Upcoming events in Budapest

The following events will no doubt be of interest to medieval art historians in Budapest.

November 18 (Thursday): Open debate and defense of the doctoral dissertation of Imre Takács at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is to become a Doctor of the Hungarian Academy (a much higher level than a PhD, see here). His dissertation is titled: Reception of Gothic in the Kingdom of Hungary at the time of King Andrew II (1205-1235). Imre Takács is the director of the Museum of Applied Arts. More info on the website of the Academy.

November 24 (Wednesday): Dedication of a room at the Art History Department at ELTE named after Lajos Fülep, Hungary's great art historian. Also, the presentation of the annual prizes awarded by the Department. For more info, see here.

November 25 (Thursday): Presentation of two books published by the László Teleki Foundation. I wrote on both books here before: one is by Márton Sarkadi about Gyulafehérvár cathedral, the other was edited by Tibor Kollár on medieval architecture in southern Hungary. The books will be presented by Ernő Marosi, Szilárd Papp, and Judit Tamási, see here.

Menawhile, the Natalie Zimon Davies Annual lectures are still going on at the Medieval Studies Department of CEU.

New medieval history books from CEU Press

Ever since the Department of Medieval Studies has been established at the Central European University (Budapest) in the early 1990s, CEU Press has been publishing a number of important books on medieval subjects. Most of these books are dedicated to the medieval history of East Central Europe. The series of Central European Medieval Texts made important primary sources from this region available in English translation. CEU Medievalia, on the other hand, is a series largely dedicated to publications by members of the Department. A couple of new books have recently been published in these two series.


The latest book is dedicated to one of the founders of the Department, Gábor Klaniczay:


Promoting the Saints Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period. Essays in Honor of Gábor Klaniczay for His 60th Birthday. Eds. Ottó Gecser, József Laszlovszky, Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, Katalin Szende (CEU Medievalia - CEU Press, 2010). For the contents, click here.

Another new volume, the 13th in the CEU Medievalia series is a monograph on a long-neglected subject: Zsolt Hunyadi: The Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, c. 1150–1387  (CEU Press, 2010). For more information, click here.

The fifth volume in the Central European Medieval Texts Series has also just been published: Anonymus and Master Roger [Central European Medieval Texts Series Volume V]. Ed. János M. Bak, Martyn Rady, László Veszprémy (CEU Press, 2010). For more information on the book and the series, click here.

This book, along with János Bak's collected studies (János M. Bak: Studying Medieval Rulers and Their Subjects: Central Europe and Beyond (Variorum Collected Studies Series). Ed. Balázs Nagy, Gábor Klaniczay. Ashgate, 2010) will be presented on November 10 at the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU. For an invitation and the detailed program, click here. For other medieval history books published or distributed by CEU Press, see here.

The CEU Medievalia series and the Central European Medieval Texts Series are both available from Amazon (click on the covers below for more information).

Presentation of new book by Vladimir Goss

On Friday (October 22, 2010), an art history workshop - or a discussion and debate - will be held at Collegium Budapest. The topic will be the new book by Vladimir Goss, titled: Four Centuries of European Art, 800-1200 - A View from Southeast (Četiri stoljeća europske umjetnosti: 800-1200. Pogled s jugoistoka) (Zagreb, Golden Marketing, 2010).

The program is the following:

Xavier Barral i Altet – Presentation of the book

Ernő Marosi and Béla Zsolt Szakács – Critical comments

Vladimir Goss – Responses

Vladimir Goss is a Professor of Art History at the University of Rijeka, he has taught several years in the US (Michigan-Dearborn, Michigan-Ann Arbor, North Carolina - Chapel Hill), among other works, he is author of Early Croatian Architecture (London: Duckworth, 1987) and Pre-Romanesque Architecture in Croatia (Zagreb: Art Studio Azinović, 2006). He was President of the Governing Board of the Institute of Art History, Zagreb (2005 -2007).

Xavier Barral i Altet, Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Rennes, is currently a Fellow at Collegium Budapest; Ernő Marosi, senior researcher, Institute for Art History at the HAS, Professor Emeritus at the Eötvös Loránd University, is a former Fellow at Collegium Budapest; Béla Zsolt Szakács, Associate Professor of Art History at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University and the Dept. of Medieval Studies at the Central European University, is also a former Fellow at Collegium Budapest.

Vladimir Goss is also the main coordinator of the website ROMANIKA.NET. The website is dedicated to the research project The Romanesque between the Sava and the Drava Rivers and European Culture, and contains a wealth of information on the subject.

(Source: Collegium Budapest)

New books on medieval archaeology

Given the tumultuous history of Hungary, archaeology plays a major role in interpreting the medieval heritage of the Kingdom (see my previous post on this). Excavations in this field yielded spectacular results, much of which is now summarized in a new two-volume publication. Titled A középkor és a kora újkor régészete Magyarországon (Archaeology of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in Hungary), and edited by Elek Benkő and Gyöngyi Kovács, the book will be presented to the public tomorrow (October 5). Ernő Marosi, a member of the Hungarian Academy, will present the book.

41 authors wrote the total of 980 pages in these two well-illustrated volumes. The book is in Hungarian, but with English summaries. The volumes were published by the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences You can read about some other publications of the Institute here.

You can read an interview with the editors on the website of the Hungarian Academy and in the online historical journal Múlt-kor (both in Hungarian).

For additional information on this field, you can turn to a book published some years ago. Visy Zsolt, ed.: 

Hungarian archeology at the turn of the millennium (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2003) contains a great number of studies on medieval archaeology, and is available in a pdf version at the website of the Foundation (this is the link to the Hungarian version). See especially the section on the Middle Ages and the Post-Medieval period, edited by József Laszlovszky on pp. 345-413.

1000 years of Gyulafehérvár Cathedral

Western facade of Gyulafehérvár cathedral
Survey by Márton Sarkadi and Tamás Emődi, 1996 

In 1009, King Stephen I decided to create a new bishopric, with jurisdiction over the territory of Transylvania. The seat of the bishopric was established at Gyulafehérvár (Karlsburg, Alba Iulia) and the first cathedral, dedicated to Saint Michael, was erected during the 11th century. The first cathedral was replaced with a much larger Romanesque cathedral, construction of which started at the end of the 12th century, and was for the most part completed before the Mongol invasion of 1241. At that time the town and the church was sacked and burned. Just as soon as repairs were made, the Saxons of nearby Szeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu) sacked the town again in 1277. Two very important contracts dating from 1287 an 1291 detail the repairs undertaken at this time, with the latter date indicating completion of the entire edifice. These dates at the same time also underline the significance of this building: apart from smaller expansion and the addition of chapels, the building as it stands today originates from the 13th century. This makes Gyulafehérvár the only cathedral building to have survived from the Árpád-period - well, in fact, from the Middle Ages at all. (Other cathedral cities - including Esztergom, Kalocsa, Pécs, Veszpém, Győr, Vác, Eger, Várad - were in the territories occupied by the Ottoman Turks. To get an idea of their fate, see my previous post on the destruction of the centers of medieval Hungary).

The main body of the church is that of the Romanesque building, although the western part of the nave was vaulted in the 14th century. The two side apses, opening from the transept, are also from this period, while the original main apse has been replaced with a much longer early Gothic apse, built during the 1270s. Chapels on the north side (Lázói and Várdai chapels) originate from the early 16th century, and the monumental south tower also dates from the Gothic period. The building has suffered more during the last few centuries than it could be summarized here (significant dates of damage include 1438, 1565, 1601, 1603, 1658, 1849) - yet it still stands today and serves as the center of the Hungarian catholic church in Romania.

The building underwent major renovation at the beginning of the 20th century. The work, which was led by István Möller, was not fully completed by 1918, when Gyulafehérvár became part of Romania. More recently, several campaigns of restoration have been carried out during the last fifteen years, in preparation for the millennial celebrations of the bishopric. During this period, a large amount of archaeological and art historical research was carried out, the results of which are now largely published.
In this post, I would like to call attention to these publications.

Architecture in Medieval Southern Hungary

A long-awaited book has finally appeared last week. Dedicated to medieval architecture in the southern part of the Kingdom of Hungary, the book has been in the making for about 10 years. In a sense it is a continuation of a volume focusing on the southern area of the Great Plains, published in 2000.^* Both books were edited by Tibor Kollár. This new publication is quite wide in focus: geographically it encompasses territories ranging from the north-eastern corner of present-day Slovenia all the way to southern Transylvania in Romania. Most of the monuments discussed are located today in Croatia and Serbia. These southern counties of the Hungarian Kingdom flourished during the Middle Ages, but got largely devastated during the 150 years of Ottoman rule and the wars of the period. Nevertheless, as this book proves, there is still an enormous amount of surviving material, much of it quite unknown for modern research - either in Hungary or elsewhere.

Some of the monuments discussed in detail (and in several studies) include the Benedictine abbey of Dombó (located near Rakovac in Serbia), the prior of Arad (Arad, Romania) and the cathedral of Zágráb (Zagreb, Croatia). In addition to architectural monuments - mainly churches and castles - and their stone carvings, a number of important wall-paintings are also published in the volume, such as the frescoes of the former Pauline monastery near Csáktornya (at Šenkovec in Croatia) and of the former parish church of Pozsega (Požega, Croatia). There are overviews of medieval churches in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia (parts of the medieval Hungarian counties of Vas and Zala), of castles in the area between the rivers Drava and Sava, and of Pauline churches. Most studies, however, are monographic articles dedicated to single monuments. Overall, the book contains 26 long studies.

While the majority of the authors are based in Hungary, there are also important studies by Slovene, Croatian, Serbian and Romanian authors. Hungarian authors include such noted scholars as Ernő Marosi, Imre Takács, Béla Zsolt Szakács. Sándor Tóth, who sadly passed away while the book was in preparation, also contributed an important study on the Gothic rebuilding of Dombó monastery. All the studies are published in Hungarian, but there is a section containing English summaries of them. It also has to be mentioned that the book is 1080 pages long, and contains over 600 illustrations, most of them new photographs taken especially for this volume by Attila Mudrák.

Castles in Medieval Hungary

View of Visegrád

The territory of medieval Hungary was very rich in castles. Castles served as the centers of royal counties, and they were also the centers of noble estates. The first large wave of castle-building took place during the second half of the 13th century, after the disastrous Mongol invasion (1241). It became clear at that time that only a strongly fortified stone castle can stop invaders. A strong line of defence was also built up along the southern frontiers of the country during the 14th-15th centuries, with the intention of stopping the advancing armies of the Ottoman empire. However, the medieval kingdom of Hungary fell at the battle of Mohács (1526), and many castles of the realm became ruined during the ensuing 150 years of wars. Thus many medieval castles survived only as ruins, although there are several well-preserved structures, especially in the northern part of the former kingdom (present-day Slovakia and in Burgenland county of Austria). Transylvania is also rich in castles - there we also find a large number of fortified churches as well.

If you would like to know more about the castles of Hungary, you should visit the website dedicated to documenting these buildings. The website - Castles of Historical Hungary - presents hundreds of castles with photographs, drawings and descriptions. Unfortunately, not much else than the introduction is available in English at present - but you can still browse the list of castles and enjoy the photographs.

The enormous amount of information that appears on this website resulted in a new book, which presents castles in Transylvania (actually, all the regions of the Kingdom of Hungary ceded to Romania at the Treaty of Trianon, in 1920). The book presents a total of 600 castles and fortified churches, with photos and drawings. You can browse sample pages here and order the book here (it is actually unclear to me whether they would ship the book abroad or not).

Here is the bibliographic record for the book:

New research on the Bibliotheca Corviniana (updated)

The Bibliotheca Corviniana, the library put together by King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490) was one of the largest libraries of medieval Europe. A humanist library, comprised largely of the works of classical authors, as well as modern historical and scientific works, the collection included a vast number of beautifully illuminated manuscripts. The library was dispersed soon after the death of the king, and today just over 200 volumes of it have been identified.

Frontispiece of the Didymus Corvina
 (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library)

In 2005, the Bibliotheca Corviniana was added to the list of the UNESCO Memory of the World heritage. Perhaps not coincidentally, there has been a renewed interest in the library during the last decade, resulting in a number of exhibitions as well as popular and scholarly publications. These include among other the following:

• The exhibition Nel Segno del Corvo. Libri e miniature della biblioteca di Mattia Corvino re d'Ungheria, held in Modena, at the Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, in 2002. The catalogue of the exhibition is available in a full text PDF version in Italian and in Hungarian.
• The exhibition and publication of the 8 Corvinian manuscripts held at the Bayerische Staatsblibliothek in Munich (Ex Bibliotheca Corviniana. Die acht Münchener Handschriften aus dem Besitz von König Matthias Corvinus. Hrsg. von Claudia Fabian und Edina Zsupán. Budapest, Bibliotheca Nationalis Hungariae, BSB, UIM, 2008. (Bavarica et Hungarica 1–Supplementum Corvinianum 1, available in a PDF format).
• A conference held in Paris in 2007, with the proceedings published in 2009 (Matthias Corvin, les bibliothèques princières et la genèse de l'État moderne / publiè par Jean-François Maillard, István Monok, Donatella Nebbiai. Budapest: OSZK, 2009 («Supplementum Corvinianum», 2). Available in a PDF format.)
• An exhibition and its catalogue dedicated to the court Matthias: Matthias Corvinus, the king: tradition and renewal in the Hungarian royal court, 1458-1490. Budapest History Museum, 2008  [ed. Péter Farbaky et al.]
• A couple of studies on the library: Katharina Rogowski: "Matthias Corvinus und die Bibliotheca Corviniana," in Concilium medii aevi 12 (2009) - Read the pdf; and Zita Agota Pataki: "Rex doctus - rex augustus. Herrscherbild und Herrscherreprasentation am Hof des Konigs Matthias Corvinus" in Ars (41), 2008/1, 29-54.
• An accessible overview of the library and the fate of the books after the death of Matthias, provided in the new book by Marcus Tanner: The Raven King. Matthias Corvinus and the Fate of His Lost Library. Yale University Press, 2008.

Digitization

New research on medieval wall-painting

The number of medieval wall-paintings known from the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary has greatly increased. In Transylvania, a complex program of inventorization uncovered numerous monuments, many of which had been fully uncovered and restored during the last decade. In the north-eastern part of the Kingdom (which is now split between Slovakia, the Ukraine, Hungary and Romania) similarly a number of exceptional find have been made, and many key monuments have been fully restored. Thanks to these discoveries, in these regions we can better appreciate the regional characteristics of medieval wall-painting - thus several local workshops have been identified, and the chronology of many works has been clarified.

I had the pleasure of contributing to two large volumes presenting these discoveries. In both cases, I worked together with restorers. Both volumes were edited by Tibor Kollár, and photographed by Attila Mudrák. The first volume, published in 2008, was written together with Loránd Kiss, and it presents two dozen monuments from Transylvania. The second volume, published last year and written together with József Lángi, focuses on North-Eastern Hungary. The volume also includes an introductory study by Ernő Marosi.

Buy it at Bookline.hu

Loránd Kiss - Zsombor Jékely: Középkori falképek Erdélyben. Ed. Tibor Kollár. Budapest, Teleki László Foundation, 2008. 363 pages, ISBN 978-963-7081-14-9

Ernő Marosi 70

Ernő Marosi, the doyen of Hungarian art historians, celebrated his 70th birthday this Spring. To celebrate his birthday, a conference was held at Budapest's Eötvös Loránd University, where he was asked to respond to each and every paper (Disputatio de Quodlibet) - an event, which proved to be a great success.

Ernő Marosi was also presented with a beautifully prepared Festschrift, written by a team of international scholars, focusing almost entirely on the history of medieval art in Hungary. Apart from a few studies in French and German, the entire volume is in English - thus accessible to the international scholarly community. Titled Bonum ut pulchrum, the study collection provides a much-needed overview of the questions in the focus of Hungarian art historical research. The book is available from the Art History Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The book was presented to Marosi at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on April 16th, here is a report on the event.

BONUM UT PULCHRUM. Essays in Art History in Honour of Ernő Marosi on His seventieth Birthday.  Eds. Lívia Varga, László Beke, Anna Jávor, Pál Lővei, Imre Takács. Budapest, 2010. ISBN 978-963-7381-97-3. Hb., 567 pp., ills.

The contents are available in the Union Catalogue of the Art Libraries Network.

The Hungarian art history journal, Enigma, also dedicated its latest issue (no. 61) to Ernő Marosi.