COURAGE

savienojot kolekcijas

The most valuable piece of the entire collections is probably Kata Bethlen’s mortar. The original owner, Countess Kata Bethlen de Bethlen, also known as Katherine Bethlen (1700-1759), was a writer and a patron of arts. She supported the Transylvanian Hungarian Reformed parishes and schools. Talented students were sent on her own expense abroad for further learning. She bequeathed her precious library to the reformed college of Aiud. She was buried in Făgăraș in the Reformed Church. 

The acquisition of this item has a very interesting story and represent an event in the development of this collection because it stirred the interest in similar objects. In fact, following this acquisition, the countess started to collect mortars as well. These mortars and their pestles represented objects of everyday life from the past, used for crushing ingredients in the processes of cooking or medicine preparation. They had lost their practical use in the meantime due to the advancement in food and pharmaceutical industries, so they turned into decorative art objects. The acquisition of Kata Bethlen’s mortar by her descendant Anikó Bethlen represented, on the one hand, an act which corresponded to the philosophy of collecting as understood by the latter, i.e., the preservation of all these small but significant traditional items, which were about to disappear due to the communist modernisation. On the other hand, this acquisition represented an act of safeguarding the heritage of the Bethlen noble family of Transylvania, which had once played crucial historical, cultural and social roles in this multicultural region. 

Turning to the story of the acquisition, Anikó Bethlen remembers that “in an autumn night in 1979, four local Gypsies temporarily working in Făgăraș visited me with the purpose of selling a mortar. They encouraged me to buy it because as they said it ’belonged to someone wealthy, and I have to buy it.’ The huge mortar bore the inscription ‘Gr. Bethlen Kata 1758.’ I knew that she died in 1759, so it was cast a year before her death. They did not know that I am also a Bethlen. They asked 4000 lei for it, but I had only 900 lei, and had gathered it for the summer. I told them that the mortar is a little bit cracked and worth only 900 lei. They thought a bit about what to answer, then sold it me at that price.” 

The mortar is made of bronze and consist of two parts. The actual mortar is high twenty-two cm, has a diameter of twenty-two cm and weighs fourteen kg. The length of the breaker is thirty-two cm and it weighs one kg. The two pieces weight a total of fifteen kg.

In early 1979, at the initiative of János Kenedi, a voluntary editorial team of intellectuals was formed to prepare a tribute anthology on the occasion of István Bibó’s 70^th birthday. However, as Bibó died in May 1979, the book became something of a post mortem homage, as it was published a year later in a samizdat edition. This imposing anthology, which consisted of contributions by 76 authors in three thick volumes of more than 1,200 typewritten pages, was no doubt the first important venture with a significant influence in the history of the Hungarian samizdat movement. Furthermore, as an example of united political strivings on the part of all democratic opposition forces in Hungary, it also seemed to set a promising precedent, and it was perceived by the onetime communist party leaders as a real challenge. This is why they tried to prevent any further escalation of a resistance movement organized partly by the former ’56 tradition and partly according to the Polish patterns of self-organized Solidarity.

Between 7 December 1980 and 6 January 1981, an exhibition was organized which was based on the objects in the folk religious collection in Esztergom. It was placed in the Esztergom Basilica, more precisely around the Holy Cross altar.

After the call issued on 6 January 1980, many objects were donated to the collection, so the exhibition could draw on 6,000 objects given by 240 donors. Icons, carvings, primers, chaplets, statues, embroideries, and religious manuscripts were put on exhibit as testimony to vibrant spiritual life. The purpose of the exhibition was dual: the organizers wanted to demonstrate the importance of religious objects, which were extraordinary in the communist period, and they also wanted to answer a question of raised by the churchgoing public: “What shall we send?” Zsuzsanna Erdélyi and László Lékai emphasized that they were open to every object which had something in connection with the subjective, the local, the folk, and official religious life.

The exhibition was a well-organized event which drew masses of visitors and also included showings by actors, actresses, and opera singers (Katalin Gombos, Anikó Rohonyi, Imre Sinkovits, Gábor Németh, András Vitai) and an organist (István Baróti). After their performance, excerpts of holy legends were read, and the event came to a close with meditation.

The exhibition was successful because many other objects were offered. On the other hand, the organizers faced the problem of how to deal with the names of the givers, how they could present the religious objects, and how they could help collect the artifacts.

Thanks to the exhibition, the collection grew continuously, and by 1985, it had doubled in size.