Earliest Christian church of Transylvania found at Gyulafehérvár

Traces of the oldest church of Transylvania

Photo from www.kronika.ro 

New archaeological research near the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia, Romania, the seat of the bishopric of Transylvania) led to the discovery of the remains of the semicircular apse of a medieval church. Archaeologists believe this is Transylvania’s oldest church, built around the year 1000 - thus before the foundation of the diocese in 1009 (see my previous post on the history of the cathedral). The remains were found at a depth of only one meter, 24 meters away from the Catholic Cathedral of St. Michael. Daniela Marcu Istrate, well-known archaeologist announced in a press conference on April 18 that the newly discovered church might have been built either by prince Gyula or by Saint King Stephen. Around 952, Gyula was baptized in Constantinople, and upon his return was given a bishop named Hierotheos who accompanied him back to Hungary - so if the church dates to the period of prince Gyula, it was built for the Byzantine rite (of course we are before the Great Schism of 1054 at this time). Besides the apse, archaeologists have also discovered several tombs dating back to the 12th century. However, experts believe that the church was already destroyed at that time. For the moment, work at the archaeological site has been suspended for lack of funds. The remains of the apse will be preserved provisionally.

Most interesting about this find is that it is not connected to the present 13th century cathedral - or its 11th century predecessor - in any way. The archaeologist proposes that this feature means that the new Roman Catholic cathedral was deliberately distanced from the earlier structure built for the Greek rite.

You can read more about the discovery in Hungarian or in Romanian.

It is worth noting that the town - Roman Apulum - has an even older history: lately, more and more Roman remains have also come to light, see here.

Open access online journals of medieval art

More and more journals are available in an open access format on the web - and more and more are only published in this format, without a printed version. The advantages of speedy publication at a lower cost are obvious, and the publications can potentially reach a much larger audience. Editorial work and peer-review can of course be maintained for online publications just as for traditional outlets.

When it comes to medieval art, there is a generous selection of such journals on the web, to supplement such print (+ restricted online access) journals as Gesta. What follows is a selection of such journals, with a brief description lifted from the introductory pages of the respective journals.

Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture

Peregrinations is published by the International Society for the Study of Pilgrimage Art, which was founded in 2000 to bring together scholars who explore the art and architecture of pilgrimage in the late Middle Ages. The journal "provides a forum for themes and topics related to that subject, and to share current research. [...] The artistic expressions which were created to give form to the cults are the objects of our investigation.

The journal is edited by Sarah Blick, and the latest issue is Volume 3, Issue 1 (2010). The journal also maintains a photo-bank.

Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art

The journal is "a web-based, open-access, peer-reviewed annual, devoted to progressive scholarship on medieval art. Different Visions seeks to fill a significant gap in current publishing venues by featuring articles employing contemporary postmodern and poststructuralist theoretical frameworks to examine medieval visual culture. Authors are encouraged to explore the application of such approaches as feminist and gender analysis, historiography, semiotics, post colonialism and queer theory to works produced during the period from the fourth through the fifteenth century. The journal will also consider essays on medieval visual culture that emerge from multiple disciplinary perspectives." The editor-in-Chief of the Journal is Rachel Dressler, and Issue Two is the most latest on the site.

Conference and exhibition about László Gerevich

László Gerevich, one of the eminent Hungarian archaeologists of the Middle Ages, was born 100 years ago. To commemorate, the Budapest History Museum organized a conference and an exhibition about his career. The highlight of this career was the excavation of the medieval royal palace of Buda, which became possible after the destruction of World War II. Gerevich was able to uncover the lower lever of the entire medieval palace, bringing to light a number of highly important finds. In that period, he was the director of the Budapest History Museum, and later also the founder and first director of the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Gerevich also excavated several other medieval sites, including the Cistercian Abbey of Pilis (see my recent post on the abbey). His English-language books include The Art of Buda and Pest in the Middle Ages and Towns in Medieval Hungary. If you read Hungarian, you can find more information on him here.

You can read the program of today's conference by clicking on the image above. I will write another post on the exhibition once I get a chance to visit it.

Conquest-period sabretache plate found at Hungarian excavations

Sabretache plate excavated in Pest county
Photo from Sírásók naplója blog 

A Hungarian archaeological blog (Sírásók naplója) reported on a recent lucky find in Pest county of Hungary. Last week, remains from the period of the Hungarian Conquest (early 10th century) have been found on a field, and excavated by archaeologists from the Pest County Museums. Of the three tombs found, one belonged to a high-ranking male, and all his accessories were found intact, including his belt and his arrow. Most important is the his sabretache plate. To quote András Róna-Tas (Hungarian and Europe in the Early Middle Ages - An Introduction to Early Hungarian History), "the sabretaches are the most characteristic finds from graves of the Conquest period. They were strengthened with metal plates, generally of silver. At the side of each bag, a strap was threaded through, and both this strap and that which attached the bag to the belt were decorated with mountings. The sabretache, which fulfilled the function of a pocket, would have held fire-making tools." 

Only about two dozen similar objects have been recovered from the Carpathian basin, and very few of them come from documented excavations, so the find is of great importance. As the archaeologists, Ágnes Füredi and Tibor Rácz report on their blog, the last similar find was made in the late 1980s, when tombs at Karos were excavated.

Sabretache from Galgóc
Hungarian National Museum 

The photo above is from the Sírásók naplója blog - you can find more images of the excavations there. For more information on Magyar metalwork of the Conquest period, visit the website of the Archaeological Department of the Hungarian National Museum. Sabretaches enjoy some popularity in contemporary Hungary - I found the most complete list of such finds on one of the traditionalist websites, the Tarsolybearers' Homepage. Defitinely have a look at the sabretache plate from Galgóc, maybe the finest of such objects, and the first one to be found, back in 1868.

The Fejérváry collection of ivories

Gábor Fejérváry (1780-1851) amassed a large collection of ancient and medieval objects in his house at Eperjes in northern Hungary (today Presov, Slovakia). After his death, his nephew Ferenc Pulszky inherited the collection. Pulszky at that time was living in England - he had to leave Hungary for his role in the 1848 revolution and war for independence. Pulszky managed to deliver parts of this collection to England, as he decided to sell much of it. In 1855 Liverpool goldsmith, jeweler and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries Joseph Mayer (1803—86) purchased the Fejérváry ivory collection from Pulszky. The collection contained a large number of late antique, early medieval and later ivories, as you can see in the original catalogue published just after the sale, in 1856 (full text here). You can read more about the Fejérváry-Pulszky collection, and Fejérváry's Liber Antiquitatis, which contains images of objects in his collection, on the website of the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

Venatio ivory, 5th c.
Liverpool, World Museum

Joseph Mayer gave his collection to the Liverpool Museum in 1867. Ancient ivories are in the World Museum today, while Gothic ivories from the Fejérváry-Mayer collection are in the Walker Art Gallery. The catalogue of the Liverpool ivories by Margaret Gibson was published in 1994 (see this link). The National Museums Liverpool Blog provides a bit more information on these ivories. When it comes to Gothic pieces, you can learn a lot more via the Gothic Ivories Project of the Courtauld Institute of Art. Search for the name of Fejérváry to get a list of the ivories from his collection (this link should work). One of the finest pieces, a 14th-century French mirror case, is illustrated below.

The Fejérváry collection held many other treasures, including such rare pieces as the Armento Rider (British Museum) or Codex Fejérváry-Mayer (also in Liverpool), one of the finest surviving Aztec manuscripts. You can read about that manuscript on the BibliOdyssey blog. 

Upon returning to Hungary after his exile, Ferenc Pulszky became the director of the Hungarian National Museum. Items he could not sell from the Fejérváry collection, as well as a large number of other objects he collected later in his life, are in various museums of Hungary today. János György Szilágyi writes more on him in The Hungarian Quarterly.

Mirror case, French, first half of 14th century
Liverpool, Walker Art Museum 

Botticelli in Esztergom?

Temperantia
Esztergom, Studiolo of palace
Photo via artmagazin 

I did not want to write this post. A great discovery has been announced a few years ago (frescoes painted by Botticelli have been identified in Esztergom!) but I still remain skeptical. Also, as I have been unable to study these frescoes personally during the last few years, and having never worked on Botticelli, I don't really have a very strong art historical argument to put forward here or in a more scholarly publication. In the end I decided to simply list a few facts here.

1. The medieval royal - later archiepiscopal - palace of Esztergom has been ruined and buried during the Turkish wars of the 16th-17th centuries (see this earlier post). The remains of the palace have been uncovered between 1934-38 in a large-scale archaeological campaign. Two large sets of frescoes were found on the walls of the building: a mid-14th century fresco-cycle in the chapel, painted by Riminese masters (in my opinion), and fragments of an early Renaissance cycle in one of the rooms of the palace. The room has been identified as the Studiolo of the archbishops of Esztergom, and the four surviving figures of the Renaissance fresco cycle as allegories of four virtues.

2. Starting in 2000, a new restoration campaign, led by Zsuzsanna Wierdl was started on the frescoes of Esztergom. Many later retouches, discolored repairs have to be removed, while structural problems of the entire building although had to be solved. This work is still not finished, in fact it largely stopped about two years ago, due to lack of funding. It is to be hoped that it will be continued this year, as the frescoes remain largely inaccessible (link to Hungarian article about funding).

The four Virtues at Esztergom, before restoration 

3. At a conference (pdf) held at Villa i Tatti, Florence in 2007, restorer Zsuzsanna Wierdl and art historian Mária Prokopp presented their findings, announcing that the figure of Temperance at Esztergom was painted by Sandro Botticelli in the 1460s, commissioned by archbishop Johannes Vitéz. The Hungarian cultural minister, who happened to be in Rome at that time, announced that Botticelli frescoes have been found in Hungary, and the international and Hungarian press was enthusiastic (link to Reuters article, to serve as an example). Participants at the conference were less enthusiastic, and lively debate continued as the conference embarked on an excursion to Hungary. Pro and contra arguments were published in the Hungarian press - particularly lively was the rebuttal of the theory by Louis A. Waldman, assistant director of Villa I Tatti, and a noted expert of the period. Waldman's argument was published in an interview in a Hungarian weekly, Élet és irodalom. Other experts, most notably Miklós Boskovits expressed their doubts (summary in this Hungarian article). The acts of the Florentine conference - co-edited by Dr. Waldman - are to be published in the near future.

Fortitudo in Esztergom and a detail from Botticelli's Birth of Venus (Uffizi)
Comparison by Zsuzsanna Wierdl, Studiolo

Fortified Saxon churches of Transylania

Birthälm (Berethalom/Biertan) 

The southern part of Transylvania has been populated by settlers from various (mainly the westernmost) parts of Germany, generally termed Saxons in medieval and more recent sources (you can read their history here). These Saxon settlers built some of the most urban settlements of Transylvania - cities such as Kronstadt (Brassó/Brasov), Hermannstadt (Nagyszeben/Sibiu) or Schässburg (Segesvár/Sighisoara). The villages of that region largely preserved their medieval structure to this day, and most are dominated by large medieval churches. Over the course of the 15-17th centuries,  as the territory was under constant threat by the Ottoman Empire, these churches were all fortified - some built into veritable castles. Transylvanian Saxons became Lutheran during the 16th century, thus these churches preserved much of their medieval treasures - including altarpieces, goldsmith works, liturgical textiles, Turkish rugs - to this day. These days, more and more frescoes are also coming to light from under the whitewash in these churches. Owing to the mass exodus of Transylvanian Saxons to Germany during the 1980s-1990s, many of these churches are out of use today, some completely abandoned. However, more and more is done to preserve this rich heritage. The churches of the region of Hermannstadt have been put on the watch-list of the World Monument Fund, while seven churches and the historic center of Schässburg are on the Unesco World Heritage list. International conservation efforts have been quite successful in some cases, as with the Church on the Hill in Schässburg, and Prince Charles has taken an interest in the region, buying property there.

Malmkrog (Almakerék/Malancrav) 

In this post, I would like to call attention to a website aimed at documenting the Saxon churches of Transylvania. The website Fortified Churches provides information on the region in five languages, with photo galleries of many of the churches (browse them under Locations). It is well worth a visit - although the best of course is visit the region in person, something I can highly recommend.

(Pictures in this post are from the Fortified Churches website. See also my earlier post on Abandoned medieval churches in Transylvania).