Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 3. (Pannonhalma, 2015)

I.Tanulmányok

HERCHL ANTAL ISKOLAMESTER TEVÉKENYSÉGE BAJNÁN (1764–1773) 39

Norbert Medgyesy S. A Schoolmaster’s, Antal Herchl’s educational, liturgical and musical activity in Bajna (1764–1773)

The composite volume of Antal Herchl’s Hymnbook

(the Hymnal of Bajna

) kept in the Manuscript Collection of the Archabbey’s Library in Pannonhalma was noted down by its eponym between 1765 and 1806. Its first part contains a catholic hymnal (pp. 1–327), its middle part comprises Herchl’s versified autobiography (pp. 328–460), its concluding part makes available the transcript of his correspondence from the years between 1796 and 1806 (pp. 461–510). Antal Herchl of Slovakian origin was born in Nyék (Hont County) in 1738. He spent the prime of his life in Bajna of Esztergom County where he led the school and organised the liturgical, para-liturgical and musical life of Saint Adalbert’s parish-church between 1764 and 1773. It was here that he set down his hymnal of 346 songs including his own poems between 1765 and 1767. During his educational activity in Bajna, Herchl taught 330–350 children. In addition, he had the organ repaired twice, and had four trumpets bought in order to enhance the beauty of the liturgy. He looked after the sanctuary lamp, baked wafer, kept alive the traditions of Rorate

-masses in Ad

vent, visiting the holy sepulchre during the Holy Week, collecting donations while singing, the procession and rogation for abundant harvest at the Chapel of Saint Urban in the vineyards of Bajna on May 25, the feast of the saint, presided wakes, composed funeral poems, wound up the church’s tower-clock, and rang the bell. Herchl also functioned as a notary; it is documented by his notes on pages 213–228 in the Liber Rationum Ecclesiæ ab anno Christi 1761 kept in the parish of Bajna. After 1773, Antal Herchl worked as a domain accountant in Gyarmatpuszta, Sárszentmiklós and Ercsi. Finally he moved to Székesfehérvár in 1792.

Antal Herchl’s collection is one of the best national sources in which one can study the life, fate and work of small schools and their masters in the 18th

century. Antal Herchl was devoted to his catholic faith, the liturgy and para-liturgy of his church. He was a teacher and precentor of great erudition, wrote good poems and proved to be a witty poet. Herchl’s family-name was German, he was proud of his Slovak mother-tongue, sang and wrote poems in Hungarian in all his life – mainly in the midst of an environment of the Hungarian language. This made him an exemplary type of the consciousness called Hungarus. His hymnal is called Cantionale Bajnensis

by the canonical visitation in 1780. This technical term emphasises the significance of this comprehensive document: this manuscript contains the most valuable and most important relic of religious experience, the local identity of catholicity in the patria of Bajna that is easy to sing.