Századok – 2010
TANULMÁNYOK - Szabó András Péter: Menyegzőtől mennyegzőig. Gondolatok a házasságkötési szokásrend magyarországi fejlődéséről
MENYEGZŐTŐL MENNYEGZŐIG 1083 FROM NUPTIALS TO NUPTIALS Reflections on the Development of traditional marriage ritual in hungary by András Péter Szabó (Summary) The present study aims at presenting the nuptial invitations preserved in the municipal archives of Beszterce (Ger. Bistritz, today BistriÇa, Romania), and at analysing upon their basis and with the help of other sources and of scientific littérature the relationship between the ecclesiastical and secular elements of marriage ritual in the Kingdom of Hungary and the Principality of Transylvania in the I6th and 17th centuries. The Latin and Hungarian nuptial invitations, which were addressed by Transylvanian noble families to the town of Beszterce, belong in terms of form to a widespread genre, the all-European patterns of which had been available since the early 15th century. While shedding light upon several tiny details of the nuptials, the letters show that in the 16th century most of the wedding ceremonies in Transylvania were held on Sunday, the main season being the carnival period and June, and the ban on the period of Lent was strictly observed. Differences betwen the confessions only become visible parallel to the increase in the influence of the Church in the 17th century. The biggest problem presented by the invitations is the identification of the event they concern. The Hungarian word 'menyegző' (Lat. nuptiae, Ger. Hochzeit), which is general in the 16th-century letters, and its counterpart in the 17th-century documents, that is, 'lakodalom', basically denoted a secular feast, which, however, was sometimes meant to comprise the church ceremony as well. The common denomination of betrothal and church marriage (Hung, kézfogás, Lat. desponsatio) seems to show that the two rituals had not been entirely separated. Terminological uncertainties are accounted for by the slow development of canonical marriage, in which betrothal, of Romal legal origins and adopted in the 12th century, had only gradually found its place. Reformation gave additional impetus to doctrines which proclaimed the binding force of betrothal. The long survival in both Transylvania and Hungary of a separate nuptial-betrothal ritual was perhaps also related to it. In this case, betrothal, connected to the church ceremony, was followed in the second phase by a purely secular marriage feast. It was only after the nuptials had definitively been embedded in the lakodalom that the church ritual became the central element of the whole process.