An anointing jar was found six years ago in the area of the former Tamás castle. A bronze vessel left over from the Middle Ages is the artifact of the month of April in the Wosinsky Mór Museum. About a rare find in the country, Dr. Archaeologist András K. Németh prepared a summary, which is quoted below.
We know two similar objects
The jar is a fragment of a vessel made of three sharpened, cylindrical compartments, cast into one, roughly half of one compartment is missing. At the junction of the cylinders, a vertical, slightly protruding rib runs between them. From the upper part of one of the cylinders, two oblique extensions with horizontal holes at the top emerge, which originally surrounded the hinged strap of the lid’s lugs. On the opposite side, between the two cylindrical parts, under the rim, there is a protruding member with a curved closure, on which the lid was once closed. Based on the surviving, similar specimens, the vessel was originally covered with a three-lobed, hinged lid, on the inner half of which the Latin initials of the names of the various sacraments were engraved.
The object is a liturgical vessel for storing consecrated anointing – a mixture of oil and chrism, i.e. oil and balm. Of the seven sacraments, anointings were used during baptism, confirmation, the sacrament of the sick, and receiving church orders, which were consecrated by the bishops on Maundy Thursday.
– As far as I know, only one similar subject has been published in Hungary so far – said Dr. András K. Németh. – The anointing container from an unknown site, dated to the fifteenth century, came to the Hungarian National Museum from the former Delhaes collection. The development of this is simpler than the Tamás copy, it lacks the ribs between the cylindrical compartments. We also know of another, as yet unpublished piece, which was found in the area of Kisoroszi, perhaps in the surroundings of a destroyed medieval monastery.
Once there was an excavation at the castle
Since the anointing vessel is a characteristic accessory of the Roman Catholic liturgy, the emergence of similar objects would be expected primarily in the surroundings of church buildings. That is why it is somewhat surprising that the specimen presented here was found in the area of the medieval castle in Tamás. The castle was probably built in the 13th century, but it was first mentioned in a written source only in 1315. From 1339 it was given to the sons of János Kőszegi, the descendants of one of whom now owned it under the name of Tamási until 1444.
After the extinction of the Tamásias, it belonged to the Hédervárias, then to István Werbőczi, and from 1545 to 1686 it was in Turkish hands. Its remains were blown up in 1776 to recycle its building material. Little is known about the castle, since there was only one day-long excavation in its territory in 1934, and only one newspaper article reports on it. In recent years, in the framework of community archeological research, instrumental finds have been discovered in the castle on numerous occasions, primarily with the participation of Miklós Kántor and Lajos Sándor. The object was found by the latter researcher in the moat of the castle in 2018.
Although it is conceivable that there was a chapel in the castle, where a similar object could have been placed, no written information has survived. According to a 19th-century record, a bell fragment weighing nearly 10 kilograms was also found when the castle was demolished. This may also point to the existence of a chapel, unless both objects came to the castle secondarily, as raw materials for smelting or as booty – mostly during the Turkish subjugation.
