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What we can point out, however, is that mediaeval Hungarian liturgical
codices only sporadically and vaguely reflect the kind of variety in the clerical
practice of benedictions which emerges in Franzs work. The latter is, no doubt,
based on a far greater number of books of ritual. The fact that Hungarian sourc¬
es do not reflect an ’arsenal of benedictions’ does not mean that in actuality the
believer did not have this to rely on. The frequently mentioned destruction of
mediaeval Hungarian liturgical (and other) sources does not enable us to say a
conclusive no to this question. Printed late mediaeval books of ritual, which
were published in unaltered form between 1496 and 1560, reflect the structure of
the European rituals of the period and the limited range of benedictions used. In
the last decades of the 16" century the first books of ritual which took into ac¬
count the reform principles of the Tridentinum began to appear in Hungary.
However, copies of Agendarius liber (1583, 1596) issued by bishop Miklós Telegdi,
were only used for a few decades and in a limited number of places.
In the diocese of the archbishop of Esztergom, a source of decisive influence,
cardinal Péter Pázmány was the first to revise his influential book of ritual Rituale
Strigoniense in accordance with the renewed Roman ritual. The book, first pub¬
lished in 1625, took advantage of the relative freedom granted to bishops by Rome
and did not follow the Roman model verbatim but instead contains divergences
in harmony with local characteristics. Alongside the benedictions found in Ritu¬
ale Romanum (water, candles, house, marital beds, boat, vineyard, pilgrim, fruit,
oil, Easter food), this collection contains (based on Telegdi’s above mentioned rit¬
ual), the benediction on wine for St. John’s day (December 27"); on the three pre¬
cious gifts at Epiphany (January 6"); on apples used against ailments of the throat
on St. Blaise Day (February 3"); on new grapes on the day of Transfiguratio Domi¬
ni (Aug 6") and on medical herbs on the Day of the Assumption, (August 15").
It was highly significant that the initiation of women after childbirth and after
the wedding night were also granted space in the book of ritual, both of which re¬
mained living customs in Hungary right until the last third of the 20° century.
An characteristic feature of Hungarian liturgical history was that the compil¬
ers of the ritual of later centuries took Pazmany’s Esztergom ritual as their point
of departure in all dioceses, also with regard to benedictions. There were some
minor divergences, too, mostly in line with local expectations. In the 18" cen¬
tury, for example, in the archbishopric of Kalocsa, a town frequently exposed to
floods of the rivers Danube and Tisza, benedictions against flooding were includ¬
ed for use by the local priesthood. When the ritual was renewed in the early 20"
century, a survey was conducted in this place interviewing the lay priesthood
which benedictions they were missing most sorely (under pressure from the be¬
lievers) from the old time ritual. The responses and the arising demands made it
clear that besides the official, printed book of ritual a subterranean MS tradition
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