Máriapócs is a small town in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, in the Northern Great Plain region of eastern Hungary. It lies near Nyíregyháza. It is an important place for pilgrimage. It has a Byzantine Catholic church, which houses the Weeping Madonna, an enormous ornate iconostasis that now takes pride of place above the altar. This icon is not the original, but an 18th-century copy. The original one is kept in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna. The History of Máriapócs Before the end of the seventeenth century Pócs only received mention in the written sources a few times. The first reference was in a document from 1280 that mentions a place called “Polch,” over which the members of the Hont-Pazmány family were disputing. During the fourteenth century, the Gutkeled family purchased Pouch, or Powch. Later, the Bathory family acquired the village, and it became a part of the Ecsed property. While the population was Hungarian during the Middle Ages, beginning with the middle of the seventeenth century a portion of the Ruthenians, spreading South from the Northeastern counties, such as Zemplén, Sáros, Ung, also settled at Pócs. By the end of the century, the Ruthenians constituted the majority. This fundamentally changed the ratio of the denominations in the town, and from that point on, the Byzantine Catholics became the majority. In addition to them, Latin Catholics and smaller numbers of Reformed and Lutherans also live in the settlement. Pócs acquired a national and international reputation in 1696. During the Sunday Liturgy on 4 November in the wooden church of the Byzantine Catholics, a peasant named Mihály Eöry noticed that tears flowed from the eyes of the Icon of the Theotokos on the iconostasis. He drew the attention of Cantor János Molnár and then the rest of those present to the extraordinary sight. The weeping continued with varying intensity until 8 December and then stopped. The news of the inexplicable phenomenon soon spread beyond the village to the neighboring settlements. The imperial general stationed at the town of Kálló, which was near to Pócs and served as the center of local administration, Count Johannes Andreas Corbelli rode out, accompanied by his officers, to Pócs in order to see the Weeping Mary icon. Taking the painting into his own hands and carefully examining it, he became personally convinced that there was no fraud, as the tears also fell copiously from the eyes of the Mother