Kalla Zsuzsa: Beszélő tárgyak. A Petőfi család relikviái (Budapest, 2006)

Zsuzsa Kalla: The history of the Petőfi relics

‘The Petőfi House was most visited on Tuesdays when entrance was free. These are the most inter- esting people: proletarians. The postman on his day off, the policeman and the soldier, the workman, the road-sweeper, the luggage porter, the servant, and the working woman with her tiny barefoot children - they all come. And all of them bareheaded, tiptoeing as if they were in church. Once, a working woman entering the main room sought the holy water and crossed herself.’ (ibid. 77)

There are countless similar examples. The parallels between religion and the cult surrounding writers is felt not only by the composers of high- flown speeches and the initiated, but also by those acting unawares, the ordinary visitors to the Petőfi House. The terminology of these texts is not rhetoric; the spontaneous devotional act of paying respect to objects can indeed be traced back to ‘holy things’. This phenomenon is an integral part of every cult, the essence of which can most clearly be demonstrated through the cult of relics of saints from the Middle Ages.

In classical antiquity and early Christian teachings, showing reverence for relics is a rare and isolated phenomenon. Miracle-working relics and the shrines in which they were housed emerged in

Monument at Fehéregyház, 1897

the 4th century, the period when Christianity conquered the Roman Empire, and the assimilation of pagan cults into Christian practice transformed the doctrine. This period saw the beginnings of folk religion, and the relic cult resembled a Christianised version of a general, ancient belief and magical practice.

The holy communicator can act to influence the forces between man and the higher power which controls the world. The believer is required to touch or simply look at the object connected with the body of the saint, and through this he becomes connected to the divine, the sublime, the terrible, the incomprehensible. These ideas go back to the rituals of the magic of touch, which can be found in tribal religions, Buddhism, lama- ism and even Islam. Relics could, at one and the same time, offer general protection, aid recovery and banish the forces of evil. Even today, objects belonging to famous people which are exhibited in public collections exert a similar, albeit not so strong, influence on visitors. Writer and journalist Viktor Cholnoky, when he saw the room in the Petőfi House in Kiskőrös, remarked: ‘You do not dare to touch the bed, for it might have been there that he first dreamt those dreams that tell no lies.’ (Cholnoky 1909, 733)

An entire ceremony was created around relic- related beliefs. At first, the most important element of this was protection, then came viewing and presentation. A church connected to a monastery is itself a shrine. Initially, only those belonging to the order were allowed to guard the objects, and kings and emperors used them to legitimise their powers. Later, pilgrimages and processions meant that ordinary believers could come into closer contact with holy relics. This process can also be traced through the story of the Petőfi Society relics. They were initially kept at the home of the president, Tamás Szana, where the Society could only provide them with an ornate cabinet. Later, they were taken to a room in the Historical Portrait Gallery of the City Park, but as early as 1881 articles and speeches were calling for them to be properly exhibited: *[...] there are no museums where future generations can go on a pilgrimage with holy devotion and ardour.’ (Sass 1926, 43) In 1909, with help from the government and institutes of Budapest, the Petőfi House opened on the capital’s Bajza utca, in the villa where the writer Mór Jókai [1825-1904] had lived. It was, as Ferencz Herczeg stated in his opening speech:

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