Abstract
In my study, through the example of the free royal city of Sopron, I am searching for an answer to the question how the Reformation influenced the political actions of the city’s leading body and its room for movement within the frameworks of estates. I will attempt to show in sketches how the intellectual horizon that can be reconstructed behind the city’s government is connected to the mentality of Lutheran Reformation. By focusing on one particular field, the educational policy of the town council, I will try to disclose how this manifested in practice in view of Sopron’s new educational institution (the lycée) established and maintained by the town council without any aristocratic patronage, unparalleled at that time. Finally, in a short outlook beyond the boundaries of the investigated period and by focusing on the activities of one former teacher (János Ribini) and two alumni (Baron László Prónay and János Kis), I will give evidence for the continued existence of the lycée’s mentality – which I will call confessional-patriotic – even after the town council had lost its supervision of the educational institution.