Lengyel László (szerk.): Devóció és dekoráció - 18. és 19. századi korolstormunkák Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 7. (Eger, 1987)
Summary
when the meaning and content of devotion transformed significantly, a number of art works appeared in the country for the purpose of individual worship, as special forms of devotion. The exhibiton staged by the Sárospatak Gallery shows this period. The thematic groups of the arrangement can precisely sense this change by revealing the cult of the catacomb saints, the various ways in which Mary can be garbed, the several forms of the reliquaries, the richness of the themes and forms of devotional pictures and nuns’ works and the incredible popularity of relic amulets and talismans._ Thus all those elements of religious practice which emerged after the Council of Trent and were established in the anti-Reformation campaign. The exhibited works are not only documents of a bygone religious era. They are also expressive and spectacular symbols of the life style of our ancestors who lived several generations ago and also the mediators and accessories of their celebrations and week days which were so different from ours. In them and through them we can really see that what they believed and hoped and what signified for them the fundamental questions of life and death, support and refuge in the labyrinth of everyday life. We does not need to draw attention for the spectacular examples of the cult of the crucified Jesus, Mary and the ministering saints, like the bizarre affect of the gold costumed catacomb saint groups or the mobile limbed, dress- able, many costumed Mary statues, as they speak for themselves. Let me mention rather perhaps the least spectacular emorial group in the show, the small stamp size devotional pictures in one of the glass cabinets. These little pictures differ from many other relics in the exhibition in that they were not representative pieces of noble, middle class or peasant houses but in the spirit of this consequent mentality, used as medicines and were swallowed many hundred thousand pieces of them. During the last decades of the 18th century and at the beginning of the 19th the doctors of the age of the enlightenment fought hard against this widespread custom, uring that the people be enlightened and hospitals established. Who or which strata of society was the possessor of the small religious art objects linked to devotion and piety and which can be seen here? It is certain that this genre reached all strata of society, from the richest noble families like the above mentioned nun work of St. Barbara belonging to the Rákóczis, to the serf populations of the villages who could buy in the same way church feast gifts and devotional pictures, painted and consecrated candles and devotional or relic amulets. The makers of these objects 134
