Dénes Dienes: History of the Reformed Church Collég in Sárospatak (Sárospatak, 2013)
FLOURISHING AND SCATTERING THE REFORMED COLLEGE IN THE 17TH CENTURY - Turtur gemens - the College in exile (1672 - 1703)
THE REFORMED CHURCH COLLEGE IN THE 17TH CENTURY 50 \nno j6M Mihály Apafi, Prince of Transylvania, provided refuge to the students who were forced to flee Sárospatak by name. It was the Principality of Transylvania which offered the possibility of survival during these tumultuous years. In Gyulafehérvár, the school was set up and organized relatively quickly. The prince and other members of the aristocratic class personally expressed their support and solidarity during a festive school event. János Pósaházi led the worship service in the church, basing his sermon on “I am a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to live wherever I can find a place (judges 17:9). Mihály Apafi appointed lay officers to serve as directors of the College and ensured the material requirements, also. The first enrollment transpired in January 1672 and was repeated every year thereafter without interruption until 1716. At this time, however, the Habsburg administration intervened and once again uprooted the school. The authorities seized the College building by force and handed it over to the restored Catholic bishop. The students had little choice but to leave Gyulafehérvár. They moved to Marosvásárhely (Tärgu Mures at present) and, two years later, merged with the secondary school there, thus establishing the Reformed Church College in Marosvásárhely. Despite its displacement, the school kept the “Patak spirit” and called itself the College of Sárospatak-Gyulafehérvár. There were students who continued to come from the vicinity of Sárospatak and constantly maintained hopes of the school returning there. The first possibility for this presented itself when Imre Thököly’s troops successfully gained control of parts of the Upper-Hungarian region. Thököly was a Lutheran and had no qualms about quickly restoring the church in Sárospatak and other buildings to the Reformed Church. When the news came, some students returned to their home town in Zemplén county under Pál Sallai’s (the senior) leadership in 1682. Despite students having to teach one another for years, slowly more and more students returned from Transylvania and new students also appeared in Sárospatak. Finally, in 1686, they managed to convince a former Patak student, János Csécsi to return to the school and be the head teacher. Csécsi worked there until his death in 1708. Csécsi’s life was one befitting that found in an adventure book. Having been kidnapped by Turkish occupational forces as a child, it was by begging that he collected some of the money needed for his own ransom. He signed the school regulations in 1665. In 1669 he went to Kassa (Kosice at present) to study for three years and later he was a teacher for the lower classes. When, in 1674, Catholics forcefully entered the school and uprooted it, Csécsi fled Kassa and hurried to Gyulafehérvár in Transylvania where he enrolled once again in his old school. He studied theology and - as his son, Csécsi János Jr. writes in his biography - devoted great energies to study Hebrew at the age of twenty-five. In a very short time, he had made such progress that he earned not only Professor János Pósaházi’s approval but that of the entire student body as well. He was thus appointed to oversee the repetitional exercise classes. In January 1679, he was elected to be the senior and, from the beginning of 1680, he assumed the position of rector in Tállya. He then went abroad to study for three years (Utrecht, Leiden and Franeker). Upon his return, he was given a teaching position in Patak and taught physics (natural sciences), metaphysics and Hebrew and also expounded upon and provided explications in the study of Amesius’ books. There were thirty students enrolled in his upper classes at the time.
