Introduction

The existence of a Franciscan shrine at Csíksomlyó (Şumuleu Ciuc, Romania) and the flooding of pilgrims to this shrine have been known for some six hundred years. The greatest and most well-known holiday here is Whit Saturday when tens or, in our day and age, hundreds of thousands of people gather in honor of the holy statue of the Virgin Mary known to be of miraculous power. It is fair to state that layers of remembrance have been accreting over each other here continually since the 1440's. A great deal was written about the place even before the end of the 18th century, but only in Latin, and mostly in works that remained in MS. It is also to this time that most buildings date back which are still standing today, as well as the smaller portion of the objects in use. After the beginning of the 19th century, notes, documents and descriptions written in Hungarian also began to appear, and this coincided with the construction of the church which is used today, as well as the creation of the ornamentation, furniture and objects that are in use in our day. From the end of the 19th century onwards we can talk of the appearance of scholarly literature; press material also increased and then, from the mid-20th century onwards, photographs and motion picture documentation also come to play their part. Dozens of generations and hundreds of thousands of people have visited these festive occasions, an even greater number have heard or read about them and the number of accounts containing their recollections is immeasurable. Treading in the footsteps of the great classics on pilgrimages (Turner – Turner 1978), specialist monographs on the subject also appeared in due course: Vilmos Tánczos analyzed in detail the vernacular religion which manifests itself at Csíksomlyó (Tánczos 2016), Tamás Mohay wrote about the past history of the shrine and related 20th century developments (Mohay 2009, 2023); while Erika Vass placed her field work experience in the conceptual context of ritual drama and theatrum sacrum (Vass 2009).

International scholarship is likewise interested in characteristics of this venue – experts have studied connections between religion and politics, religion and patriotism (Lovász 1993; Losonczy 2009), neo-pagan rituals (Povedák 2014), and the development of connections with other European shrines such as Mariazell, Austria (Lovei 2015) or Lourdes, France (Loustau 2019). A separate paper was written on how and why the attempt to have the Csíksomlyó monastery and its Whitsun festivities registered on UNESCO's List of the World's Intangible Heritage proved unsuccessful (Tánczos 2018). The paper showed clearly what kind of groups and forces were trying to influence the position of the shrine and the festivities in the public consciousness according to their own divergent interpretations.

This way it may be justified to approach the topic by invoking the concept of the place of remembrance (lieu de memoire, locus memorialis). After the work of French historian Pierre Nora who, writing in the 1980's, arranged the work of over 100 French historians around the magnetic central concept of the lieu de memoire, over the decades the original approach became a scholarly paradigm known throughout Europe (Nora – Kritzman 1996–1998; Nora 2008; K. Horváth 2008). By now we may well have the impression that the broad range of usages in which the term has been applied has to the fragmentation of the concept and its meaning has become uncontainable (S. Varga – Száraz – Takács eds. 2014). We might even find it justified to ask the question, what is not a place of remembrance (K. Horváth 2008:390–391; Kovács 2008:9–40)? I am convinced, however, that it requires no particular proof that Csíksomlyó is a place of remembrance even in the broad sense of the term, where, besides the obvious religious registers, national remembrance is also an outstandingly important part of the festivities. Thus there is reason to speak of locus memoriae and, beyond that, also of locus memoriae nationalis, a place of national remembrance. To use a simile from the world of music, we might say that there are ever newer sections joining in with a large philharmonic music score. Let us review what are these different tunes in the context of Csíksomlyó. This will most likely help us see more clearly why and how Csíksomlyó justifies that we speak of a place of remembrance and its national character.

I Csíksomlyó (the locus)

Even at first sight we may distinguish at least six clearly discernible tunes in this symphonic score.

• 1. Even since its first known mention, throughout the 15th-17th century and even beyond, Csíksomlyó was little more than a Franciscan monastic community, complete with its church, its priory and the adjoining lands. Generations of monks have been living here in almost unbroken succession ever since. In fact, this is the only monastic community with such a long and continuous history in the whole of Transylvania and in the Hungarian Franciscan order. It constitutes part of a Europe-wide and international web of institutions structured by different types of stratifications; it has its place in its own monastic province, within the Hungarian and Transylvanian Franciscan system. The fact that Csíksomlyó was in active contact with this network proven by reports and letters; we can witness the movement both of monks and of financial resources in narrower and broader concentric circles, reaching all the way to the center of the order in Italy and even as far as Rome. A host of sources were created and are accessible even today – at the same time it is also hard to estimate what a vast quantity of sources must have fallen victim to war and arson over the centuries or to the pillage of the archives and libraries of the order during the communist dictatorship of the mid-20th century (Benedek 2000, 2002).

• 2. We can also speak of a municipality in the classic, administrative sense of the word. Csíksomlyó is a physical space, a part of the landscape, you can go there, there are streets, houses, inhabitants; there are people who had moved away from here and others who married into the community. Yes – but it is fair to ask how, since when and how far has this been a village? Archaeologist historian István Botár has pointed out that the only identifiable villages that we can put names to existed only around Somlyó both in the Middle Ages and for centuries afterwards, such as Várdotfalva (Vardotfălau, Csobotfalva (Cioboteni), Csomortán (Șoimeni), Csíktaploca (Toplița Ciuc), Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc), in other words the Franciscan church and monastery are “only” a clerical architectural ensemble (Botár 2012). Since the Franciscan monastery was not under the jurisdiction of the Transylvanian bishopric, it was not a diocese or a parish. Local consciousness and the cognitive map of the locals have retained this in-between status to this day: a mere 200 m from the monastery we are already at Várdotfalva or Csobotfalva. All we find is an unofficial place sign on the Szék road, exactly at the point where a centuries-old boundary-stone indicates the border between Csíktapolca and Várdotfalva. Up until 1959 Csíksomlyó and Várdotfalva constituted one village – then both villages were officially unified with the town of Csíkszereda: thus today there exists no administrative unit that we could identify as Csíksomlyó.

• 3. Thirdly, Somlyó is a potent cultural center. The library of the monastery has been increasing its stock ever since its foundation in the Middle Ages – only in the second half of the 20th century did it suffer irreparable losses and vicissitudes (Muckenhaupt 1999:11–19). We don't know exactly how long there has been a school at Somlyó, but it is definite that by the 1670's there was formal education there, and possibly even earlier. Since that time, it has been the home to secondary or grammar schools, later of a junior seminary and subsequently a teacher training institution almost without a pause right until the middle of the 20th century (Sávai 1997; Antal 1968). Besides, for a good two hundred years from 1675 right until the end of the 19th century the Franciscans also maintained their printing house, which was actually a publishing house producing a vast amount of publications (Muckenhaupt 1999, 2009). A well-known and ever more thoroughly researched tradition was that of dramatic school plays which flourished here in the 18th century (Pintér 1993; Medgyesy-Schmikli 2009). There were religious stage troupes functioning like Mary's Society established in 1731 or St. Anthony's Society launched in 1772 or what were known later as Mary's Congregations.

• 4. Fourthly, Csíksomlyó is a shrine and a place of pilgrimage in the traditional sense of the word and has been so at least since the middle of the 1600's, similarly to dozens of Hungarian and hundreds of European shrines, most of which came to flourish during the time of Baroque religiosity as it emerged after the Synod of Trident (Tüskés 1993; Tüskés – Knapp 1996). The religious epithet of the church since the 1440's has been the church of Our Lady of Sickles (Visitatio Beatae Mariae Virginis), which is celebrated on July 2nd (in the Hungarian church the practice continues even after the 2nd Vatican Synod moved this to May 31st). Its catchment area covers the Catholic Székely population of Csík and some further lying areas. This became extended in the first half of the 20th century to the total Catholic Hungarian population of Transylvania and later to the entire Hungarian-speaking area (Mohay 2011). Even today it is well integrated with the European network of shrines.

• 5. Next, Csíksomlyó is a place of pilgrimage in the modern sense of the word, too – indeed, during the three decades that have passed since the end of the socialist regime it rapidly developed into a “national shrine” visited by masses of people reaching into the hundreds of thousands and arriving from the entire Hungarian-speaking area (Losonczy 2009). The original shrine has not been overridden or abolished in all this time, but it has become greatly transformed and somewhat diminished in significance, while the pilgrimage itself has assumed a slightly secular character. It would be most accurate to say that tourism, both of a religious and a non-religious nature, has become predominant (Ilyés 2014; Tánczos 2018).

• 6. Lastly, Csíksomlyó is the birthplace or a source of inspiration of a whole multitude of texts: prayers, plays, poems, stories and accounts about the memorable miracles, as well as songs and singing traditions preserve and compress into symbols an unfathomable mass of relationships, connections, religious experiences and encounters. The first written examples have been known since the 1680's (to be sure, they existed beforehand), and they have been streaming out ever since (Mirk ed. 2010; Kolcsár 2008). The long line of texts, arranged according to topics, forms etc. coalesce into memories and traditions.

Liturgies that preserve the traditions from the times before reformation have also become, due to their very nature, places of remembrance. Embodied in sacred actions, gestures, texts and symbols, they turn the past into present and tie it in with the future. This goes back to the Judaism of antiquity where the invitation to remember was perceived as a religious commandment (Yerushalmi 1982). The well-known liturgical imperative “do this in remembrance of me” from the account of the last supper (Luke 22,14–23) has become an imperative of a similar magnitude and has constituted the pedestal of the liturgy as a “place of remembrance” for two thousand years (Berger 2005). This is kept alive by the daily practice of the shrine's monastic community. This is what visitors with a religious motivation join in with – in other words, instead of turning to the past they became part of a shared experience of the sacred.

In the following brief review we are going to show a few examples of the most varied “vehicles” of the remembrance material at Csíksomlyó, of the varied range of content they hold and the ways in which they direct and adjust our remembrance.

II Vehicles of memories (memoriae)

1. 1.The first church that stood in the spot where the votive church stands today was a single nave church with a pointed arch built in the 1400s. This stood for approximately three and a half centuries and required several bouts of reconstruction following partial damage and destruction. An East-facing structure, the Northern side of the church was extended by chapels; on the Southern side it adjoined the monastery, while the steeple stood on the southern end of the sanctuary. Not a single stone of it was left after it was demolished in 1802 with the intention to build a larger church in its place. We can hardly imagine today the huge sense of vacuum it must have left behind. Nobody at the time wanted to preserve any “memory” of this old church. In the age no visual representation of it was created, except for a sketch in Leonárd Losteiner's 1777 manuscript. To this very day there have been no archaeological diggings to explore its former walls – the ground plan is only known from a drawing made at the time of the planning of the new building. Its one-time crypt, however, is in use even today. A drawing reconstructing this building was made by sign-painter Sebestyén Keöpeczi – this is what visitors see today in the vestibule of the church or in various albums.

Constructions of the church we see today began in 1804 and it took surprisingly long to complete – twenty-two years went by before it was under roof. The main altar was not erected until 44 years later, in 1848, but the church had to wait a total of seventy years, until 1875, to be consecrated. This meant a state of transition lasting many decades, filled with preparation, struggle, failures, shortages of money, material and manpower; efforts to raise funds and to keep repairing the already existing parts over and over again. Collective memory could preserve less and less of what had for three centuries been a secure point. By now, the new church is the only point known to everyone and the prolonged struggle that accompanied its construction has been mostly forgotten – surviving only in a description by Franciscan historian Fortunát Boros based on contemporary notes and documents (Boros 1943). Anyone who goes there today is entering a “centuries-old” church which in no way points back to the times before its existence.

Let us ignore for now the interior of the church building and the memory-content of the statues, altars and images inside it. All I wish to allude to is that it was in the 1960's, after the 2nd Vatican synod that the newly fashioned liturgical space in the sanctuary was completed with the altar for celebrating mass facing the people (Márk 2014:91–108). Displays in the sanctuary also include several dozen pieces of offer from the 18th century, as well as votive plaques in their hundreds from the 20th-21st centuries. The texts on these plaques are located somewhere on the boundary between private and public remembrance and reminding. Behind each plaque there is a story of a personal experience the majority of which would be termed, in clerical vocabulary, prayers heeded. There is no way of knowing their exact content, nor the individuals behind these monograms, family names – or, indeed, plaques with no names. It is their location that renders them a means of collective and shared remembrance. No matter how stereotyped their inscriptions, the personal story in the background makes it certain that even these brief- one- to two word acts of gratitude are more than mere formalities. We cannot know whether these are in any way noted, recorded, whether anyone goes up to these plaques and preserves any memory or photographs of them.

The building of the Franciscan monastery has a history which can be traced back along an unbroken line if not all the way to its foundation in the Middle Ages, but certainly as far as its reconstruction and extension in the 18th century. Its structure and plan are reminiscent of hundreds of other Franciscan monasteries – anyone who enters here may bring to it memories associated with other places and leave afterwards with new ones acquired here. Although the building, during the period following its expropriation, served until 1990 as a state-owned vocational school, still, even during this time “everyone” knew that in fact it was a monastery: many of the Franciscan friars remembered for decades afterwards who had lived in which room throughout the years in the past, where each of them used to take their meals or say their prayers along with the others.

1. 2.The statue of Mary plays an absolutely central cultic role at Csíksomlyó in the church consecrated in honour of the Virgin Mary. Transylvanian Franciscans recently celebrated the 500-year anniversary of the votive statue (2015). It is hard to fathom all of the memory content that had accumulated around it during the five hundred years that had flown by since its completion. Innumerable people have written about it, but none of them said very much about the changes in the actual “body” of the statue. Improving upon our earlier knowledge based merely on descriptions, recent instrumental measurements have explored the transformations that the very physicality of the statue had undergone, such as being re-painted, re-carved to some extent or adjusted to the venue (Benkő – Mende – Mihály – Muckenhaupt 2016). During the wars of the 20th century it had to be rescued twice and restored to its original location. During and after WWII it was guarded for months in the Franciscan church of Kolozsvár (Cluj); since that time a replica kept in that place has been preserving its memory and continues to connect the two churches. The statue has always been surrounded, to this day, with innumerable signs of cultic veneration. After a whole line of miracle-accounts have been noted down and authenticated, and after two diocesan investigations that were interrupted, at the end of a third official procedure in 1798 Ignác Batthyányi declared in a bishop's decree the statue's power to effect miracles. The epithet “replete with miracles” has since then become one with this statue and grown to be a part of the public consciousness, but the original ruling of the bishopric and all related documentation have remain unpublished to this day: neither the original Latin, nor its Hungarian translation ever found their way into the circles of remembrance. The first reports in Hungarian about the miracle events that took place in association with the statue were written in the 1810's by Franciscan father Leonárd Losteiner in a “book of miracles”. By that time this genre had been on the decline within pious literature, even though in the Baroque such books were written in vast numbers (Tüskés 1993). Efforts to publish this MS book did not prove successful until two hundred years later (Mohay 2015).
2. 3.Throughout centuries, the circular procession, or as the locals call it, the great walk-around, has been seen as an indispensable part of Whitsun festivities. This is a walk of some two or two and a half kilometres from back to church, stopping at three chapels on the top of the hill and with a 200 m difference in altitude on the way up and down. This is associated with the labarum which, if not a cultic object, is certainly an object of deference. This emblem is one of Csíksomlyó’s unique features – it has a special place during the procession. They carry it around the venue even today, but it plays no other part the rest of the time, but is simply put aside. This was the only object thus distinguished at the procession – neither the Sacrament, nor the votive statue or its replica were carried around. Also worthy of remembrance are the young boys who carry the labarum around during the Whitsun procession. The names of these so-called laborifer used to be inscribed on the inside of the labarum in the gaps between the ribs of the iron structure, sometimes ornate with floral patterns created with calligraphic elegance. Protagonists in the half-shade, they are hidden parts of the Csíksomlyó place of remembrance. If we take the trouble to explore what is behind some of these personal names and conjure up their voices, we find that entire life stories reveal themselves. One of them, Tivadar Bálint's name was entered, surrounded by a fine floral wreath, in 1925. He was also mentioned in the local press, as “the student with a crown of myrtle” – decades later he was to spend five years in the prison of the communist regime. One wonders how much of the religious processions of his early youth he may have remembered there, and who were the people who could still remember him? The bushy branches of remembrance trail in unpredictable directions (Mohay 2012).
3. 4.Of the objects that played a part in the cult, there are another two that express with considerable significance the character of Csíksomlyó as a place of remembrance in specific communities. Flags and bells served to provide group cohesion among the pilgrims' groups. Church and pilgrimage flags are among the emblems that display the identity of the village and operate as visual codes within the traditional milieu. Both locals and people from other parts could know through these which group of pilgrims – or to use the local phrase, keresztalja, i.e. “under the cross” – had come, say, from Csíkszentmiklós (Nicolești), Csíkszentdomokos (Sândominic) or Gyimesiek (Ghimeș). The “loss of this code” took place as the free, public and complete order of festivities was banned during the four decades of dictatorship. The processions were re-launched from the 1990 onwards after being preserved in peoples' hopes and memories. For a number of years one could observe that many old flags had place-names newly embroidered next to the images of the saints, Jesus or the cross. Rather than any local need, this served to display the identity of these groups to others, mostly to those arriving from mainland Hungary. Most of these groups, concentrating around local villages, also wanted to show themselves and stepped out of unmarked anonymity by making place placards. We might as well say that in their own ways these groups did not and still do not want to be left out of the various spaces of remembrance – others (too) can see them, record and even publish their images, they get to leave memories behind them.

The bells used to work as an auditive code before the dictatorship and have done so again ever since it came to an end. This highly characteristic rhythmic gesture and sound, created at the head of the pilgrimage groups with their crosses, dictate the pace of the procession for all those who look on this as an organic part of their tradition. Even in photographs one can retrace the typical rhythm of hands and steps that has remained the same through generations (Mohay 2008). Most of these bells were out of use through decades, but then people got them out again. One dates back as far as 1882. Who could possibly recollect all the people who paced their footfall following its rhythmical sounds?

After physical objects of remembrance we may now turn our attention to the undercurrents of narrative tradition, to stories that invoke people's memories.

1. 5.Strong symbolic stories include the history of the origin of the Whitsun pilgrimage procession. It has been common throughout world history to attribute the successful outcome of battles and armed conflicts to the miraculous intervention of the heavenly powers, and in Christian Europe to the help of the Virgin Mary. These were most frequently the conflicts of Christian and “pagan” (i.e. Islam) or “heretic” (i.e. Protestant) armed forces and it is important to note that their cultural memories were later recorded in the most varied forms by texts, objects and festivities. Thus, for instance, the Akathistos Hymn which is widely known and popular in the Orthodox Church, is associated with three different sieges on Constantinople: the Persians and the Avars wanted to occupy the city in 626 AD, the Arabs in 677 and again in 727–728 – and failed to do so due to the intervention by the Virgin Mary with the heavenly forces (Ivancsó 1996:39–60). The memory of the battle of Lepanto fought against the Ottomans in 1571 is commemorated by the festivities of the Queen of the Rosary or Our Lady of the Rosary (October 7th). It is said that directly before the battle the Pope had called on the entire church to pray the Rosary. The festival was extended by the Pope to the whole of Spain on the 100th anniversary of the battle, then, later, in memory of the victory that Eugene of Savoy scored over the Ottomans at Pétervárad (August 5th 1716) to the totality of the Christian church (Bálint 1977/II:367–369). The victorious battle that was fought to repel the Ottoman siege against Vienna on 12th September 1683, on the name-day of Mary, was attributed to the intervention performed by the sacred image of Mary the Helper held in Passau, because the Kaiser and his court, who had fled there, prayed in front of this image. After the siege Polish King Sobieski left a copy of the Częstochowa icon in the chapel of Kahlenberg near Vienna. Similarly, the victory of the Catholics in the second battle of Kappel (or Gubel) in Switzerland in 1531 was attributed to help by the Virgin Mary, where the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland clashed, and where the several hundred dead of the Protestants included their leader, the famous reformer Zwingli. The first chapel on the hill over the city of Lőcse (Levoča, Slovakia) was built in memory of their escape from assaults by the Tartars, and after repeated pilgrimages, from the 17th century onwards this Hill of Mary became one of the most attractive places of pilgrimage for an increasingly wide area.

A story that fits harmoniously into this corpus of traditions is the widely known account of the so-called battle of Hargita.

The great remembrance history of Csíksomlyó explains the origin of the Whitsun pilgrimage by a narrative whereby in 1567 Prince János Zsigmond tried to convert the people of the Csík region (including the Gyergyó area) to the Protestant faith, but the people of Csík had just won a great victory on Whit Saturday led by priest István from Gyergyóalfalu (Joseni), and in memory of this they swore to make a regular custom of this pilgrimage and have kept this in an unbroken line ever since, and thus it may be seen as a votive rite. This account, first formulated and written down around 1777, later came to be published in a number of different variants and not only became consolidated as a narrative, but gradually gained an authoritative power. (Most recently Lóránt Balla found a collection of Franciscan sermons in which this story featured as early as 1759. Balla 2023.) This story intertwines three important constitutive strands: 1. the székely people of Csík insist on remaining loyal to their Catholic faith; 2. they defend it against a threatening assault by joint effort and 3. successful resistance creates cohesion among them and the vow they swear in celebration of their victory becomes the basis of the pilgrimage at Csíksomlyó. Critique and doubt concerning the veracity of the tradition explaining the origin of the pilgrimage is not a novel thought. Reviewing the literature of the subject, I myself have also repeatedly summarized the evolution of this story, its different, constantly changing variants and its reception; I have also made efforts at interpreting it in the conceptual framework of the invention of tradition (Mohay 2009:106–133). It is rare for histories of origin to become subject to historical fact-checking and subsequent debate. The reason why this happened with regard to the Whitsun procession at Csíksomlyó was that the story in question is relatively recent and has a number of authenticating traits which tie in this legend narrative with the known historical past, its figures, places and dates. This is why researchers' attention was directed to find out how much of the origin-story can be authenticated in the historical sense. In the meantime the “explanatory” power of the story had the potential to awaken strong emotional attachment, not only by virtue of being old and thus emanating a certain authority, but also because a scarcity of any other sources left us without any other explanation as to the emergence of this pilgrimage custom (Darvas-Kozma 2011). In view of all of this, the situation of Csíksomlyó appears peculiar: we know of no other Hungarian shrine where justification for the pilgrimage, particularly those publicized by mass media, put such a strong emphasis on historical explanations. At any other shrine, and regardless whether they believe in it or not entirely, people tend to know of the first miracles (too), but this plays no definitive part in their relationship to the shrine, nor does it act as a point of reference or a cohesive force.

This origin story received different emphases in the course of its re-interpretation and re-contextualization through the various periods. In the mid-18th century the motif of successful resistance to imperial power became central (this was shortly after the massacre of Székely (Siculeni) Hungarians at Madéfalva in 1764, which in fact was the exact opposite – a failed revolt). In the mid-19th century it was seen as an expression of the feudal national cohesion of the Székely Hungarians. By the second half of the 19th century the floodlight had shifted to strong loyalty to the faithand to the Catholic church, at a time which was in fact a period of increasing secularization and the slow waning of the role of the church. After the great historical traumas of the 20th century, the central motif was the survival of Transylvania's Hungarian population, then, after the collapse of communism the narrative of the battle of Hargita was raised to be a symbol of holding together the entire Hungarian population, while interpretations referring to inter-denominational conflict were pushed into the background. In the public discourse this battle has become a powerful symbol, which consciously draws boundaries around those who identify with it and places a dividing line between themselves and people of different denominations. Inside the votive church two memorial plaques have been dedicated to the victory at Hargita. Doubts raised by historical scholarship whether this supposedly victorious battle ever happened have left all those people untouched who speak about the pilgrimage from the angle of the Catholic church or the Székely Hungarian ethnic group, as well as those who look on the former as the ultimate authorities in the matter. The situation is the exact opposite if we enter Protestant, particularly Unitarian circles: after these already existing counter-arguments gained confirmation, the opinion of the general public also changed.

Constructed at just the right time in just the right style, the story of the battle at Hargita captures in a compressed form the pathos of successful resistance against aggressive state power. I believe that the elementary power and impact of this story is due, in great part, to the fact that the “victory” missing from reality was transferred to a past which is barely accessible at all through sources and also transferred it to the religious plane. Precisely to the plane where it becomes sacrosanct. In this sense the truth of the story exists even if its historical veracity cannot be authenticated. In this case “origin” is to be understood as a strong form of explanation – the valid core of it is loyalty to the Catholic faith which the aggressive converting intention of the central power could not overcome. This can because for pride and joy, it is sufficient reason for celebrating together, and thus it becomes the symbol of a great belonging together of all.

III The national image

Of the “prophane”, i.e. not expressly religious interpretations of the Csíksomlyó phenomenon the stronger than any other is that it had become a national shrine very soon after the post-communist transition. This emphasis falls mostly on festive, ritual occasions, indeed, almost exclusively on the Whitsun procession. The subject of national continuity and cohesion surfaces in laudations and sermons offered at these festive events, but, in another context, even in speeches made in parliament. They reach not only those who make the pilgrimage, but also the viewers and listeners of the various mass media. They shape the collective sentiment, as well as individual feelings and their expressions.

Even the superficial onlooker may notice that utterances of an expressly national character are fairly rare at places of pilgrimage, certainly in Hungary and mostly in other countries, too. Pilgrims tend to visit shrines under the influence of some religious sentiment; we don't see the national flag, we don't hear the national anthem, or if we do, this is not more frequent that at any major festive mass, where the Himnusz (the Hungarian national anthem) might ring out or a flag or two may be raised. It is also not common for the ritual order of such pilgrimage processions to contain sermons elaborating on the exact character, unity and cohesion of the nation. Why do we, nevertheless, speak of a national places of pilgrimage?

One of the most important traits of the line of events that have taken place in Central and Eastern Europe over the recent decades is the wide-spread experience whereby religious affiliation and national identity are very closely interlinked (Eriksen 2003). National consciousness often appears in a religious guise, and religious notions can also be heavily permeated with powerful allusions to national belonging (Daniel – Durham 1999; Gereben – Tomka 2000, Gereben ed. 2001). National consciousness, just like religious affiliation, have the power to create a very strong cohesion among members of a broader or narrower community, and in the eyes of their surroundings this may appear in both a peaceful or a threatening form (Barna 1997; Kapitány – Kapitány 2002, 2012). All of the above applies particularly strongly to areas which are the home of several languages and religions in close proximity (Erős ed. 1996; Flora – Szilagyi – Ruodometof 2005; Pozsony 2006; Kupa ed. 2008).

In a religious context the phrase national shrine is used in two senses. There are cases in which a shrine is elevated to this status by centuries-old traditions, the shared belief and cult of religious and national communities. In other cases the relevant clerical leadership raises a shrine to this rank. In this latter case national is meant more in the administrative sense. Also, the two are hard to separate, since the decision of the bishopric needs to be based on a foundation of well-established national traditions. The national shrines of many countries had catchment areas extending to territories amounting to entire countries (and several peoples therein), which were later confirmed by demonstrative visits paid by rulers, notabilities or the heads of other lay organizations.

In Hungary there are two shrines, both of them attracting masses of visitors, that received the rank of a national shrine from the Hungarian Catholic Bishopric: Máriapócs in 2005 and Mátraverebély-Szentkút in 2006. The past and traditions of these shrines had laid sound foundations for these decisions.

Official church records state that there are a total of 8 international shrines and 204 national shrines worldwide. Of the latter, 24 are scattered in 12 Western-European countries, 16 are in 9 Eastern European countries (International 2019). A widely known shrine is Częstochowa in Poland, with the icon of the Black Madonna, guarded carefully in the monastery of the Pauline Fathers (OSPPE). The national character of this shrine has its roots in the Swedish-Polish battle of 1655, when the monarch made a pilgrimage in order to express his gratitude for the victory of the Poles. This was followed a year later by the votive offering of dedicating the country, in a symbolic sense, to the Virgin Mary. By this time, however, the custom of the pilgrimage procession had probably been established for well over a century. During the period in the 19th century when the country lacked national independence, this shrine was seen as the token of unity and survival. People liked to refer to it as Poland's spiritual capitol, since the territory of the dismembered country was dominated by three foreign capitols (Niedźwiedź 2010, 2014). Of the more than eight hundred shrines registered in Poland, this one is certainly the most prominent.

“The most high ranking shrine of the country” is a status held among international shrines by Fatima in Portugal, Lourdes in France, Santiago de Compostela in Spain or Altötting in Bavaria – each receiving several million visitors a year from the broadest international circles. Mariazell, Austria, has been the home of the votive statue of Magna Mater Austriae since the 17th century – this may be the first shrine which owes its tacit, but de facto primacy to the remarkable attention of the Catholic House of Habsburg (Farbaky – Serfőző eds. 2004). In Croatia it was Marija Bistrica in the Zagreb Diocese that was accorded the rank of an international shrine where people began to revere a statue of the Madonna made out of black wood in the 15th century – this happened in several waves, after the statue was hidden on two occasions. After the war, the communist leadership prohibited and prevented people going on religious pilgrimages. This place was elevated to the rank of a national shrine in 1971, right in the very middle of the Tito era (Kurečić – Njavro 2004). In Lithuania, where over three quarters of the population are Catholics and the church is seen as far the most stable cultural and religious institution, the only surviving fortification of the one-time city wall of Vilnius, called The Gate of Dawn, and its icon of Mary have become a national shrine. During the Tsarist and the Soviet occupation alike this was where the suppressed idea of Lithuania national unity found refuge. By contrast, during the period when the city of Vilnius was temporarily a part of Poland (under the name Wilno), the coronation of the icon in 1927 was meant to serve the symbolic integration of the opposing Polish and Lithuanian peoples (Griffante 2014).

Another shrine that is considered a national place of pilgrimage is the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat lying in Catalonia, not far from Barcelona. It is known that after the civil war, the state of the Franco era suppressed all cultural and political strivings on behalf of the Catalonians and other national minorities, such as the Basques. It is interesting that in this secularized state it was nevertheless the church and within that particularly the lower clergy, which was mildly opposed to the ruling hierarchy, that became a refuge for the national idea. At this ancient Benedictine shrine some one hundred thousand people gathered in 1947, for the first time after a long pause, to demonstrate with national flags and a Catalonian-speaking orator under the auspices of a symbolic liturgical event – the coronation of the statue of Mary. The author analyzing the event emphasized that left-wing activists played as much of a part here as did the monks attending the event (Conversi 1997:125–130).

Associating Csíksomlyó with the epithets and overall character of a “shrine” and of “national” significance looks back on a past of at least a century and a half. After the independence fights of the Hungarians, vanquished in 1849, several contemporary accounts refer to Csíksomlyó as a place of national (Székely) significance. This was a period when the concept of the nation was not seen in Transylvania to include the entire Hungarian nation or homeland. It was common and natural in the parlance of the age to speak of the Székely nation; nor did Transylvania belong to Hungary in the administrative and legal sense. The Székely community displayed a strong feudal and administrative autonomy. In the second half of the 19th century, the pull of Csíksomlyó extended to no more than a regional catchment area in the Szekler's province (Székelyföld).

We are convinced that Csíksomlyó was raised to the rank of their own national shrine by the Hungarian population of Transylvania, Romania, which came to be in a minority in Romania after the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920. This was not something that anyone pronounced or wrote down publicly at the time – indeed, references to Csíksomlyó as a place of national significance seemed to disappear from texts for a number of years. After 1921, when the Romanian state power once again permitted the pilgrimage, it gradually developed into a festivity for the whole of the Catholic population of Transylvania, attracting large crowds from towns and villages alike as transport facilities improved. By this time it was also clearly visible that there was practically no other suitable meeting point with a significant catchment area in the whole of Transylvania. Csíksomlyó did not need to “compete” with any other shrine, as no other church in Transylvania or the Székelyföld region had developed into a pilgrimage center. In the part of Northern Transylvania which was re-annexed to Hungary in 1940 as a result of what was known as the Second Vienna Decision, Csíksomlyó became one of the distinguished places of thanksgiving: the traditional autumn Mary Festival (September 12th) was the first occasion where national flags and other symbols began to play an emphatic part. It was during the following four years that Csíksomlyó was able to gain national renown. It was exactly this four-year period, the “brief Hungarian world” as it was known, that the Romanian state found most disturbing during the re-organization that took place following the World War. Naturally, during the years of dictatorship no one was allowed to speak about the national significance of Csíksomlyó – however, the memories proved indelible. Perhaps the most powerful prophane, i.e. not expressly religious motivation that may bring people to Csíksomlyó is the desire and the joy of experiencing the encounter between “Hungarians and Hungarians” (i.e. Hungarians from mainland Hungary and others from Transylvania – translator's note). This is often expressed both by participants and by researchers arriving from great distances. A whole line of laudations and sermons delivered at the festival discuss, besides religious and spiritual themes, the importance of national survival and cohesion. These expressions affect not only those present, but also anyone watching or listening to any of the mass media – they shape the public mood, as well as individual sentiments and their expressions. A motif which keeps recurring in interviews and conversations is the way in which the simultaneous presence of large masses of Hungarians, their meeting and encounter, is a crucial component of the pilgrimage experience. At the same time, there is a marked opinion, held particularly by clerical organizers of the event, whereby it is important to preserve the festival as a religious event.

The crowd which gathers here at Whitsun seems to embody the idea that in the modern age the nation becomes something one can experience in its palpable, physical reality for all the hundreds of thousands who attend, rather than remaining a mere “imagined community” (Anderson 1991). Today, a festival like this serves at least as a “sacred space” for demonstrating and thereby further enhancing the collective national consciousness of the Hungarians, as it does for expressing veneration for the votive statue of Mary at Csíksomlyó or the emanation of the Holy Spirit at Whitsun. The sense of national identity, a prophane element when viewed from the angle of religious procession of purely sacred content, is also a sanctity in itself in the symbolic sense. It becomes even more so in the context of the heightened mood related to the presence of the sacred – in this sense it is fair to talk about its sacralization (Brandt 2013). Since most of the participants come from a country which lacks a mass-scale religious event on a similar scale, with comparable solemnity and traditionality, they are justified in feeling that the ancient shrine of the Catholic Székely is a fountainhead where they can recharge their souls with something they are lacking – with authentic national sentiments. A similar experience of recharging probably takes place at other mass events where participants experience a sense of belonging through some kind of shared joy and excitement with a great number of individuals they don't personally know, surrounded by national symbols, and all of this becomes identified as national cohesion. One obvious example that springs to mind is that of international football matches (Bali 2022:142–156).

Being together at the festival and experiencing the joy of this community is, obviously, a collective experience in the sense of the term as it was used by famous social psychologist Ferenc Mérei (Mérei 1947; His 1947 book was a pioneering work in its time and the elaboration of this concept was a thread running through his entire oeuvre (Mérei 1989; László 1999; Pataki 2003). The collective experience of participants means far more than a great number of people having the same experience at the same time: this experience becomes part of their collective memory, “an episode in their shared history” (Pataki 2003:27). The religious festival at Csíksomlyó is an outstanding occasion for creating an experience community not only due to the large number of participants, but also to its repeated occurrence going back many decades. This experience community serves as the point of departure for group accounts; this is where the ties of group cohesion are centered and it also serves as the basis for personal identity formation. This is particularly true of grand narratives expressing national affiliation. Psychologist János László emphasizes that the element of experience is at least as important here as the element of collective – this is the vital, vigorous, emotionally charged component without which no lasting bond could be built, no customs and traditions based on these allusions could emerge (László 1999).

We might also invoke another concept to help our interpretation used by István Bibó – that of ritual community. Bibó thought this concept was of vital importance in mediaeval European society and even beyond, all the way from Morocco to India, and he also believed this enabled him to grasp one aspect of the social structure of European Jews. “Ritual communities had a decisive significance in the whole of mediaeval Europe, and the Near-East still more or less lives in such communities all the way from Morocco to India. The defining significance of these communities was far more important than any kind of national or racial boundary world-wide and this is still the case in the Near-East to this day. They engaged and organized a far broader range of various manifestations of human life, our emotions and volitions or indeed of collective solidarity than the state which, for the longest time, represented nothing more than a power mechanism. In this respect, a ritual does not represent a creed or a denomination in the contemporary sense, but a community which used to determine not only people's religious conditions and convictions, but their entire collective and individual lifestyle, their social mores, everyday habits or, as we might say today, their entire ethnicity. These communities began to lose their significance starting in the beginning of the modern era, or in the Near East in the most recent times, and are replaced by national communities in the European sense, which constitute their structures around the central issue of sustaining or founding a state and began to appeal more and more to the collective feelings and solidarity of the masses for their own advantage” (Bibó 1991:200). This concept, which later grew somewhat in scope and slightly altered its meaning, clearly captures a premodern social and mental state, remnants of which could go on existing even after the advent of modernity. In a broader and slightly more abstract sense a “ritual community” can also be interpreted as a community created by and for rituals which exists only for the duration of the ritual participants of which, once the festival is over, “will disperse and not constitute a formal group describable by any other, external function” (Füredi 2004:340). The pilgrimage procession is a spectacular collective manifestation of this latter – the people who come from greater distances to share experiences and a sense of national unity have, over the past few decades, attached themselves to an already existing Catholic, Székely ritual community which now plays little or no role in the organization of their own societies and which they then transfer and absorb into a different mental space imbued with a national feeling. It is easy to recognize that during this process the community becomes re-interpreted, it shifts to the field of national sentiments where in turn, it enters a line of marketization processes that turn it into an object of “consumption”. Let us add to all of this that in the religious field knowledge about collective experiences and narratives exists as a practical acumen which has been passed down for millennia through a multitude of elites and generations. It is enough to remember the lasting “memory community” which is available in the center of most larger religious communities such as, for example, the collective practices of the great monastic orders which overarch continents and centuries. This is why it is possible for the language of religion to speak to masses of people in a clear and profound manner about belonging together, since the system of allusions relies on the deepest possible roots.

After 1990, following the political transition in Romania it became characteristic to use national symbols with a broader meaning than before and with new emphases – this was also observable at Csíksomlyó. There is always a high concentration of national symbols right next to each other in the crowd gathered for the Csíksomlyó festivities. In this respect “the changes” brought about a real liberation starting at the end of 1989. Signs of the self-expression of Hungarianness were given unlimited freedom to appear in this symbolic space: flags, standards, ribbons, as well as the national coat of arms, the national anthem “Himnusz” and the “Székely anthem”. In this respect the festival at Csíksomlyó towers far above other religious events. There is no other occasion, procession, festival or church service where one could encounter as many national colors and symbols. All of this has been recorded over the past three decades in a mass of photographs, film, video and television footage owned privately or published in newspapers, albums or exhibitions or later by digitally recorded motion picture. According to my observations sustained over long period of time, carrying a Hungarian national flag was introduced after 1990 by pilgrim groups not from Transylvania or the Székelyföld region but by those from mainland Hungary. As these arrived from an ever broader range of places, the number of national flags grew with them. Such an explicit use of national symbols was a totally obvious sign of the pilgrimage festival assuming a national character – the like of which had happened on a broad scale at a number of places in the world and may be seen as the summation of a whole set of cultural processes that many authors have analyzed (Ilyés 2014).

The referendum held in Hungary on 5h December 2004 about the dual citizenship of Hungarians living abroad was an important event, besides its public political relevance, also from the point of view of pilgrimage. Previously the socialist state leadership of the time campaigned forcefully for a no vote, and although eventually the yeses were higher in number than the no votes, the overall turnout did not reach the required threshold. The message of this result was that in fact those staying away were supporting the camp of those against.

Understandably, the entire population of Hungarians living abroad was shattered by the campaign against them and by the referendum results. Many were overcome by a sense of rejection, the bitter feeling that “the mother country does not want us”. This experience, almost impossible to process with a sound mind, and the above interpretation were strongest in the Székelyföld region. After the referendum certain priests at certain masses downright refused to sing the Hungarian national anthem in their churches. The Whitsun celebration held six months after the referendum divided participants into two camps: the behavior of the one side revealed unspoken reproach and cautious reserve, while the other camp made gestures of apology and atonement. Many pilgrims arrived from Hungary with the mindset of “we are not like the referendum showed us”, and tried to express this in every possible way – e.g. by wearing badges with the word “igen” [yes] – which provoked mixed reception on the other side.

Between 2002 and 2010 it was clearly palpable, even without direct political allusions, that the procession is at the same time a demonstration of national unity; a gathering of the political opposition of the time who rejected left-wing governance and its leaders from the bottom of their hearts. After the 2010 elections in Hungary the situation was significantly altered by the fact that in one of its first new laws Parliament granted Hungarians living abroad the opportunity to apply for Hungarian citizenship – the highest number of people who took advantage of the opportunity lived in Romania. From this point onwards both the situation and the prevailing sentiment changed – while the Franciscan organizers of the event and other associated clerics kept politics at arm's length from the pilgrimage procession, the multitude of participants with a high national sentiment could feel that now they form a part of the state's mainstream.

Pilgrimage customs and the expressions of national awareness preserved their hidden streak of continuity even during the 40 years of communist rule. The fact that Transylvania is the home of a more “real” Hungarian past, a more authentic folk culture could only surface sporadically and “in a suppressed manner” during a 40-year period, manifesting in signs like the outstanding success of certain theater productions, dance houses, albums, or people's predilection for travelling to Transylvania (Kürti 2001). Visiting the venue en masse or celebrating along with the locals were prohibited. For a few years after 1990 the expression of national consciousness was seen as an extension of a past and long hidden expression of national consciousness. Over the subsequent one and a half decades this was intensified by these forms being re-invented and further developed. Next, in the past twenty years we have witnessed encounters between the sacred and the prophane, and the emergence of new dimensions. These were significantly influenced by external political and business considerations and developments such as the referendum about dual citizenship, the EU accession (2004), new developments in national minority policy after 2010 and the emerging new system of subsidies, or the increasingly intense flow of organized pilgrimage tourism to the festival or the emergence of value and heritage inventories.

Tamás Mohay is a professor at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore, Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest), and a doctor of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2022). His post-doctoral thesis (1994) analysed the farming practices of a peasant farmer who had kept a diary; his professorial thesis discussed the history of the pilgrimage procession rite at Csíksomlyó (2009); while his Academy Doctoral thesis offers a monographic rendering of the recent past and the present of the shrine and the pilgrimage procession of Csíksomlyó (2020). All three of these works have been published in book form and are available online. Mohay has also published papers on diverse topics such as peasant farming and society; the regional structure of the Hungarian people; vernacular religion, prayer traditions; the history of his discipline; life stories and memory.