John Horarik

* Bán, 19 May 1808 – † Bánya, 20 May 1864 / Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, public writer ; ; He was the son of a Slovak clothmaker and learned Hungarian and Latin at the Nitra gymnasium. From 1827 he was a student at the central seminary in Pest, where he learned German, and later French and English. With György Gábor Ihász and others, he founded the Hungarian Language Cultivation Society. He was ordained a priest in Nitra in 1831 and became a theology teacher at the local seminary, then a priest in Nagyugróc and Németpróna. In 1837 he gave up his pastoral ministry and moved to Pest. He increasingly criticized the rigid stance of the church on many practical issues, and finally left the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He is also seen as one of the ideological preparers of the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848/49. He promoted modern philosophical and natural philosophy views in his time, and even summarized his thoughts in a book. He sent the manuscript of this to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but they did not agree with the content of the work and sent him back the text, which was then lost. After the failure of the War of Independence, he went into hiding abroad, but even after the internal situation improved, he was not allowed to publish under his own name, but instead wrote his articles and translations under a pseudonym. His philosophical ideas, which are primarily based on the views of Ludwig Feuerbach, were most comprehensively summarized in his autobiographical work (Johann Horárik's Kampf mit Hierarchie und Kirche in den Jahren 1841-45 – Horárik János's Kampf mit Hierarchie und Kirche in den Jahren 1841-45. önn) published in Leipzig in 1847. In his last years, he lived with his brother in Banská Bystrica. In his will, he requested that no priest say goodbye to him and that his body be handed over to medical students for autopsy. This was ultimately not fulfilled, but the priest, who wanted to bury him, could not even begin his speech at the grave because a heavy rain unexpectedly fell on the mourners.