Cseri Miklós, Füzes Endre (szerk.): Ház és ember, A Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum évkönyve 9. (Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 1994)

LIMBACHER GÁBOR: Palócföldi kis-kápolna, tárgyai tükrében

A SMALL CHAPEL IN NORTH-HUNGARY CHARACTERIZED BY ITS OBJECTS After mentioning the recently accumulating achievements of research into chapels in Hungary, the author stresses the importance of examining one or two wellchosen buildings in depth besides the comprehensive papers published up to now, discussing the subject on a regional level. Accordingly the study is to get us acquainted with the ethnographical aspects of the small chapel - practically functioning as a column holding a statue - founded in Szanda (Nógrád County) in 1890, and to interpret the data obtained from the point of view of the objects in it. About two dozen informants were selected for this purpose according to age. sex, religiousness, kinship with the founders, distance of home from the chapel, and cultic relationship. Stock was taken first of the building, then of the dressed statue of the Virgin Mary in a portable holder, her robes, remembered of and actually existing (28 pes), her other accessories, and the rest of the objects in the small chapel. The data have been summed up and systematized in a table; the results compared with their counterparts in literature and their significance determined. The study adds further details to the statement that a local community, while bringing to existence its system of sacral buildings, and forming the artificial environmental conditions in which it can operate will, at the same time, desacralize the land, depriving ecological factors from their earlier sacral role. The author presents a case study, and refers to further similar cases, to show that in a peasant culture a sacral architectural environment differs, on model level, from that in a modern, urbanized society. The former may be directly influenced by the transcendent world in a subtle way and so may become more than a mere human product. On the other hand some places of nature may also retain their sacral connotation. The study also enumerate a lot of data to demonstrate that the statue in the small chapel was not taken for a representation, or lifeless imitation but, in a syncretic way, „The Virgin Mary of Szanda" had become an aid in many a human emergency for those who appealed to her. A peculiar peasant attitude toward sacral objects developed this way, manifesting itself in the care taken of the chapel and in cultic events.