Tematikus lapszámunk tanulmánygyűjteménye annak a tudományos konferenciának az anyagára épül, amelyet Szenci Molnár Albert és a 16–17. századi peregrinatio academica címmel rendeztünk meg 2024. szeptember 5–7. között Debrecenben. A harminc elhangzott előadást magában foglaló alkalom széles körű és alapos szakmai előkészítését a Debreceni Egyetem Bölcsészettudományi Karának Magyar Irodalom- és Kultúratudományi Intézetéhez, illetve Néderlandisztika Tanszékéhez kötődő Reformációkutató és Kora Újkori Művelődéstörténeti Műhely tagjai végezték (jelen kötet szerkesztőin kívül Bozzay Réka és Imre Mihály), együttműködve a HUN-REN
BTK Irodalomtudományi Intézetének Reneszánsz Osztályával (Kecskeméti Gáborral és Móré Tündével), a Tiszántúli Református Egyházkerülettel és intézményeivel (a TTRE Közgyűjteményei és a Debreceni Református Hittudományi Egyetem), az egyetemek
régi magyar irodalom tanszékeivel és kutatóműhelyeivel, valamint Debrecen Megyei Jogú Város Önkormányzatával. A tudományos rendezvényt a Reneszánsz-Barokk Kutatócsoport (ReBaKucs) vándorkonferenciájának 55. alkalmaként szerveztük meg, Szenci Molnár Albert (1574–1634) születésének 450., valamint az Institutio-fordítás megjelenésének 400. évfordulója alkalmából.

Th€e author is pleased to conclude that over the past fifty years, research on Albert Molnár Szenci’s oeuvre has made considerable progress. Almost all his works are now available in facsimile or digital editions. Th€us, his oeuvre can be objectively analysed in its entirety and in detail, free from excessive bias or reservations. €The study lists Molnár’s printed and manuscript works and translations that have not survived, but whose existence can be reasonably proven. In addition to the search for these, the aim of future research is to produce a modern critical edition of his letters and occasional Latin poems, to process and publish his collection of commonplaces, to reconstruct his library, to prepare a bibliography of the Genevan Psalms in Hungarian, and to write his monography.

Until the middle of the 20th century, research in the history of culture, literature, and church history was mainly interested in the Reformation and Humanism of the 16th century, while after 1550, including the first two decades of the 17th century, it was a kind of “no man’s land”, which most people did not see worth dealing with. After a few early and pioneering studies of the 1960s, scholars witnessed the beginning of a more thorough study concerning this very period. It was due to the publication of basic handbooks, book series, and source editions, which led to an increase of the scholarly attention paid to this previously neglected period. Th—ere was also a major technological development, thanks to the personal computer and the Internet. After 1990, international scholarship opportunities opened up (now without domestic restrictions), and this had an inspiring effect on Molnár’s research, his life and his oeuvre as well. Between 1993 and 2003, a new critical edition of the Diary was completed, with commentaries and a Hungarian translation. It is possible to produce a similar edition of the correspondence, an edition of the Latin poems (pieces of which are turning up one after the other as a result of the digital publications), and perhaps someone will eventually start working on a monograph on him. —This study goes through the research and publications that have made it possible to produce a virtual “map” of the work of this versatile Hungarian writer, who lived in Germany for thirty years, but enriched the Hungarian culture as well, as a theologian, a grammarian, a translator and a poet as well. 

No detailed inventory of Albert Szenci Molnár’s library has survived. žThe (at least partial) reconstruction of his legacy has been an important thread of Szenci-research for more than a century. Scholars have regularly reported their findings in this area at relevant
academic forums. In the present study, we have attempted to summarize and compare these studies. At present, we know of a total of 39 volumes that were, for shorter or longer periods, in the possession of Albert Szenci Molnár. Of these, three are manuscripts and seventeen are printed volumes (containing altogether twenty-four printed works) that formed an organic part of his library. In addition, we know of nineteen volumes that he gave as gi³s to others, fifteen of which are his own writings. 

By the early 17th century, the Lutherans of Western Transdanubia had firmly established their separation from both Catholics and Calvinists. Among the region’s two great aristocratic families, the Batthyánys adhered to Calvinism, while the Nádasdys followed the
Lutheran faith. Upon returning from his travels, Albert Szenci Molnár initially sought to integrate into this deeply divided religious landscape; one that, by the 1610s, was predominantly Lutheran. However, his efforts were hindered by the local Lutheran community, including Benedek Nagy of Sármellék, a schoolmaster in Kőszeg, who even composed a mocking pasquinade against him.

Since the publication of its facsimile in 2002, with the excellent preface of Judit P. Vásárhelyi, I have been taking out and re-reading almost every year the precious Prayer Book of Albert Szenci Molnár. Œis publication of an important pious text, which had two predecessors, is a translation into Hungarian, based partly on the Christian Prayer Book of a work of Heinrich Bullinger and Joannes Frisius of Zurich (Zurich, 1600). Originally published in 1621, its message is primarily to deepen the Christian knowledge and faith of religious women. Albert Szenci Molnár, who had been faithful to Heidelberg, his most important Alma Mater, the seat of the Electorate of the Palatinate, since his student days at the Kazimir College, and had some protectors and collegial friends there, published this book in this remarkable university town. He dedicated his Prayer Book to two women. And now not to high-born, noble ones, just to two financially well-off wives, living not far from his native town, Szenc (today: Senec, in Slovakia). Œe diminutive form in the title of
the lovely ‘little book’ is the sign of its intimate content, and personal tone, without any disdain or diminutive way of thinking. ŒThe addressees of its dedication are two particularly gracious spouses, namely, Orsolya, married to Gáspár Szegedi Mező, and Anna, married to János Krausz. Both of them were the life-long, faithful partners of their husbands, and two respected patrons of Szenci
Molnár from the town of Nagyszombat (today: Trnava, Slovakia, a settlement near to Senec). Its deep faith, vividness and convincing style make this booklet worth reading even in the 21st century, not only by women, but by men as well. In his book Szenci Molnár wrote about Queen Elisabeth I, as one of the greatest personalities and supporters of the Reformation, even as a psalm and religious prose text translator. Finally, let us mention an unforgettable and painfully relevant sentence of Szenci Molnár’s book when mentioning his personal difficulties and efforts and fights. Among others because the financial difficulties of collecting print-expenses when writing a new book: “Lunae radiis non maturescit botrus” / “Œe moonlight is not ripening the grape”.

Despite the fact that Albert Molnár Szenci revised the Hungarian Bible translation on two occasions and translated the Geneva Psalms into Hungarian, there is a paucity of information about his knowledge of Hebrew. A survey of his studies and his Hebrew teachers reveals that he had the opportunity to learn the language thoroughly. Nevertheless, he did not become a writer of the 17th-century Hebrew Greeting Poems. It was previously hypothesized that these Hebrew poems were Hebrew transcriptions of poems originally written in Latin. Th›e captions and poetic devices of these poems lend support to this hypothesis. However, a thorough examination of these poems, along with an existing bilingual poem, suggests that these carmina were originally composed in Hebrew. 

Albert Szenci Molnár’s Hungarian grammar written in Latin (Novae Grammaticae Ungaricae libri duo, published in Hanau in 1610) is the first complete classification of the Hungarian language, including its syntax. It fits perfectly into the European movement toward
the rise of the vernacular. Recording these rules makes it possible to express nuanced ideas in the native language as eloquently as in Latin. •This contributes to the strengthening of national consciousness and the development of linguistic patriotism.

The engraved print known as Igaz Vallás (True Religion), featuring a poem translated by Albert Szenci Molnár and an engraving by Dominicus Custos was published in Augsburg in 1606. This work is a variant of the 1576 Amsterdam print, which featured Beza’s poem translated into several different languages. The Dutch engraving was a portrayal of a protest against Spanish oppression. By 1606, Beza’s poem had a tradition that dated back for several decades. The prints published in Amsterdam and later in Augsburg placed the
allegorical female figure into specific historical and social circumstances, meanwhile the old versions had been of allegorical nature with the female figure engaging in discussion with the readers of the poem. The first versions pictured a female figure leaning on a cross, crushing death under her feet. From 1560 onwards, the allegorical engraving, a picture and poem together, was commonly used without a title and with titles, in protestant publications, confessions, psalms and in Bible editions; furthermore, it was used by German, French, Swiss and English printers as typographic insignia. The front cover of Szenci Molnár’s translation of Calvin’s work (Institutio Religionis Christianae, 1624) displayed a version of the picture significantly different from the ones before. It displayed only the allegorical female figure, and the translation of Beza’s poem was placed before Calvin’s text. Beza’s poem appeared in Latin
in the anthology by Georgius Carolides, Szenci Molnár’s patron in Prague. Péter Beregszászi Tóth’s collection of poems included the Hungarian adaptation of the old poem of complaints as a lament against protestant religious grievances of the seventeeth and eightteenth centuries.

In the study of Renaissance humanism, it has long been established that friendship played a crucial role in the self-organisation of humanists. Nevertheless, it is worth analysing Molnár Szenci’s diary and correspondence in the light of recent research into historically
specific versions of early modern concepts of friendship. The paper approaches Szenci Molnár’s correspondence from the perspective of whether there are traces of more personal friendships in the letters, and whether there are differences in the rhetorical formulation of the letters that suggest a deeper emotional connection.

This essay discusses the handwritten commonplace book of the Hungarian Calvinist intellectual Albert Szenci Molnar (1574–1634), who modelled his notebook on the method of Johann Benz, professor in Strassburg. Adapting his teacher’s system of subject headings, Szenci Molnar focused his attention more and more on matters that he personally considered to be important, such as Hungarian humanism and Calvinist communion theology. The main part of the essay shows how the commonplace-collection was used and augmented by its second owner and scribe, Ferenc Papai Pariz (1649–1716), son of the court preacher of the Prince of Transylvania. Papai, who,  after graduating in medicine at Basel, served as Professor of Ancient Greek in Nagyenyed (Aiud, Romania), and became famous for publishing an updated version of Szenci Molnar’s Latin-Hungarian dictionary. He carried the notebook with him during his Western European study trips. Although the materials gathered by him under the commonplace headings point towards less autonomous choices and interests, the entries can be linked to relevant fields, including phraseology, lexicography, bibliography and historia litteraria, medicine, medical botany, and chemical recipes. The material analysis of the document suggests that Papai Pariz not only bound additional leaves to the manuscript, but he also reconstructed its damaged first section. Through his work, Papai Pariz preserved and partially (re)created, one of the most important ego-documents of early Hungarian literature.

Albert Szenci Molnár’s psalm book published in Herborn in 1607 is decorated with engraved illustrations, yet researchers of Szenci Molnár’s works so far have not examined these works, which also merit attention as this is the only edition of Psalterion that contains these illustrations. Szenci Molnár wanted his psalm book to fit into the intellectual environment of Germany; however, Rabe, the publishing house, gave him the opportunity to integrate the iconographic traditions into that context. Examples for that are the engraved illustrations of the pelican and the two horsemen, both of which were part of the publishing practice of Georg Rabe and Christoph Rabe; however, they were much more common in books published by Georg Rabe. ‰The engravings, together with their textual descriptions, played a role in shapingSzenci Molnár’s identity as an author, particularly through their connection to the ethos of princely dedications, and to the construction of his heroic role as defender of the faith.

Personal remembrance of the author of the present study is characterised first, concerning some persons of the 20th century authorities of the Hungarian psalm and tune editors. It is now certain that the immediate source of the 1607 Hungarian edition was the 1598 German edition, rather than the French of 1562. At least some of these Psalms and editions must have been earlier known among Hungarian ministers in the second half of the 16th century, those who studied at German and Swiss universities. žThe study also describes some characteristics of the Psalms in the 1948 Hungarian edition. Characterised and compared are also a few examples of additional hymns to the 150 Psalms since the beginnings, that follow the examples of the German forerunners, i. e. the Decalogus, Pater noster and Magnificat in Hungarian verses.

My study examines the musical movements of a manuscripts preserved in the Grand Library of the Reformed College of Debrecen – the Balogi cancionale, composed in 1659 – from the perspectives of melodic history, music history, and liturgical practice. šThe significance of the melodies lies in the psalm melodies notations found at the end of the cancionale indicating the involvement of at least two different scribal hands which could be considered in further research on the manuscript. Thše analysis of the melodies confirmed assumptions about the two hands as the notation clearly reveals two distinct writing styles: one angular, the other more rounded. Examining notional accuracy further enabled me to separate the two scribes, and analysis supported the creation of a table that thematically marks the problems in the musical notation. Central focus of my paper is the study of the psalm melodies in the Balogi cancionale and the thematic grouping of the errors found in their notation. Thše manuscript cancionale also contains a responsory on page 271 of the hymnal, which I treat and discuss as part of the cancionale’s core repertoire. šThis short responsory, reveals the decline of the art of musical notation in 17th-century Hungary.

This study aims to provide a brief overview of the efforts made in recent decades to identify Hungarian and Transylvanian law students who visited Western European universities in the early modern time to uncover data related to their university stays and studies. Who were those who wasted their time and their own and their patrons’ money on acquiring “useless” legal knowledge at universities? “Useless” because, according to our current knowledge, there was presumably a huge gap between practical legal life, especially in private law relations in Hungary and Transylvania, and the legal thinking imbued with the European ius commune that could be acquired at universities. Those who attended foreign universities probably constituted only a negligible proportion of our legal scholars at the time. Another question is whether this numerical inferiority was not necessarily proportional to the “scientific” and possible practical influence of this group on the legal life of the time. Focusing primarily on the hundred years around the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the study aims to provide some insight into the possible impact of legal knowledge acquired at foreign law schools on domestic “legal scholarship,” based on visitation data and on legal and political disputationes, defended at the universities.

Imre Forró began researching the studies of Hungarian students in Franeker in 1932 as a Stipendium Bernardinum scholarship holder. Upon returning to Hungary, his work was accused of plagiarism, a claim that was later proven to be unfounded. Nevertheless, the controversy led him to set his work aside for decades. In 1954, the De Wever Publishing House in Friesland showed interest in Forró’s manuscript, which was also considered by the journal Egyháztörténet in Hungary. Forró applied for the Stipendium Bernardinum scholarship again in 1960, which he was awarded in the spring of that year. AftŒer a long delay, he was finally able to travel in 1964. While he was waiting for his permission, he focused on gathering relevant literature on Franeker. AŒer returning to Hungary, he organized his manuscript with the help of Pieter Tuinhof. Despite receiving full support from the Fryske Akademy and preparing the manuscript for publication, Forró felt it lacked readability and decided to write an extended introduction. Ultimately, the manuscript was never published, and only the introduction was released posthumously by his family.

Th‘e library in Halle today is the most important organically structured collection of early modern Hungarian peregrination outside the Carpathian Basin. Th‘e manuscript collection of the Hungarian Library of Wittenberg-Halle identifies some 3000 early modern individuals (authors, recipients, copiers, possessors). ‘e types of documents (letters, albums, lecture notes), together with occasional printed material, are excellent for analysing the network of contacts and evaluating the content of studies abroad. ‘The collection also includes the administration of scholarships for students in Hungary (applications, decisions, accounts), and the documentation of book acquisitions (last wills, book donations, catalogues). ‘The study aims to outline new research possibilities, while taking stock of the results to date.

During the 16th century, the University of Wittenberg was regarded as the most popular institution among students from the Hungarian Kingdom. They established a student association that published quite extensively, primarily focusing on occasional poetry. Their predominant genre was the valedictory poem, which flourished from 1587 until 1589. The student organization steadily diminished at the end of the 16th century and later was diminished in 1613 due to ecclesiastical laws. The paper analyses two valedictory prints from this late period to explore the narrative regarding the ideal Protestant traveller in the poems.

This study examines the album amicorum of Gergely Váradi Farkas, a Hungarian Protestant student, to explore the social networks formed during his peregrination in Wittenberg and Marburg (1607–1608). In Wittenberg, he primarily had relationships with other students, both Hungarian and foreign, and with teachers well-known in Hungary, while in Marburg, he was in contact with many professors as well as fellow students from abroad. The study attempts to capture the mediating role of Albert Szenci Molnár in Gergely Váradi Farkas’s connection to the European intellectual communities.

In this paper we focus on the supporting figures of the cavalier’s tour, which served to train young noblemen. In order to outline the role of the noblemen’s companions and educators (known as ephorus, praeceptor, prefect, Hofmeister, or moderator), we draw on data from three sources. —The instructions written by the noble parents who employed them, the letters sent by and addressed to them by the parents, and some diary entries testify their role during the cavalier’s tour. Finally, we compile a list of ephoruses known from the previous literature from the mid-16th to the mid-18th century, together with a brief description of the cavalier’s tour.

Th‹e history of the library of the Sárospatak Reformed College is known from the first third of the 17th century. In 1671, the library owned more than 5000 documents, which were almost completely destroyed during the last three decades of 17th century. Th‹e 16th and 17th centuries were an important period of peregrinatio Hungarica. In the first three-quarter of the 16th century, hundreds of Hungarian Reformed students studied at the University of Wittenberg, from 1592 at the University of Heidelberg. After 1622, the academies in the Netherlands played an important role, and many students also visited England. My study focuses on Reformed pastors, whose names were hidden for centuries behind supralibros of 16th-century Renaissance or 17th-century vellum bookbindings.

Upon returning from Utrecht, György Komáromi Csipkés organized a series of disputations at the Academy of Debrecen, where he attempted to recreate the university practices he had observed during his studies in the Low Countries. Of his four disputations published between1654 and 1656, my study analyses the De bis mortuis (On ’ose Who Have Died Twice) in detail, and I show that Ps-Augustinus’s work De miraculis Sacrae Scripturae, which examined the resurrections mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, played a major role in the argumentation of the De bis mortuis. From the context of the disputation’s publication, it is clear that Komáromi Csipkés, a student of Gijsbert Voetius, attacks his master’s opponent at the time, Samuel Maresius, in this treatise, and it was thanks to this that his text was later published several times in the Low Countries in Voetius’s circle.

Th›is paper explores the Hebrew-oriented scholarly activities of seventeenthcentury Hungarian Protestant peregrini, including Bible translation, grammatical works, and congratulatory poetry (carmina gratulatoria). Th›is study considers how these genres interacted, and their place within the intellectual and ideological context of the period. ›The study argues that these Hebrew-focused endeavours contributed both to the standardization of the Hungarian language and to the formation of national consciousness.

In my study, I seek to answer what lessons can be gleaned from previous research on the 16th-century university visits of Transylvanian Unitarian students abroad and how we can continue the work that was started. In the case of this topic with its rich source material, it is worth examining how we can summarize, refine and rewrite in detail the previous knowledge of the university visits of Unitarian students by rereading old sources and incorporating new ones, and how we can connect these data to Transylvanian education and literary tradition.

Th™e Unitarian College of Cluj (Kolozsvár), the sole Antitrinitarian institution to sponsor students’ peregrination, saw a significant setback in the early 1660s (due to a combination of fire damage, the bubonic plague, and an erosion of discipline). As a result, Unitarian peregrination temporarily “showed a tendency of decline”. From the 1670s, however, Unitarian students were again regularly sent to study abroad at the expense of the parish of Cluj, but before they leftš, the peregrines had to issue a pledge, a so-called promissory note (reversalis, obligatoria) to the ecclesia, pledging faithfulness and obedience, primarily; a practice also known in other denominations. Th™ese notes are usually – and correctly – regarded as formulaic in nature, but they contain the occasional interesting detail, such as the amount of the “scholarship” granted, the duration of enrolment and the required languages to be learned by the sponsored student. This study offers a systematic overview of these details.

Th›e paper analyses the Ms. U. 584 of the Academic Library of Cluj-Napoca. I examine the attribution of the manuscript and argue for the correction of the author’s name by linking to him another manuscript from the same collection (call number: Ms. U. 659). After presenting the known biographical data about the newly identified author (including books with his inscriptions), in the second part of the paper I investigate the sources of the sermons and argue that 41 sermons out of altogether 112 in the Ms. U. 584 are translations and copies from Caspar Sibelius’s two sermon collections, the Fraenum iuventutis (1639) and the Humilitas Davidica (1640). Finally, I examine the possible reasons and routes of the reception of Sibelius in the Transylvanian Unitarian community in the seventeenth century.

In 1589, the Calvinist Franciscus Junius published Christian Francken’s Argumenta XXII in Heidelberg for polemic purposes. žThe paper attempts to clarify the circumstances under which the manuscript of Francken’s work, probably written in Hungary, was transmitted to the Heidelberg theologian. A new philological data strongly suggests that Bálint Sárközi, an alumnus of Zsigmond Rákóczi, played a crucial role in this mediation. Sárközi’s person, a Calvinist with an exceptional philosophical education, enables us to raise certain questions about the philosophical orientation of Calvinist as well as radical Protestant authors in the Late Renaissance period of Hungary.

Posta Anna: Neolatin bibliai költészet a 16–17. századi Magyarországon, Debrecen, Debreceni Egyetemi Kiadó, 2022 (Csokonai Könyvtár, 61).