VJERSKI ŽIVOT KATOLIKA U JUŽNOBARANJSKOM DIJELU PEČUŠKE BISKUPIJE U 18. STOLJEĆU NA TEMELJU PODATAKA KANONSKIH VIZITACIJA
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF THE CATHOLICS IN THE SOUTH BARANJA SECTOR OF THE DIOCESE OF PÉCS IN THE 18TH CENTURY, BASED ON DATA OBTAINED BY EPISCOPA

Summary/Abstract: The paper portrays the religious life of the Catholics in the 18th century based on the data obtained by canonical (episcopal) visitations performed by the Diocese of Pécs in south Baranja and attempts to evaluate to what extent the people of Catholic faith accepted the Church’s decrees regulating cult and liturgy in the century following the liberation from Ottoman rule; what were the basic characteristics of folk piety; and to what extent these components reflected religious conformism. The authors also investigate the possibility of differences regarding piety, morality and the behavior of Catholics in individual villages in south Baranja, as well as the changes to the aforementioned factors in the observed century. Since the territory of the Diocese of Pécs had been under Ottoman rule for another century and a half after the Council of Trent, the canonic visitations of the bishop or his representative to south Baranja in the eighteenth century became essential for the stabilization of the Catholics’ religious life. The visitation, i.e. the inspection of the church and its equipment, other sacral buildings, the parish house, the revenues of the church and parish priest, church books etc. followed after a ceremonious reception of the visitators, holy mass and a blessing of the congregation. It is important to point out that the comments and recommendations given after the visitations considerably helped improve the quality of the church and religious life. Their prominence is evident in documents from 1782 in which a separate chapter was devoted to them. Religious ceremonies were sometimes held on the occasion of the arrival of the visitators. We should thus mention the renovation of the Church of the Holy Cross in Petlovac in 1782 and the blessing of church bells in villages of Topolje, Podolje and Batina in Baranja that took place in 1738. The visitators paid much attention to the manner in which the Eucharist, the holy liquids, the baptismal font and other church objects were kept, while the principal objections pertained to the oil lamp that was not burning constantly and improper font maintenance. A section of this paper is dedicated to the life of the congregation, analyzing the piety, morality and the behavior of the congregation in individual villages. Various deviations from church regulations were noticed in the observed period. We may therefore conclude that a considerable portion of the congregation remained at the level of religious conformism, even though the influence of the Church and the faith, which nevertheless ensured the sense of Catholic religious identity, is prominent.

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