Verordnungen über die Bestattungen in den mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Quellen aus dem Szeklerland

Demjen, Andrea-Erzsebet (2014) Verordnungen über die Bestattungen in den mittelalterlichen und neuzeitlichen Quellen aus dem Szeklerland. TERRA SEBUS. ACTA MUSEI SABESIENSIS, 6. pp. 341-358. ISSN 2066-9143

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Abstract

Written sources indicate that burials inside churches and within the churchyard enjoyed a special status throughout the Szekler region. For both Catholics and Protestants, burials in the church, mainly around the communion table, had a particular status linked to the belief that the chances for resurrection on the day of the Last Judgement were higher for those who were closer to the saints, to the sanctuary. Nobles, donors and benefactors of the church as well as clergymen would normally be buried there. However, the church allowed every social category to have a grave in the church against a certain amount of money. Burials in the church and in the churchyard were regulated by several ecclesiastic decrees that were disregarded most of the times. The austerity measures in the church protocols give us some information about those situations. In the Middle Ages the church was packed with graves, which, at the beginning of the early modern period, led to decisions to confine burials to the church crypt alone. However, the ecclesiastical regulations did not have the expected results of moving the cemetery outside the inhabited space. At the end of the 18th century, at the initiative of the secular authorities, began an evacuation process on sanitary considerations that ended only at the end of the 19th century and during which cemeteries were moved from inside the church to the churchyard.

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