The Role of Pilgrimage in Granting of MarketTown Status to the Village of Máriapócs

Abstract

The icon of the Mother of God in the Greek Catholic wooden church in the village of Pócs in northeastern Hungary was seen weeping in November 1696. News of the miracle spread quickly, and the icon was transported to Vienna the following year at the request of Emperor King Leopold I (the icon is now located in St. Stephen's Cathedral). Nonetheless, Pócs also became a pilgrimage site (now Máriapócs), as confirmed by the fact that a copy of the icon sent here around 1707 also wept in the summer of 1715. Between 1731 and 1757, a spacious Baroque pilgrimage church was built on the site of the former wooden church; the Greek Catholic Bishop of Munkács founded a monastery in 1749 and entrusted the care of the shrine to monks of the Order of St. Basil the Great. From the 1720s onwards, the Roman popes authorised various pilgrimages, mostly linked to the feast of the Virgin Mary, for both Roman and Greek Catholic worshippers. These indulgencies increased the intensity of pilgrimages. Fairs were also held in connection with the pilgrimages, and in 1816 the village was granted the privileged status of a market town by the emperor-king. As there were several towns in the vicinity of Máriapócs, the village clearly owed this urban privilege to its status as a site for the shrine and the economic potential of the pilgrimages. Until the mid-nineteenth century, the monastery was also an important centre of Greek Catholic education. Although Máriapócs lost its urban status in 1872, it regained it in 1993 thanks to its status as a shrine, and for many years it was the smallest town in Hungary.