting life. He was raised in Sárospatak but he abandoned his studies due to a conflict with one of the overbearing ‘contrascriba’. He went off to became an in-house private teacher for the Répásy family in Kemecse and then went to the Kolosy family in Cselej. After two years of being out of school, he enrolled in the College again, becoming one of the most active students of his time. He participated in the reform movements and student associations, and, in addition to his encouraging literary work, he completed his studies in law as well; he passed the bar exam in Pest in 1841. During the most stirring decades of the Reform Era, he was thoroughly drawn into Pest’s intellectual animation. Through his travel writings from Central Europe and France, together with his poems, and the increasingly popular poetry collections, he became well-known and he published often. He was the editor of multiple newspapers: Regélő Pesti Divatlap, Respublica, Szépirodalmi Szemle (Fabulous Pest Fashion Magazine, Respublica, Literature Review). The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Kisfaludy Society both took him in within their ranks. In 1848-1849, he was the director of the National Theatre. So
