Gyulai Éva - Viga Gyula (szerk.): Történet - muzeológia : Tanulmányok a múzeumi tudományok köréből a 60 éves Veres László tiszteletére (Miskolc, 2010)
IKONOGRÁFIA - Voigt Vilmos: Renard nyomai Magyarországon?
to "eastern European" themes. My study, whose first version was written in 1991, searched for the traces, if any, of Renard in Hungarian cultural history. In a paper read at the international Walloon-Hungarian conference held in Tokaj in 2004, I reviewed the historical evidence and the occurrences in the applied arts. The paper was not published for various reasons. The time elapsed since the conference has enabled a better and more precise overview of this subject. The historical layers of Hungarian animal fables do not contain any traces of Renard. While traces of the Trojan epics, the Alexander romances and the Roland epic can be identified in the literature of medieval Hungary (principally in the personal names), the relevant sources contain not the slightest reference to Renard. No parallels can be found in the old, "Conquest period" and the newer, "European" coatsof-arms either. The written documents of the Middle Ages containing the word "fox" (róka) and its equivalent adjective, "cunning" (ravasz) as personal names cannot be associated with a form of "totemism". Several studies in art history have focused on the animal depictions appearing on medieval metalwork, especially on baptismal fonts. While these depictions reflect a rich artistic tradition absorbing cultural impacts from distant regions, none can be linked to the world of the Renard Cycle. At the same time, some interesting portrayals appear on stove tiles. Studies on the stove tiles front Buda Castle since the 1930s have provided an accurate date for these ceramic pieces and have demonstrated cultural influences from the Upper Rhine region. One stove tile portraying a rabbit and a hedgehog can be dated to after 1408. The depiction itself can be linked to folktales in which the "slow" animal overcomes the "quick" animal in a race (ATU 275C). However, this motif does not appear in the traditional Renard Cycle. Another stove tile from the town hall of Besztercebánya, dated to between 1440 and 1465, shows a creature clad in a hooded collar holding a stick in its right paw and a seizing a poultry by the neck with its left paw; the heads of three fowls can be seen under the hood. Four fowls with heads held high watch the standing animal. According to the museologist describing the stove tile, the scene shows a wolf dressed in a frock addressing geese. The wolf opens its mouth and sticks its tongue out, making its teeth visible. Czech and Slovak scholars ling this depiction type to the iconography of lupus predicans ; modelled on Gentian prototypes, these portrayals spread in the Czech lands during the 14th century and can be interpreted within the framework of "Hussite" ideology. Comparable depictions appear on Habán pottery in Hungary: a fox wielding a club and a basket (ca. 1620, with a German inscription), and a fox with a wooden cage and a pigeon (18th century) - however, these too differ from the original illustrations to the Renard Cycle. The original Renard texts often contain descriptions of how the fox (and the wolf) donned ecclesiastic, monastic or pilgrim garments, and recite a text. Parts of the Renard Cycle correspond to the folktale type of "Peace among the animals" (ATU 62). The European parallels to this illustration suggest that this was the most widespread Renard portrayal which, however, reached Hungary indirectly, through German mediation. The fact that no traces of the Renard Cycle could be identified in medieval 1 Iungary is at least as important as if traces of this type had been found. The collection and examination of the possibly relevant data yielded many interesting, little known details of cultural history. The absence of the Renard tradition in medieval Hungary is not really surprising, despite the presence of Walloons. The same holds true for the Austrian, Czech, Moravian and Polish lands. Vilmos Voigt 286
