Oldal 440 [440]
DAnıer BÄRTH
Benediction and exorcism
in early modern Hungary
The present book is about the textual aspects of the sacramentals of the early
modern Christian church. This is a subject area embedded in an inexhaustibly
rich cultural historical context, which the volume will approach mostly along the
criteria and questions of historical folklore. Naturally, this does not mean that
this branch of studies has any kind of monopoly over this subject area, either in
terms of exploring sources or in analysing them. The very complexity of the sub¬
ject matter calls for an interdisciplinary approach which includes clerical and li¬
turgical history, the branch of religious ethnography which focuses on the history
of lay religiosity, research into popular beliefs and customs and (particularly as re¬
gards the complex question of ‘magic’), the criteria applied by the history of men¬
talities and by historical asnthropology. These approaches will be reflected both
in the introductory essay and in the explanatory notes attached to the texts.
The author of the volume has been engaged in studying the Hungarian and
Central European aspects of the 16"-18'" century practice of benedictions and
curses for over a decade. Within this, the focus is not on objective manifestations
but primarily on the text of the rituals, as well as on their transmission, use,
structure and their characteristics of form and content. Of all the textual ele¬
ments of the rituals in question, excessive importance is attached to the positive
texts of blessings (benedictions) and to the negative texts called curses (exor¬
cisms). The former phrase is applied in clerical and scholarly usage mostly as a
summary term to refer to rituals of this nature, while the term ‘exorcism’ is most¬
ly used to refer to the ritual of curing demonic states of possession (so-called ‘ma¬
jor’ or ‘solemn’ exorcism). This is how the situation emerges whereby prayers of
‘minor’ or ‘simple exorcism’ sometimes occur in the sources as components of
rites referred to as benediction. This is mainly what explains why both concepts
are included in the title of the book despite that fact that major exorcism only
appears in one subchapter which mainly focuses on presenting liturgical texts.
The time boundaries of the present research effort are explained by the consid¬
erations set forth in the introductory essay. It is clear, however, that in order to
understand the processes which took place in the early modern period, com¬
monly perceived as the age of changes, we cannot avoid outlining the mediaeval
practices, either. A brief look at the relevant phenomena of the later centuries
seems appropriate to the predominance of the historical folklore approach ap¬
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