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(from fever to impotence), they prayed against storms and for rain, they applied
ceremonies to halt the plague, fire, flood or whatever else might be threatening
the people. Although this clerical activity extended to all strata of society ‘from
the king to the pauper’, to the everyday life of village and to urban and court
communities alike, if we judge from the surviving texts, the general character of
mediaeval benedictions was agrarian. This clerical practice emerged not accord¬
ing to a pre-meditated system but along a more or less clearly discernible line of
historical development, in harmony with religious needs.
The repertoire of benedictions in question became transformed in the West as
part of the process which is usually referred to in the literature of historical an¬
thropology and mentality history as the decline of magic’. Alongside the anti-sac¬
ramental gestures of Protestantism, we also have to bear in mind a serious change
in the mentality of the clerical elite. The publication of Rituale Romanum (1614),
as well as the related attempts at purification and unification of ritual are usually
seen as crucial components in the fundamental changes within the church. It is
no accident that the investigations in Franz’s also extend to the time of the publi¬
cation of the Roman book of rituals. The strivings of the higher clerical leadership
did not lead to instant and radical changes. In Southern Europe, the South Ger¬
man and Austrian provinces, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary and Croatia (and prob¬
ably a number of other places), the above mentioned processes appeared only later.
Besides this delay, there are also signs of typically subterranean, ‘semi-official’ pre¬
servation. Since this particular region is in a border position, in Hungary’s case it
is particularly exciting to see how far the influence of orthodoxy, unaffected by re¬
forms of this kind, could survive. Other crucial questions are who were the media¬
tors and what were the means by which the Latin blessings and curses of the
church were mediated to popular culture, what were the channels through which
they were translated to the vernacular, which was the clerical stratum that cham¬
pioned the transmission, dissemination and, primarily, the use of these texts.
The Hungarian practice of benedictions in the Middle Ages also has its rel¬
evant sources. Besides early books of rituals (sacramentarium, agenda, manuale,
obsequiale etc.) other liturgical codices (pontificale, missale, breviarium etc.) must
also be considered from this point of view. Practically all historical facts and da¬
ta that characterise this Hungarian practice are available to us owing to these
sources. For want of preliminary research, the mediaeval chapter of the present
work does not venture to present the types of sources or the data regarding indi¬
vidual benedictions. Accordingly, we cannot at this stage offer a general charac¬
terisation of the mediaeval Hungarian practice of benedictions. Although in the
case of some benedictions included in the reader we do refer to antecedents in
this country, we can in no way offer to clarify questions of origin or provide a
wide ranging comparative exploration.
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