Home Marian Shrine, Kapuvár

Author: Erika Vass
Photoes: Edit Garai

Founded in the 12th century, the pilgrimage site at Mariazell was one of the most important in the Habsburg Empire, with ties to Hungary in particular dating to the time of King Louis the Great (Nagy Lajos, 1342–1382). By the 19 th and 20 th cen turies, it was regarded as a national shrine, though it occupied a place of similar significance in the religious lives of Catholic Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, and Slovenes.

The pilgrimage of the Kapuvár Hungarians to Mariazell (or as they called it, Öregcell, ‘Old Zell’) began each year on the second Monday in May. Pilgrims set out on foot, arriving at the site five days later, on Saturday. There, wearing their Sunday best, they took part in a special ceremony held just for the occasion. During the 1910s, participants numbered 150 to 200 persons. For local youth, it was an opportunity for socialisation and courting. First-time participants underwent an initiation rite, with girls selecting a godmother and boys a godfather from among the older pilgrims. The godparents then ‘Christened’ their ritual godchildren using either holy water, or water from the brook.

From Mariazell, the pilgrims took home various devotional objects (medallions, badges, icons, rosaries, candles, and decorative gingerbread biscuits) as souvenirs of their experience. Popular items included carved and painted reproductions of Mariazell’s statue of the Virgin Mary, which was thought to confer blessings and protection for home and family.

To house the devotional statues, the pilgrims had local carpenters construct glass cases, or ‘Mary houses,’ which they placed in their parlours (or ‘clean rooms’) in special devotional (‘sacred’) corners. In terms of function, the glass houses united reverence for the Virgin Mary with wedding commemoration, as it was often here that families preserved their bridal wreaths and grooms’ and hosts’ boutonnieres. In a way, it was like commending the family to the Virgin’s special protection.

The Museum of Ethnography owns twenty-six individual home Marian shrines and their contents, six of them from Kapuvár. The example seen here was collected by Zsuzsa Varga in 1969. The figure inside was brought from Mariazell by Anna Ézsöl (born 1878), when she was a 17-years old girl. However, the linden wood statuette of the Virgin Mary is a copy not of the Virgin of Mariazell, but of the Virgin of Svata Hora, a devotional site located on the mountaintop above the Czech town of Pribram. The same depiction can be found in other home shrines. The likely reason for this is that pilgrims typically saw the Mariazell virgin outfitted in clothing, and of the different types for sale, preferred this to the others. Nevertheless, these statuettes were still referred to as ‘Zell Maries’, based on the location where they were purchased.

The women in a given family would dress the statuette in clothing to suit their individual tastes in the manner often seen with ecclesiastical figures. Here, Mary is wearing a trapezoidal dress sewn from expensive brocade (‘sikselem’), a material only the wealthier families could afford, decorated with gathered pink and sky-blue ribbons and trim. The back of the case has been lined with a pink print fabric and, above it, tulle with interwoven silver threads.

Around Mary’s neck are a string of blown glass beads and a sky-blue ‘Mary’s ribbon’ (‘márjás szalag’) belonging to Ézsöl’s daughter-in-law, Etelka Varga. The ribbon’s placement here indicated Ézsöl’s admiration for her daughter-in-law, earned by the girl’s fidelity to her son, Géza Papp: Varga had waited four years for Papp to be released from captivity after World War II. The two were married in 1948. The neck band and medallion are a reference to Varga’s membership in the Congregation of Mary, a Catholic society for girls who had completed their elementary school education. Varga would have worn the medallion on holidays and when taking part in pilgrimages.