English Financial Aid for the Reformed College of Debrecen in Light of Hungarian Archival Sources

At the end of the seventeenth century, following the retreat of the Ottoman Empire from the region, the whole of the Kingdom of Hungary came under the jurisdiction of the Catholic Habsburgs, who introduced a number of measures that restricted the rights of Protestants. One of these measures affected the city ministers and the professors of the Reformed College in Debrecen, when they were forbidden by the Chamber of Szepes to have their salaries financed by the city. In such a situation, the leaders of the college had to seek financial help from Protestant-friendly countries such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and England. Drawing on primary sources available in the Archives of the Reformed Church District of Tiszántúl, the aim of this paper is to present the history of the financial aid the Reformed College received mainly from England (and to some extent Ireland and Scotland) from the seventeenth century to the end of the twentieth century with a focus on how the money was collected and how it was transferred to Hungary. (RB)