Pauline Guide

With a new title, in a revised, enhanced edition, we publish the guide to the cultural history exhibition entitled Paulines, Our White Friends, co-organized by the National Széchényi Library and the Hungarian Pauline Order in 2014–2015. The publication is new, but its purpose is the same: to revive the history of the Paulines, which even though closely intertwined with Hungarian history and culture, is now somewhat forgotten.

The volume also selects from the results of literary and ecclesiastical history and archaeological research of the recent decades, thus creating a chronological and interdisciplinary medium for learning about the Pauline Order. Richly decorated with images and digital copies, the publication also presents a number of rarely published documents and works of art without claiming completeness. The work, which can also be used as a handbook and as a popular publication to help orientation, has preserved the structure and visual elements of the previous volume, but the second edition has also been enriched with new content, images and supplements. After the first edition being published, the Pauline Order was declared hungarikum in 2017, recognizing the significant role of the Paulines as the only Hungarian-founded male monastic order in historical, cultural, intellectual and spiritual life.

The Pauline Order was founded by Blessed Eusebius of Esztergom in the mid-12th century based on the traditional lifestyle of hermits. In parallel with the Hungarian historical eras and events, the flourishing and declining order and its schools were dissolved by the decree of Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor in 1786, ending their operation in Hungary for one hundred and fifty years. Finally, it was not until 1934 that the monks, called White Friends, came home. The communist power banned the operation of the Hungarian Pauline Order again in 1950, but the secret monastic tradition continued up until 1989 to allow the old order of Saint Paul the Hermit in Hungary to resume in four locations.

The publication was edited by the curators of the exhibition, Annamária Sudár and Gábor Sarbak.