Földessy Edina, Szűcs Alexandra, Wilhelm Gábor: Tabula 3/2 (Néprajzi Közlemények; Budapest, 2000)

MOHAY TAMÁS: Egy ünnep alapjai. A csíksomlyói pünkösdi búcsú új megvilágításban

TAMÁS MOHAY The foundation of a feast: the Whitsun Pilgrimage of Csíksomlyó in a new light The Whitsunday pilgrimage of Csíksomlyó in Transylvania is considered to be an old and significant feast. Csíksomlyó is a traditional pilgrimage site, where - for centuries, under the leadership of Franciscan monks - festive practices came into being which retained a certain continuity even in the midst of changing historical circumstances. Following the 1949 banning of the public pilgrimage, for forty years the feast took place surreptitiously as it were, often stretching the limits of the tolerance of the authorities. Since I 990 the crowd attending the Whitsunday pilgrimage at Csíksomlyó outstrips all previous ones, and in its composition increasingly includes the entire Hungarian language territory and beyond. My essay examines two aspects of the pilgrimage, on the one hand I re-examine its origin story, on the other its continuity. According to the origin story, the pilgrimage first began in 1567. Its myth-like qualities and an examination of the written sources as well as a twohundred-year hiatus in them lead us to believe that we have to do with a "constructed tradition". The other recurring narrative deals with the continuity of the pilgrimage: according to this the Seklers, and later the Catholic Hungarians of Transylvania have been present continuously on Whitsunday at Csíksomlyó. Historical sources - of which there is quite a substantial amount - indicate that the situation is not as simple as this, that is to say there were interruptions and re-beginnings. In light of this, the question becomes what kind of changes did the interruptions in the continuity of the pilgrimage bring about both in the practices of the feast and in the discourses surrounding it.