Boldogasszony

A sheet hangs from the roof beam of a one-room house on the Hungarian plain, closing off one corner. Behind it the light is dim and the air is warm and smells of milk. A woman lies there with a child a few days old. She will not come out, and no stranger will be let in, until the day she walks to church to be blessed. The village has a name for the corner she is lying in. It is Boldogasszony ágya, the Blessed Lady’s bed.

Boldogasszony means the Blessed Lady, or the Happy Lady, since the Hungarian word boldog covers both. For close to a thousand years it has been the Hungarian name for the Virgin Mary. Hungarians rarely called her Mária in prayer. They called her the Lady.

The oldest story about the name comes from the legend of Saint Gerard, an Italian monk who became bishop of Csanád under Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary. The legend says it was on Gerard’s advice that the Hungarians took to calling the mother of Christ simply the Lady, and that the king called his realm her household. The feast of her Assumption, on 15 August, became the Day of the Lady.

Stephen died on that day in 1038. His only son was already dead. The story told afterwards is that the old king, on his deathbed, raised his hand and gave his crown and his country to the Virgin, because he had no one else to leave them to. From that hour Hungary was her kingdom. Later painters showed her wearing the Holy Crown itself, the child on her arm, as queen of the country.

So far this is a Christian story. The other one is younger.

In 1885 a village priest named Lajos Kálmány published a paper with a bold title: Boldogasszony, the goddess of our ancient religion. Kálmány had spent years collecting beliefs from farm women around Szeged. He argued that the name was older than the Church. In his reading the pagan Magyars had worshipped a great mother who watched over birth, and Gerard, a practical man, had told his missionaries to give her name to Mary so that the people would keep praying without noticing the change. Arnold Ipolyi had pointed the same way in his Hungarian mythology of 1854. Later folklorists, Sándor Bálint among them, took the idea up, and it is now what most Hungarians have heard.

The evidence is thin. No text from before the conversion names her. The Gerard legend says the Hungarians called Mary the Lady. It does not say there was a goddess. The linguist Károly Mollay argued that boldog asszony is a plain translation of the Church’s own Latin, beata domina. The whole pagan goddess rests on customs written down eight hundred years after the conversion.

The customs are real, though, and they are strange enough to see why Kálmány thought as he did. His farm women did not speak of one Blessed Lady. They spoke of seven. The greatest, Nagyboldogasszony, was the mother, and many of them said she was Saint Anne. The Little Lady, Kisasszony, was her daughter Mary. A woman who wanted a child fasted for nine Tuesdays in the Great Lady’s honour, and a pregnant woman did the same for a safe delivery. Tuesday was her day. Nobody washed clothes on a Tuesday. The Lady of Tuesday punished it.

The folklorist Lajos Katona answered this in 1905, and he did it with a book. Latin legends of Saint Anne, copied into Hungarian manuscripts in the early 1500s, say that Anne was born on a Tuesday, bore Mary on a Tuesday and died on a Tuesday. All over Catholic Europe, Tuesday was Anne’s day. The nine Tuesdays were late medieval church piety, he said, and had nothing pagan in them.

The Church’s calendar has seven Blessed Ladies too, and they follow the fields. On 2 February, the Candle-Blessing Lady, wax candles are carried to church in the cold and brought home to burn in storms and at deathbeds. On 25 March, the Fruit-Grafting Lady, the feast of the Annunciation, trees are grafted. On 2 July, the Sickle Lady, the wheat harvest begins. The Lady of the Angels and the Lady of the Snows fall on 2 and 5 August. The Great Lady is 15 August and the Little Lady, Mary’s birthday, is 8 September. January was once called the Blessed Lady’s month. A hymn from the early 1700s, Boldogasszony Anyánk, Blessed Lady our Mother, served as the country’s anthem before it had an official one.

What she can do, in the belief of the people who called on her, is narrow and deep. She gives children to the childless. She brings a woman alive through labour. She guards the mother and the unbaptised child in the curtained bed, the weeks when both are weakest. And she holds the country, which was given to her and has not been given to anyone since.

Her limits are the limits of the record. She has no story of her own. No tale tells where she came from, who her husband was or what she did before the bishops arrived. Take away Mary and Anne and there are no myths left, only a name, a bed, a day of the week and a paper from 1885. A goddess may be standing behind them. Nobody has been able to show it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Boldogasszony?

Boldogasszony, meaning Blessed Lady, is the traditional Hungarian name for the Virgin Mary as patron of mothers, childbirth and Hungary itself. Since 1885 some scholars have also argued that Boldogasszony was first a mother goddess of the pagan Magyars. No text from before the conversion to Christianity names such a goddess.

Was Boldogasszony a pagan Hungarian goddess?

The idea that Boldogasszony was a pagan goddess comes from the priest and folklorist Lajos Kálmány, who published it in 1885, building on Arnold Ipolyi’s work of 1854. It rests on folk customs recorded many centuries after the conversion. Critics such as Károly Mollay and Lajos Katona argued that the name and the customs come from medieval Christianity.

What is Boldogasszony’s bed?

Boldogasszony ágya, the Blessed Lady’s bed, is the Hungarian folk name for the bed a woman lay in after giving birth. It was curtained off with a sheet, and the mother stayed in it with her child until she went to church to be blessed.

Why is Tuesday the day of Boldogasszony?

Hungarian women fasted for nine Tuesdays to ask the Great Blessed Lady for a child or a safe birth, and they did no washing on Tuesdays. Many identified the Great Blessed Lady with Saint Anne. Lajos Katona showed in 1905 that medieval legends say Saint Anne was born, gave birth to Mary and died on a Tuesday.

What are the seven feasts of Boldogasszony?

The seven feasts of Boldogasszony are the Candle-Blessing Lady on 2 February, the Fruit-Grafting Lady on 25 March, the Sickle Lady on 2 July, the Lady of the Angels on 2 August, the Lady of the Snows on 5 August, the Great Lady on 15 August and the Little Lady on 8 September. Several are tied to farm work, such as grafting trees and starting the harvest.

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