Vernacular Religious Wars: The Battle of Sükösd

Abstract

This workshop will feature István Povedák, who will speak on vernacular religious wars. Conflicts between believers and the clergy arose in a small Hungarian village in 1993 when a woman claimed that Jesus appeared to her and asked her to serve as his messenger. Since then Marika, the visionary of Sükösd, has received messages from Jesus on every first Friday of the month. During these long rituals, the woman experiences the Stations of the Cross and relives the sufferings of Christ until she finally "dies" and falls unconscious. In the past two decades her "Golgotha" induced a remarkable pilgrimage from different parts of Hungary. Despite prohibition by Hungarian bishops, the chapel – built by Marika and her followers – is filled with pilgrims waiting for the message of Jesus mediated by the visionary.This lecture will examine the contrarily interpreted phenomena that generated significant tensions in the vernacular religiosity of Hungarian Roman Catholic believers. A central question of the lecture is how this movement has been incorporated in the "playground of pseudo-historians." Though the practice has taken on a neonationalist overtone, it has had little to no international attention.