Novák László Ferenc: Fejfa monográfia - Az Arany János Múzeum közleményei 16. (Nagykőrös, 2005)
III. Angol nyelvű összegezés
XL MONOGRAPHY OF WOODEN GRAVE POSTS The aim of this study was to examine a uniquely Hungarian type of grave marker: intricately carved wooden grave posts. These grave posts are important aspect of Hungarian folk culture. During the past century, a large number of papers have been published on the shapes of the posts and on the history of their use.471 However, wooden grave-posts cannot be fully discussed simply by listing their shapes and categorizing their ornaments. It is the cultural and historical context that makes Hungarian wooden grave-posts really interesting and ethnologian valuable. Thus, it is worth examining funeral ceremonies, semeteries, other burial sites, and the graves themselves to acquire a deeper understanding of this system of marking graves. Scientific research can verify that wooden grave-posts are used only by Protestants and chiefly by Calvinist. They were sporadically used by Lutherans, but never by Unitarians in Székely land of Eastern-Transylvania). During the time of the Turkish occupation in the middle of the 16th century, the Helvetian religion (Calvinism) took root in Hungary. It spread from the central and South-Western parts of Hungary (Baranya, Somogy and Tolna conties), to the Great Hungarian Plain and to Transylvania. After the fall of Buda in 1541 Hungary was torn into tree parts. Independent Transylvania in the East, the Habsburg-controlled West and Nord, and a central area ruled as a part of the Turkish Empire. In the Turkish-occupied area, the power of the Roman Catholic Church was weakened, and its leaders from archpiscopacies, episcopacies, chaplaincies were forced to flee. Both seecular and ecclesiastical many acrid landowners were threatened.472 Only begging Franciscans were allowed to stay on the areas under oppression (in the towns Jászberény and Kecskemét). The forsaken Hungarian population adpted puritan Protestantism as they strove to form a new indenty. As a result, Calvinism spread both in the territory under Turkish occupation and also in Transylvania, where it became also state religion. Additionally, Lutheranism took hold among Saxons in Transylvania, Hungarian aristocrats in Western Hungary, and Slavonic serfs in North-Hungary, German inhabitants of the North-Eastern Hungarian region called Zips (Szepesség). Further, at the beginning of the 18th century, there was a great migration of people. Northern Slavonics from the Highlands (Felföld, Felvidék) and the Germans wandering along the Danube River from German territories into Hungary disseminated the Lutheran the Lutheran (Evangelical) religion all over the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld) and Transdanubia. The use of wooden grave post spread among Protestants and can be considered as characteristic of Hungarian heritage. Although it apperaered relatively late in history - at the end of the 17th century - they retained several archaic traits in its richness of shape and ornamentation from the thousand-year-old Hungarian culture. Hungarian Calvinists unlike Catholics set up carved wooden posts as grave markers. In the 118lh century, the majority of the northern Slavs - Slovaks - who settled in the Great Hungarian Plain (in the villages of Alberti, Irsa, Ipilis, Péteri, Dunaegyháza, Apostag, and Tótkomlós, in the country towns of Békéscsaba, Mezőberény, Szarvas) and a smaller of Germans who were forced to escape because of religious persecution were Lutherans. Jast like Slovaks, the inhabitants of the German villages of Kis-Harta and Soltvadkert, and Germans in the country town of Mezőberény used wooden grave posts on their graves, also, 471 General work by László NOVAK, 1980., Ernő KUNT, 1983.; Iván BALASSA, 1989. 472 In connection with this question see Ferenc SALAMON, 1885.; Ferenc SZAKÁLY, 1981. 177
