Bodnár Mónika: A serényiek hatása a gömöri népelméletre - Officina Musei 21. (Miskolc, 2014)

The impact of Serényis' on the people's life in Gömör region (Summary)

ment by Wolfgang (Farkas^876 in 1733 and with the efforts to support the religious life, as explained by the establisher of the Church and his successors. I consider the activities of the painter Max (Maximilian) Kurth in the church of Putnok. I want to clarify the issues of the advowson, concerning the church of Putnok. Account is taken of the small church objects, which can be found in the region and which can be associated with different family members.- The Serényi family has not only been involved in the reestablishment of the Catholic Church but also in the founding of the Catholic school, and they played a role in their further operation. Bélám, first as a member of the school board and later as its president, was fully aware of the fact that the maintenance of the school was a burden for the Church(es). He also perceived that many small, rural Churches (including the Church of Putnok) could not meet the requirements of high-standard modem education. Therefore, he called for and supported the nationalization of church schools. Besides initiating public elementary education, he also wanted to establish a higher level of education, thus he exercised influence on the establishment of the horticultural department, the higher school for young ladies and the civil school in Putnok. The father of education on a different level is Lászlóin, who obtained undeniable merit, when he raised the issue, pushed and then actively supported the establishment of the Putnok nursery school in the 1860s, which was completed in 1868.- I deal with the role of the Serényi family in the economic life of the region (model farm, horticulture, mill, brick factory) and with their relationship to the public. I could collect a couple of suppositions and stories related to the Serényi family. One part of them 1 found in a number of historical documents, another part of them I collected with traditional ethnographic methods. These stories are presented in a historical context.- I sum up the material and spiritual memories of the Serényi cult, which revived in the different periods, including the most recent ones as well.

While carrying out this investigation, I applied a mixture of ethnographic and historical research methods. I used such historical and ethnographic publications as sources which were important to the topic and which provided me with additional material. Besides printed documents, I used unpublished, handwritten sources, too. A large number of documents, which could be used as a resource, have also been discovered in museums, parishes, and in archives of churches and governments. In addition, fieldwork has been carried out, in which I collected data of the Putnok branches of the family. 1 carried out purposive conversations, and I interviewed persons who could provide relevant information related to the topic of this book.

Besides the so called traditional source types listed above, I also used a new source of our age successfully: the internet. Here I found books and studies which were difficult to access, as well as other documents which could be used as sources (such as obituaries).

876 The subscripts help the orientation in genealogical tables which are situated at the end of this book.

286