{"id":5939,"date":"2022-12-15T13:58:11","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T12:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forumszemle.eu\/?p=5939"},"modified":"2022-12-15T13:58:11","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T12:58:11","slug":"liszka-jozsef-ed-monumentumok-szakralis-es-szakralis-monuments-sacred-and-sacred-small-relics-in-the-carpathian-basin-reviewed-by-zoltan-magy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumszemle.eu\/en\/2022\/12\/15\/liszka-jozsef-ed-monumentumok-szakralis-es-szakralis-monuments-sacred-and-sacred-small-relics-in-the-carpathian-basin-reviewed-by-zoltan-magy\/","title":{"rendered":"Liszka, J\u00f3zsef (ed.): Monumentumok. Szakr\u00e1lis (\u00e9s \u201eszakr\u00e1lis\u201d)\u00a0[Monuments. Sacred (and \u201csacred\u201d) small relics in the Carpathian\u00a0Basin] Reviewed by Zolt\u00e1n Magyar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liszka, J\u00f3zsef: Monumentumok. Szakr\u00e1lis (\u00e9s \u201eszakr\u00e1lis\u201d) kiseml\u00e9kek a K\u00e1rp\u00e1t-medenc\u00e9ben [Monuments. Sacred (and \u201csacred\u201d) small relics in the Carpathian Basin<\/em>]. Kom\u00e1rom\u2013 Somorja, F\u00f3rum Kisebbs\u00e9gkutat\u00f3 Int\u00e9zet\u2013 Etnol\u00f3giai K\u00f6zpont, 2021, 702 p.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Five years after J\u00f3zsef Liszka published the impressive collection entitled Boundary Regions<\/em> (Hat\u00e1rvid\u00e9kek<\/em>), in a certain sense interpretable as a self-festschrift, containing his most important folkloristic essays, he has now published another volume, as impressive as the previous one, and also comparable in size, layout, and typography. Upon our first impression, but also having taken a closer look, we can see a paradigmatic work that can be considered as another summary of a professional career. Being placed next to each other on the shelf, these two volumes look much like the three voluminous festschrifts (similar in layout) to celebrate the 60th<\/sup> birthday of Ferenc Pozsony, Vilmos Keszeg, and Vilmos T\u00e1nczos, the Transylvanian trio of ethnographers; and, three being a mystic number, too, it is very likely and indeed expected that a similar volume by Liszkay will be published in the year 2026.<\/p>\n

The Transylvanian contemporaries have achieved their paradigm-creating results during the past three or four decades by working together as a team of ethnographic re searchers and organizers, with a broad social and institutional background, giving space to a multitude of ambitious young researchers, too. As opposed to this, J\u00f3zsef Liszka has long remained a sort of a single-person institution of Hungarian ethnographic studies in Slovak ia. This, of course, is an exaggeration, since we could equally refer to the work of re searchers such as K\u00e1roly Cs\u00e1ky, Istv\u00e1n B. Kov\u00e1cs, Ilona L. Juh\u00e1sz or Norbert Varga; yet, the Ethnological Centre at Kom\u00e1rno\/Kom\u00e1r om, founded and run by Liszka to date, is a basis and a measure that has been able to define the directions of research, organize field work, as well as to summarize and publish the results in a representative way. Were it not for that, one could but mention some lonely authors; yet, as demonstrated by the example of a contemporary genius, viz. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Szeg edi from Rimavsk\u00e1 Sobota\/Rima szomb at, even comprehensive research of the highest quality will probably remain unechoed and lying in the shadow without an institutional background.<\/p>\n

Right from the outset, one of the Eth nological Centre\u2019s main profiles and directions for research has been the field of religious ethnology. As the founding director has also been charged with playing the role of \u201cthe nation\u2019s (general) labourer\u201d, this field is but one of the visible parts of his perplexingly rich work. It was Liszka who wrote a definitive manual on the ethnography of ethnic Hungarians in Slovakia; it was him, too, who wrote a gap-filling textbook on folklore and folkloristic studies when a course of ethnography had begun at J\u00e1nos Selye University (although unduly neglected by folklore researchers in Hungary); he has been editing, for 23 years, the yearbook of the institute, a yearbook of exceptionally high quality even with Central European standards; indeed, the list might be continued, but let us mention two volumes to serve as forerunners of the subject of this review: the (1995) \u201cThe cult of holy images\u201d. Essays on popular religious practice<\/em>, and the (2000) Erected in Christian devoutness. Essays on the sacred small monuments <\/em>of the Kisalf\u00f6ld region<\/em>.8<\/sup><\/p>\n

The new book, of 702 pages, Monu ments. Sacred (and \u201csacred\u201d) small relics in the Carpathian Basin<\/em>, as indicated by the author in the preface, collects the relevant papers published during three decades in a \u201ccondensed\u201d form in a single monograph volume. This is, after all, acceptable: most of the greater publications and academic dissertations are generally produced in the same fashion. Apart from matters of content, the obvious crucial question is how successful the author\u2019s attempt at organically \u201ccondensing\u201d the papers has been. In other words, to what extent do the original texts, spanning several decades, written from a variety of theoretical perspectives and based on ever-changing background information, as well as the newly added parts and conclusions which serve as a sort of \u201cmortar\u201d to bond the blocks together, form an organic and unified text? In this respect, J\u00f3zsef Liszka has undeniably excelled: it is only after noticing some of his brief remarks and browsing the bibliography that the reader realizes how many of the topics had been elaborated on earlier (e.g.\u00a0 the stone crucifixes erected along highways, the cult of St. Wendelin in the Kisalf\u00f6ld region, the cult of St. John of Nepomuk in Hungary, the iconography of the Holy Trinity and Mary Help of Christians, the issues concerning the \u201csacred depot\u201d, etc.). The book\u2019s style, as usual, is admittedly subjective, even informal and belletristic, but nowhere does it any harm to the scientific content; it suits Liszka anyway, having become quite like a \u201ccopyrighted\u201d feature of his (somewhat like in a number of provocative analyses by Vilmos Voigt, one of Liszka\u2019s masters and a former teacher of his at Budapest).<\/p>\n

In the preface, J\u00f3zsef Liszka clarifies that8 Kisalf\u00f6ld<\/em> can be rendered as \u201cLittle Plain\u201d, a geographical area divided between Hungary, Slovakia, and Austria, in contrast with the \u201cGreat Plain\u201d on both sides of the River Tisza, occupying most of Eastern Hungary. Also, henceforth, Hungarian topographical names will be cited in Hungarian as well as Slovak\/ German\/Romanian\/Serbian, etc., as appropriate. Since the paper is primarily concerned with ethnic Hungarians, topographical terms, once so cited, will be referred to by their Hungarian name only. (Translator\u2019s notes.)<\/p>\n

he aims at an overview of the entire Hungarianspeaking area regarding sacred small monuments, but he also emphasizes that his work is mainly based on, and illustrated by examples of, ethnic Hungarian popular culture in<\/p>\n

Slovakia; this culture and the linguistic area, as he says, is a small universe by itself, being in contact with Western European patterns and also influenced by them in the West, but by Eastern (Greek) Christianity in the East (e.g. the upper region of the Bodrog-Tisza [Slovak Tisa<\/em>] Interfluve as well as Ung [Slovak Uh<\/em>]). Although this claim is generally tenable, the Eastern influ ence is not adequately demonstrated, and indeed, it may not be significant in relation to ethnic Hungarians in (Eastern) Slovakia (the pilgrimages to M\u00e1riap\u00f3cs9<\/sup> might be an exception). This may be the reason (apart from the apparently scarcer fieldwork carried out in Eastern Slovakia) why the overwhelming majority of data come from Western Slovakia. Or, rather, from other regions, too: the illustrative texts and images reach out far beyond the (SouthWestern) regions known as Csall\u00f3k\u00f6z (Slovak \u017ditn\u00fd ostrov<\/em>), M\u00e1tyusf\u00f6ld (Slovak Mat\u00fa\u0161ova zem<\/em>), the V\u00e1g-Garam (Slovak V\u00e1h-Hron<\/em>) Interfluve, and along the rivers Garam (Slovak Hron<\/em>) and Ipoly (Slovak Ipe\u013e<\/em>). Indeed, considering earlier studies and interethnic relations, it includes a number of data and parallels from Austria, Germany (Bavaria), Slovakia, Czechia and Slovenia. As for other parts of the Hung a rian linguistic space, the Transdanubian part of Kisalf\u00f6ld, the region called Pal\u00f3cf\u00f6ld10<\/sup>, as well as Vajdas\u00e1g (Serbian Vojvodina<\/em>)11<\/sup> are represented by a wide range of illustrative samples, relying on the religious-ethnographic research of colleagues working in those regions, as well as the manuals by S\u00e1ndor B\u00e1lint, a great classic figure in the field of Hungarian religious-ethnographic research, which are also concerned with Liszka\u2019s topic. Still, the farther we go towards the East, including Slovakia\u2019s Hun ga rian-speaking parts and also beyond the River Tisza, the scarcer and sporadic the examples given, and referred to, by the author tend to become. I will later discuss a specific formulation of this (feeling) of a gap; let us now see the unquestionable merits of the book.<\/p>\n

When writing Monuments<\/em>, J\u00f3zsef Liszka was making an attempt at producing a volume<\/p>\n

that might also serve as a manual, i.e. highlighting the broadest possible range of aspects of the topic. That is why several distinct chapters contain information on \u201csacred small monuments\u201d, a technical term attributable to him, but which has now become part and parcel of \u201creceived\u201d wisdom in the field; also, on the sources of his topic, on the locations and methodology of the archiving process (including his own \u201cArchive of Sacred Small Monuments\u201d), on typology (still unclarified in several respects), and \u2013 last but not least –\u00a0 on the systemic presentation of the small monuments discussed, both according to form and content. It is appropriate at this point to repeatedly refer to the exceptionally copious illustrative material presented in the volume, also including many curiosities, which is attributable to the author\u2019s broad knowledge of the technical literature (the bibliography of the volume is almost 150 pages long) as well as the professional archive at Kom\u00e1rom\/Kom\u00e1rno, itself based on extensive field work. To be sure, the publication of the volume without these features might have been almost pointless: this particular area of religious ethnography (and art history) includes visual representation to a crucial extent, much like no discussion of folk poetry is possible without presenting the given text. The volume does, occasionally, feature textual folklore sources related to sacred small monuments as illustrations, but featuring somewhat more of them might have been useful, since a variety of \u201cfounding\u201d traditions and stories of miracles often form an integral part of the tradition around such \u201cmonuments\u201d.<\/p>\n

A crucial part of the book is the chapter on the typology and the terminology of sacred small monuments, partly an overview of the history of the research, but more than that: its primary goal is to clarify things. Specifically, as<\/p>\n