Dénesi Tamás (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 7. (Pannonhalma, 2019)
II.Közlemények
Szent Benedektemplom a határvidéken 65 ZsO II/2. = Mályusz Elemér, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár. II/2. (1407-1410) , Budapest, 1958. ZsO IX. = Borsa Iván – C. Tóth Norbert, Zsigmondkori oklevéltár. IX. (1422) , Budapest, 2004. Gyula Benczik – Balázs Zágorhidi Czigány Saint Benedict’s Church on the Borderland The Early History of the Church of Felsőszentbenedek in the Former Vas County Saint Benedict’s church of the village of Felsőszentbenedek (today: Kančevci, Slovenia) belonging to the former Vas County – despite being located on the borderland of the county and the country – was mentioned in a charter as early as 1208. The ecclesiastical tradition of the 17th and 18 th centuries identifies the church with a Benedictine abbey de Borch y, which was destroyed in the period of the Turkish occupation of Hungary, and which is not known in detail. This identification is the basis of the hypothesis of the Slovenian historiography, which assumes that Slav Benedictines came to this region from Zalavár at the time of establishing the bishopric of Zagreb (cc. 1094). The present paper – based on the direct and indirect mediaeval sources related to the church of Saint Benedict and the surrounding estates – makes an effort to answer the question of the origin of the church and its presumed or real Benedictine connections. The data from the 13th and 14 th centuries bear evidence that while in the beginning the Héder kindred had a considerable property here, it was completely lost later. In the middle of the 13th century, a part of the property was procured by the Gyüre kindred, whose members – in all certainty because of the church and the estate connected to it – became known by the name of Szentbenedeki (de Scenbeneduk ... de genere Jwre) in the second half of the 14 th century. However, the church itself belonged to the Nádasd kindred’s different branches according to a charter of 1345, which has been published only in abstracted form so far, but which is introduced here in detail. One can come to the conclusion from the seemingly contradictory data that the estates of the Nádasd family and the Gyüre family were torn from the Héder kindred’s earlier property of the 12th century, and the church itself might have been the parishchurch of this region. The church’s dedication to Saint Benedict is explained by the kindred’s connections with the Benedictines: as the founders of the Küszén Abbey (i.e. Németújvár; today: Güssing, Austria) and because of their propertyorganisation related to the missionary activity of the Benedictines, they popularized the veneration of many Benedictine saints (Szentgotthárd: Saint Gotthard; Rábagyarmat: Saint Ruprecht/Saint Lambert; Rábaszentmárton: Saint Martin, and Felsőszentbenedek: Saint Benedict) on the borderland.
