Sándor Bálint

The Scientist, the Teacher, the Foregoer

Abstract

Sándor Bálint (1904–1980), the ethnographer, was a highly educated teacher of classical languages, literary history, music history, history, architecture, geography, church history, liturgical history, ethnography and folklore.  His professional philosophy was to make peasant education part of national culture. He was the developer and the greatest researcher of the approach and method of religious ethnography in Hungary. The study summarizes his life, religious ethnography and pedagogical work. The study summarizes his life, reviews his major religious ethnographic works, his works on the birthplace Szeged and the Great Hungarian Plain, and his pedagogical work. Finally, it introduces the Christian humanist whose beatification is in process.