Lengyel László (szerk.): Devóció és dekoráció - 18. és 19. századi korolstormunkák Magyarországon - Studia Agriensia 7. (Eger, 1987)
Summary
Apart from orders which appear in the sources, in all probability other convents also decorated relics. On the basis of their work the above mentioned convents are probably the most well known, because the decoration of catacomb saint relics requires especially great manual skill and expert knowledge so due to, this they were sought with commissions from abroad, too. Only those convents could be occupied with relic decoration which due to permanent commissions gained great practice in arranging decoration elements and in the hadling of materials. Because of this they rose to significant fame and had an important income from these works. During the collection of material up until now, we found in the territory of Hungary altogether 29 catacomb saint relics in 23 places, but originally there could have been much more. From among these 6 relics from 6 different placesare now over the present border. From among the remaining 23 relics 4 have decayed during the time, or disappeared, 2 are uninteresting from a decoration point of view and 2 we did not examie succesfully. On the basis of the arrangement of the bones in the reliquary the relics can be divided into two big groups. In the first group are those relics of which the bones do not piece together a whole body, but the most characteristic bones are distinguished by being decorated and placed in the reliquary separately. The other group of catacomb saint relics is more extensive and spectacular because here, the whole body is assembled. We can say summarily about the techniques used in relic decoration that they can be summed up and divided into two big groups which they can be summed up and divided into two big groups which they usually used in parallel to each other. One of the groups includes different embroideries. is the socalled polion decoration. This sollution is similar to the filigree technique which was used in the small sized convent works. Here the technique of the smaller objects which served the purpose of individual faith was repeated on a larger scale. On the basis of all this, we can say summarily that to draw conclusions that attend to the decoration of catacomb saint relics and to establish the connection between art criticism and style criticism more extensive research sources are necessary as well as a greater collection of material, the detailed comparison of the different groups of convent work and of international material. While in some Western European religious orders it is still possible to study precisely different decoration techniques which are 142
