Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)

Dénes Dienes: THE PROTESTANT SCHOOL IN THE 16TH CENTURY - The humanist Reformed college 1577-1599

The donors included Gáspár and András Mágocsy, István Melith, István Ecsedi Báthory, Simon Forgách, Sebestyén Thököly and Zsigmond Rákóczi. In addition to them, there were also urban merchants alongside the patrons, such as Ferenc Pap from Kassa and György Szabó. Furthermore, there are records confirming that, in 1583, Mrs. János Tar, a female citizen of the city of Kassa, bequeathed money to the Patak school in her will. The widow of János Chapy, Klára Boc- skay, remembered the school thus in her will dated in 1586 in Gálszécs: “I will bequeath ten cubic fathoms of wheat and ten forints to the students of Patak”. It was not solely the landlord patron who supported the school in this way but also many other donors as well, which turn of events may well be a reference to its positive reputation. It is clear from these developments that the institution had by now grown beyond the framework embodied by the town of Sárospatak.

Life in the college - it now being possible to refer to it as a college - experienced no inner fractures in the wake of the passing away of Balázs Fabricius Szikszai. The former Patak student, György Császár Kassai, studying in Wittenberg at the time, published the biography of his illustrious former teacher in 1577. He dedicated the foreword recommendation to the deans of the Reformed Church of the Cistibiscan district, urging them to take special care of the school in Patak.

“Indeed, it will be most worthy of your authority to open up to the student youth the path which was disrupted by the untimely death of the man who is irreplaceable [Balázs Fabricius Szikszai]. If you reinstate those approaching their downfall, if at school you teach once again liberal arts, which came to a halt and was reduced to nothing after the death of the prodigious patron of these disciplines; if you call the Muses back and oppress the threatening rudeness; if by your wise counsel and measures you conjure back everything which in its slackness has started to disintegrate, and protect the holy cause of science and ethics from the impeding confusion with resolute spirit and endurance”.

The decline of the school tentatively described in this text cannot be taken at face value. In respect to its essence, it is a letter written in humanist style, something which should not be interpreted literally. These expressions do not describe the real situation in Patak but acclaim instead the deceased Szikszai, praise in him the outstanding teacher who had passed away only shortly before, and, in a figurative sense, even relates information pertaining to the standards of the school. This is all the more true, when one is aware that the author of the letter already knew who would be taking on Szikszai’s mantle and composed his text with appropriately true humanist loft: “As the greatest expectations awakened in us by the news, which having circulated all about within the boundaries of Pannónia arrived to us, also, proclaiming that you are offering a secure token for our good hope about the academic knowledge of the youth in our native land by inviting Mihály Paksi, a very prominent persona, for the place and department vacated by the most excellent teacher”.

This “very prominent man”, Mihály Cormaeus Paksi, was a pupil of Fabricius Szikszai in Kolozsvár. Enough is said if we only enumerate the most import-