Arrabona - Múzeumi közlemények 31-33. (Győr, 1994)

Horváth József: Adalékok a XVII–XVIII. századi temetkezési szokásaink kutatásához

Contribution to the research of our burial customs in the 17th to 18th centuries Our brief study is meant to contribute in a small way to the research of the burial customs in Kisalföld in the 17th to 18th centuries. The main source has been the last wills of that age, kept in the Archives of Győr. In the past decade we have managed to process about a thousand of them. The majority date back to the 17th century. These testaments which still exist in a great number, are extremely precious, containing numerous valuable data also relevant to our subject. Our study has been an attempt to summarize them. After stressing the importance of the type of source, we have considered each group of data, one after the other. We have also reff ered to the clothing of the dead, the vigil by the dead body, the knell, the preaching and mass said for the deceased, the time of the funeral and the "obligatory" participants and the burial feast, as well. Our prime aim has been to publicize the data collected so far, therefore there are only a few references to analogies in the special literature. We do not find it suitable for going in detail into the burial culture of that age - it may be the subject of a later paper of a greater extent, after processing the several thousands of testaments, still unexplored, of that age, and including other sources. József Horváth 106