A Collection of Prayers with Hymns of 1641, Debrecen (Early Hungarian Prints 1874)

Abstract

This analytical study detects some of the thus far unclarified connections between similar types of old Hungarian prayers, and adds a suggestion on how to index them, since it is missing from the most important bibliographies like the Early Hungarian Prints (RMNy), volume III. The main problem is that prayers haven’t got a characteristic first line (incipit) similar to hymns, on the contrary, these are very often indicated by generalized initiating words such as ‘O my God’, ‘Eternal Father’, and so on. Many of them have a general inscription of nothing more, than another, i. e. prayer of the same type or custom. On the other hand, unaltered texts have different titles or inscriptions. The book type analysed in this study contains topics or one or more prayers in every section, in total 109, each piece is followed by one or more old Hungarian hymns. Nicean, Athanasian Creed and the Te Deum laudamus are considered as prayers. No authors or editors are named. However, dialectal versions of words and orthographic rules in Debrecen during the period in question are outstanding features in this edition, so the circle of the unknown authors and the possible collectors and editors can be narrowed down to this time, i. e. the 17th century.
Twenty prayers are taken from Bullinger’s Collection of Prayers, translated into Hungarian by Albert Szenci Molnár (1621). Other prayers had been published in the 16th century, survived in manuscript song collections or appeared decades later in liturgical books or Bible editions, like the one published by Miklós Tótfalusi (1685).
Further investigations have to clarify the connections between the unwritten and the written tradition and dispersion of prayers in the daily use of the community, and in the Reformed worship services in the 16th and 17th century Hungary.