Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 6. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1990)

BARTHA ELEK: A szakrális célú határbeli építmények funkcionális kérdései. Keresztek, szobrok, kápolnák

Elek Bartha FUNCTIONAL QUESTIONS OF SACRAL OBJECTS The existence of sacral objects, statues, and buildings, situated in various places are among the conditions that are necessary for religion to work. These, as artifical element of the landscape, become, as a result of man's activities of shaping the environment, important parts of the system of connections between religion and environment. The connections so formed are two-directional: the objects mentioned are important elements of the sacralization of the landscape on the one hand, and the environment, changed by their presence, has an effect on the religious life of those living there, forms it and enables its association with certain places. The study deals with the most characteristic types of sacral objects that form points of division in the landscape: crucifixes, statues of saints and chapels set up on the confines of villages. All these have an important role in the religious life of rural Catholics, but their functions differ. Among the motives for their erection may be the indication of the entrance to the village, protection of the fields and the settlement itself against evil powers, cult of the dead, appeasement, making atonement and other reasons, too. The statues of saints, beside evidencing the cult of the saint represented, sometime serve for very concrete purposes. They protect the village from fire (St. Florian), the vineyards from hail (St. Donatus, St. Urban, Simon-Judas, etc.), the livestock from disease (St. Wendelin, St. Leonard, St. Demetrius, etc.) to say nothing of the various patron saint held in great reverence in many parts of Hungary whose help is onvoked in case of various diseases. Where the immediate reason for erecting the statue or other object, e. g. the branch of agriculture to be protected, or the direct danger of fire, ceases to exist, or the disease becomes curable, sometimes come to an end. The veneration for crucifixes which have a less specific function is however still alive, although in somewhat different forms.