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Az Erdélyi Református Egyházkerület gyülekezeteire vonatkozó 17–18. századi levéltári források kiadása 2005-től a fennmaradt korabeli tárgyak bemutatásával bővült ki. Ez a körülmény kiváló lehetőség az egyházközségek tulajdonában lévő, néhol feledésbe merült, használaton kívül rekedt textíliák feltérképezésére is. A kutatás kiterjed a források és a fennmaradt emlékanyag összevetésére is, ami a tárgyak újfajta megközelítését teszi lehetővé: sor kerül a textíliák gyülekezetben betöltött szerepének vizsgálatára, és az ennek függvényében kialakult megnevezéseik, jellemzőik meghatározására is. Jelen tanulmány a történelmi Küküllői Református Egyházmegye 1676-ban induló vegyes protokollumában szereplő, a gyülekezetek 1676-os jövedelemés vagyonösszeírásainak textíliákra vonatkozó adatait szeretné értelmezni.

Hymnology in the 16–17th Century Reformed Church of Transylvania. The religious experience, the belief in God and in God’s power has always influenced the society. The 16th century’s reformation defined and still defines Europe’s and the world’s social, religious, political and economical aspect. There were radical changes on the fields of theology, literature, liturgy, in religious songs, printing, school system, and syllabus within it. The new teaching of the reformers needed a new form of worship which preserved some of the old elements, formed, recreated them according to his needs. This way the religious hymn in stanzas was born in people’s native language, so as the metrical psalms in native language and humanist metrical folk songs. Their Hungarian origins are the historical songs of the previous century, songs translated by Luther as German origin and the psalms propagated by Kálvin as French protestant source. The graduals of course (In Transylvania mainly the Öreg Graduál) transmitted the structure of the ancient liturgy but neglecting the non biblical thesis (e.g. the hymns of the saints). There were other influences in smaller extent such as the songs of the Morvian brothers and the creations of Unitarian authors. The new form of worship took over from the graduals the medieval hymns, antiphones, sequences and psalms. On the pattern of the historical songs the first biblical histories were written in the time of reformation. The majority of these deal with Old Testament themes, but we can find some stories of the apocryphal books. The best known authors are: Tinódi Lantos Sebestyén, Gosárvári Mátyás, Valkai András, Temesvári János, Temesvári István, Nagybánkai Mátyás, Görcsönyi Ambrus, Tőke Ferenc, Csanádi Demeter, Salánki György, Tardi György, Sztárai Mihály, Mádai Mihály, Szegedi András, Ilosvai Selymes Péter, Hunyadi Ferenc, and others. Their works were published in Kolozsvár and Debrecen in the publishing houses of Heltai, Hofgreff and Komlósi. The collections of historical songs published in the 16th century are: a Hoffgreff Cancionale, Cronica by Tinódi and Cancionale of Heltai. Besides the graduals the folk songs in native language became organic part of the worship. They are even more oftenly used at the influence of the puritan movement from the second half of the 16th century. In the hymnbooks of the time there are translated songs but original Hungarian works as well. The most significant songs were published in the hymnbook of Gálszécsi István, in the Hymnbook from Várad, and later in the Hymnbook form Debrecen. The nearly 40 publishing of this latter hymnbook defined the songrepertory of the Hungarian protestant churches of 16th and 17th century.

Textiles from the 18th Century at the Reformatted Congregations of Déva and Hátszeg. The two chosen congregations can be found in towns of the historical HunyadZarand region. Among the characteristics of this Transylvanian area is that it lost a major Hungarian population during the last centuries. Reformatted congregations died out so many historical and cultural monuments and objects were also lost in time. The congregations of Deva and Hatszeg have a specific character. In the last century many objects were moved here, on purpose to save them, from the surrounding churches, where no reformatted lived anymore. Unfortunately only a few textiles survived till our days: at Deva – two pieces, at Hatszeg – three pieces. One of them was donated to Deva, and one to Hatszeg, as we can read from the inscriptions on the textiles, telling us also by whom and when they became property of the congregation. From earlier documents can we localize another in scripted (the name of the donator and date) piece to Nagypesteny, now found at Hatszeg. But in case of two textiles we have no information about their origin. All five textiles, having a white cross fabric material of flax or cotton, were embroidered with colored silk and metallic threads, showing mostly floral patterns. The present study / article presents in detail these embroideries which are specific artifacts of the 18th century Transylvania.