Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
FLOURISHING AND SCATTERING THE REFORMED COLLEGE IN THE 17TH CENTURY - School life
THE REFORMED CHURCH COLLEGE IN THE 17TH CENTURY 24 The title page of Kecskemétit book of sermons the platform and an essential tool to encourage individual achievement but also a prerequisite for maintaining an equilibrated society. It was with a different approach but in essence the same emphasis as it pertains to schools and schooling that Pál Keresztúri Bíró - who later became the private tutor of the Rákóczi boys - advocated. He had enrolled as a student in Patak 1617. In his recommendation addressed to György Rákóczi I., he expounded on the ideal school: on one hand, there is to be no confusion, no noise from guns, no dissension, no coarse bluster, no anger, no hatred and no envy. On the other hand, it is to demonstrate repeatedly and generously those virtues which are indispensable to a happy life. It is essential that every society have such schools. Nowhere is there more fertile ground for good deeds, my Lord, than in schools; there exist no genial groups where the human mind urged by honorable desires would mature faster; there is no work more eminent or more useful than of that done in schools; there is no artificial science that would bring us closer to God’s glory than schooling. All of this would remain obscure and useless were the schools not to offer this to the world - the entirety of human society depends on these. Teachers came and went regularly, most of them staying for three or four years. Their students - István Geleji Katona, Bishop of Transylvania and Máté Csanaki, MD - generally remembered them as being great scholars, although not all of them left behind written evidence of that. As a matter of fact, students from Patak proved to be well-educated when arriving at German and Dutch universities. In Heidelberg and Franker, a total of fifty-eight students - who completed their studies before 1622 - were from Hungary and of these twenty-six were from Patak. Without a doubt, János Filiczki was the most qualified among the teachers. He had begun teaching in Patak in 1617. He spent fifteen years in Western universities and colleges, these including Prague, Marburg, Heidelberg, Basel and Altdorf. He was one of the last representatives of humanism, an excellent poet writing in Latin and very enthusiastic about Albert Szenei Molnár’s translation of the Psalms. He fell victim to the plague in 1622 together with many students and a fellow teacher, Márton Muraközi Dús, who was once a student taught by György Rákóczi and someone to whom Szenei Molnár referred to as a godly and learnt brother. The school had great difficulty overcoming the devastation caused by the plague. The students who survived soon scattered and for years afterwards only one teacher carried on with teaching. In 1626, a lector was taken on to once again work alongside the rector. From 1629 it became regular practice to hire teachers for three years and then, with the support of the school’s patrons, assist them in acquiring a more lucrative pastor’s position in a congregation, in this way making more attractive the teaching positions of shorter duration.
