The Place of Remembrance and Its National Character at a Franciscan Shrine – The Example of Csíksomlyó

Csíksomlyó (Șumuleu Ciuc), Romania, has been the home of a Franciscan monastic community for some six hundred years, and the community has been a noted pilgrimage destination since at least the mid-17th century, centered around the miraculous statue of the Virgin Mary. The most important festive day is the Saturday before Whit Sunday. The present paper examines the way in which it is transforming into a place of remembrance in the sense in which the concept was introduced by Pierre Nora. In the first section I describe the location ( locus ) itself – at once a monastic community, an administrative unit, a cultural center, a traditional votive procession venue and a modern-day pilgrimage destination, as well as a source of inspiration for a whole series of texts. The second section is a concise summary of the depositories of these memories ( memoriae ) such as the votive church, Mary's statue, cultic objects and emblems, as well as the history of the origin of the shrine and its powerful symbolic force. Section three goes somewhat further and explores the way in which Csíksomlyó had become a place of national remembrance ( locus memoriae nationalis ). The concept of the national shrine also has a clerical legal meaning, but in this case we are talking about something else: religious traditions receive a national tint due to the versatile use of their symbols and expressions of national identity become sacralized. The rich and complex phenomenon of a festivity attracting several hundred thousand visitors may be interpreted within the conceptual framework of the ritual community . This concept captures a pre-modern social and mental condition in which the foundations of a community are outlined not by national or kinship dividing lines, nor by power spheres (states), but rituals which are interpreted as going even beyond creeds and denominations and which have the power to shape the lifestyle, social mores and everyday customs and habits of communities and individuals. During Whitsun, participants arriving from every point of the Hungarian-speaking territories come with the wish not merely to profit from an experience community in the social-psychological sense – they also attach themselves, as it were, to the pre-existing traditional ritual community of the Catholic Székely population. National sentiment, now subject to “marketisation processes”, becomes a commodity.