Goals

The village of Leles with close co-operation with the Tas archery club would like to establish traditional activities, revive the cultural and historical message of the community, ensure its regular functioning and to pass it on to the future generations. These aims would be achieved in the following way:

Creating an Archeopark

In this archeopark would be placed a memorial for the Árpádian dynasty and Andrew II., which would revive the historical message of the community, to organize traditional activities, various conferences, to show the life of the people of the past ages, their spiritual life, beliefs and their values of life.

For this our devices would be:

- buy a yurt with full equipment

- buy a war tent with full equipment

- organize Traditional fairs, craft shows, camps, archery range and full equipment.

To organize with the Ukraine and Hungarian partners an international child camping.

To ensure the operation of the Tas archery club, build an archery range where we could organize county-level archery competitions. Only from the east Kassa (Košice) regions the numbers of competitors are around 40 people.

Support the archery club’s ambitions, to create with the local archery clubs so called Brotherhood of Zemplénian archers, which would bind the old Zemplénian county archers together without any boarders.

In our future plans are also:

Continue the cooperation with the Kisrozvágyian BODREMKA foundation and to successfully set up an Andrew II. statue.

With the help of the Karosi Turul traditional group take part in the National Gallop to show the world Leles is still alive and their citizens are aware of its historical importance. Not to mention that outside the Pannonhalma places there is only the Lelesian monastery, which is still standing.

Introduction of Leles

Its name comes from the ancient personal name Lelu. Some sources are introducing it as the village of the Holy Spirit, and its name comes from the words lél or lélek (soul). Leles belongs to the oldest ang largest settlements in the Bodrogköz.

According to archaeological records, its area has been inhabited since the Stone Age. First written records are from 1132 king Béla II. era. Bishop Boleszló of Vác founded the Premonstratensian provostship in 1180. The monastery is from the 13^th century to 1567 the place, where a lot of important certificates were written. In 1241 it was destroyed by the Mongols, but it was soon rebuilt and continued in its important role. In the beginning of the 16^th century the monastery was robbed out an since then it was strengthened like a fortress. Until the end of the First World War it belonged to the Jászó prepostery. The Premonstrarensians valuable archives, which contained more than a century old documents, were often replaced to other places. Rákóczi Ferenc II.  took them to Munkács, then Joseph II. in 1802 to Buda. A part of the documents were placed to Jászó.

Petőfi visited this region in 1847. The poet wrote about this place as very good ‘’pig fattening place’’ aiming on, how good you can eat in the vicarage.

The number of inhabitants of Leles is approximately 1870 mostly with Hungarian nationality. It has several shops, doctors surgery, pharmacy, post office, catholic and protestant churches.

Bindings between Leles and the Hungarian Árpád dynasty kings

The leaders of Premonstratensian Order were the secret advisors for the kings of the Árpád dynasty. Also they were spiritual leaders and advisors for economical matters within which the aim was to introduce new agricultural technologies and to extend its usage.
Andrew II. the king of the Hungarian kingdom can be attached with multiple strings to Leles.

From the kings military descriptions we know, that through his military campaign he, with his knights, very often rested here in Leles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_II_of_Hungary

According to the legend when the king was on its campaign to Galicia on 23^th September 1213 his dead wife’s (queen Andechsi-Merán Gertrudis) corpse was kept temporally safe by the Premonstratensian order. The king, to show his gratitude, he donated his dead wife’s heart to the order as a gift. Since then, he became the guardian, patron of the order.

One quarter of the survived, priceless records, donation letters and colourful church chronicles from the Arpádian era (11^th-14^th century) was written in the Premonstratensian Order in Leles, for which the rights to function was granted by Andrew II. in 1214. For this, it became for nearly 800 years the home for the depository of legislature and Hungarian literacy.

A lot of documents are tied to Andrew II. name. After the English Magna Charta (1215) his Golden Bull of 1222 was the second constitutional writing for the early middle age Europe. One of its eight copies was written in Leles.

During the Ottoman expansion only few monuments of the gothic, knight age Hungary had remained. Miraculously Leles belongs to one of these, which is standing proudly between the Latorica-Tice-Bodrog Rivers, sending the message of the kings sacred heritage.

Introduction

The Tas Leles archery club was registered on 10^th September 2009 at the ministry of interior as civic association, whose aim is to extend the traditions and culture of archery. One of the main goals of the founding members, besides creating sporting possibilities is, to strengthen the relations and friendship between the citizens of Leles. For this, archery gives the best possibility, because you can start at any age and you can reach very good achievements even as junior or as senior. The clubs first steps were made with the help of Urbán László, local entrepreneur, which we used to buy the basic equipments and he is still one of our main supporter. Praiseworthy is the mayors and the councils attitude, thanks to which we can be proud for our 3D targets. We are regular participants of the regions other archery competitions, where our warriors gain honourable victories. Compared to the fact, that we are a young association, our results are showing something else. We have only few gold medals, but we have far than more silver and bronze medals.  We are in contact with the archers of the Hungarian Keleti Gyepű and we also participated on their competitions where we were not ashamed. Last but not least, with our friends we have the intuition to create a so called Brotherhood of Zemplénian archers, which would bind the old Zemplénian county archers together without any boarders.