Otrokocsi Ferenc Fóris

* Otrokocs, October 1648 – † Nagyszombat, October 1, 1718 / theological and linguistic writer, academic law teacher ; ; He began his studies in Sárospatak. From 1669 he was rector of Szatmár, and in 1671–1672 he studied at the University of Utrecht. After his return home, from 1673 he was a Reformed pastor in Rimaszécs. In 1674 – together with all the Protestant priests in Hungary – he was summoned to court in Bratislava, imprisoned there, then taken to galley slavery, from which he was released in 1676 thanks to the kindness of the Dutch admiral Ruyter. He stayed abroad for a while (in Switzerland, Germany, England and the Netherlands), then returned home in 1678. First he was a pastor in Rimaszécs, then in Gyöngyös from 1681, and in Košice from 1677–1690, but in the last years of his work there he fell into melancholy and his behavior became chaotic, for which reason he was deprived of his pastoral office. He lived in England and the Netherlands from 1690–1693. Returning to Hungary, he sought to unite the Catholic and Protestant churches. In 1694, he converted to the Catholic religion. He also won an annual award from Emperor Leopold I. In 1696, he went to Rome, where he obtained a doctorate in Catholic theology, law, and philosophy. From 1699, he was a law teacher at the Nagyszombat Academy, and at the same time, he was the keeper of the chapter archives. He wrote numerous theological treatises in Latin and Hungarian. In his comparative linguistic work (Origines Hungaricae I-II., Franeker, 1693), he used fantastical wordplay to prove the Hungarian-Jewish linguistic kinship.