The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

Narrations in Literature and in Writing History

Hedvig Bubno (Károli Reformierte Universität Budapest)
The culture, which makes the bonding. Thoughts on the universality of Saint Elisabeth of the House of Árpád in connection with a 14th century Spanish hymn

The cult of Saint Elisabeth was broadly followed in that age: How did the Hungarian princess become an important actor of political interests first and then, due to her innocent and immaculate life, the model of the Christian Europe.

According to the spirit of her age the most important value was to be a model. Different levels of being a model could have been observed in her life. Due to her heritage being the offspring of a famous dynasty, through her deeds she was constantly in the very focus of attention. As a consequence of exercising noble virtues, among them social activities-supporting, practising charity, she got in contact with a wide circle of the society. Her activities, deeds reflected the actual needs of her age. Because of her voluntarily taken poverty and her unconditional devotedness to Christ she has become the true model of the newly emerging ways of religiousness.

The impact of honouring the saint: The main objective of honouring Saints is to create the unity with God, i.e. joining the Heavenly and the Earthly. As a consequence of it Saints - as well as God - deserve the best quality from music, literature and poetry. The flourishing cult of different Saints - due to the intention to get closer to completeness - was an important motivating factor of education of arts. The sequences, biographies and hymns created originally because of liturgical purposes could mediate the values and virtues embodied in Saint Elisabeth from the grounds of Christian Universality, thus ensuring that her cult proved to be sustainable for centuries.

The detailed description of the Spanish Hymn would provide us with the opportunity to highlight the substantial values, symbols and ideas of that period, which connected us and which contributed to the creation of a universal European culture.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES