"Én, úgy nőm - lélek szerint - reformátusok vagyunk" : Novothny Lajos református lelkész atipikus életútja = ’Me as well as my wife are Calvinists – spiritually’ : Atypical course of life of the Calvinist priest Alajos Novothny

Kránitz, Zsolt (2025) "Én, úgy nőm - lélek szerint - reformátusok vagyunk" : Novothny Lajos református lelkész atipikus életútja = ’Me as well as my wife are Calvinists – spiritually’ : Atypical course of life of the Calvinist priest Alajos Novothny. ACTA PAPENSIA, 25 (1-2). pp. 3-66. ISSN 1587-6292

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Abstract

Alajos Novothny (1834–1924) a poor Slovakian teacher from the county of Nyitra was born from the marriage of Ferenc Novothny. Finishing his secondary school education, he joined the Cistercian order and became a monk. From the year 1859, he was a teacher in the secondary grammar school of the order in Székesfehérvár. Here he met his wife Etelka Nagy a woman from a local craftsman family on account of whom he gave up his firm financial position as a teacher and quit the order. In 1862 he converted into Calvinist religion and got married. First, he worked as a teacher later after taking his exams and being confirmed he served as a Calvinist priest in the villages in Somogy county belonging to the Transdanubian Reformed Diocese (he was a teacher in Hedrehely and a priest in Kutas from 1876, later in Kastélyosdombó from 1878 until his death). At the top of his parsondom he was elected a chief notary later a vice dean in the Belsősomogy Reformed Deanery. His family successfully integrated in the local reformed community. The study using specialist literature and archival sources describes Novothny’s special course of life, the story of his marriage, the difficulties of integrating into the new community. In the Appendix the author publishes Novothny’s autobiography ending in 1899, which is a sincere confession about his deep emotions, decisions, about the everyday life of being a priest, and at the same time it is a true mirror of the social situation of that age.

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