Written sources indicate that burials inside churches and
within the churchyard enjoyed a special status throughout the
Szekler region. For both Catholics and Protestants, burials
in the church, mainly around the communion table, had a
particular status linked to the belief that the chances for
resurrection on the day of the Last Judgement were higher for
those who were closer to the saints, to the sanctuary.
Nobles, donors and benefactors of the church as well as
clergymen would normally be buried there. However, the church
allowed every social category to have a grave in the church
against a certain amount of money.
Burials in the church and in the churchyard were regulated by
several ecclesiastic decrees that were disregarded most of
the times. The austerity measures in the church protocols
give us some information about those situations. In the
Middle Ages the church was packed with graves, which, at the
beginning of the early modern period, led to decisions to
confine burials to the church crypt alone. However, the
ecclesiastical regulations did not have the expected results
of moving the cemetery outside the inhabited space. At the
end of the 18th century, at the initiative of the secular
authorities, began an evacuation process on sanitary
considerations that ended only at the end of the 19th century
and during which cemeteries were moved from inside the church
to the churchyard
