Oldal 445 [445]
OCR
earlier notions about the mediaeval ‘arsenal of benedictions’ having declined in Hungary. Not only were mediaeval texts transmitted, but new blessings were constantly being created and old ones were brought in line with the times. Comparative examination of the material shows that there are not many texts that were originally created in Hungary, it is more realistic to speak of a kind of Central European stock of texts. The source works for these benedictions, besides a number of unidentified mediaeval sources, were probably those large collections which enjoyed broad popularity all over Europe and which were closely tied in with monastic practice. These include Rituale Franciscanum (1685) published by Czech Franciscan Bernardus Sannig which ran into a number of editions and contained as many as 150 benedictions, or Gelasio di Cilia’s Locupletissimus thesaurus (1709) which contained 176 benedictions. The international character of blessings was confirmed, besides being in Latin, by references which showed that names of saints referred to in the texts were freely interchangeable, and the names of such saints as were popular in the country and region of the users could be freely inserted. In the case of some types of blessings, in the more fortunate cases, we can trace the windy tracks of dissemination within the monastic order and of copying by hand. In the early 20" century, noted folklore scholar Lajos Katona found a MS containing anti-demon procedures (a text which blessed the protective piece of paper, the seal, pen and ink alike) in the Franciscan monastery of Gyöngyös as an ethnographic curiosity. The contents of the book actually came from Sannig’s above mentioned collection and were copied out and disseminated in the mid18th century. Data in the context of the ‘storm candles’ (Wetterkerzen) which would be blessed on the day of martyrs St. John and Paul (June 26") also point to a Czech origin; while the ritual of blessing bread on the day of St. Augustine (February 5'") to protect against fire, has Czech and Polish/Lithuanian parallels. The latter blessing is also interesting because in this case we are not talking about a mediaeval benediction but a type of text which emerged in the 16" century and clearly grew widespread in the Franciscan practice of Central Europe. Its popular ity in Hungary declined as the cult of Florian, the saint who protects from fire, began to spread in the 18" century, but in Franciscan areas of influence they sur vived right until the time of the folklore collections of the early 20" century. The volume devotes a separate chapter to the problem of the early modern formal variants of anti-demon exorcism. Here the emphasis is mainly on liturgical respects. The ceremony of the clerical ‘cure’ of possession by the devil, after the Roman fashion, first appears in Pázmánys Esztergom book of ritual. It is this rite which is then borrowed by a number of printed books of rituals in Hungary. Besides the official ritual of so-called ‘major exorcism’, there were also a number of ‘alternative’ manuals circulating for the expulsion of demons. Several texts from the two-volume manual of Hieronymus Mengus (Flagellum daemonum, Fus444
