The Exorcist of Sombor

The Mentality of an Eighteenth-Century Franciscan Friar

Dániel Bárth

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367356798
• eBook ISBN: 9781000076196
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

The Exorcist of Sombor examines the life course, practice and mentality of an eighteenth-century Franciscan friar, based on his own letters and documentation, creating a frame around the tightly packed history of events that took place between 1766-1769, and analysing the series of exorcism scandals that erupted in the Hungarian town of Sombor, from the perspectives of social history and cultural history.

The author employs a method which reflects historical anthropology, the history of ideas and the influence of Italian microhistory. Based on the activity of an exorcist priest in the early modern period, the documents of the ecclesiastical courts and a considerable body of autograph correspondence are thoroughly examined. Analysing these letters gives the reader a chance to come into close proximity with the way of thinking of a person from the eighteenth century. The research questions in connection to the documentation aim to identify the causes for the conflict. How was it possible to have "correct" and "wrong" methods of exorcism within the practice of one and the same church? What sort of criteria were used when certain previously accepted practices were dubbed superstitious in the second half of the eighteenth century? What were the changes that took place in the attitude of priests and friars within the ecclesiastical society of the period? How can a conflict be focussed on a practice (healing by exorcism) which has roots going back thousands of years? How many different variants of demonology existed in the clerical thinking of the age?

As a highly accomplished source analysis within microhistory, The Exorcist of Sombor will be of great interest to early modern historians, anthropologists and culture researchers interested in microhistory and themes such as religion, magic, occultism and witchcraft.

1 Splinters of a biography

The life story of Petrus/Rochus Szmendrovich (1727–1782)

First fragment: “Patria mea”

The protagonist of this book came to see the light of day in one of the houses of the village referred to in contemporary sources as Nagymlaka (Croatian Velika Mlaka) near Zagreb in a region called Túrmező in Hungarian and Turopolje in Croatian. Even decades later the village only had some 50 houses, so in the 1720s there must have been even fewer homes. Lacking a parish of its own, the community belonged in terms of clerical administration to nearby Odra. As a result, they also lacked the right to keep their own registry, therefore children born at Velika Mlaka were registered at the parish of Odra. Since the earliest registers from Odra have been lost, and today we can only access those from after 1780, the exact month and day of birth of the member of the Szmendrovich family we are interested in remains an insoluble mystery.¹ Luckily, we have data from after 1758 which allow us to identify with relative precision at least the year of his birth. Based on all of these the most likely seems to be 1727.²

The broader environment in which Petrus Szmendrovich – or, as he was referred to in his mother tongue, Petar Szmendrovich – was born was the region of Turopolje, a part of continental Croatia with ancient roots and a distinguished legal status. Sometimes referred to in historical sources as “the fields of Zagreb” (campus Zagrabiensis), but more widely known as “campus Turopoljensis” (earlier “Turovo polje”), it lies directly South of Zagreb. Turopolje became famous in historical literature mostly for its special legal status as an independent district of nobility which had existed since the later Middle Ages.³ Living as serfs of the castle of Zagreb in the early thirteenth century, the people of Turopolje had received the rank of royal servant from Béla IV and managed to retain their independence as a community of lesser nobility (universitas/communitas nobilium campi Zagrabiensis). For centuries they lived their lives under the leadership of their own elected land agent (ispán, comes terrestris). Their privileges and customary rights were first sanctified by Ladislaus IV in 1279, to be reinforced at the end of the Middle Ages by King Matthias and Louis II. At the end of the fifteenth century the castle of Lukavec was built here, which counted as an important fortification in the country’s war of defence against the Ottoman Empire. Members of the noble community of Turopolje themselves liked to refer in the eighteenth century to the community statute which was confirmed by King Rudolf in 1582 and later by a whole succession of his heirs. The foundations to this were laid by the common legislative rulings of the noble families themselves. Members of the autonomous community had exclusive rights with regard to the inheritance of the lands on their territory. In 1737 they received a common coat of arms and a seal equivalent to that of a locus credibilis from King Charles III (VI).⁴

In the eighteenth century, the nobility of Turopolje occupied fewer than a score of villages. These were usually small settlements with just a few inhabitants. According to a house census of 1773, which included the numbers of the homes of nobility and serfs alike, they counted fewer than 500 (489) houses over a total of 18 villages. The largest village at this time was Kurilovec⁵ with its 75 houses, followed by “Alsó Lomnicza”⁶ with 54 houses and Velika Mlaka, also with 54 houses. There were eight villages with fewer than 20 houses registered. Later the centre, at this time Velika Gorica (in Hungarian: Nagygorica), had only 13 houses.⁷

The annual assembly of the noble community of Turopolje elected not only their land agent (comes terrestris) but several other officials, too. The offices of the assessors and judges of the district court lasted for life. Besides them there was a deputy land agent, notaries, prosecutors, a captain, a cashier, an archivist, an auditor and, by the nineteenth century, a civil engineer, an official doctor and a “courage commissioner” working in the service of the offices and population of the district.⁸

Nevertheless, most of the population of Turopolje consisted of the lower nobility who lived partly as descendants of the families of former castle serfs, and partly pursued the modest, non-affluent, peasant-like everyday life of the armorial nobility, that had recently entered the community. Another significant factor in this society was constituted by the serfs, whose numbers varied from village to village but who were certainly in a minority position.⁹ Few families had more than one serf at any one time. In Turopolje as elsewhere, in the eighteenth century the ownership structure of communities which included the minor nobility was characterized by fragmentation of the estates and early impoverishment. While grain production played a relatively small part here, the main emphasis was on stock-keeping, with the woods and pastures that were common land being the main terrain for the activity. When the nobility of Turopolje wrote a letter to the Regency Council of Pressburg¹⁰ in a matter related to certain funds, they devoted an uncommonly long passage to the problems of extensive stock-breeding, which took place outdoors from spring till autumn. All of this was discussed, by the way, on account of the male children who worked as shepherds and were therefore neglecting school. This reveals that certain villages only rarely employed a community shepherd; instead, the male members of families shepherded their own animals in the woods and fields nearby. This kind of work requires the help of boys just at the end of childhood.¹¹ Another description coming from over a century later sheds even more light on the utilization of forests used by the community.¹²

The pride of nobility, however, prevented them from giving up certain customs, even in the face of the most hopeless financial hardship. An ethnographic description of the population of the district from the end of the nineteenth century, however general and simplistic, will shed light on some of these aspects:

The people of Turopolje are proud of their ancient nobility and faithfully guard the memory of their forebears and their heroic struggles. In other respects they live a rural life, are frank and honourable. The older generations are highly conservative, while the young people are more receptive to the spirit of the age. Besides their ancient rights they likewise preserved their ancient customs and mores. The men are tall and muscular, one could fairly term them a fine race; the women are mostly blonde with blue eyes. The have a predilection for white clothing with red embroidery and for strings of red corals. The men like multi-coloured leather waistcoats, and in summer they wear home-made straw hats in yellow or green. They build their houses out of oak wood, often two stories high, there are even some wooden churches, remarkable for the curious windows characteristic of Turkish bazaars, windows which open downwards and offer a comfortable view into these tiny churches which house but a handful of people. Community housing is still a custom here – on occasion one finds 150 people living together.¹³

The Southern Slavic extended family (zadruga) survived in this area right into the twentieth century. Similarly resistant were certain remnants of wooden-beam house walls, exposed to the photographer to this day, for instance in the streets of Velika Mlaka. Velika Mlaka lies to the right of the highway to Zagreb which cuts right through the Turopolje region. Although never a regional centre, it has been seen as a place of some significance ever since the Middle Ages and its existence has been continuous. Its chapel was built in the first half of the seventeenth century and dedicated to St. Barbara.¹⁴ Built entirely out of wood, the building is the most important historical relic of Velika Mlaka today and, at the same time, one of the finest intact baroque painted wooden churches in Croatia. The church gained its present shape through a course of conversions and expansions. In the interior the colourful painted wooden panels which embellish the walls and the ceiling also increased in number through many stages, until today they quite impress the visitor upon entering. The winged altar of the chapel, for instance, certainly dates back to the seventeenth century, while one of the most famous side wall paintings and one which is most exciting from a cultural historical point of view, the representation of St. Kümmernis (Wilgefortis), goes back to the mid-eighteenth century.¹⁵ Although the existence of the chapel had already been mentioned during a seventeenth-century clerical visit,¹⁶ the rather brief minutes of the visitation to Odra written in 1726 make not a single mention of this filial and its church. We do, however, find out that the parish vicar of Odra at this time was one Stephanus Zorinich, who was probably the man who baptised little Petar.¹⁷ The chapel of Mlaka was described during the visit of 1768. The church, built entirely out of wood, was in relatively good condition at this time, only the roof wanting some repair. With regard to the past of the chapel, practically nothing was known – “who had it built is unknown” (“nescitur a quo erecta est”).¹⁸ Sadly, the minutes are also somewhat laconic concerning the believers, the village and its population. The parish priest of the village had been Matthaeus Bassarovich for 34 years by this time and he remained so for a record length of time – practically till the end of his life. He fulfilled the pastoral duties at Odra and its filial between 1734 and 1780.¹⁹ He lived an uncommonly long and active life compared to most priests – in 1768 he was already 75; 12 years later, when he died, he was seen as a veritable Methuselah. The literature on local history seems sure that the further development of St. Barbara’s chapel at Mlaka and the increase in the number of paintings inside it all took place during his time as par...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Splinters of a biography: The life story of Petrus/Rochus Szmendrovich (1727–1782)
• 2 Three years – one story (Sombor, 1766–1769)
• 3 A town on the boundary between Western and Eastern Christianity: Religious and ethnic plurality at Sombor in the eighteenth century
• 4 Clerical history from beneath: Considerations of a monastic order and a diocese in the background of a conflict
• 5 The friar who heals
• 6 Demonology and possession
• 7 Father Rochus, the exorcist
• 8 The background of a conflict: The Catholic Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Hungary
• 9 The humblest servant: Subjective impressions about the reflection of an eighteenth-century priest’s personality
• 10 Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index