Pocsainé Eperjesi Eszter: Református egyházlátogatási jegyzőkönyvek néprajzi vonatkozásai - 16-17. század Tiszán inneni egyházvidék (Sárospatak, 2007)

Idegen szavak, kifejezések jegyzéke

This period holds great interest for the ecclesiastic historian and also for the ethnographer. Words and phrases came to the surface that themselves require research. I have tried to find the original meaning of every word and phrase. Regarding the income of the church clerks I have found a number of so-far unknown customs and found that the life of a congregation then was very different from that of today.

I found it important to discuss in detail the liturgy, holidays, feast days, and their related customs in the Hungarian Reformed Church. Medieval traditions could be traced in the holidays in the period after the Reformation but also as late as the 17th century. I found a great number of elements in the customs related to important turns of human life that have entirely disappeared today. For instance, introductio puerperae (“church-rising” would be the literal translation of the Hungarian phrase), the rising of a woman after childbirth, when her first walk out of the house led to the church, to give thanks to God. Rich traditions also used to belong to christening, wedding, and funeral.

A separate chapter is devoted to the description of the carpets, vessels and cloths of the Lord’s Table, with special emphasis on the Lorántffy embroidery workshop. All this gives a different idea of what the Hungarian Reformed churches were like in the 17th century, their sacral inner spaces full of decorated carpets and Lord’s Table’s cloths embroidered with golden and silver-thread. It also gives a better understanding of the mentality of those suffering for their faith as galley- slaves at the time of the Counter-Reformation and the fate of the Hungarian Reformed believers who refused to give up their schools and churches under any circumstances.

Todays canonica visitatio to the congregations occur in totally different forms and invokes new customs. The past gave us the present, and the knowledge of the past and the present together will create the future and ensure the survival of Hungarian Reformed believers.

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