Journal of Global Catholicism - Hungarian Catholicism - Winter 2020 - Vol 4 Iss 1

Journal of

VOLUME 4 | ISSUE 1

GLOBAL CATHOLICISM WINTER 2020

HUNGARIAN CATHOLICISM Living Faith across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts

ARTICLES • Mathew N. Schmalz / Overview & Acknowledgements • Marc Roscoe Loustau / Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism • Krisztina Frauhammer / Longings, Letters and Prayers: Visitor’s Books at Hungarian Marian Shrines • Kinga Povedák / Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices • Cecília Sándor / The Interwoven Existence of Official Catholicism and Magical Practice in the Lived Religiosity of a Transylvanian Hungarian Village

Photo by Kinga Povedák

2

M AT H E W N . S C H M A L Z

Hungarian Catholicism: Overview & Acknowledgements

Mathew N. Schmalz is Founding Editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and Professor of Religious Studies at the College of the Holy Cross. He received his B.A. from Amherst College and his Ph.D. in the history of religions from the University of Chicago. He has published more than fifty articles and essays that engage global Catholicism (particularly in South Asia), Catholic theology and spirituality, Mormonism, and The Watchtower movement. He is co-editor of Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations, and Resistances (SUNY, 2012, with Peter Gottschalk) and author of Mercy Matters: Opening Yourself to the Life Changing Gift (OSV, 2016). Schmalz has also written more than one hundred opinion pieces that have appeared in On Faith, Crux, The Huffington Post and in the print editions of The Washington Post, Commonweal Magazine, US Catholic, The National Catholic Reporter, the Providence Journal, and the Telegram & Gazette.

He has provided expert commentary to USA Today, The New York Times, ABC's Good Morning America, NPR, CNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and U.S. News & World Report, among others.

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Mathew N. Schmalz | 3

A

s Marc Loustau notes in his Introduction, Hungarian Catholicism is

not a self-sealed, hermetic phenomenon. The articles in this issue of the

Journal of Global Catholicism testify to this fact while simultaneously

eliciting issues relevant to the study of Catholicism as a whole.

In her piece, Krisztina Frauhammer examines the corpus of inscriptions in visitor's

books at Hungarian Marian shrines. She argues that, through the written word, pilgrims “personally encounter the Transcendent.” Frauhammer concludes by ob-

serving that pilgrimage creates a “rupture” that allows participants to bridge the

heavenly and Divine realms. While Frauhammer explicitly draws upon the work of Peter Berger to make this point, there are also echoes of the work of Romanian historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, who charted the various ways in which mun-

dane or profane experiences are elevated and transformed by contact with the

Sacred. Frauhammer thus extends the ambit of her theory to provide a suggestive framework for considering how personal experiences—and longings—are effec-

tively inscribed and joined together through the seemingly mundane, and quite common, act of writing in a visitor’s book or leaving a note at a shrine.

Kinga Povedák introduces us to vernacular music practices and explores their em-

beddedness within the Catholic charismatic movement in Hungary from the 1960s onward. As Povedák argues, counter-culture in Hungary of the 1960s could—and did—involve various “spiritual awakenings.” Within this context, Catholic charis-

matic renewal attracted both ecclesiastical and governmental suspicion in the age

of “Goulash communism” but also managed to survive as a grassroots movement or a series of “islands” within Hungarian society. Interestingly, Povedák concludes

by observing that Hungarian versions of Catholic charismatic renewal operated relatively untouched by Western “styles” and by the 1990s had become “anachro-

nistic.” Povedák’s meticulously researched piece not only provides insight into an

under-researched aspect of Hungarian religious culture but also engages important questions and issues regarding how religious movements sustain themselves during times of persecution.

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4 | Hungarian Catholicism: Overview & Acknowledgements

Cecília Sándor’s article concludes this issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

Sándor’s piece is an in-depth study of lived Catholicism in a Transylvanian village. In addition to her focus on magic—an important and under-studied aspect

of Catholicism— Sándor draws upon the work of William Christian and Charles Stewart to make a distinction between officially sanctioned religious rites and

rituals as the langue of Catholicism and magic and other associated practices as

Catholicism’s parole. What emerges in her piece is not only a fascinating study of Catholicism as practiced in a particular social and cultural context, but also a useful theoretical framework that can be applied to Catholicism more broadly.

This issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism was edited by Marc Loustau, whose

deep experience in Hungary was instrumental in bringing together such a fine

group of scholars. The articles contained in this issue were originally presented at the 2018 conference “Lived Catholicism from the Balkans to the Baltics,” at

Pázmány Péter Katolikus Egyetem, Budapest, which was also organized by Marc

Loustau on behalf of the College of the Holy Cross. The conference also could not have taken place without the generous and gracious assistance of Dr. Máté Botos and Dr. Katya Dunajeva at Pázmány Péter. At Holy Cross, gratitude is due

Danielle Kane who expertly formatted the issue as well as to digital librarian Lisa Villa whose tutorials on digital publishing are always invaluable. As always, thanks

to Dr. Tom Landy, director of the McFarland Center and the Catholics & Cultures initiative, of which the Journal of Global Catholicism is a part.

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Mathew N. Schmalz | 5

Photo courtesy of Cecília Sándor

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M A R C R O S C O E L O U S TA U

Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

Marc Roscoe Loustau is Managing Editor of the Journal of Global Catholicism and a Catholics & Cultures contributor. As a scholar of religious studies in the context of personal, social, and economic change, his research has focused on Catholicism in Eastern Europe where, after decades of official state atheism, there has been a prominent resurgence of religion in public life. Loustau has taught courses at the College of the Holy Cross on contemporary global Catholicism. He holds a Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School.

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Marc Roscoe Loustau | 7

T

he articles in this edition of the Journal of Global Catholicism were originally presented at a conference held in Budapest, Hungary through a partner-

ship between the Catholics & Cultures program of the McFarland Center

for Religion, Ethics and Culture at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA, USA) and the Pázmány Péter Catholic University of Hungary (PPCU). Along

with the McFarland Center’s staff, the event was organized with special assistance from Dr. Máté Botos and Dr. Katya Dunajeva of the PPCU’s Department of International Studies. This Special Issue has the title, “Hungarian Catholicism: Living

Faith across Diverse Social and Intellectual Contexts.” The original conference was titled, “Lived Catholicism from the Balkans to the Baltics,” and included papers

on this theme from scholars doing fieldwork at sites in Ukraine, Romania, Poland, Macedonia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Lithuania. Given the conference’s site in Budapest, Hungary, the schedule also included a substantial group of presenters who focus their research in areas where Hungarian-speaking Catholics live

and worship. As the editorial team of the Journal of Global Catholicism reviewed the

presentations, we decided that several of the presentations could come together in

these pages to form a portrait of contemporary Hungarian Catholicism, a phrase we have also decided to use for the title of this Special Issue.

I mention the articles’ original context—a conference on Catholicism in the broad and internally diverse region evoked by the title, “From the Baltics to the Balkans”—so as to immediately question any assumptions that Hungarian Cathol-

icism is a self-enclosed, self-explanatory phenomenon or an internally-oriented

national concept and territorial trope. In the context of the conference at PPCU, discussions about the papers on Hungarian Catholicism took shape against the backdrop of a broader regional conversation and became a mode for evoking a

process of historical and cultural formation that emerged in engagement with

multiple centers of political, economic, and religious power. In this region that

was dominated by state-socialist regimes for large parts of the twentieth century, presenters foregrounded the forms of intellectual control of religious practice that

emanated from and sometimes exerted a reciprocal influence on centers of political

and economic control situated in state capitals like Budapest, Bucharest, Prague, and Vilnius. But an overall picture also emerged in which Catholic ecclesiastical VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

8 | Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

officials’ own work and practice was and continues to be caught between an emerg-

ing Catholic consumer culture and efforts to both preserve and renew the faith at local and regional levels. The Catholic Church’s centers of power, influence, and

direction—in the view of multiple conference presenters—were caught up in local

and national social dynamics emanating from Catholics’ engagement in and en-

thusiasm for lived religious practice in these near-margins of the European sphere.

Although the articles in this Special Issue are focused on Hungarian Catholicism, conference participants originally heard them in relation to and refracted through papers about the broad historical and social context of the near-margin region

“from the Baltics to the Balkans.” In this Introduction, I will try to recreate that same context by discussing the articles in relation to three historical and social trajectories that have shaped the study of lived Catholicism in this region: •

The integration of the study of lived Catholicism into the academic fields of

scientific ethnology and folklorism—a process through which key individuals collaborated to establish canonical theoretical concepts, define the parameters

of research methodology, and project the discipline’s ultimate place within and influence on society.

•

The emergence of a Catholic consumer culture that both supported Hungary’s

socialist-era consumer culture but also used it to expand the range of possibilities for mediating divine presence.

•

The simultaneous and conjoined expansion of literacy and consumer citizenship in contemporary Hungary.

In the case of the three articles we feature in this edition of the Journal of Global

Catholicism, context is the key to proper understanding and effective interpretation.

Both Krisztina Frauhammer’s and Cecilia Sándor’s articles takes shape in relation to a long-standing tradition of ethnological and folklorism research in Hungary

and Hungarian-speaking villages in Transylvania. Like traditions of research on national folklore in Germany, Poland, and other nearby countries, the Hungarian

tradition goes back to the mid-19th century and drew a wide variety of intellectuals JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

Marc Roscoe Loustau | 9

to conduct research on every kind of cultural product imaginable, from music, to the visual arts, to architecture, and literature.1 In the post-World War II period, this

tradition of folkloristic research underwent significant changes as it was integrated into the state-driven emerging “national science” of ethnological research.2 Around the same time, Hungarian ethnologists began attending to specifically religious

content by collecting rituals, magical spells, and prayers in villages and rural areas like Cecilia Sándor’s fieldsite, the village of Csíkszentsimon (San Simion, in

Romanian) in eastern Transylvania. Ethnological researchers encountered com-

munities in which Catholicism provided a hegemonic and near-universal official religious background to everyday life.

Unlike in Western Europe and North America, the study of lived Catholicism in

Hungary, Romania, and other socialist countries became integrated into an aca-

demic disciplinary framework with a commitment to systematic description and rigorous testing and close ties to the official atheist state. In Romania, the late socialist state saw religion as a ritual system that could be harnessed for the purpose

of fostering social solidarity and belonging, and the government began encourag-

ing intellectuals at all levels—from official state research institutes down to local elementary schools—to conduct research on rituals, songs, dance, and other cul-

tural forms.3 The most prominent product of the resulting “fever of fieldwork” was

the state’s nation-wide “Sing Romania” festival, in which workplace-based song and dance groups gathered for competitions at local, county, and national venues.4

1

2 3

4

Cătălin Cotoi, “Sociology and Ethnology in Romania: The Avatars of Social Sciences in Socialist Romania,” in Sociology and Ethnography in East-Central and South-East Europe: Scientific Self-Description in State Socialist Countries, eds. Ulf Brunnbauer, Claudia Kraft & Martin Schulze Wessel (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011), 130–155. This tradition of research on folk culture includes luminaries like the internationally renowned early twentieth century classical composers Béla Bartok and Zoltán Kodaly who both traveled to Transylvania and recorded folk songs they later used in their own compositions.

James Kapaló, Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), https://doi.org/10.1086/491088.

Zsuzsánna Magdó, “Romanian Spirituality in Ceauşescu’s ‘Golden Epoch’: Social Scientists Reconsider Atheism, Religion, and Ritual Culture,” in Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe, eds. Paul Betts and Stephen A. Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 77–101, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54639-5.

Otilia Hedeșan, “Doing Fieldwork in Communist Romania,” in Studying Peoples in the People‘s Democracies: Socialist Era Anthropology in South-East Europe, eds. Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ilia Iliev and

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10 | Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

The official atheist ideology of socialist state ethnology also took up and rein-

forced a preexisting notion that the Church’s ecclesiastical dogma was opposed to and sought to stamp out heretical aspects of popular religious practice. Many of the distinguished Hungarian and Transylvanian Hungarian ethnologists of the 1970s and 80s used this broad theoretical framework of opposed and antagonistic

“folk belief ” and “Church doctrine.” Sándor and Frauhammer count some of these

scholars as teachers; works by Éva Pócs, Gábor Barna, Vilmos Tánczos, and Vil-

mos Keszeg appear in Sándor’s and Frauhammer’s bibliographies, demonstrating the continuing influence of the intellectual generation that came of age in the late

socialist period. Pócs, Barna, Tánczos, Keszeg, and others were and still are leading figures of the national scientific discipline of Hungarian ethnology that blended

nineteenth century folklorism’s aspiration to assemble a complete repository of national cultural artefacts with the post-World War II socialist state’s goal of us-

ing the latest scientific ethnographic methods to build a revolutionary atheist and communist culture.

Sándor’s and Frauhammer’s articles in this collection are snapshots from this mo-

ment in time when a young generation of Hungarian scholars are grappling with

the conceptual and methodological legacies of their teachers, some like Sándor are refracting them through other types, styles, and approaches to ethnographic research on religion. Sándor’s article, “The Interwoven Existence of Official Cathol-

icism and Magical Practice in the Lived Religiosity of a Transylvanian Hungarian Village,” bears the marks of this struggle most clearly in her attempt to collate

her teachers’ ethnological research with Harvey Whitehouse’s cognitive science of religion, Charles Stewart’s adaptation of Saussurean linguistic theory, and William

Christian’s historical research on Spanish Catholic pilgrimage.5 Sándor sees

5

Slobodan Naumovic (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2008), 21–41. Vintilă Mihăilescu, “A New Festival for the New Man: The Socialist Market of Folk Experts During the ‘Singing Romania’ National Festival,” in Studying Peoples in the People’s Democracies: Socialist era Anthropology in South-East Europe, eds. Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ilia Iliev and Slobodan Naumovic (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008), 55–80.

Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil. Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400884391. Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Alta Mira Press: Walnut Creek, 2004), https://doi.org/10.1086/491088. William A Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

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Marc Roscoe Loustau | 11

parallels between the methodological and conceptual assumptions of Transylvania’s

most prominent Hungarian ethnologist of religion, Vilmos Tánczos, and William Christian’s notion that official and popular practice are actually ways of imagining and constructing culture in time. Official Catholic doctrine is better viewed as

“religion as prescribed” while popular religiosity is “religion as it is practiced,” or a community’s substantive ritual life. Dissatisfied with both oppositions, she calls

for and effects in her own participant observational and engaged interview meth-

odology a return to the existential and practical dimension of human existence, or in her words the realm of local religiosity, where she found that her informants in

the Transylvanian Hungarian village of Csíkszentsimon adopted a pragmatic and

improvisational approach to aspects of folk belief and Church dogma, which her teachers had sometimes portrayed as isolated and self-subsistent realms. Sándor’s most striking departure from her teachers comes at the very end of her article when she discusses the future of agricultural magic at her fieldsite.

The question of magic’s futures was raised throughout her article by virtue of her

description of diverse didactic methods—both formal and informal—through which subjects learn ritual practices, forms of pedagogy that Sándor glosses with

the term “religious transmission” adopted from anthropologists like Naumescu and others. In her discussion of religious transmission once again we see Sándor grappling with complex legacies and imagining a future for the practices she has tracked

during her first experiences of fieldwork. Initially, she affects a dire assessment of

the mediatization of agricultural magic that is strongly reminiscent of her teacher, Vilmos Tánczos, who wrote as recently as 2018 about the dire effects of mediatization on another ritual practice centered in the region where Sándor conducted

fieldwork: the annual pilgrimage procession to the Catholic shrine at Our Lady of Csíksomlyó, a village about fifteen kilometers from Csíkszentsimon.6 Tánczos

noted how the consumption of Csíksomlyó’s rural landscapes and symbols of agri-

cultural magic in photographs, videos, newspaper articles, television programs, and documentaries effected a distinction between foreground and background spaces 6

Vilmos Tánczos, “The New Cultural Economy and the Ideologies of the Csíksomlyó (Şumuleu Ciuc) Pilgrimage Feast,” in Cultural Heritage and Cultural Politics in Minority Conditions, eds. Töhötöm A. Szabó and Mária Szikszai (Cluj-Napoca: Kriza János Ethnographic Society, 2018), 145–178.

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12 | Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

of the shrine and pilgrimage ritual. “In other words,” Tánczos wrote, “the scene

has a clearly visible, strongly ideologized and mediatized part, but also an invisible, ‘secondary’ or ‘rear’ section, which is not planned and remains outside the space of

the events taking place in the foreground.”7 From this distinction, he draws the gloomy conclusion that, “it is more characteristic for the older popular traditions to

fall into oblivion from their peripheral position and then to disappear completely.”8 Sándor’s decision to note the mediatization’s role in the “decline of traditional farming and related practices of agrarian magic” is thus only partly an example of

the theoretical perspective that anthropologists involved in the new study of reli-

gion as mediation have held up as prototypically old-fashioned and deserving of critique.9 Sándor certainly affects Tánczos’s argument that modern and capitalist

social relations necessarily act like solvents on religious formation. But she takes up this perspective also to distance herself from this eminent and influential figure in Hungarian ethnological research and project a more complex and unstable view

of magic’s futures based on a view that “change is disappearance and reproduction

at the same time.” Any argument can generate multiple interpretations. In this case, reading Sándor’s statements about religious transmission as purely theoretical

claims would be reductive and miss an equally important alternative reading that emerges from situating her article in the intellectual and historical context of twentieth century Hungarian ethnological and folklorism research.

Kinga Povedák’s article breaks new ground by tracking the Catholic dimensions of socialist-era Hungarian consumer culture. Povedák’s research is part of an emerging body of historical and anthropological literature that questions the assump-

tion that the state socialist political economic systems of the twentieth century were defined by shortages of consumer goods. Until recently, scholars and gener-

al observers assumed that images of grocery stores with bare shelves and drably gray concrete apartment blocks told the whole story about consumption under 7 8 9

Tánczos, “The New Cultural Economy,” 151.

Tánczos, “The New Cultural Economy,” 151.

The most prominent proponent of this view is Birgit Meyer. See Birgit Meyer, Sensational Movies: Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), https://doi. org/10.1525/9780520962651-004.

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Marc Roscoe Loustau | 13

socialism.10 Krisztina Fehérváry’s study of the history of Hungarian home construction has done much to make Hungary the paradigmatic case study for research about socialist-era consumer culture, showing how Hungary’s socialist government went to great lengths to cultivate consumer desires in urban subjects who

in turn came to view the West as an idealized land of abundant consumer pleasures and ease.11 Povedák takes up this theme to show how socialist-era Catholics stood

within and without this socialist consumer culture to create new opportunities for

materializing divine presence in consumer cultural forms. Members of the Catholic

Charismatic movement in Hungary in the 1970s and 80s were present and active at large music festivals and gatherings of hippies and other counter-cultural move-

ments, and they enthusiastically adopted the emerging style of guitar-centered

popular devotional music for the purpose of religious renewal and evangelization.

These phenomena lead Povedák to conclude that, “The baby boomer generation on

both sides of the Iron Curtain viewed popular music as something akin to a con-

fession of faith.” Christian popular music and the Catholic Charismatic movement went hand-in-hand in Hungary, the former’s new musical language was a natural fit to aid the latter’s search for a new self-centered mode of religious experience.

Povedák’s article tells the fascinating story of how Christian rock music created

unexpected ecumenical exchanges between Catholics and Protestant Charismat-

ics and Pentecostals. Even more surprisingly, given socialist-era Hungary’s highly racialized and segregated society, guitar-centered masses and rituals created a plat-

form for Catholics to worship alongside the growing numbers of Roma who were

converting to Charismatic and Pentecostal forms of Christianity. In the 1970s, Povedák writes, both the government and the Church acted to suppress Christian

rock groups, Catholic renewal movements, and their new modes of cultivating divine presence. In the end, though, these efforts backfired. Arrests, public denunciations, and stricter police surveillance led to a stronger sense of counter-cultural

opposition among Catholics who continued to consume Christian rock music.

10 The paradigmatic political economic analysis of shortage economies is by Katherine Verdery. See Katherine Verdery, What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821990.

11 Krisztina Fehérváry, Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013).

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14 | Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

Povedák writes that, “Charismatic renewal groups appealed to individuals with an

injured religious identity who then felt an even greater urge to protect and maintain their particular style of religiosity.”

Povedák’s story is not confined to the past, though. The movements that she tracks

in her research continue to act in generative ways to shape contemporary the sound-

scapes and forms of religious experiencing that mobilize and move and Hungarian

Catholics today. On the Catholics & Cultures website, there is a video I recorded

during my fieldwork at Hungary’s national shrine of Our Lady of Csíksomlyó, the same shrine that Tánczos wrote about in his pessimistic review of mediated forms

of agricultural magic.12 I filmed a group of Charismatic Catholic Roma performers play a set on the side of the road in front of the shrine’s main church. Bending their

knees with each line so as to call out with greater strength, they sang the Kyrie, “God have mercy, Christ have mercy, God have mercy.” Of course, they sang ac-

companied by acoustic guitar. They seem less bothered and more at home with and energized by the cars whizzing by on the road in front of them.

Finally, Krisztina Frauhammer’s article uses a triadic comparison of three Catholic

shrines to shatter expectations and force us to situate Catholic practice in broader horizons of interpretation and understanding. Máriakálnok is now in Hungary but before World War II it was inhabited mostly by Germans. Egyházasbást-Vecseklő

(in Slovakian, Večelkov) is in Slovakia but inhabited mostly by Hungarians. Finally, Mátraverebély-Szentkút, Máriagyűd, and Máriapócs are all prominent shrines in Hungary whose constituency consists mostly of Hungarians living within Hun-

gary’s contemporary borders. Prayer at all three sites is, today, mostly a matter

of leaving handwritten notes to divine figures like the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and God. Frauhammer describes these prayers as encounters with the Transcendent

by means of sacred communication—communication that is actualized through the written word. Frauhammer uses her finely-tuned eye for different types of prayers and different habituses, or habitual attitudes, toward the sacred to situate

the written messages in relation to the broad array of communicative practices that 12 See https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/romania-charismatics-blend-music-festivals-and-church-engage-youth.

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Marc Roscoe Loustau | 15

middle-class Hungarians are comfortable using in contemporary society. Individuals who arrive at the shrine as tourists tend to use these books as they would at oth-

er similar sites such as museums, galleries, hotels and restaurants. Visitors are even

self-conscious about this comparison. “In a number of cases,” Frauhammer writes, “visitors said: ‘we write in it the way we do in a museum visitor’s book.’” Frauham-

mer is sufficiently sensitive and creative to listen more closely to the Máriapócs shrine priest than to the majority of anthropologists who often assume that shrine

officials always seek to control, discipline, or limit consumer culturally-mediated popular practice. In fact, the parish priest praises the practice of leaving written “shrine reviews” as a means to contact the transcendent, showing how even Cath-

olic clergy are at the forefront of efforts to use consumer culture to develop new means for materializing divine presence.

Hungarian-speaking Catholics live in the kinds of communities that can be found in the other countries of the area from the Baltics to the Balkans as a whole. The

essays in this edition shine a light onto Hungarian Catholicism’s complex interweaving with the region’s urban and rural social, economic, political, ethnic and

racial diversity. More importantly, these articles about agricultural magic, Cath-

olic rock festivals, the Catholic Charismatic movement, and written prayers that

double as consumer demands hint at the ways in which Hungarian Catholicism and Hungarians' practice reflect, challenge, support, and sometimes uncomfortably coexist with these social formations.

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16 | Introduction: Consumer Contexts and Divine Presences in Hungarian Catholicism

BIBLIOGRAPHY Christian, William A. Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Cotoi, Cătălin. “Sociology and Ethnology in Romania: The Avatars of Social Sciences in Socialist Romania.” In Sociology and Ethnography in East-Central

and South-East Europe: Scientific Self-Description in State Socialist Countries, edited by Ulf Brunnbauer, Claudia Kraft and Martin Schulze Wessel, 130–155.

Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011.

Fehérváry, Krisztina. Politics in Color and Concrete: Socialist Materialities and the Middle Class in Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013.

Hedeșan, Otilia. “Doing Fieldwork in Communist Romania.” In Studying Peoples in the People‘s Democracies: Socialist Era Anthropology in South-East Europe, ed-

ited by Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ilia Iliev and Slobodan Naumovic, 21–41. Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2008.

Kapaló, James. Text, Context and Performance: Gagauz Folk Religion in Discourse

and

Practice.

Leiden:

ej.9789004197992.i-352.10.

Brill,

2011.

https://doi.org/10.1163/

Magdó, Zsuzsánna, “Romanian Spirituality in Ceauşescu’s ‘Golden Epoch’: Social Scientists Reconsider Atheism, Religion, and Ritual Culture.” In

Science, Religion and Communism in Cold War Europe, edited by Paul Betts and

Stephen A. Smith, 77–101. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. https://doi. org/10.1057/978-1-137-54639-5.

Meyer, Birgit. Sensational Movies: Video, Vision and Christianity in Ghana. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520962651004.

JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

Marc Roscoe Loustau | 17

Mihăilescu, Vintilă. “A New Festival for the New Man: The Socialist Market of Folk Experts During the ‘Singing Romania’ National Festival.” In Study-

ing Peoples in the People’s Democracies: Socialist era Anthropology in South-East Europe, edited by Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ilia Iliev and Slobodan Naumovic, 5580. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2008.

Stewart, Charles. Demons and the Devil. Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1991. https://doi. org/10.1515/9781400884391.

Tánczos, Vilmos. “The New Cultural Economy and the Ideologies of the Csíksomlyó (Şumuleu Ciuc) Pilgrimage Feast.” In Cultural Heritage and

Cultural Politics in Minority Conditions. Edited by Töhötöm A. Szabó and

Mária Szikszai, 145–178. Cluj-Napoca: Kriza János Ethnographic Society, 2018.

Verdery, Katherine. What Was Socialism and What Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400821990.

Whitehouse, Harvey. Arguments and Icons. The Cognitive, Social and Historical Implications of Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1086/491088.

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KRISZTINA FRAUHAMMER

Longings, Letters and Prayers: Visitor’s Books at Hungarian Marian Shrines

Krisztina Frauhammer is a member of the Research Group of Religious Cultures of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research concerns mainly the various manifestations of vernacular religious practice and the relevant sources. For several years she analyzed the prayer texts in the guestbooks placed in votive churches. For this project, and in connection with the devotional forms studied here she dealt in depth with votive graffiti, 20th-century miracle texts and the prayer pages of internet virtual churches. She closed that research in 2009 and began a new investigation on 19th-20th century spiritual history in the light of contemporary prayerbooks. A prayerbook database was created and is accessible to all, as this is a group of sources that has never been studied in Hungary. In the frame of this research she is currently studying the prayerbooks published in the 19th-20th centuries for women and girls, and the identification models for women transmitted in them by the church.

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Krisztina Frauhammer | 19

INTRODUCTION

S

ince the dawn of the 1960s, great emphasis has been placed on an ever increasing linguistic practice of prayer, one that is deeply rooted in the prag-

matic field of the written word.1 Registry, Visitor and Guest books, as well

as prayer slips have served as the locus of such writings, which have become very

popular at Catholic shrines. These writings primarily focus on requests, petitions, supplications as well as professions of gratitude. The pages in these books, as well as the little notes left by pilgrims are refreshingly honest and self-reflective. The

prayers reflect personal worlds in a way that is visible in both writing and practice. I happened upon this topic whilst researching the north western village of

Máriakálnok. This tiny settlement was where I began to encounter the practice of writing personal prayers to the Divine. While analyzing and surveying the records

of the shrine in Máriakálnok I became privy to a hefty book, which was utilized between 1947 and 1952 as a guest book of sorts. The book contains 402 pages filled

with 3,746 personally handwritten messages and prayers: stories of fate and faith, mixed emotions, hope, gratitude, fears, betrayal and desperation. From this point 1

Jasna Čapo Žmegač, “Mother help me get a good mark in history. Ethnological Analysis of Wall Inscriptions in the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Osijek (Croatia),” Ethnologia Europaea 24 no.

1 (1994): 67–76. Helmut Eberhardt, “Von Lassing bis Kosovo. Aktuelle Ereignisse in Anliegenbüchern,” Ritualisierung, Zeit, Kommunikation, ed. Gábor Barna (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2003), 31–43, https://doi.org/10.1556/aethn.47.2002.3-4.4. Helmut Eberhardt and Gabriele Ponisch, “Hallo lieber Gott! Aspekte zu schriftlichen Devotionsformen in der Gegenwart,” in Konvergenzen und Divergenzen. Gegenwärtige volkskundliche Forschungsansätze in Österreich und Ungarn, eds. Kuti Klára and Béla Rásky (Budapest: Österreichischen Ost- und Südosteuropa-Institut – Institut für Ethnologie der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 11–27.

Walter Heim, Briefe zum Himmel, Die Grabbriefe an Mutter M. Theresia Scherer in Ingenbohl. Ein Beitrag zur religiösen Volkskunde der Gegenwart (Basel: Krebs Verlag, 1961), 40. Geneviève Herberich-Marx, Evolution d’une sensibilite religieuse. Témoignages scripturaires et iconographiques de pèlerinages alsaciens (Strasbourg: Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1991). Gray Tristan Hulse, “A Modern Votive Deposit at a North Welsh Holy Well,” Folklore no. 106 (1995): 31–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/0015587x.1995.9715890. Gerhard Schmied, “Lieber Gott, gütigste Frau ...”. Eine empirische Untersuchung von Fürbittbüchern. Passagen & Transzendenzen. Studien zur materialen Religions- und Kultursoziologie 4 (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1997). It is important to note that writing prayers in sacred spaces is anthropological in nature. Examples include the Jewish kvittli, which Jews place in the crevasses of the Wailing Wall and the tombs of the Tzadik’s.

Norbert Gleszer, “Kvitli. Írott szakrális kommunikáció a magyarországi cadik sírjainál,” in “Szent ez a föld...”. Néprajzi írások az Alföldről, eds.Gábor Barna, László Mód, and András Simon (Szeged: Néprajzi Tanszék, 2005), 146–159. Variants of similar practices can be found within the Muslim and Coptic Christian traditions.

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onwards, I began to search for other such books, booklets and prayer slips at similar shrines. I soon realized that the written prayer tradition was quite prevalent. From

these, I chose five Hungarian shrines where I documented and analyzed close to 8,000 messages, notes and letters. Firstly, I examined the case of the aforemen-

tioned Máriakálnok, a village which was previously inhabited by Germans. The

shrine there served as more of a regional locus. The visitor’s book at the shrine was

placed out on display to be engaged with after the end of the Second World War. This particular book was utilized until 1952. The tumultuous push of the historical circumstances renders these passages particularly interesting in their formation

and frequency. They speak of re-building and renewal. The trials and tribulations following the war, as well the relocation of the Germans and the settlement of new inhabitants all contributed to the idiosyncrasy of the passages from this period.2

My second location of interest is a Hungarian settlement in what now consti-

tutes Slovakia called Egyházasbást-Vecseklő (in Slovakian, Večelkov). This is also a lesser known site, one that does not have the direct ecclesiastical approval of the Roman Catholic Church.3 In order to prevent pilgrims from writing on the walls

of the wooden chapel, notebooks were placed in the space by those responsible for

the upkeep of the building from the 1970s and onwards. Mátraverebély-Szentkút, which operates as one of the most prestigious pilgrimage sites in Hungary, served

as my third location of interest. Here, the practice of writing in visitor’s books came about without the prior approval or suggestions of the priests that serve at this

particular site. This process evolved spontaneously. At first, prayer slips were placed in the cave for hermits which was located near the church. This cave was relatively far from the miracle working statue. From the 2010s onwards, and perhaps due to my interest in said prayer slips, a notebook was placed in the church so that

pilgrims could write their prayers in a more structured manner. In choosing this

site, I was mindful of the fact that this shrine is one that retains a host of practices, rituals and customs that are traditional in nature. Finally, I chose to work on the 2 3

Until 1946, Máriakálnok was a German settlement. Following the Second World War and the Treaty of Trianon, 95% of the German population was relocated. Hungarians from nearby villages and other settlements further away took their place.

This settlement belonged to Hungary until the end of the First World War. Following the Treaty of Trianon on June 4 1920, it came under Slovak rule.

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shrines of Máriagyűd and Máriapócs. In concert with the aforementioned site of

Mátraverebély-Szentkút, these shrines are of outstanding significance within the

Hungarian context. In Máriagyűd, visitor’s books have been utilized since 1970.

Initially, the visitor’s books at this site merely documented the names of pilgrims and the sum they offered to the shrine, but unique supplications and prayers soon

took the place of this data. The famous Greek Catholic shrine of Máriapócs is also of note. A similar book was placed on display at this site in 1900, which is a partic-

ularly early date in considering comparable practices at other shrines in Hungary.

For quite some time, only those who were specifically asked to write in the book were allowed to do so, and so, the book was only placed on display in the church

when such exceptional guests arrived. However, since 2001 this practice has altered.

The visitor’s book is now on display beside the statue on a separate pedestal so that everyone can have access to this text.

The total number of visitor’s books is ever increasing on a national level. Termi-

nology regarding such texts is by no means unanimous: Remembrance or Memory

book, Guest book, Visitor’s book.4 Regardless of the markers these books signify, they are more than just a place for recorded data and dates. Perhaps more impor-

tantly, they serve as a vehicle to the Divine; a bridge between the pilgrim and Mary, Jesus and other saints.

In what follows, I will attempt to analyze the lexical relationships formed when pilgrims personally encounter the Transcendent by means of sacred communication —communication that is actualized through the written word. Firstly, I am curious

as to what kind of habitus pilgrims engage with at such pilgrimage shrines. Know-

ing similar books placed in museums, hotels and hospitals and the entries made in them, the question arises: in what way are the visitor’s books in shrines different?

In writing such reflections, does the profane or the sacred realm prevail? What I

mean by this, is the following: do pilgrims write of when and how they got to the

site, or indeed, why they are there? Furthermore, what prompts a pilgrim to write down their deepest and perhaps darkest problems onto a public platform? How 4

In the analysis that follows, I will continue to use the term “visitor’s book,” in keeping with the forms I have utilized in my previous publications.

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does writing in a guestbook help people feel they get the benefits of both organized religion and individual choice? Why would they willingly open themselves up to

the Divine in such an unbarred manner? Why is it then important that pilgrims

write down their innermost thoughts? Indeed, does writing influence one’s state of

mind or one’s spiritual state? As we rarely encounter such speculations in the relevant literature it is the aim of this present study to follow these trails and find their

route. Specifically, my aim is not merely to account for the content of such written

prayers, but rather to provide an insight into the milieu of these prayers and the bodies (both temporal and other-worldly) that are associated with them.

THE PROFANE FUNCTION OF VISITOR’S BOOKS You know, non-believers write in it too, because you can say that about the

church, even now those from Berettyóújfalu did not come in the spirit of the

pilgrimage, but as tourists, after they visited the village museum in Nyíregyháza, and then halfway to Nyírbátor they came in here. There are entries like

this. Sometimes they even congratulate the priest, who welcomes them in the church. (K.I.)

The remark made by the parish priest of Máriapócs (K.I.), as well as an analysis of the content of the books examined throw light on an important aspect. Many

people use these books to record their name, the date of their visit, or to express a favorable opinion on the shrine as a tourist attraction. Often this is the case because the person writing the entry is a tourist rather than a pilgrim and so tends to

use the book in that capacity. Approximately, one fourth of all entries follow this

general pattern (other non-Hungarian pilgrimage shrines have similar statistics).

The touristic appeal of such pilgrimage shrines has rendered these meeting places

as exotic spaces of the past. Moreover, the “revival” nature of these sites has fed their popularity. Traditional walking pilgrimages are becoming increasingly wide-

spread, often spreading over the course of several days, covering a wide range of

topics as starting points. These pilgrimages are often directed at a specific group.

For example, pilgrimages will be organized for a certain age group, men, women, bikers, scouts, teachers etc. In concert with parish, monastic, or spiritual communi-

ties, formal travel agencies operate to fuel pilgrimage sites with more tourists. Thus, JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

Krisztina Frauhammer | 23

shrines encompass a great portion of the ever increasing tourism sector. Due to this fact such pilgrimage sites have become hot-beds for tourists seeking aesthetic

(or perhaps even ascetic) experiences, while still continuing to serve the religious public. These tourists journey to pilgrimage sites in vast numbers. In fact, so do

pilgrim tourists and tourist pilgrims. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between these boundary lines, most especially as one cannot segregate differ-

ent groups into “just” sacred or “just” profane realms.5 Valene Smith, an American anthropologist of tourism describes those who frequent pilgrimage shrines in the modern period in the following way:6

The markers we use to define each category are ambiguous. However, in terms of

personal motivations and actions, pilgrims can most definitely be distinguished from one another. The pilgrim seeks the essence of the shrine, while the tourist

is merely curious about it. Pilgrims are oftentimes motivated by an urge to maintain a sense of body-mind-spirit equilibrium. This cycle is perpetuated by recurring or new health concerns. Pilgrims seek out the site in order to re-gain their

health and keep it. Pilgrims are also motivated to meet and talk with God in a way

that is different from their everyday experiences. On the contrary, the tourist will seek out the shrine in order to satisfy their touristic tendencies, and delight in the

artistic, historical wonders that emanate and thrive at such sites.7 They record their impressions of this situation and sight, entering also their name, place of residence 5 6 7

Márta Korpics, “Zarándok és turista. Gondolatok a szent helyekről a turizmus kontextusában,” in Turizmus és kommunikáció, eds. Fejős Zoltán and Szijártó Zsolt (Budapest-Pécs: Néprajzi Múzeum, PTE Kommunikációs Tanszék, 2000), 172.

Valene Smith, “The Quest in Guest,” Annals of Tourism Research 19 (1992): 4.

Korpics, “Zarándok és turista,” 175–176.

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and date of the visit. “I really like this church. It is the most beautiful church I have ever seen. I hope it stays like this!” 8 We primarily come across such declarations at the three largest Hungarian pilgrimage shrines of Máriapócs, Máriagyűd as well as

Mátraverebély-Szentkút. At times, these pilgrims will also record the name of the travel agency, school, pensioners’ club or retirement home, workplace, or foundation they are associated with. These markers identify which groups organize trips to pilgrimage shrines.

Naturally, these tendencies meet, mix and collide. Most especially, in the case of individuals who sign up for group/mass pilgrimages who practice their “own” religion.9 These are the pilgrim-tourists or tourist-pilgrims who will choose a site based on it touristic appeal, while still holding on to what they themselves define as

the Divine or some semblance of it, while journeying to a site that is tied to some manner of organized religion. As they are somewhat versed as to what religion

means and does for those at the shrine, these pilgrims—though initially divorced from the masses—have the ability to temporarily blend into the zone of the site and take part in rituals accordingly.

Furthermore, the actions of these pilgrim tourists or tourist pilgrims also differ

slightly in terms of how they treat the visitor’s books on site. Individuals who arrive

at the shrine as “tourists” will tend to use these books as they would at other sim-

ilar sites such as museums, galleries, hotels and restaurants.10 In a number of cases visitors said: “We write in it the way we do in a museum visitor’s book.” (M.Z.)

The parish priest at the Máriapócs shrine (K.I.) also gave as a reason why he 8 9

Visitor’s book in Máriagyűd 2007/1. 186/1.

I borrow this term from anthropologist of religion, Miklós Tomka. He defines such individuals as those who do not practice their religion on a regular basis, but do claim some association with a Higher Power, or at the very least, consider themselves to be agnostic. Miklós Tomka, “Vallás és vallásosság,” in Társadalmi riport, eds. Andorka Rudolf, Tamás Kolosi, and György Vukovich (Budapest: TÁRKI-Századvég, 1996), 594, 604–607.

10 Visitor’s books of this kind have also been accounted for in the relevant anthropological literature: Imre Gráfik, “A vendégkönyv mint üzenőfal,” Néprajzi Értesítő 96 (2015): 115−132. Krisztina Frauhammer, “‘Every Hungarian should see this …’ Cultural Memory and National Identity in the Mirror of the Visitor’s Books,” in Nemzeti identitás, kulturális örökség, emlékezet és az Ópusztaszeri Nemzeti Történeti Emlékpark [National Identity, Cultural Heritage, Memory and the Opusztaszer National Heritage Park], eds. László Mód and András Simon (Szeged: SZTE Néprajzi és Kulturális Antropológiai Tanszék, 2011), 103–109.

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supported having a visitor’s book: “I found it to be a good thing. Just as it is a very good thing when you go to a museum to be able to put down your opinion in

writing, express thanks, criticism, or anything else. But this has since grown into

something entirely different.” (K.I.) Indeed, guest books placed in shrines have since become something quite special, but they still have many features in common

with visitor’s books of a profane nature. They all serve the same purpose of enabling

people who write entries to step out of their accustomed, everyday context and express their feelings, impressions and observations. Even so, the context in which the entries are made determine the character of the whole visitor’s book, giving it distinctive features. For example, the entries in hospital visitor’s books often express

thanks and gratitude for a recovery, and for the attentive care and expert treatment.11 In wedding visitor’s books the emphasis is on documenting guests’ presence

and expressing best wishes to the young couple.12 In the case of museums too, most

entries record the visit, while some also comment on what they have seen and express thanks to the curators of the exhibition. Besides such intentions, the books in

shrines and churches are mainly used to make requests to the “heavenly powers.”

The faithful use such entries to enter into contact with the invisible Transcendent, in the hope of receiving help in their crises or everyday lives.

In the case of Egyházasbást-Vecseklő, another profane function comes to mind.

Remarkably, there is an astonishing number of names and dates visited recorded.

Everyone living in the settlement near the chapel knows about the notebook at

the shrine, why it is on display and what function it serves. Evidently, everyone

records their data accordingly. Those responsible for tracking this data claimed that recording one’s name and the date of one’s visit are an integral part of the rituals at this site:

If someone comes from further away, they know that I was here, they know that I am also able to embark on this journey, let them see that I was here. I am

11 In the 2001–2002 academic year students at University of Szeged, under the guidance of Dr. Gábor Barna carried out research on the many forms in which visitor’s books appear. Documentation archived in the University of Szeged Department of Ethnology provides information on the result of a semester of collecting work.

12 I saw such wedding guest books in Germany in 1998 and among my relatives in Hungary in 2008.

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sure that you also, though you came here to do your research, will surely go up; you won’t leave without writing your name in it. And if someone will go up and read it, they will say, look how far this person has travelled to get here! (M.K.)

Or as another lady exclaimed: “Let them see, let them know that people come

here.” (V.J.) One of my older interlocutors remembers her time at the shrine in the following way:

So that they will see that I, Mede Zita, was here in 1998 and in 2000, then

you must know it also, that people go there. My husband and I, wherever we went, we would sign our names in the big book, in these thick books. (...) It is an eternal memory, when I see my name in the book with my husband. (M.Z.)

For the locals that frequent the site on a regular basis, it is in their best interest to confirm their allegiance with the shrine. The Virgin Mary speaks to both locals and pilgrims from afar, thus demonstrating her power. Many of my interlocutors were interested in who visited the little chapel and where they came from. They fill with

pride every time they see a name they do not recognize from a far off destination.

The little notebooks thus fulfill two main purposes: to confirm one’s presence at

the site, and also, to ensure that others are made aware of it. This confirms the va-

lidity of the site, and serves as a means of propagation or propaganda. In the case of Vecseklő, this is particularly important as it has not received approval from the church.

It must also be noted that documenting a pilgrimage, registering valued guests

and donations is not a new practice. There is a centuries-old tradition of drawing up procession lists in places of pilgrimage. We know for example, that in Czestochowa, the famous Polish shrine, the names of visitors have been recorded in a

manuscript since the Middle Ages.13 In Máriapócs too, the first visitor’s books were

introduced in 1900 for the same purpose. The situation was similar in Máriagyűd

in the 1970s; at that time only lists of names and the donations made by pilgrims were entered into these books.

13 Zoltán Szilárdfy, Ikonográfia–Kultusztörténet: Képes tanulmányok (Budapest: Balassi, 2003), 117–123.

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The experiences of conversations with the parish priests of shrines and of monks living there can add interesting new aspects to such use of visitor’s books in places

of pilgrimage. The priests and monks that I spoke with informed me that reading

these books is like taking an inventory of how many pilgrims frequent the site, who arrives to the site, at what time and which group they are affiliated with. Knowing these everyday facts is just as important, if not more important than knowing the

prayers of the pilgrims. These aspects are evidently integral to the adequate func-

tioning of a site. Knowing these details, estimates and rough statistics allows those responsible for the shrine to maintain the site, and to build appropriate infrastruc-

ture for the pilgrims that arrive. Here, the visitor’s book is directly linked with how the site functions as a site of tourism that also relies on economic progress. The rector at Máriagyűd ( CS.I.) explains this phenomenon in the following way:

Surely, this is an interesting study of our times. For example, when you read the

entry of a socialist group from the ’80s, it’s definitely very interesting, because

naturally socialist groups don’t just go to Marian pilgrimage shrines (...) I think

that this is a case study of our times and of the life of the shrine. Of course, we can see where pilgrims come from. We also record who are visiting priests who perform the mass here; this helps us keep track of things. We can also think about the fact that tourism plays a factor in all of this, as tourists come here

too. They bring their little thoughts with them, and indeed, they come from all

over the world; even from Spain, or Germany or Ukraine. They also come from North America. We’ve even seen entries from North Africa. (CS.I.)

The young rector at Máriapócs also highlights the morsels of information gathered from such books:

These entries give me feedback on what my tours are like, what kind of experience the pilgrims had. They usually record their entries after the tour

(the young local priests lead the tours of the shrine—my words); they record their thoughts 1–2 minutes after the tour, and then I see what effects my tour had on them. This is a good way for me to know how they felt and how I did as a tour leader. (B.M.)

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Another priest at the site said: “Yes, this is a prime feedback (...) you don’t really see

memory books in churches (...) I just thought of how we could have a protocol one, if there’s a notable guest, we’ll take it out and they can write in it. And then we’ll have another one in the church.” (K. I.) This priest got this idea from the past, as the first visitor’s book at Máriapócs was used in a similar manner. The first book set

out on display was signed by the well-known Cardinal Mindszenty as well as Jus-

tinian Serédi Principle Archbishop14 and famous Hungarian actor Imre Sinkovits.

15

The locals and authorities are incredibly proud of these entries. In fact, they even

published copies of these entries in the Greek Catholic section of a 2005 yearbook.

Exhibiting these entries is similar to how votive tablets and miracle proclamations were handled in previous centuries; all of which contribute to the peculiar force which surrounds Mary of Máriapócs.

It is then evident that the visitor’s books examined serve a completely profane

role in addition to their spiritual function. This profane role can, as noted above, be linked with similar books in museums, or other cultural spheres. The visitors

are divorced from their everyday communities when they enter this sacred space; a space that is specific and particular. Their respective entries are then able to immortalize their feelings and impressions of the site. Many pilgrims will treat the

visitor’s books in this manner, keeping this thought of immortalization in their

mind while they write their entries. For the attendants of the chapel, this projection of sentiments is vital to the upkeep of the space. The visitor’s book contains infor-

mation about who journeys to the site and how the site is perceived. In a way, these

entries serve as a kind of advertisement, further acknowledging and validating the space. There were shrines that specifically placed visitor’s books on display in order

to serve this purpose. Moreover, those spaces in which books, notebooks, or slips of paper were used spontaneously and organically, were left out on display for the reason outlined above.

14 Justinián Serédi (1884–1945) was a cardinal, and the archbishop of Esztergom. This is the highest ranking in the Hungarian ecclesiastical church. József Mindszenty (1892−1975) was his successor, who was the most renowned Hungarian member of the church in the 20th century.

15 Imre Sinkovits (1928−2001) was a famous actor in the latter half of the 20th century.

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THE SACRED FUNCTION OF VISITOR’S BOOKS An examination of visitor’s books of a profane nature shows that they all reflect a distinctive, one-sided communication. The person writing an entry in the book

sends a message to those who placed the book there but does not expect a reply.

Perhaps it is here that a distinction can be made between visitor’s books in church-

es and those in profane environments. Texts written in books placed in churches are generally addressed not to the persons who maintain the shrine, that is, not

to those who placed the book there, but to a third person: the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or a saint. The person making the entry also expects a “reply”: the solution of their problems, spiritual consolation or strengthening of their faith. In this way

the visitor’s books in shrines also have a strong sacral function: they provide a space

for visitors’ spontaneous, individual prayers. And visitors make use of this possibility: such prayer texts account for more than three-quarters of the entries.

It is thus quite clear that the visitor’s books in shrines are most commonly used to

record individual prayers. Because, when a pious pilgrim seeks out a shrine, they are motivated to interact with that which is Transcendent. Forming a relationship with the Eternal then becomes a deep yearning on the part of the pilgrim. Pilgrims

believe that the location of the shrines designates the presence of the Divine. This

is precisely why they seek out such sites—in order to jumpstart conversations with God. The pilgrim will call out to God, they will talk to Him, prepare and enact

rituals for Him, and bring gifts for Him (or Mary and the host of saints). For this to occur, the pilgrim has to believe that the Transcendent exists (in singular or

plural forms) and that the divine has the power to influence one’s everyday life in a very potent way if a relationship is maintained.16 Communication is at the center of this exchange. Communicating with the divine is idiosyncratic to each and

every denomination, thus uniting those under one canopy who communicate in

similar ways.17 We define this phenomenon as sacred communication; communi-

cation which differs from everyday interactions on account of the circumstances in 16 Irén Lovász, Szakrális kommunikáció (Budapest: Európai Folklór Intézet, 2002), 11.

17 Márta Korpics and P. Szilczl Dóra, Szakrális kommunikáció – a transzcendens mutatkozása.(Budapest: Typotex, 2007), 17.

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which it occurs and the rules that surround it.18 Prayer is perhaps the most known

means of initiating this sacred communication system. While scripted prayers that are mostly formulaic, repetitive and static in nature19 often characterize one’s first

definition of prayer, visitor’s books contain hardly any such prayers. Here, prayers

directed to God or Mary are written in a somewhat spontaneous manner, and are freer in form:

Mary of Pócs!

I often prayed to you in my desolation, in my great sorrow…You listened to

me, you helped me, and that’s when I made an inner vow, that I would give you our wedding rings as an offering. As a symbol. While the flow of my life went another way—ever still, in happiness, it developed nonetheless. These rings symbolize a period of my life. These rings belong with you; the best place for

these rings to be, is with you. I turn to you in prayer, please continue to help

me Dear Virgin Mary. Please do not leave us, fallible weak people. Thank you, that you have stayed by me, stay on, help my loved ones, our loved ones, give them health.

PS. I ask the reverend father to place these rings in the church, and if it is possible, to place them on the garments of Mary.

With Thanksgiving: [Name]20 Karl Rahner’s “discourse prayer” comes to mind in light of these discussion type

prayers. In these prayers, the faithful will form their thoughts without formal

constraints in order to open their hearts to God.21 One of my interlocutors reacted to this notion in the following way: Do you pray at home?

18 Lovász, Szakrális kommunikáció, 7.

19 Lovász, Szakrális kommunikáció, 25.

20 This prayer was found in a letter in an offertory box at Máriapócs, beside the visitor’s book.

21 Karl Rahner, Von der Not und dem Segen des Gebetes (Freiburg im Bresgau: Herder, 1965), 9. Karl Rahner, Hit, remény, szeretet: a lelki élet olvasókönyve (Budapest – Luzern: Egyházfórum, 1991), 183.

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-Praise be to God, yes.

And how? With your own words?

-Yes, with my own words, and I have shared prayers with my children. But most of the time I ask for things with my own words. Me and my family. They are completely different, because when I pray them, I feel totally close to Jesus Christ. Those prayers are completely different; they are different from the

heart. (…) I feel like the words are nicer, they come from a deeper place (…) I feel like soul is speaking with soul. (P. Zs.)

In the case of the visitor’s books, this style and act of speaking, is translated into the written word. Regardless of their verbal quality, these entries are still prayers. Most especially because those writing them, regard them as such:

I pray at home often, but this is different. I pray a great deal here as well. Firstly, I pray in my own words, just to myself, but I know that I had to write it down, I

had to give thanks, that I can be here, and to ask for help, that I can come back next year (…) Everyone has emotions. I believe in prayer, I attest to it. I am a God fearing person, and I enjoy praying. (É.B.Zs.)

Writing down the prayer is a possibility that can also benefit the individual. When

they decide to record the prayer in writing, it loses its momentariness. Such prayers are able to be looked at and retrieved at any time, even perhaps re-read, they become re-usable. They function like little notes used for remembering things.22

I really would have loved to write in it. I assume that the reason everyone comes to shrines like this, is to ask for something (...) that’s mostly why people

come here, that’s why we came here as well, for a very concrete thing this time,

and that’s why I think that not only spiritually, but there should be a trace left, that it remains in writing. (R.)

22 Jack Goody, “Funktionen der Schrift in traditionalen Gesellschaften,” in Entstehung und Folgen der Schriftkultur, ed. Jack Goody, Ian Watt, and Kathleen Gough (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986), 20.

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Similarly, the priest at the shrine of Máriagyűd also places high value on the act of writing:

I tell you, sometimes it’s impossible to chase them away, so you can definitely see that they are set on writing things down. So sometimes non-verbal communication says more than words. (...) And yes, this is right in front of the statue of Mary and they absolutely feel that they wrote their message to the Virgin Mary. (CS.I.)

The priest at the shrine of Máriapócs stresses the manifestation of one’s faith in this act that relies on requests and sentiments of thanksgiving:

The idea of prayer in of itself is limiting for them, as it has the ability to break.

This is like when we love someone, we draw them something, if it is applicable

(...) I think that that’s the anthropological meaning of tattooing. (...) I really feel that this is an anthropological urge or compulsion; one which is separate from religion. Like when I love someone, then I want to touch them after a

while. This virtus23 is also found at Máriapócs. And if I have an opportunity to write it, and sometimes the believer’s soul, especially when they don’t necessarily operate on a spiritually intelligent level, then, kind of by nature, they will surely try to manifest their faith. (K.I.)

These declarations of faith might be compared to ex voto objects: “Look, the way

I am with this, is that words fly away, while writing remains, I can’t say more than that.” (Anonymous) Another woman spoke of this idea in the following manner:

Well, I don’t know…I know that here is my writing, it is written down, here

in this gorgeous, wonderfully beautiful church, and then this is better for me, if I write it down. I repeat all of this in words, and I give thanks, and I ask for 23 Virtus is the touching of first- or second-class relics by hand or by another object later used for prayer. The main incentive of this practice is to imbue the object or the hand with the sacrality present in the relic or sacred statue. Not all shrines offer such services, however there is a staircase at Máriapócs that leads up to the sacred icon of Mary. Going up to Mary and touching the icon is still an ever-present practice on pilgrimage feast days, and at other times. See Sándor Bálint and Gábor Barna, Búcsújáró magyarok. A magyarországi búcsújárás története és néprajza (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1994), 196.

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things, if I want something from Him, from the Virgin Mary, but if I write it down like this, it is safer. (E.)

The interviews showed that pilgrims who leave notes are comforted by the fact that their prayers leave a mark. The request or thanks becomes visible when they are written down, thus ensuring that they have more chance of being heard.

We can cite here Jack Goody. In his opinion the reason why we write is because it offers a novel medium of exchange and communication. The main task of writ-

ing is to objectify language. Moreover, it is meant to create a system of signs that are visible to the material world. Through this, it is able to surpass both temporal

and time-constrained barriers, where the vocalized word becomes immortalized.24

According to Jan Assmann, this brings memory to the fore, whereby writing becomes one of the forms memory makes itself known in.25 Capturing the word or the thought is central to Assman’s conjectures on cultural memory. Capturing the situations in which writing occurs, and expanding those parameters is also part and parcel of his analysis. In this case, the cultural memory of a site expands with

every miracle that is tied to the pages of the visitor’s books. Viewed from the stand-

point of profane history, these shrines re-create the mythos of the past, which is,

according to Mircea Eliade’s notions of time, directly tied to sacred history.26 Thus,

if the believer seeks out the shrine, the mythos of the shrine becomes normative.

In other words, it becomes reality. It has the capacity to formulate power. The pilgrim is faced with the concerns and joys of their everyday life, coupled with those

things they specifically want to bring with themselves on the pilgrimage—spiritually speaking. They think of the intercessory power of Mary and how they are

surrounded by her presence in the form of votive tablets, tablets of thanksgiving, songs, the prayers of other pilgrims and the gestures performed at the shrine; all

24 Goody, “Funktionen der Schrift in traditionalen Gesellschaften,” 26.

25 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2005), 21–25.

26 Mircea Eliade’s notion of sacred history, in which the sacred, mythical past is distinguished from ordinary time (in which non-sacred events occur) is especially relevant here. All contemporary religious feasts, or liturgical time spans hearken back to, and resurrect­—so to speak—this mythical past, in which sacred events occurred. Mircea Eliade, Le sacré et la profane (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 63–66.

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of which motivate the pilgrim to write their request down. In this way, the shrine, and the objects it contains and holds, as well as the rituals and the visitor’s book all have the capacity to make a place memorable.27 In the present case this practice of writing down the prayers of pilgrims helps and inspires institutionalized forms

of organized religion. This is the cultural context that gives meaning to writing an entry in the visitor’s book.

Another characteristic of prayer texts entered in the visitor’s books of shrines is

their autocommunicative nature. Jurij Lotman’s theory on communication dissects these themes. Lotman attests that art historical and religious texts have the

profound capability of becoming auto communicative. These texts, such as diaries, prayers or mantras focus on quality, rather than quantity in that they fill and raise the individual or the spirit of the community to a higher level. Thus, the text in the

entries serves as a code, rather than merely as a message. It transforms the identity

of the speaker.28 Whoever prays, steps out of the profane world, and attempts to

traverse to the sacred world, spiritually speaking. For this to occur, they must get in

contact with their innermost selves. Lotman defines this phenomenon as an “I-I” form of communication.29 Lotman’s conjectures on communication are similar to theologian Karl Rahner’s viewpoints. Rahner emphasizes that in prayer, the speak-

er realizes and validates not only who God is, but also, who he himself is. 30 The

theologist claims that in prayer conversations—where the believer is convinced that he/she does indeed hear the voice (or message) of God—it is really (merely) a

reflection of his/her thoughts and mood. A conversation with the self, if you will.

27 Pierre Nora’s Les lieux de mémoire [Spaces of Memory] pioneered this thought. Personally felt experiences and the way they spontaneously affect our memories (tradition) and history (the reconstructed past) meet at a nexus, if an urge to remember exists. If this desire to remember does not exist, only the places of history will remain. The spaces of memory are more than just places imbued with histories; they are living memories that become richer with every time they re-surface. This is precisely how the past is resurrected on to the living web of current civilizations.

Pierre Nora, “Emlékezet és történelem között. A helyek problematikája,” Aetas 14 no. 3. (1999): 142−158.

28 Jurij Lotman, “A kommunikáció kétféle modellje a kultúra rendszerében,” in Kultúra, szöveg, narráció. Orosz elméletírók tanulmányai, eds. Árpád Kovács and Edit Gilbert (Pécs: Jannus Pannonius Egyetemi Kiadó, 1994), 17–43.

29 Lovász, “A kommunikáció kétféle modellje a kultúra rendszerében,” 51.

30 Rahner, Hit, remény, szeretet: a lelki élet olvasókönyve, 143.

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This is naturally not easily dismissed, and naiveté aside, it is useful to consider this idea when thinking about prayer. In prayer, the individual—when speaking about

God with themself or in placing themselves in the presence of God—sinks into their own soul.31 Speaking the prayer, or in this case, writing it down, heightens the emotions that are directly tied to it. It also builds hope and gives the pil-

grim strength to carry on.32 Psychologists who have studied this phenomenon have observed that the performative ritualistic function of prayer has the capability to

overwrite the narrative of a sickness. If the Christian believer is able to accept the teachings of the Church as valid, which we observe in the gospel of Mark—“I tell you, therefore, everything you ask and pray for, believe that you have it already, and it will be yours.” 33—then they have a way out.34

My interlocutors often informed me about how much relief they felt in writing their prayers down:

It just came to me. I think this is a good practice because one calms down from it. I just read a book, that if someone goes to church, they live longer. Someway-somehow. I don’t know, but there must be some truth to it, because when I go to church, I feel calm after. I know today is a holy day, today is Sunday, I

went to church, I prayed for my family, and for everything, and this calms me and in my own way, it makes me happy. (D.J.-né)

A Franciscan hermit monk (K.D.) at the shrine of Mátraverebély-Szentkút compared his own diary entries to the slips of papers with prayers found at such sites:

I really don’t like writing a diary, but when I went to Mátraverebély-Szentkút 31 Rahner, Hit, remény, szeretet: a lelki élet olvasókönyve. 148.

32 Lovász “A kommunikáció kétféle modellje a kultúra rendszerében,”. 32–33.

33 Mk. 11. 24.

34 See Adrian Andreescu, “Rethinking Prayer and Health Research: An Exploratory Inquiry on Prayer’s Psychological Dimension,” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 30, no. 1–2 (2001): 23–47. A study on prayer slips at a chapel in a hospital covers similar themes. According to the study, the children in the hospital, as well as their parents, turned to religious or spiritual sources as a result of the situation they were placed in. The study mentions the Holy Child chapel at the Hospital of Cincinnati, where many will leave written prayers for the children at the hospital. Some of the prayers ask God to intervene with the illness; others focus on patients receiving the gentle consolation of God. VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

36 | Longings, Letters and Prayers: Visitor's Books at Hungarian Marian Shrines

as a hermit, my superiors instructed me to write a diary. I have to write an entry every day. Initially, this was very difficult for me, but then I realized, that

this has a very important psychological function. You have to arrange your

thoughts. You have to look yourself in the eye, and write it down etc. I think this might be a factor in why people leave slips of paper, filled with personal problems. (K.D.)

Walter Heim’s research on diary writing also draws parallels between the act of writing and the psychological rewards associated with this task. According to Heim, writing these prayers down serves a certain purpose, which is to restore the

pilgrim to a state where they finally calm down. 35 It is inevitably a route to inner

peace. This feeling is oftentimes also documented in the pages of the visitor’s books: Dear blessed Virgin Mary!

I am so grateful that I can be here in front of your colors. My experience here

was so beautiful. My whole soul is so light. I calmed down, and I came with such great joy once again...

[Name] 2005. 03. 14.36 Here, we must keep in mind that religion has a type of psychological function, as the hand of God is available even when all else fails.37 Realizing that one is not alone takes a remarkable weight off one’s shoulders. Experiencing this transcen-

dent means of help can offer ease and relief.38 Visitor’s books also contribute to thisfeeling: primarily in the construction of phrases that concentrate on problems and issues, which are then alleviated through the task of writing.

35 Walter Heim, Briefe zum Himmel. Die Grabbriefe an Mutter M. Theresia Scherer in Ingenbohl. Ein Beitrag zur religiösen Volkskunde der Gegenwart. (Basel: Krebs Verlag, 1961), 86.

36 Visitor’s book in Máriapócs 2005/1. 72/1.

37 Frida Balázs, “A vallás és a szupernaturális. Valláskutatás és antropológia: meghatározások és alapfogalmak,” Világosság no. 7–8 (2005): 198.

38 Balázs," A vallás és a szupernaturális," 198.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS Peter Berger’s work on religious practice and tradition points to how the human condition is oftentimes broken and re-considered when one’s everyday life is inter-

rupted; ruptures which oftentimes do not have a physiological basis.39 Pilgrimages, and the rituals that are tied to them, are akin to these ruptures. An opportuni-

ty arises for everyone to create a relationship between the earthly and heavenly

realms and even just to step out of their usual everyday experiences. Despite the ever-changing outward signs and symbols of such sites, this is where I see consis-

tency. The pilgrim seeks the Divine, the pilgrim yearns to meet the Transcendent, to embark on a religious adventure where they hope to find rejuvenation for their

body-mind-soul. For those that arrive as lay tourists, finding curiosities on site overrides the prospect of these spiritual discoveries.40 The entries in visitor’s books

primarily focus on the search for God, and a solution for imminent health problems. These entries are usually conducted in an honest, personal manner. Aside

from these pilgrims, and in fewer numbers, we encounter tourists. In my reflec-

tions above I aimed to show how these differential actions, motifs, and motivations contribute to the multifaceted function of such pilgrimage sites. This freedom, a

freedom that is both formal and informal, creates pockets of opportunities for pil-

grims to create and immortalize their exchange with the Divine and to manifest their prayers in ways that are specific to them. For many, written prayers are acts of

thanksgiving; rituals of giving back. The auto communicative manner and form is

prevalent in these exchanges between the divine realm and that of the pilgrim. This lends to the relief that surrounds pilgrims upon journeying to and participating in

such pilgrimages. Perhaps it is this widespread, comprehensive span of functions

which explains why such visitor’s books have become so popular in recent decades.

In them, each pilgrim finds the building blocks of their religion, and how they want to interact and what they actually want to share with God.

39 Peter Berger, Heretical Imperative. Contemporary Possibilities of Religious Affirmation (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 39.

40 Bertalan Pusztai, Donach Myers, and the American Belleville study delves into the three functions of allocating pilgrimage shrines. Bertalan Pusztai, “Vallás és turizmus,” in A turizmus, mint kulturális rendszer, ed. Fejős Zoltán (Budapest: Néprajzi Múzeum, 1998), 17.

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Barna, Gábor. “Gästebücher an Wallfahrtsorten, in Krankenhäusern und Hotels

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Eberhardt, Helmut. “Von Lassing bis Kosovo. Aktuelle Ereignisse in Anliegenbüchern.” In Ritualisierung, Zeit, Kommunikation, edited by Gábor Barna, 31−43. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2003.

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Frauhammer, Krisztina. “Every Hungarian should see this …” Cultural Memory and National Identity in the Mirror of the Visitor’s Books. In Nemzeti identitás, kulturális örökség, emlékezet és az Ópusztaszeri Nemzeti Történeti Emlékpark [National Identity, Cultural Heritage, Memory and the Opusztaszer National

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Frida, Balázs. “A vallás és a szupernaturális. Valláskutatás és antropológia: meghatározások és alapfogalmak.” Világosság no. 7-8. (2005): 195−214.

Gennett, Gillian and Anne Rowbottom. “Born a Lady, Married a Prince, Died a

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Wojcik, Daniel. “Pre’s Rock: Pilgrimage, Ritual, and Runners’ Traditions at the Roadside Shrine for Steve Prefontaine.” In Shrines and Pilgrimages in Contemporary Society, New Itineraries into the Sacred, edited by Peter Jan Margry, 201−237. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 2008.

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42

KINGA POVEDÁK

Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

Kinga Povedák studied European Ethnology and American Studies at the University of Szeged, Hungary. Her PhD thesis was on religious modernization through the phenomenon of popular Christian music among Catholics, focusing on and analyzing the peculiarities of vernacular religiosity during the socialist times through the study of the origins of the movement in Hungary. She is research fellow at the Research Group for the Study of Religious Culture (Hungarian Academy of Sciences/University of Szeged).

Her main fields of interest include popular religiosity of late modernity, Catholicism and popular culture, and most recently the musical worlds of Pentecostal Romani communities. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the European Research Council Project "Creative Agency and Religious Minorities: 'Hidden Galleries' in the Secret Police Archives in Central and Eastern Europe."

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INTRODUCTION

W

hen the discussion of the 1960s Hungary appears in religious studies it is primarily associated with the reforms and adaptations of the Vatican Council II (1962-65). These Council-focused studies mainly

focus on theological and historical topics and questions, including persecution and

suffering under the communist regime and various forms of religious-ideological

oppression. Not much has been written on everyday religious culture in that era.

Government control of scholarship helps explain this lacuna: There was no discipline of religious studies independent from political censorship in socialist coun-

tries; the regime’s ideological expectations permeated the scientific literature of that

age. Therefore, no voice was given to religious transformations, personal religious experiences, religious renewal movements or minority religions. Recently, historians have tried to bridge this gap. With a few exceptions, most of their research has

examined high-level religious politics, the official state-church relationship, and

persecution of religious communities.1 Exceptions to this elite-focused approach

include sociological and anthropological research on Catholic base communities, boy scouts, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.2

The role that socialist-era Christian popular music played in advancing the Cath-

olic Charismatic Revival (CCR) remains understudied. Although this movement

is the largest Catholic renewal movement in Hungary, only Hungarian-language 1 2

Csaba Szabó, A szentszék és a Magyar Népköztársaság kapcsolatai a hatvanas években (Budapest: Szent István Társulat – Magyar Országos Levéltár, 2005). Ferenc Tomka, Halálra szántak, mégis élünk! Egyházüldözés és az ügynökkérdés 1945-1990 (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2005).

András Máté-Tóth, Bulányi und die Bokor-Bewegung. Eine pastoraltheologische Würdigung (Wien: UKI, 1996). Mátyás Ivasivka and László Arató, Sziklatábor. A katakombacserkészet története (Budapest: Új Ember – Márton Áron Kiadó, 2006). Zoltán Rajki and Jenő Szigeti, Szabadegyházak története Magyarországon 1989-ig (Budapest: Gondolat, 2012). Csaba Fazekas, Attila Jakab, Éva Petrás and Szabolcs Szita, A magyarországi Jehova Tanúi Egyház története (Budapest: Gondolat, 2017). Kinga Povedák, “New Music for New Times(?), debates over Catholic congregational music,” in Christian Congregational Music: Local and Global Perspectives, eds. Tom Wagner, Monique Ingalls and Caroly Landau (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 99-116. Kinga Povedák, “Catholicism in Transition. The ’Religious Beat’ Movement in Hungary,” in Christianity in the Modern World: Changes and Controversies, eds. Giselle Vincett and Elijah Obinna (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 139-156.

Kinga Povedák, Gitáros apostolok. A keresztény könnyűzene elemzése (Szeged: MTA-SZTE Vallási Kultúrakutató Csoport, 2019).

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insider accounts have been published about the CCR.3 According to some esti-

mates, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal is present in nearly every country and

has more than 160 million members around the world. Roughly 13 percent of all Catholics are part of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal.4 It is difficult to give an

exact number from Hungary, since the movement has no membership list, but levels of participation are proportional to nearby countries. The current study aims

to illuminate the processes that led to the emergence of the Hungarian Catholic Charismatic Renewal behind the Iron Curtain. Using oral historical interviews and

archival sources from the Archives of the Hungarian State Security police force, I

intend to show how and when Catholic charismatics appeared in Hungary, what their ecclesiastical and political reception was, and the way contemporary Christian music contributed to their survival.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS The cultural revolution of the 1960s had the greatest effect on the field of popular music, articulating explicitly the feelings of the baby boomer generation and their 3

4

For research on the Catholic Charismatic Renewal broadly, see Thomas J. Csordas, Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). Thomas J. Csordas, “Global religion and the re-enchantment of the world: The case of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal,” Anthropological Theory 7, no. 3 (2007): 295–314, https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499607080192. Important studies of Charismatic/Pentecostal Christian churches include Allan H. Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386431.001.0001. Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), https:// doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511488221. Concerning Pentecostal churches in Eastern Europe, see László Fosztó, Ritual Revitalisation after Socialism: Community, personhood, and conversion among Roma in a Transylvanian village (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2009). Barbara Rose Lange, Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). Kinga Povedák, “Belonging, Integration and Tradition: Mediating Romani Identity Through Pentecostal Praise and Worship Music,” in Congregational Music Making and Community in a Mediated Age, eds. Anna Nekola and Thomas Wagner (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 161-184. Kinga Povedák, “Hillsongization, Religious ecumenism, and uniformity,” in The Hillsong Movement Examined. You Call Me Out Upon the Waters, eds. Tania Riches and Thomas Wagner (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 181-198, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59656-3_10. Marc Roscoe Loustau, “Risking a Miracle: Transcendentally Oriented Improvisation and Catholic Charismatics’ Involvement in a Transylvanian Canonization,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 31, no. 3 (2016): 335-350, https:// doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2016.1206229.

See https://www.Catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-Catholic-charismatic-movement-isalive-and-bearing-fruit.

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desire to rebel against their parents’ conformist, authoritarian, and conservative middle-class values. This process was different in socialist and capitalist societies of the era, though, and brought different results in different measures. Even though members of the baby boomer generation on either side of the Iron Curtain used

popular music to satisfy fundamentally similar desires, their societies’ divergent ideological environments—official atheism or religious pluralism—resulted in sig-

nificant differences in the field of popular music. Just as we cannot speak of a single

pattern and uniformly occurring process of modernization, so we cannot speak of a uniform Christian reaction to socialist atheist culture. Just as there are many

different kinds of modernity, so also do Christian churches, including the Catholic Church, modernize in many different ways.5

In democratic countries of Western Europe and North America, the “rebellion” of the 1960s did not simply produce an atheistic abandonment of faith but also a

spiritual awakening, an opening towards so far obscure—and, therefore, even more appealing—exotic eastern philosophies and religions. The hippie movement was captivated by Rousseau’s “back to nature” philosophy, viewing it as a quasi-religious ideology and way of life centering on the creation of utopian and egalitari-

an intentional communities based on the principle of rejecting consumer society.

Around this time, eastern and esoteric spiritual groups became popular in some of

the same milieus, and in many cases musicians took the lead in promoting these

5

It is worth noting that among the many definitions of modernity, the one used here is that of multiple modernities that rejects the idea that there could be a single perspective, a kind of master narrative to explain the changes, and that takes the position that alternative modernities have arisen side by side. It must be stressed therefore that there is no generally valid modernization thesis and that the most frequent use of the term as a synonym of Westernization and Europeanization is mistaken. See Urs Altermatt, A katolicizmus és a modern kor (Budapest: Osiris, 2001), 33. As Herzfeld concluded, modernity cannot be regarded as exclusively the property of the West. Naturally, this does not mean that the importance of the West in the processes is being questioned, but simply that its role is not regarded as absolute and the global processes are decentralized. Michael Herzfeld, Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 83. As Niedermüller writes, “research must move beyond the previously accustomed national, regional or local frames, it must also extend its attention to the global connections.” Péter Niedermüller, “Sokféle modernitás: perspektívák, modellek, értelmezések,” in Sokféle modernitás.

A modernizáció stratégiái és modelljei a globális világban, eds. Péter Niedermüller, Kata Horváth, Márton Oblath and Máté Zombory (Budapest: Nyitott Könyv – L’Harmattan, 2008), 9.

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46 | Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

new religious movements.6 Music was the most striking manifestation of the gen-

eral cultural revolution that appeared in the 1960s, especially in Western societies.

Music was able to express in an explicit way the feelings of the young generation of that time and their rejection of their parents’ values, including conformism, au-

thoritarianism, and hierarchy. Because of the prominent part popular music played in the baby boomer generation’s cultural rebellion, for many members of this group music was never just music. It was and remains today an expression of an entire

way of life, a broad orientation toward rebellion, autonomy, and separateness. The

baby boomer generation on both sides of the Iron Curtain viewed popular music as something akin to a confession of faith.

Despite the explosive growth of interest in eastern and esoteric traditions in the second half of the twentieth century, recent anthropological and historical research

has also highlighted the baby boomer generation’s fascination with Christian popular music.7 Indeed, we cannot unambiguously state that during this period there

was an obvious or complete turn away from Christianity. This is true even of socialist countries behind the Iron Curtain. To greater or lesser degrees, all socialist gov-

ernments were suspicious of rock and roll and Western capitalist societies’ hippie culture. Religious renewal was lumped together with rock and roll music as a danger to the socialist system and the state’s official atheistic culture. The Hungarian

journalist Péter Tardos, writing in 1972, complained about the growing number of albums with religious themes:

Johnny Hallyday’s [sic] song on Jesus Christ is number one on the charts.

6

7

Santana was a follower of Sri Chinmoy; The Beatles and the Beach Boys made Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation Centre well-known. Jay R. Howard and John M. Streck note that “Guitarist John McLaughlin amended his name to Mahavishnu John McLaughlin after meeting up with Sri Chinmoy; Carlos Santana billed himself as Devadip Santana for a number of years. Pete Townsend and Ronnie Lane became devotees of Meher Baba; Seals and Crofts advocated the Bahai faith; Richard Thompson became a strict Sufi; and Rastafarianism […] became a household word with most American rockers thanks to the emergence of reggae music.” Jay R. Howard and John M. Streck, Apostles of Rock. The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 29. Along these spiritual affiliations, we know that the Osmonds, coming from Salt Lake City, were Mormons and two members of The Shadows, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, belonged to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

See Tanya Luhrmann, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (New York: Alfred E. Knopf, 2012).

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He is waiting for some kind of a contemporary Messiah. Jeremy Faith’s “Je-

sus” is a hit in France and England. “Jesus, Jesus come back to us/ For the marijuana/ For the words we say/ For the people thinkin’/ The world is OK/

Save us, save us hallelujah…” In London, the band Nazareth was formed and [the film Jesus Christ] Superstar is being shot in Nazareth, the Holy Land […]

The band Quintessence’s new song mentions “Sweet Jesus” […] and George

Harrison sings “My Sweet Lord”: “I really want to see you/ I really want to be with you.”8 Bob Dylan in his album New Morning sings of the Father of

the Universe, José Feliciano, the blind Puerto Rican singer sings the songs of his land: “Come Down Jesus.” The well-known folk-rock band, The Birds has

“Jesus is Alright” in their standard repertoire. The French electronic composer, Pierre Henry composed the record ceremony for Spooky Tooth. Galt McDermot, the composer of Hair is preparing to debut the Divine Hair Mass in a New York Cathedral. The rock version of Händel’s Messiah is coming out from OAK records. It will condense the Bible into 26 rock opera hits. The record is

entitled the Truth of Truths […] With the success of these Jesus-hits, it seems

today that a group addicted to the pleasures of drugs and spiritual comfort, and which first searched after the fashionable Krishna’s teachings, is now calling for a new opium. Jesus has become fashionable for the hippies, but only super-

ficially. They pin a large yellow disk on their jackets saying “Jesus is love,” but

they will change it depending on the day to a different, more appealing slogan. […] There are never so many for Christ as there are today…9

The socialist regime led by General Secretary János Kádár was committed to a

“soft dictatorship” or “Goulash communism,” a hybrid of private and public production and commerce that lasted from 1956 until 1989. Cultural policy during

this period was dubbed the “3 T ideology” after támogat (support), tűr (tolerate) and tilt (prohibit). Because the Kádár regime perceived that rock and roll had the

power to create subcultures or alternative social groups with a basis of solidarity 8 9

It is worth noting that the song was used in churches and during masses as well. See János Sebők, A Beatlestől az új hullámig. A rock a hetvenes években (Budapest: Zeneműkiadó, 1981), 45.

Péter Tardos, Beat-pop-rock (Budapest, Zeneműkiadó, 1972), 54-56. Surprisingly, the secularized consumers did not critique the religious content, rather the unauthentic religious content and associated industry and business-like attitudes.

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48 | Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

independent of the government, it was regarded as extremely dangerous. The state

was unable to cease its spread even though it continuously monitored pop cultural

music and censored lyrics. Writing in the early 1970s, Ferenc Tomka noted that the party leadership was aware of the fact that, “community represents strength

because it may be the source of an independent way of thinking and perhaps even resistance.”10

Religious revival movements like the CCR fell between the cracks of the regime’s “3 T’s” system, and was situated on the borders of toleration and prohibition. Ac-

cording to the official state propaganda there was religious freedom in Hungary,

and indeed participation in various religious rituals was not prohibited. However, the church’s social presence and role was made insignificant and was confined to the ordained ministry of the clergy. All other social organizations and activities came under party and state control,11 including the emergent religious movements

that belonged to officially accepted churches as determined by the regulations of the Hungarian Council of Free Churches.12 Only those religious phenomena were

tolerated that were controlled by the officially-accepted churches be they either the

Roman Catholic Church or the Protestant Hungarian Council of Free Churches.

In order to control Catholicism, the state created a movement of ordained priests called “peace priest movement.”13 Most priests who joined had to report regularly on the Church’s activities to the secret police. Moreover, throughout the 1950s and

early 1960s the state tried to intimate the clergy and laity by arresting religious

activists and submitting them to show trials. These were the primary ways the

communist government tried to expel religion from public social life and relegate it to the private sphere.

Socialist state officials and the ordained Christian clergy who collaborated with

them both regarded religious grassroots revival movements like the CCR with 10 Tomka, Halálra, 173.

11 Tibor Valuch, Magyar társadalomtörténeti olvasókönyv 1944-től napjainkig (Budapest: Argumentum – Osiris, 2004), 149.

12 Zoltán Rajki and Jenő Szigeti, Szabadegyházak története Magyarországon 1989-ig (Budapest: Gondolat, 2012).

13 Roman Catholicism is the biggest religious organization in Hungary. Nearly 2/3 of all registered members of religious groups belong to the Catholic Church.

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suspicion. During this period, many churches perceived themselves to be oppressed and dependent on the state’s tolerance. Naturally, what was considered a prohibited

or tolerated phenomenon by the political regime had to be treated similarly by the churches as well. This might provide a partial answer as to why Catholic Church

officials did not initially give their approval to the emerging forms of guitar-cen-

tered popular devotional music, even though this style was gaining popularity with young Catholics. Nor did Church officials recognize small revival movements including the Catholic Charismatic Revival—that were doing the most to promote

this music. Church officials at various levels in the hierarchy either tolerated or rejected these communities, and only in a very few cases encouraged them. As a

consequence, members of the Hungarian Conference of Catholic Bishops kept a

clear distance from Hungary’s growing network of grassroots religious festivals, which were increasingly popular with young people and often functioned also

to popularize the emerging style of Christian popular music. Therefore, it is due

primarily to political reasons that the head of the Catholic Church in Hungary, László Cardinal Lékai, waited until he visited Pope Saint John Paul II in 1980 to recognize the “underground” religious festival that had taken place in Nagymaros

near Budapest since 1971. It was only after this visit that Cardinal Lékai made a public appearance at the festival,14 which is to say that the Church at that point only tolerated—but did not yet approve—this festival.15

In this sense not only Christian popular music but also emerging Roman Catholic renewal movements that used this musical genre can be considered a threefold

alternative movement in communist Hungary. First, from a political point of view this new genre of church music was outside officially accepted socialist culture; it belonged to the counterculture created by “western rock and roll music.” At the

same time, being religious during the communist regime was to, in a sense, oppose the political system. And third, the Church regarded renewal movements as an

alternative religiosity and result of an external ideology—i.e. secular rock and roll.

Renewal movements threatened the Church by introducing new forms of rituals, and therefore ecclesiastical officials believed they endangered the traditions of the

Church and its conventional religious rituals. In the 1970s, many religious renewal movements within the Hungarian Catholic Church, including and especially the VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

50 | Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

Catholic Charismatic Renewal, embraced a symbiotic relationship with the new religio-musical languages and genres of Christian popular music, but also faced

fear and suspicion from ecclesiastical officials, who sometimes even went so far as to reject renewal movements’ ritual and liturgical innovations.

This ambiguous character is well demonstrated by informer reports found at the

Historical Archives of the Hungarian State Security. A young priest taking up a

position in Hungary’s third largest city, Szeged, at the southern border with Serbia, received the following advice from his clerical supervisor: “It may be worthwhile to

host all gatherings publicly in the church so that everyone will know about them. It

is no good visiting families at home or having special gatherings in other locations in the evening. For this reason, working with young people at the university is a

rather delicate matter. You must handle university students quite carefully, especially when it comes to having evening events for them.”16

Political scientist Leslie László has argued that, in regards to official policy toward the Catholic Church, the official aim of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party

was to wean young people away from religion, which the communist government identified with false consciousness and unreal idealism. The state saw all such at-

titudes as harmful to the development of a new socialist generation and society.

The Hungarian public was bombarded with articles appearing in periodicals and in the daily press, roundtable discussions on the radio, and television programs

featuring portrayals of juvenile delinquency, including nihilistic, cynical, and hedonistic young people wearing jeans and playing rock music.17 Catholics’ attitude

toward the Church’s grassroots movements was destabilized by a variety of fac-

tors; this destabilization encompassed the Charismatic renewal movements that

incorporated modern, guitar-centered music in summer festival-style gatherings.

Even as the popularity of the CCR among young and educated was contributing to the survival and renewal of Catholicism, this movement was also a threat to the political system.

16 See the reports of secret agent “Kerekes” in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian Secret Police (ÁBTL): file H-36278/1, 9.

17 László Leslie, “The Catholic Church in Hungary,” in Catholicism and Politics in Communist Societies, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 166.

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CHARISMATIC RENEWAL IN HUNGARY While numerous anthropologists and historians have offered detailed accounts of the American roots of the charismatic renewal in Catholicism, we still have only a vague understanding of the movement’s origins outside of North America, espe-

cially in Eastern Europe and Hungary.18 We know that the reforms of the Second

Vatican Council appeared in the Hungarian Catholic church considerably late, some years after the close of the Council. Due to the efforts of fearless priests

and lay people, some renewal and base communities (Focolare, Bokor Movement, Catholic charismatics) began appearing in Hungary in the 1970s. The first 18 The Catholic Charismatic Renewal began in January 1967 in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). A few teachers and students of the Duquesne University faculty of theology went for spiritual exercises (Duquesne weekend) where they experienced the spiritual awakening of “Baptism in the holy Spirit”. They soon shared their experience with students of Notre Dame University and Michigan State University. As Csordas notes, the new “Pentecostal Catholics” promised individuals a unique spiritual experience, the direct experience of divine power through numerous “spiritual gifts” and “charisms”, the result of which will be a drastic renewal of church life based on the re-baptism and “personal contact” with Jesus. Csordas, Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement, 4. In contrast with the earlier Pentecostal awakening, the Charismatic Renewal attracted mainly educated, middle-class Catholics from the suburbs. The new movement spread like wildfire through the United States, then appeared in all Catholic regions of the world, including Hungary.

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Photo courtesy of Kinga Povedák

52 | Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

Catholic Charismatic groups in Hungary were formed in 1975-76. In 1982 the TŰZ (Fire) movement was launched with the aim of evangelization—introducing

and discovering the Holy Spirit with the help of various courses (Philip Course, John Course, Andrew Session etc.). Secret police reports show that Catholic charismatics appeared as underground urban communities who had close relations with Pentecostal charismatics, with whom they sometimes mutually organized religious

gatherings.19 Christian popular music was an important foundation of these “ecumenical” Pentecostal/Catholic ritual communities. Modern guitar-centered masses, which had been a feature of Catholic practice since 1967, thus prepared the ground for this particular manifestation of contemporary ecumenism in Hungary.

Two points must be made clear here. First, Christian popular music and the charismatic movement can be mentioned side by side, since the latter helped solidify

a new musical language and a new mode of religious experience in the Hungarian

Catholic Church. Still, while Catholics embraced guitar centered popular music, underground ecumenical renewal communities remained officially independent of the Church. Conversions from Catholicism to Pentecostalism began later, only in the early 1990s. Second, the spread of the religious renewal and modern Christian music did not necessarily mean the significant spread of charismatic experience. While Catholic charismatic worship certainly used Christian popular musical genres and languages, not all who played modern popular music in Catholic churches became members of the Catholic charismatic renewal movement.

The movements may have seemed similar in their ritual and musical styles. They

also sometimes intermingled on an everyday and vernacular level. Still, both government and Roman Catholic church authorities clearly distinguished them and

looked upon them with suspicion. Communist authorities found both charismatic movements dangerous, since they fell outside the competency of the religious lead-

ers to control them. That is, they were often independent of official ecclesiastical lines of authority and differed in style and content from conventional ritual practices. As one Roman Catholic priest added in his reports to the secret police:

19 Pentecostal charismatic movements appeared basically parallel in Hungary due to the activity of preachers visiting from Western Europe and the U.S. JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

Kinga Povedák | 53

My general experience is that Bulányist groups, small prayer groups, evangelical Christians and so-called charismatics are generally mistaken if they ap-

pear in Catholic circles. The question is further complicated by the fact that

none of the movements are clearly defined, they share traits and furthermore, their effect is intensified, they find help in each other and doctrines are spread from one group to the other. […] For me this is not the most dangerous pro-

cess, but the youth movements within the Protestant churches, mainly among Baptist we find the Charismatic movement. They have Hungarian propaganda material, mainly through foreign—primarily Dutch—financial support. These

propaganda materials are found from the Central Seminary to the smallest parish churches, everywhere. [...] and they spread such propaganda materi-

al that could be resourced from Catholic publishers as well. Moreover, they include authors that are found in Catholic prayer books as well. The propaganda material is added as expletive in an appealing and popularizing way.20

Based on oral history interviews and the critical use of the descriptions found in

secret police archives, we can provide a relatively comprehensive summary of char-

ismatic renewal groups’ worship during this period. It is clear that the anti-religious

propaganda of the communist regime significantly contributed to participants’ embrace a “protest religion.” Charismatic renewal groups appealed to individuals

with an injured religious identity who then felt an even greater urge to protect and maintain their particular style of religiosity. They developed secret rituals and

survival strategies to hide and protected themselves from the eyes of the secret police. Congregants came together in hidden house churches and evangelized on a

one-to-one bases through personal relations. Margit Bangó, a popular and internationally acclaimed Hungarian Roma singer, evoked this interpersonal and underground milieu in her conversion story:

There was a preacher, Uncle Jani Ander, and I told him I wanted to be one of them. From there on he regularly visited me in my flat. At the age of 25 I got 20 The Catholic renewal movement called Bokor [bush] around the figure György Bulányi (19192010), based on biblical teachings and laying great emphasis on the role of base communities.

For more see András Máté-Tóth, Bulányi, 1996. See the reports of secret agent “Rákoshegyi” in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian Secret Police (ÁBTL): file H-63879, 17.

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baptized as well. Not much later, in Pest an independent congregation convened in my house. Gypsies who were both musicians and non-musicians got

to know the Bible during that period. I knew that I was under surveillance, and

I knew that many in the music industry did not like it. But I did not experience any further harm. Of course, this all happened in the early 1980s. We wanted

to put out an album, The Songs of Love, with worship music. But they did not allow us. It was stopped. Only later, after the political transition, in 1996 was it possible to release the cassette and CD.21

The situation was similar in rural settings too. Close to the Soviet-Hungarian bor-

der, in the small village of Uszka, the Pentecostal charismatic preacher Jenő Kopasz went house to house visiting locals. He formed congregations of converted Roma women in the late 1970s. The structure and style of typical charismatic ritual practice might help explain the effectiveness of this conversion campaign: Charismatic

ritual builds on the structure of personal testimony—singing, worship, teaching— and has an intimate, home-like atmosphere encouraging active involvement and

strengthening the feeling of belonging. Exemplary figures in these movements did

not fear opposing government authorities and dedicated their life to establishing religious communities.

This movement’s forced seclusion limited both the speed with which the it could spread as well as charismatic communities’ structural development. Different

groups became interconnected through persons who visited many local con-

gregations to spread information and spiritual literature. The religious music of charismatic communities also spread in the form of samizdat, or clandestinely cop-

ied and distributed literature banned by the state. According to one charismatic Catholic active during this time,

After I got to Budapest, it was my job to collect music sheets since Jenő [ Jenő Sillye, the “father” of Hungarian Christian popular music] and his friends’ reputation had even reached Szeged. Each time I went home, Aunt Emese would

ask me, “So, have you brought any new songs?”… In Budapest, they didn’t tell 21 István Povedák, Színvak könyv. A cigány identitás mintázatai (Szeged: Szegedi Keresztény Roma Szakkollégium, 2018), 55-56.

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you too much. They didn’t tell you whose song it was, who wrote it, why he wrote it, what he wrote it for.22

Such people often found themselves the target of the state secret police. Through

their informers, the secret police were present in local communities and reported back on the rituals, group dynamics and structures to their officers. Authorities found such local communities especially interesting when guests, for instance

a visiting preacher, visited these congregations for ecumenical services. Visiting

preachers connected isolated, local communities with each other, and sometimes

also helped the authorities come to understand the expansion and organization of

the movement.23 We have access only to a limited amount of information about the expansion of hidden religious networks. Still, the effects of the renewal movements

should not to be underestimated. As the Vatican delegate to the communist bloc, Cardinal Casaroli, put it:

The Church separated from the young seemed weak [...] Less and less peo-

ple went to church [...] Entire social groups disappeared from there, such as teachers, soldiers, public officials. Except in Poland—according to the Marxists hopes—the Church showed the signs of dying. [...] However, the spiritual

church survived in secret, and groups were organized in underground circum-

stances. They were often subjected to the rigor of authorities, but continuously persisted and, contrary to the opposition of the governments, they continued to spread.24

Group-formation is perhaps the most important social consequence of Christian

popular music under the political circumstances of socialism. These communities— be they charismatics or not—worked as long-term referential points for individuals defining their way of thinking, worldview, and actions. Charismatic groups 22 Interviewee L.Sz. 54-year-old man, Szeged, Hungary, 2009.

23 Secret agents sometimes—intentionally or accidentally—misinterpreted the size of these religious networks. By visualizing an extended, presupposed web of conspiring religious communities the importance and the efforts of the agent became indispensable.

24 Cardinal Agostino Casaroli served as the Vatican’s liaison to the communist bloc from the 1960s.

Agostino Casaroli, A türelem vértanúsága. A Szentszék és a kommunista államok. 1963-1989 (Budapest: Szent István Társulat), 83-84.

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therefore contributed to the survival of Catholicism and Christianity and—indirectly—of a democratic, anti-communist religious attitude.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ‘PENTECOSTALIZATION’ Although this paper does not aim to provide an aesthetic analysis, certain musicological or sonic features should be mentioned. These also were shaped by the peculiarities of the political-historical conditions under which the charismatic renewal emerged and developed during the Cold War era. It is obvious that the religious

music revolution of the 1960s was built on the fashionable music styles of the time.

The “folk mass” movement began in the United States in the 1960s under the influence of the folk song inspired protest songs hallmarked by Bob Dylan or Joan

Baez.25 The Jesuit priest Aimé Duval was inspired by French chansons in the 1950s

when he picked up his guitar and toured around the world with his religious music.

The Belgian Dominican “singing nun” Soeur Sourire’s song “Dominique” reached

the top of European and the American pop charts in 1963. There were several in-

dependent trends within this religious music revolution such as the Hungarian that appeared strikingly early. In 1967, Imre Szilas, a 17-year-old young student wrote a “beat mass” that launched a whole guitar mass movement.26 Between 1967 and

approximately 1990, the style of Christian music did not change, but remained the

“beat-style” of the 1960-70s. This peculiarly Hungarian style is named “Jenő-style” after the most emblematic author-performer, Jenő Sillye who has been its leading performer since 1971.

The similarity between the music of Pentecostal and Catholic charismatic renewal

movements and “standard” Christian popular music in Hungary is striking. An

obvious reason is that all took inspiration from the same—secular—musical roots.

The lack of characteristically different features of charismatic worship music and

liturgical Christian popular music used facilitated musical cross-fertilization, the transdenominational spread of genres, and consequent theological and ideological

hybridities. Musical cross-fertilization did not only mean the borrowing of music 25 Ken Canedo, Keep the Fire Burning: The Folk-Mass Revolution (Portland, OR: Pastoral Press, 2009).

26 That was not a coincidence that Szilas emigrated to the United States in 1970. Reading the propaganda in the newspapers against his “Mass Teenager” he decided to leave the country. Povedák, Gitáros, 98-99.

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but the transfer of religious practices, producing ritual and embodied homologies.27 István Kamarás and Ferenc Körmendy emphasized in 1990 that guitar masses had resulted not only in communication but also in communion: “[h]igh art and believers had become separated, and the preference for youth music, which offered an an-

swer to alienation, has become an interest among the masses.… There has not been such major activity in church music among young people in centuries.”28 A good example of this is the “beat mass” of the American group Only for Jesus, which the secret police documented in detail. The American Pentecostal charismatic “song and music group”—as the report describes them—held a youth “beat mass” with

the title of “Unity” in Budapest on August 2, 1976 in the Roman Catholic Saint Stephen’s basilica, one of the most prestigious churches in Hungary. The mass was

translated by the Pentecostal preacher Lajos Simonfalvi and was held with the permission of the Roman Catholic assistant chaplain Árpád Alberti. The event attracted roughly 2,000 young people—Seventh-Day Adventists, Pentecostals, and

Catholics—and was characterized by observers from the Budapest Police Headquarters as dangerous, in part because “they did not have permission from the au-

thorities to hold it.”29 According the police, it was “a premeditated political action, in its ecclesiastical aspect. ”30 They were also suspicious because the interdenomi-

national event was a new phenomenon that they had not anticipated: “In respect of the sects it was especially the case, given that the church action is organized

jointly with the Roman Catholic Church.”31 An informer who participated in the

“rock devotions” held in September 1982 in the Bükkony Street Roman Catholic

parish in Budapest gave a strikingly similar report about this event. According to his account, 140-150 persons, from teenagers to people in their sixties, gathered to

listen to a four-member band who had come from America and who performed

27 Csordás, Language, 1997.

28 István Kamarás and Ferenc Körmendy, “Religiózus beat? (szociográfia) II,” Új forrás 22, no. 3 (1990): 57.

29 See the reports in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian Secret Police (ÁBTL): file 3.1.2.

M-40918/7. 2.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

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58 | Rockin’ the Church: Vernacular Catholic Musical Practices

Photo courtesy of Kinga Povedák

in English. After the performance, Géza Németh, a Calvinist minister known as “Uncle Géza,” addressed the audience.32

A scholarly explanation centering on the dynamics of consumer culture and fashion can be found for these phenomena, one that is not merely limited to Mo-

rel’s theory that each age must find a “new religious language”—and we may add, channel—through which the Church’s message can be understood by believers.33

Religious experiences found in different religious groups are similar not simply because of the music used, but also because a particular kind of musical style is better

suited to given religious experiences. It seems that religious experience together with consumer cultural industries determine the basic features of emerging mod-

ern religious music. In other words, charismatic experience and its ritual frame that correspond to postmodern religious demands and therefore can be “sold” success-

fully on the religious market result in the appearance of a similar music style, which 32 See the reports in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian Secret Police (ÁBTL): file 2.7.1. NOIJ BRFK-110/1982.09.02. 1 33 Gyula Morel, A jövő biztosabb, mint a múlt. Őszinte kísérlet a lényeg keresésére (Budapest: Egyházfórum Alapítvány, 1995), 31.

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in the present case functions not only as an aesthetic category but also as a channel of religious communication. In this way a form of consumer culture “fashion” has appeared, based on aesthetic demands, in the religious environment. But this fashion owes its popularity and long life to the fact that these aesthetic demands have been successfully implanted into the religious demands.

Besides the need for religious renewal, it is important to emphasize that differ-

ent types of religious music result in different religious experiences with different forms of expression. The rituals of the charismatic awakening movements share

common features; congregants enact similar types of expressive bodily movements and emotional outbursts. These practices themselves differ significantly from the more traditional and structured Roman Catholic liturgy. Even some of the faithful and the clergy expressed ill feelings against non-traditional expressive forms.34

Others were attracted to the informal, spontaneous, and active style of partici-

pation: “this performance is a form of apostleship and dialogue, and it is a rather effective tool and it is appealing especially because as the older priests say—it is

not ‘churchlike’ enough.”35 This tension with the traditional, “churchlike” Catholic

liturgy should call to mind scholars’ judgment that postmodern forms of religious ritual tend to be anti-authoritarian. As Tardy puts it: “They gave themselves over to natural and supernatural things with the same openness and naivete, the same sincerity and enthusiasm. This combined with the basic drive for freedom, which

expressed itself in the search for new opportunities to have a direct encounter with God. Post-Conciliar religiosity was in the process of being born, and they sought a style suitable for expressing their faith, experiences, and belonging, one in which they had already learned to express their relationship with worldly things.36

Finally, a comment has to be made concerning the “new religious musical language.” It is true that Hungarian Christian popular music appeared parallel with

its Western equivalents and showed great similarities in the 1960s, but due to the 34 See the reports of the III/III. Department of the Police Headquarters of Csongrád County in the Historical Archives of the Hungarian Secret Police (ÁBTL): file 3.1.5. O-16039/150. 10.

35 Ibid.

36 László Tardy, “Istenélmény a mai zenében,” Vigilia 1 (2007), last accessed February 27, 2016, http://vigilia.hu/regihonlap/2007/1/ tardy.htm.

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political circumstances their development went in different directions. While espe-

cially in the United States a commercial Contemporary Christian Music industry evolved with many fashionable styles, the entire Hungarian Christian popular musical scene operated in a bubble, untouched by the “Western” styles and influences

and by the 1990s became anachronistic, having lost its “modern” and “fashionable” attractivity towards the younger generations.

CONCLUSION If we take into consideration the religious tendencies and the turn away from institutional religions during state socialism in Hungary, then the question of “how

could religious popular music and religious renewals and base communities spread

and experience a revival during the times of persecution?” automatically emerge.

Under the given political circumstances of socialist Hungary, churches could not and did not encourage renewal movements, however, on the local microlevel the base communities served as islands. Tomka compares the Catholic Church during this period to a group of islands. The metaphor of islands represents the well-

operating, active parish churches, and these islands were quite independent.37 These

communities often gained a secondary, political feature as most religious activities were done in a hidden and secret way. Therefore, being religious at this point is

not only worldview and faith anymore, but in certain cases—when members of

a given pursued religious group are aware of the persecution, still they insist on their religious identity and participate in clandestine church rituals—might become a political act as well. Besides, samizdat religious culture developed under

ideological pressure inevitably assigned a political feature. The political control of religious freedom and persecution hurt the religious identity of the believers in a

way that sometimes the token of survival was—rather than becoming more secularized—belonging to a community of faith such as the charismatic group with great commitment.

37 Miklós Tomka, Magyar Katolicizmus 1991 (Budapest: Országos Lelkipásztori Intézet Katolikus Társadalomtudományi Akadémia, 1991), 79.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Allan H. To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. https://doi. org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386431.001.0001.

Altermatt, Urs. A katolicizmus és a modern kor. Budapest: Osiris, 2001.

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Csordas, Thomas J. Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997.

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Fazekas, Csaba, Attila Jakab, Éva Petrás and Szabolcs Szita. A magyarországi Jehova Tanúi Egyház története. Budapest: Gondolat, 2017.

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Herzfeld, Michael. Anthropology. Theoretical Practice in Culture and Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Howard, Jay R. and John M. Streck. Apostles of Rock. The Splintered World of Contemporary Christian Music. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1999.

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Budapest: Új Ember – Márton Áron Kiadó, 2006.

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Kamarás, István and Ferenc Körmendy. “Religiózus beat? (szociográfia) II.” Új forrás 22:3 (1990).

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CECÍLIA SÁNDOR

The Interwoven Existence of Official Catholicism and Magical Practice in the Lived Religiosity of a Transylvanian Hungarian Village

Cecília Sándor is a Ph.D. candidate at the Corvinus University of Budapest Doctoral School of Social Communication and is the President of the Department of Communication and Media Science of the Hungarian National Association of Doctoral Students. She is an ethnographer, cultural anthropologist, and professional in the field of media communications. Her research interests are local religiosity in Transylvanian Hungarian villages and the interconnection of religious worldviews and magic in Catholic communities' everyday lives. Her broad research questions include how people interpret the world, how they experience Christian religiosity, and how they try to prosper in relation to changes in life circumstances and social conditions.

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INTRODUCTION

T

his article has two aims. First, I present a summary version of the material I have gathered during five years of ethnographic field research on the trans-

mission of religious knowledge, especially magical practices relating to

farming and agricultural production, in a rural Hungarian-speaking Transylvanian village. I examine these phenomena through the conceptual framework of “collec-

tive memory” and “religious transmission.” I show how religious knowledge and practice are transmitted directly—taught by elders—as well as acquired through an individual’s own experiences and overheard from peers and others.

Second, I highlight two different but coexisting “constructions of reality” in this rural community. By “constructions of reality,” I mean interpretations of reality expressed in narrative discourses and local magical practices that are closely and inex-

tricably interwoven with a Catholic religious worldview.1 By developing this picture

of interpenetrating constructions of reality, I offer insight into the interconnection of religious worldviews and magic in a Catholic community. The world created by the lived practice of Catholicism is interwoven with reference and recourse to

beliefs and practices associated with magic. These magical beliefs and practices ac-

company individuals throughout the various stages of life such that they constitute an identifiable “life strategy” that is embedded in everyday experience.2 Magical

procedures are present and applied in a variety of life situations. Most frequently, they are deployed in relation to the practical everyday concerns of rural agricultural

production, including increasing yields, ensuring a rich harvest, holding onto good luck, and maintaining health and strength to work. Magical beliefs and practic-

es also shape individual and collective experience during important annual events

(holidays, festivals, rites of passage) and critical life situations (disease, evil spells, death, and other kinds of loss). They also aid individuals in situations when they are confronted with goals unattainable by rational means (love magic). Some of these 1 2

Because my goals are primarily descriptive and not theoretical, I dispense with an introductory section that weighs the various benefits or limitations of studying worldviews and constructions of reality from the history of science point of view or Clifford Geertz’s thick description approach.

Vilmos Keszeg, Hiedelmek, narratívumok, stratégiák (Cluj-Napoca: Kriza János Néprajzi Társaság, 2013), 14.

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actions belong to the scenario of communal rites and take place in public, while others are of a personal, individual nature, avoiding the public sphere.

Research on local and rural religious worldviews has already been completed in

several areas of the Romanian region of Transylvania. However, in the Hungari-

an-speaking parts of Transylvania known as the Szekler Land (Székelyföld), where a substantial middle-class population emerged much earlier and has had a greater

influence on religious culture over time, research on the religious construction of

reality remains uneven, which limits scholars’ ability to develop a broad and general picture of the religious worldviews present in the Szekler region today.

My methodological goal is for the words of the interviewees to “gain ground,” to allow these statements to shed light on contemporary religious life as a living, func-

tioning, and continuously adapting dimension of human existence. Accordingly, I

first describe my field site and methodology, and then give a broad sketch of the

character of local religious beliefs and practices. Because a religious worldview and the process of constructing reality shape even the smallest parts of everyday life in the village where I conducted fieldwork, the essay also describes concrete examples

of agricultural magic that are embedded in the most basic and essential aspects of farming production.

CONTEXT OF RESEARCH AND METHODOLOGY Csíkszentsimon (Sansimion) is a village in Romania’s Transylvania region, laying

on the left bank of the Olt River south of the closest city and the county seat, Csíkszereda (Miercurea-Ciuc). Up until the 18th century, Csíkszentsimon formed a parish together with Csatószeg (Cetatuia), but it was made up of two congregations. Its church was built between 1823 and 1835 in the honor of King Saint

Ladislaus. The village also had a Catholic school, which operated from the 1860s until 1948 when the newly established communist regime nationalized religious

schools throughout the country. The village’s current population is 3,429 people, the vast majority of which is Catholic.3 3

There are, in addition, 39 Orthodox, 56 Protestant Calvinist, and a single Baptist practitioner in the village. Crucial to the community’s identity is that József Tamás, the assistant bishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia) was raised in the village. Being aware of this also JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

Cecília Sándor | 67

I utilized semi-structured and guided interviews to gather information from 68

people in total, of whom 48 were women and 20 men. Sixty-six of my respondents were Roman Catholic and two Orthodox. The eldest was born in 1919 and youngest in 1998. My interviews often dealt with sensitive information; respondents dis-

cussed practices that were either clearly proscribed by official ecclesiastical doctrine or had a semi-tolerated status. Many respondents also adopted a “subjective” style of first-person reflection about their lives and the strategies they used for trans-

mitting religious knowledge. I also sought to adapt my interview methodology to account for this tendency. The character of the interview responses varied depend-

ing on the location, time and circumstances of the speech event. The identities and personal goals of the speakers also shaped the conversations. Besides my questions

formulated during the interviews and the topics of the conversation, genres also determined the way of the conversation. For example, a different linguistic coding

system (number symbolism, mythological references) is used in the magical procedure, and as the utterance replaces the action as a speech act, it is often controlled by rules (to whom, when, how one is allowed to tell it).

MAGIC AND CATHOLIC PRACTICE IN LOCAL RELIGIOSITY Anthropologists have long recognized that religiosity often manifests itself in two

alternative modalities, even if these modalities go by different names depending on

the scholar’s particular perspective. Anthropologist of religion William Christian, strengthens and unites them in their faith. An example of this: I.: "Who did you learn it from?"

K.Z.: "From my grandmother, and she learned it from her aunt whose husband was the crosier holder of Sir Áron Márton, the bishop."

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Photo courtesy of Cecília Sándor

68 | The Interwoven Existence of Official Catholicism and Magical Practice in the Lived Religiosity of a

Transylvanian Hungarian Village

who has focused much of his research on European Catholicism, identifies two

levels of religiosity: universal, ecclesiastical Catholicism, which is based on the or-

dinances of a central ecclesiastical authority, and local Catholicism. In Christian’s

opinion, the most defining characteristic of religious practice is the place and time.

That is, the difference is not between the religion of the elite and the masses, but

between what constitutes the proscriptions of the church and what constitutes a community’s substantive practice.4 Brian Morris argues that there is a funda-

mental and profound difference between world religions (such as Christianity or

Buddhism) and local religions (folk religions or spirit cults); Ioan M. Lewis makes a distinction between central and peripheral cults;5 McKim Marriott draws atten-

tion to the great and little traditions of Hinduism; and Ernest Geller highlights variations between clerical and ecstatic religiosity in Islam.6 Finally, anthropologist Charles Stewart distinguishes doctrine from local religious practices. Stewart

compares the relationship between these two types of religiosity to the relation of langue and parole in Saussurian linguistic theory, according to which doctrine may

be merely an ideal type of religiosity or a kind of rule system. In contrast, local religiosity as such is always influenced by the broader environment and is a constantly

evolving form of practical knowledge; it exists as a worldview and is enacted as personal attitudes and orientations.7

In the context of my research, given that my main questions concern how people interpret the world, how they experience Christian religiosity, how they adjust to

changing circumstances, and how amidst all of this they try to prosper, then I adopt an approach that avoids separating what these scholars treat separately as different

“doctrinal” versus “local” elements of religious life. It can be said that at my fieldsite, local religiosity encompasses both folk practice and some aspects of church dog-

ma. As part of individual and collective knowledge, local religiosity is linked to a 4 5 6 7

William A. Christian, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 176-178.

Ioan M. Lewis, Estatic Religion: An anthropological Study of Spirit Possession and Shamanism (England: Harmondsworth, Pengiun Books 1971).

Brian Morris, Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 268-270.

Charles Stewart, Demons and the Devil. Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 10-13, https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400884391.

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Cecília Sándor | 69

determinatively pragmatic attitude and mindset. Local religiosity and everyday practice are focused on interpreting experience and laying the foundation of subsequent action oriented toward one’s environment. Its pragmatic function is out-

lined by regulations, interdictions, and suggestions; and its main end is to provide answers to the problems of human existence. Local religiosity is integrated into and becomes manifest within both workdays and the feast days when villagers

take time for rest and celebration. Local religiosity is so integrated into individuals’ experience that it becomes part of their identity and embedded in their particular life stories.

What became evident during my fieldwork, and what constitutes the main point

of this article, is that institutional religious phenomena and folk practices are both

part of local and individual habits. The main example I explore below, in the section

on agricultural magic, is the celebration of the spring blessing of the wheat harvest, which takes the form of a procession accompanied by flags and singing. This ritual

act complements another ritual form, which I also describe below—the magical act of circling the fields and asking for protection from birds and other pests.

In general, people in my fieldsite treated belief as a fundamental and universal

feature of human existence. They would agree with statements like, one cannot live but have a faith. Or, everyone must accept something unquestionably as real or true. During one interview, F. T. [31-year-old man], reported, “we can only call

those superstitious who pretend that they don’t believe.” Others agreed with this

perspective and extended the idea of belief as a fundamental human universal to

the arena of agricultural magic. For instance, a 63-year-old woman, P. Sz. told me that magical acts affect only those who accept that they work: “I believe in it, and it’s effective.” Many also reported that some events happen irrespective of people’s

presence, so individuals can decide for themselves what significance to assign to the events: “Some believe in it, others don’t, but many things have happened,” a

90-year-old man named B. Gy. stated. In this way, beliefs lend meaning to events and make the world interpretable. In the words of one informant, beliefs explain “things that are inapprehensible and unexplainable.” The view that beliefs are present in life as an effect on one’s circumstances and experience shapes a vividly VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

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expressive statement by Cs. V., a 49-year-old woman who stated that, “I think, I feel that if the belief was true, that would be good for me, I guess.”

Often, when speaking about beliefs, an alienating, distancing behavior prevails.

Respondents are aware that their statements are also regulated by Catholic doctrines. In the mode of discourse about magical practices, statements like, “I’m not superstitious, but I’ve read it somewhere” (Cs. D.) and “I don’t believe it, but there

is something to it” (B. Gy.) are typical. In many cases, the character of the narrated stories is typically someone else, a foreigner, a neighbor, an inhabitant of another

village, and its location is distant, another part of the village or a faraway space.8

In statements about transcendence, the supernatural powers and forces, the views

of the folk religiousness interweave with the official points of view of the Church.

Both of them are acceptable, that people perform in order to both accept but also distance themselves from Catholic doctrine.

CANONICAL PRAYERS AND FOLK SPELLS As a fundamental and universal human mode of existence, praying is an element of both work and rest, days set apart for labor as well as days for celebration and

feasting. In the religious mode of existence, or homo religious, maintaining contact with supernatural power is a fundamental necessity. Based on his fieldwork

in Western Moldavia, Hungarian ethnologist Vilmos Tánczos argues that, “com-

munication with the truest, most real being is achieved through individual prayer.”

Praying, Tánczos continues, is a rite in itself and is often accompanied by physical

actions: “[I]t fulfills its function by means of correctly carrying out the rite.”9 At my fieldsite, there are a variety of individual and collective modes for engaging in

prayer. Individuals sometimes pray by themselves, children with their parents, family members and neighbors together, prayer communities collectively and, on the occasion of holy masses and feast days, the entire population of the village turns to the transcendent with a unified piety.

8 9

When a specific practice has been explicitly rejected by the Church, informants will use formulas like “only other people have such superstitions.” Keszeg, Hiedelmek, 11.

Vilmos Tánczos, Csapdosó angyal. Moldvai archaikus imádságok és életterük (Miercurea Ciuc: ProPrint Kiadó, 1999), 245.

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In my opinion, in keeping contact with the transcendent, the supernatural, praying

in an ecclesiastical setting is of a doctrinal character, while spells abound in imagistic rites. While the former is characterized by recurrence, systematization, organization, the repetition of rites and dogmas, and the institutional setting, the latter can

be described by words such as spontaneous, offering intense experiences, personal, emotional.10

At my fieldsite, magic and canonical styles of prayer are simultaneously parallel and also interwoven modes for maintaining contact with divine power. The ritualized character of the recitation of both prayers and spells is given by the belief in oral

magic, as well as the function of the recitation. While the former magical character, more precisely the contextualized function of the substantive and formal characteristics of the prayer—shaped by canonical regulations—has ceased, the latter can be found in spells to this day. In a prayer the person addressed in every case is a

divine power, while the spell’s purpose is to have a direct influence on incidences.

The evidence for the shared origin and common root of magic and canonical prayer lies in magical actions’ ability to encompass core features of canonical prayer, most prominently when magical requests for divine assistance are directed at saints and holy people.

Thus interpretation is supported by Hungarian ethnologist Éva Pócs’s definition of magic as, “a ritual technique and behavioral form that helps an individual or a

group in being able to influence certain supernatural powers for the sake of a prac-

tical cause.”11 Ultimately, my research highlights a necessary addition to approaches

to magic inspired by Pócs’s definition, the need to view canonical and magical prayer as mutually conditioning and interwoven parallel systems of prayer.

Returning to the theme of religious transmission, we can see that prayer allows 10 See Harvey Whitehouse, Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Whitehouse distinguishes between two types of religious forms: the doctrinal mode and the imagistic mode. Doctrinal religiosity includes regularly occurring, codified rites based on repetition, with a constant content and a low level of personal involvement. The imaginative form can be described by the tendency of sporadic, small-scale rites with intense emotions.

11 Éva Pócs, “Néphit,” in Népszokás, néphit, népi vallásosság. Folklór 3, ed. Dömötör Tekla (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1990), 643.

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people to engage in acts of formal didactic teaching as well as spontaneous mimicry. The imagery and strong performative character of the prayers puts an em-

phasis on experiencing the recitation as a rite. Out of the inventory of non-verbal

communication, prayers implicate mimicry, the gaze, gesture, touch and posture, all of which are considered appropriate for transmitting emotions and attitudes.

The process of religious transmission, or the act of acquiring emotions and atti-

tudes implicit in the practice of prayer, is possible both through formal education

(deliberate teaching) and implicit copying (spontaneous learning). One woman,

A. K., engaged in a formal style of education when she showed me how she prays.

She explained, “I put them together [my hands], I am not just talking and that’s

it.” Lifting one’s eyes to the cross, as well as the use of objects indicates distancing from the outside world and makes praying into a complete physical-spiritual

process. Anointing one’s forehead with holy water, placing the rosary beads on the

dashboard or rearview mirror of one’s car, keeping the Miraculous Medal in one’s purse or a keychain is all part of the broader system of prayer and ritual behavior.

Many people at my fieldsite insisted that acquiring religious knowledge begins in

childhood. In the words of one woman, “I learned it as a child from my mother, and they repeated it all the time at the church.” From the point of view of the practice of religion, besides family education the intense character of this life stage

is strengthened by catechism at school, Bible classes, the preparations relating to the rites of coming of age (First Communion, confirmation), church liturgies and

preachings. As a recitation habit, prayer is incorporated into everyday life: “Well, that’s what we got used to, we got used to it like this since we were little girls.” (F. D.) The conscious practice of religion is characteristic of adulthood, when the individual’s own system of ideas is formed, in which dogmatic knowledge interweaves with elements of folk belief.

In the material I gathered during fieldwork, the most common type of magical

recitation focused on counteracting or healing diseases. Many examples of magical spells sought to cure the evil eye or forms of bewitchment that afflicted both people and animals. I recorded two texts for preparing water used to cure the evil eye. Ac-

cording to my informants in the Csíkszentsimon, the ritual for preparing this type JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

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of healing water begins outside the home and in the early hours of the morning.

One pulls water either three or nine times from a well in the period before the sun has risen. After collecting the water, one recites the following text:

The Blessed Virgin Mary set off through the water of the Jordan, and she found three Jewish maidens who bewitched her Holy Son. The Blessed Virgin Mary scooped water from the Jordan and cast water for his Holy Son. May

water casting be as useful to *** (the name of the animal/person) as it was to the Holy Son of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

An alternative version of the text that I recorded is as follows: The Blessed Virgin Mary set off with his blessed Holy Son./ She found 77 evils, and she asked them: Where are you going, 77 kinds of evils?/ We are

going to smell the red blood/ And to split the bony flesh of C. S./ I banish you to the branches of the forest/ Find yourself a lodging.

In these prayers, the effective power of the Virgin Mary is not at all limited to the

past, to a bygone mythical time following after the birth of Jesus Christ. Nor is this mode of divine power limited to a particular space in and around the course

of the Jordan River. Rather, Mary’s intercessory action is also effective in and ef-

fected through the act of recitation. As a text recitation, both prayers and spells

are linked to time (morning, noon, evening, night), time of the day (sunrise, dawn, noon, sunset, night), occasion (disease, work), posture (kneeling, folded hands, sign

of the cross, drawing a cross), repetition (three, seven, nine times) and rules (subal-

ternation, wordlessness). The highlighted places of prayer recitation are the church, the graveyard, the chapel, crossroads, and the end of the street where a crucifix is

placed. The selected place of spells is usually the family home, the yard, but it can also be some kind of frontier joining/dividing human and supernatural spaces, a field, the frontier of the village, a doorstep, a door or window.

Because such magical texts are secret, their transmission is linked to ritual rules, and

they can only be transmitted according to the dictates of oral educational processes.

For instance, one is allowed to teach them only to someone younger. Both magical VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

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texts and prayers that are preserved in the community’s long-term collective mem-

ory are, today, maintained through processes of oral memorization. According to Walter J. Ong, the foundation for preserving texts through oral memorization con-

sists of thinking in “mnemonic patterns that combine easily into speech.” That is, memorization operates by forming words into rhythmic and balanced configurations, including repetitions, oppositions, alliterations and assonances. Recurrent attributive structures, such as rhyming lines, syllabo-tonic versification, and symbolic

content of the images, also facilitate embedding in memory.12 In Csíkszentsimon, individuals use strategies like the mechanical recitation of such texts to sediment

and transmit religious knowledge. But also and just as importantly, individuals uti-

lize the recitation of prayers on specific occasions and for particular purposes to conduct the work of transmission.

The use of written sources, in contrast, allows transmission to operate independent-

ly of memorization processes. Knowledge becomes accessible regardless of time and place, and the texts used in prayers and spells become accurately recallable in

any context. At my fieldsite, I observed that numerous written religious texts (the

Bible, prayer books, psalm books, and other publications) and the symbolic objects of the Church (crosses, holy water, and rosary beads) are also placed in the living

space of individuals who employ magical practices. These printed texts as well as prayers transmitted by the media and consumed via the internet are all incorporated in the everyday practice of religion.

The encounter with spells as texts and ritual practices lasts through all life stages and starts first in childhood. Learning to apply and practice begins in earnest after marriage and starting a family, when concrete life situations make knowledge of traditionally accepted magical practices a vital concern. The role of expert in tra-

ditional knowledge is essentially linked to adulthood as a life stage, and associated even more clearly with being elderly. Thus, both of the ritual recitations influence physical and spiritual states, relations and connections in any stage of life.

12 Walter Jackson Ong, Orality and Literacy (London: Methuen, 1982), 33-36, https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203328064.

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AGRICULTURAL MAGIC Agricultural labor and production were pervasive areas of concern for the people I met and interviewed while conducting fieldwork in Csíkszentsimon. I came to

sense that the natural environment is the foundation of their lifeways and livelihood, which helps explain my informants’ preoccupation with agriculture. Their

lives are closely and clearly situated in the conditions of the natural world, and they depend on this environment for their continued existence. During interviews, this connection was discussed in relation to earning a living through semi-industrialized farming as well as practices of agrarian magic and the symbolic value of land.

Based on my research, it can be said that some elements from ecclesiastical, prescribed religiosity are absent from lived religiosity. However, religious experience in the everyday life includes other aspects of official Catholic practice while also

embracing many extra-ecclesiastical ideas and orientations, including many prac-

tices associated with agricultural magic. Official biblical narrative and agricultural practice come together, for example, in statements about the value of hard work and assiduousness. People in Csíkszentsimon associate this value with those who use agricultural labor as a basic way of earning a living. There is a biblical precedent

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for this association; agriculture is associated with the first humans who were expelled from the Garden of Eden. Quoting B. F., an 86-year-old woman, that “in the

sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,” doing manual labor and the belief in divine blessing provide confirmation of a biblical origin.

The boundary between magic and official ecclesiastical practice also becomes blurry in the case of ritual acts of predicting weather and harvest yields. Canonical

Christian feast days and predictions relating to weather changes are closely con-

nected during agricultural work phases. Thus, farmers graft their fruit trees on the 25th of March, the feast of Annunciation, the day of Jesus’ conception according to

the teachings of the Church. Palm Sunday is the time for sowing summer flower

seeds. On Good Friday, farmers bathe their animals, washing their cows, horses, and pigs before sunrise. Saint George’s Day, the 24th of April, has interwoven with getting the animals out to grass for the first time in spring. Saint Medardus’ Day is an occasion for predicting the weather: if it rains on this day, then it will rain

for the next forty days. The 11th of November is the day marking the end of the

farming year, when animals are brought in from the pasture. The weather of the

approaching winter can be predicted from the breast bone of a goose or chicken eaten on Saint Martin’s Day. In Csíkszentsimon, a commonplace saying for Saint Catherine’s Day is, “if Catherine knocks, Christmas will splash.”

The timing and order of tasks for preparing one’s garden can be memorized ac-

cording to the days of the Church year. Sowing needs to be started on Saint Rose’s

Day, the 4th of September, while harvesting on Saint Anne’s Day, the 26th of July.

Hoeing is forbidden on the week of Saint John’s Day, otherwise crop yields will be poor. For example, cabbage needs to be sowed on Saint Anthony’s Day, cucumber

on Saint Gisela’s Day, the 7th of May, while carrot and onion in early June. Putting a hen to sit needs to be done by the housewife (it is bad luck if a man does it) on

Sunday, when people come out from or go in for the mass, as a crowd brings abundance and she will have many chickens.

Another determinative element of religious activity in agricultural life is the distinction between workdays and feast days. For believers, feast days mean inter-

diction from work, a time for attending mass and praying. One especially devout JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

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family in Csíkszentsimon claimed that family members refuse to work the earth in

any way on Thursdays, since Saint John the Baptist’s head was cut off on this day.

Because his blood was shed on the ground, they can’t touch it even if this means that

weeds end up overgrowing their garden. The more general practice of avoiding agricultural work on feast days is expressed in the words of an informant, M. Sz., who

reported, “On religious feast days, set aside by the Church, the Székelys were more

godfearing than now. The most dangerous day is the feast of Peter and Paul when, without a cloud or any warning sign, the will of God struck down on a farmer, it

came all at once from the sky. On Saint Elias’ Day it was also forbidden to go to the fields.”

It is a basic tenet of Catholicism that the land and its crops are God’s gift. One

cannot live without work, which encompasses both labor and rest. F. D., a 53-yearold woman’s words concerning the importance of a work ethic express these basic principles:

I could give work to all the people. To all the people. Look, son, you had this

much land, stand next to it, you had that much, stand next to it with your fam-

ily and work! Cultivate it, you don’t have to go anywhere from home. You have the opportunity to work, if you don’t forget God’s teaching. If the young people

can learn, they should learn, and if they like to work, they should stand next to the land and hoe. They say that it is not fashionable. It will be fashionable, the good Lord created us for work.

When the farmer goes out to the field, he starts his work with making the sign of the cross, this being a precondition of his success. Before sowing, he takes off his hat, and asks for God’s blessing on his handiwork. “Lord, give your blessing on my

handiwork,” he says, which is a known blessing request text. When leaving, as a

kind of closing he says: “The good Lord shall protect the land.” Along field roads, near pastures and ploughlands, residents have erected numerous crosses as means for asking for God’s blessing. The inscription on one of them is: “You, man, who

are passing by, greet your heavenly Saviour./ Oh, accept our heartfelt prayer, bless, protect our lands./ Keep us from hail, wind, blizzards and all harm. Amen.”

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The customs of consecrating the wheat harvest and tracing the boundaries of one’s

fields are composed of several ritual elements. In the spring of every year, at the canonical blessing of wheat, the village people go out to the fields in the form of

a procession, to ask for God’s blessing and a bountiful wheat-harvest. In addition to this more formal and ecclesiastically-approved agricultural practice, people in Csíkszentsimon also perform magical procedures aimed at counteracting danger-

ous forces of nature and keeping away birds that ruin crops. G. L., an old lady who has lived all of her 97 years in the local community, learned to trace the boundaries of her fields from her father. During our interview, she confessed that she herself

has not been able to work her land for years. But when she was healthier and

younger, she used to go out to the fields silently, holding a stake at its sharp end while saying the rosary to herself. She circled the field three times always keeping

the property on her left-hand side. When she reached a corner, she recited a spell.13

In this interdiction, she invokes the Passion story with the image of overflowing blood and the crucified Christ’s five holy wounds: “Mice, birds, do you hear me?

13 She was the only person in the village I interviewed who spoke about this ritual with a sense of practical expertise.

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Photo courtesy of Cecília Sándor

We haven’t sown this for you, but for our own nurture. I banish you for the sake of

the five holy wounds of Jesus Christ, the wedding ring of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the branches of the forest where you don’t harm anyone!”

One of the most important parts of agricultural life is the protection of domestic farm animals. An animal’s milk and fat is an essential farming product, and protecting these parts of the animal is essential for those who accept the reality of the

evil eye or bewitchment. According to people I interviewed in Csíkszentsimon, one method of ensuring protection is to pour the first drop of an animal’s mother’s

milk through a stone with a hole in it in the moments following birth. Here, the stone functions as a magical object. Another procedure is cutting the nails from

the feet of the newborn animal, putting the clippings in fresh milk and having the cow drink it. Some use the method of feeding an animal with a potato cut in half and dipped in milk. Illness caused by the evil eye can also be fended off by subtle

or concealed actions: when a stranger enters the stall, a man turns his hat around, and a woman turns her apron inwards. One informant, F. D., claimed that she pre-

vented such curses by shaking her hands three times under her apron and repeating

to herself: “phew-phew, no evil spells.” Her husband is supposed to simultaneously shift his hat three times on his head. Another practice is using a piece of chalk to

draw a cross on an animal’s hide, most commonly on pigs. Others tie red ribbons on their appendages to guard and protect valuable domestic farm animals.

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It can be seen in many places that, in order to keep good luck, they place a horseshoe at the left corner of farm buildings. “A horseshoe has to be put the other way

around on the doorstep of the stall as, if a horseshoe is not there, those who enter take good luck out with them,” relates Gy. C., 71-year-old man. On Saint George’s Day they draw a cross on the door of the stall with garlic blessed in a liturgical

setting, based on the belief that this plant keeps evil powers away. As they are objects bestowed with power by means of church ceremonies, one is allowed to take

only pieces of catkin (popular name: pussy willow) that have been blessed into the house, or else the farm’s chickens will be barren and there will be no baby chicks

born. The connection between these plants and chickens is related to the visual and

tactile similarity of the pussy willow’s aments and the soft plumage of baby chicks, suggesting that the basis of this practice lies in analogic magic, or the practical act of comparison or attribution of similarity between two objects. Another example

of how religious and magical spirituality are synchronically practiced and lived in the agricultural life is connected to the Christian feast day of Epiphany. On this day after the priest blesses Epiphany water in the Church, the farmers pour on the

buildings with this newly blessed water and they also mixed it into the drinking water of the animals with the purpose to prevent the harm and to protect them from garbling.

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As a conclusion, we may state that the teachings of the Church and the elements

of folk belief, interweaving in the Catholic worldview, represent the reality of ev-

eryday human life. Sacrality, also present in agriculture, reflects the authenticity and timeliness of religion for Roman Catholic worshippers.

CONCLUSION There is a well-known tendency in ethnographic description to present a culture and place as isolated, fixed, and static—as if they are still images or photographs. In the case of the study of agricultural magic, there is a similar tendency to refer to an

eternal idyllic relation between human beings and nature. But of course the community of Csíkszentsimon is changing, and so is the relationship human beings

adopt with the land. Attitudes toward agriculture and nature are changing, and my

informants offered different views depending on their age, occupation and generation. One major factor in this process of change was the introduction of agricultural collectivization by the Romanian socialist state starting in the 1950s. Collectivized agricultural production transformed farming as a way of life and separated

households from their land. An additional factor shaping lived religious practice today is the declining market value of agricultural produce. Following 1989 and the process of “decollectivization,” one cannot guarantee a basic level of sustenance

for one’s family though agriculture alone. Starting in the 1950s, industrialized, factory-based production scheduled according to the socialist government’s five-year

plans sought to establish a new worldview in communities like Csíkszentsimon.

Collectivization created a pathway to replace subsistence farming with wage la-

bor performed in factories and other spaces of industrial production. For example, many residents of Csíkszentsimon who worked at the socialist-era Starch Factory of Csíkszentsimon were unable to perform regular agricultural labor in the fields.

Despite these efforts and the evident impact industrialized production has had on

the lives of people in Csíkszentsimon, it is important to highlight that following

the regime change of 1989 and the redistribution of collectivized property, the older generation has returned to traditional farming. However, one should not interpret this as the reappearance of a totally alien worldview among an older gen-

eration of villagers. On the one hand, there is certainly evidence that recommends VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

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this interpretation. Many of my informants were among those who have returned to agricultural production; they evince a commitment to modes of sacredness in-

tertwined with laboring on the land. The material I presented above provides ample evidence that they consider themselves to be subordinate to God, and nature to be controlled by divine power. In this dualistic world view, villagers believe in tran-

scendent power, and try to influence natural forces by prayer and magical practices.

Members of the younger generation see agriculture as a business and aim to obtain abundant crops with the help of machinery and chemicals. In this effort, they try to place themselves above the ecosystem and try to dominate nature.

On the other hand, however, the two generations share some commitments and values, which are implied in their common ritual practices—some ecclesiastically-approved and others not. For both groups, the land represents an ancient heritage and should be held in respect. Whether farmers use traditional or industrialized forms of agricultural production, they stop and pray when they encounter

crosses marking the boundaries of fields. The wheat blessing ceremony, overseen by the village priest on the morning of Holy Saturday, draws a group that crosses

generational lines. All village farmers who raise cows, regardless of generational

identification, cast holy water on their animals, and most also keep a horseshoe nailed above the door of their barns for luck.

On the surface, Csíkszentsimon is a homogeneously Catholic village. Based on my research, we may state that one primary effect of the Catholic worldview is its abil-

ity to construct a sense of truthfulness; Catholicism regulates human action and provides a specific interpretation of the world. With the knowledge it offers, both

to the individual and the community, people are able to interpret events within Catholicism’s system of meanings. Through its ideas, Catholicism provides an ef-

fective ground for individuals’ judgment of both emotional and ethical experience, helping villagers discern whether something is acceptable or deviant and sinful.

Yet it is also clear from my interviews that when villagers adopted an everyday attitude toward religious practice, speaking about their general approach to transcendent and supernatural powers and forces, folk religiosity became interwoven

with the Church’s prescribed ideas and practices. The end of functionality and JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CATHOLICISM

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effectiveness provides the basis for villagers’ magical practices. If church rites do not have an adequate outcome, as in the case of the ritual circling of farmland, magical practices come to the fore, or farmers use both at the same time in a complementary mode.

The worldview being drawn is characterized by temporal syncretism: it contains the past and the present at the same time. These are simultaneously existing inter-

pretations of reality, creating different images of the world within the same social, political, economic, and natural sphere. There are similarities and differences, but what is important is the fact that they are connected to local norms and knowledge is transmitted during socialization in the village community. The experience

of the generations gone by serves as a model for those to come. Individuals make

decisions based on the social habits and value system of their social environment, setting up their way of life within this framework. The Catholic world of faith, the

world of knowledge and actions, is based on continuous transmission as well as face-to-face interactions across generations.

Many practices that my informants would view as magical are also connected to

turning points in the human lifespan. The transition from childhood to adulthood, then from adulthood to old age results in the transformation of the approach to

magical actions. The surplus of empirical and special knowledge provides status and prestige within the community. Although the different generations are privy

to other worlds of life, they belong to the same community based on their system of belief: during their socialization they came across the same teachings of the

Church and folk knowledge, their inventories of concepts match, with smaller or greater overlaps. Their worldview is similar, but their approach is different. Younger

people often call into question the truth value and reality content of happenings and explanations. Their knowledge or the absence of it, their answers given to the

questions or their negations do not vary only on generation level, but individually as well, on the level of families and groups.

But this account of religious transmission in Csíkszentsimon should not be tak-

en to signal that patterns of folk religiousness are permanent existents. Rather, magical practices and even patterns of transmission themselves are continuously VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 | WINTER 2020

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formed and reformed during contact with others and in the process of acquiring

knowledge about the world. Religious life based on the Catholic tradition and

experiencing the belief knowledge of the former generation are continuously re-

peated and renewed through the transmission of knowledge and recurring social practices. So there is a consistency in the present, while with modernization everything is regularly reviewed by the new information. According to the theory of the

representatives of symbolic interactionalism, G. H. Mead and C. H. Cooley, the self is an “interactive” concept, it is not autonomous and independent, but “is form-

ing during the relation kept with the significant others.”14 Thus, the world of the individual “is taking shape and changing during the permanent dialogue carried on with identity models” offered by others. According to my in-depth research in

a Transylvanian village, we may state that affiliation lends content to actions, and has a decisive role not only in individual acts, but also in the process of creating and recreating religious worldviews.

Decline and disappearance is one way of describing transformations in the domain

of lived religiosity in villages like Csíkszentsimon. Agricultural practices are being 14 Stuart Hall, “A kulturális identitásról,” in Multikulturalizmus, ed. Margit Feischmidt, trans. Krisztina Farkas (Budapest: Láthatatlan Kollégium, 1997), 60–61.

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especially affected by changes in patterns of social interaction, and one index of these transformations is the decline of traditional farming and related practices

of agrarian magic. With the expanding of the world of life, the individuals’ system of relations changes, and the forms of spells for protecting crops and animals and

guaranteeing yields grow dim. The experience of individual religiousness exceeds the limits of the village’s system of norms. But decline is the full story. We need

to emphasize that change is disappearance and reproduction at the same time.

Even if the knowledge and practice characteristic of agricultural magic loses its

function and becomes part of a community’s “passive memory,” it will still survive for a long time and be sustained through processes of socialization, coexistence and

remembrance. In other words, in parallel with technological evolution, elements of a religious and belief system of a previous era still remain, and in place of the mag-

ical knowledge and practices that are disappearing with emerging lifestyles, based on my research in Csíkszentsimon, there is evidence that rural communities will continuously recreate their own transcendent faith and beliefs.

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