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tis daemonum) appear in the 17" century Benedictine MS of Pannonhalma. The
protagonists of two great exorcism scandals of the 18" century, a parish priest of
a Transylvanian (Sekler) village in the 1720’s and a Franciscan monk of Zombor
from Southern Hungary in the 1760’s, probably also used the manual of Mengus.
Throughout a series of anti-demon soul battles which lasted several weeks and
which may be reconstructed from witness statements and their correspondences,
the two priests enlisted practically the total textual, tangible and ritual arsenal
of unofficial exorcist practice.
As regards the structure of the ritual order (ordo) of benedictions and exor¬
cism, we can partly speak about the most important elements (persons involved,
intentions, auxiliary objects used, texts sung and spoken such as introductory
and transitional prayers, blessings and curses, Biblical texts, clerical songs, ritual
acts); and partly about the various types of ordos. In the context of the three ba¬
sic elements of benedictions, blessing, curse and prayer, the author has made an
attempt to characterise the texts according to the magical/religious system of re¬
lations in which they are embedded. This examination has confirmed that nega¬
tive exorcisms show the heaviest magical character. It is no accident that both in
terms of form and content, they also mean the primary analogy to peasant
charms of the 19" and 20" centuries.
In the field of textual connections between clerical benedictions and peasant
charms it is a fundamental question when and through what channels the mod¬
els formulated in Latin prayers found their way to vernacular texts. Folklorists
engaged in the study of religious ethnography and charms have long recognised
that in the case of archaic forms clerical practice itself probably goes back to pre¬
Christian, ‘pagan’ roots. However, almost half of the early-modern Hungarian
peasant charms clearly show connection with clerical texts. Thus it is more than
probable that this pronounced parallel developed in the frame of a transmission
and trickle-down process through several centuries. It probably began in the
centuries of the late Middle Ages but was at its most intense in the early modern
period when, as part of the ‘subterranean practice’, certain source data appeared
which clearly show that the boundary between clerical and lay blessings/curses
was vague and permeable.
The image of the early modern Hungarian ’arsenal of benedictions’ as it is re¬
flected in the present volume was drawn on the basis of sources which date back
to the times before the trend of clerical enlightenment became predominant
bringing significant changes in the history of mentalities. The change in per¬
spective which unfolded within the church after the middle third of the 18" cen¬
tury gradually yielded its fruits, in a top down process, as regards the pastoral at¬
titude of priests toward sacramentals. Certain types of blessings (e. g. the blessing
of new houses) were marginalised as a consequence of rulings of the lay power.
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