There will be a conference on May 28th 2015, at Esztergom, dedicated to medieval history and art of the city, which was Hungary's first capital. Titled "Metropolis Hungariae," the conference will feature a number of internationally known Hungarian scholars, who will speak about recent archaeological research in the town and new art historical work. The focus of the conference will be the Árpád period, perhaps the most important period in the town's history. Art historical lectures will primarily discuss the architecture and sculpture of the medieval cathedral of the town.
The conference presents a good opportunity for visiting Esztergom, where the permanent exhibition in the former royal palace has been reinstalled and the restoration of the palace chapel has been fully completed (I already reported on this last year).
The full program can be seen below.
There will be an international conference dedicated to early modern illustrated texts next week at the National Széchényi Library in Budapest. The symposium, organized jointly by the Library and Pázmány Péter Catholic University, is titled: Facing and Forming the Tradition. Illustrated Texts on the Way from Late Antiquity until the Romanesque Times.
You can also read the conference abstracts on Scribd. I am really looking forward to this event! More information is available on the website of the library.
Spring is often the season of conferences - and there are a number of them coming up in March, some dealing with aspects of medieval art in Hungary. So below, I am listing these, hoping to generate some additional interest in these forums.
The first conference to come up also deals with the earliest subject: the Early Christian period. Although only a few lectures deal with art historical topics, one of the locations of the conference the town of Pécs (which boasts an Early Christian necropolis) merits its inclusion here. Devoted to examining pagan-Christian interactions across the Roman Empire, the conference seeks to consider new evidence and new approaches to the material and textual remains that bear on the value of these categories between the fourth and the sixth centuries. The conference is organized by the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University, together with the University of Pécs and the Hungarian Patristic Society. Information on the conference is available on the CEU website.
The conference series organized by the County Museum of Satu Mare and Jósa András Museum of Nyíregyháza has been one of the most important forums for questions of medieval architecture in Transylvania for many years. The conference presents a regular occassion for Hungarian and Romanian researchers to meet and discuss issues of their common heritage. Even more important is the fact the proceedings of these conferences are being published regularly: so far five volumes have been printed. The studies are published in various languages - often in English, and always with English-language summaries.
The program of the 8th conference can be seen here.
This international interdisciplinary colloquium organised by the universities of Opava and Brno together with the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences aims to add the neglected point of view of diplomatics: which conclusions about the constitution of the “aristocracy”, its self-fashioning and its role within the politics of the European monarchs are offered by patents of nobility or acts of promotion to higher ranks of nobility? For the first time the concise cooperation of historian and art historians shall push the interdisciplinary approach towards grants of arms which, due to their illuminated coats of arms, may be considered as an important diplomatic innovation of the 14th and 15th centuries. A central question is how far – considering the profound differences between the European aristocratic elites – the progressive output of patents of nobility and grants of arms issued by European monarchs may be interpreted as a result of a European cultural transfer. The program of the conference is available here - you may notice that this is something I have to prepare for (as one of the presenters).
There are of course other events planned worldwide: The Index of Christian Art at Princeton is organizing a conference on Maps and Diagrams in Medieval Art (March 15-16, 2013). Also, on April 18-20, The International Colloquium “Medieval Europe in motion” will be held in Lisbon. You can find the conference website here and there is also a Facebook page for the event. The website also provides information on related research projects. And, to call attention to something later in the year: the second Forum Medieval Art (Forum Kunst des Mittelalters) is scheduled for September 2013 in Freiburg im Breisgau.
As Medievalists around the US (the world?) are gearing up for this year's Medieval Congress at K'zoo, yours truly will drive over to neighboring Slovenia, to participate at the CIHA Colloquium at Maribor, titled Art and Archicture around 1400: Global and Regional Perspectives. I've gotten to like these more focused conferences, as discussions often tend to be livelier. The conference was organized by the University of Maribor, and by the Slovene Art History Society, under the auspices of a really distinguished Program Committee.
The six-day program of the conference is quite rich, with a number of interesting excursions aside from the talks, for example to see frescoes by the workshop of Johannes Aquila.
Naturally, there will be a sizable Hungarian delegation at the conference, and a lot of Hungarian medieval topics will be treated in lectures and posters. A conference report with pictures will likely appear on this blog some time later. For now, a number of pictures of Slovenia's rich Gothic heritage can be seen in this gallery (the statue of St. James to the left is from the pilgrimage church of Ptujska Gora).
The website of the conference above is no longer available, so the links above don't work any more.
The National Széchényi Library preserves Hungary's largest repository of medieval manuscripts, and it is also an important research center in this field. On Monday, January 24th 2011, a series of lectures will be held about various medieval manuscripts and early printed books.The detailed program of these sessions can be studied on the blog of the National Library (in Hungarian). Lectures will be given by researchers working at the library, as well as by art historian Ernő Marosi.
If you would like to know more about the medieval holdings of the library, the 1940 catalogue of Latin medieval manuscripts is available online (Emma Bartoniek: Codices Latini Medii Aevi), to be found among the databases of the National Library (go to Kézirattár). Also, there is a lot of information available on the Bibliotheca Corviniana, as I wrote in a previous post and also on my website. Most important resource is the Bibliotheca Corviniana Digitalis. For other early Hungarian books, you might want to look at another website of the library, dedicated to the earliest Hungarian linguistic records (the full website is largely in Hungarian).
An international traveling exhibition, which presents photographs of about fifty armorial letters from Transylvania, will arrive to Budapest this week. It is the result of research conducted by specialists of the Institute of History, University of Debrecen and the Faculty of History and Philosophy, Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj Napoca. The project was coordinated by Tamás Szálkai, whose book on this subject was published in 2009. The armorials date from the period of the Principality Transylvania, and were donated by Princes of Transylvania to various noblemen.
The exhibition will open at the Budapest History Museum on January 19th, 2011. For that day, and entire conference has been organized on the subject of Coat of arms and society in medieval and early modern Hungary. You can read the conference program here, and you can read more about the exhibition here.
There is an entire website dedicated to the program, unfortunately only in Hungarian - visit Armales Transylvanorum for more information.
The medieval building of Pécs cathedral was completed during the 12th century. The building, although rebuilt several times, essentially survived until the late 19th century, when it was drastically remodeled ('restored') in Neo-Romanesque style. Directed by the architect Friedrich von Schmidt, this construction took place between 1882-1891. The remodeling brought to light much of the original Romanesque sculptural decoration of the cathedral, the remains of which were all removed from the building, and placed in a lapidarium. The carvings have been moved from one place to another during the last 100 years, until they finally found a home in the newly constructed Cathedral Museum, which opened in 2004. This museum contains the richest collection of Romanesque sculpture in Central Europe - and these sculptures are of extremely high quality. The material includes the narrative cycles from the walls of two stairways leading down to the crypt, fragments of the altar of the Holy Cross and the western portal of the cathedral, among many other carvings. Unfortunately, the beautiful Gothic carvings found among the ruins of chapels north of the cathedral are not on view (for more info, see the website of the Sigismundus-exhibition).
No modern catalogue of the material is available - in fact, there is simply no current publication available on this material in any language. There isn't even a small guidebook to the museum, where actually not even all the labels have been properly written. Pécs is a world heritage site (because of the Early Christian necropolis of the town, located in the area around the cathedral) and was the European capital of culture during 2010. Still, nothing happened around the cathedral museum. The Cathedral Museum has no real website, and there is barely any information available on the sculptures online. (This website has some photos and information in Hungarian. This website, made for university students, also contains some photographs and a useful bibliography).
On January 14, 2011, a public workshop will be dedicated to new research on Pécs cathedral, organized by the University of Pécs. At this occasion, the work of a research group established last year and coordinated by Endre Raffay will be presented. You can read the program here (in Hungarian).
Results of the research of an older generation of scholars - notably Melinda Tóth - remain largely unpublished. Maybe a younger generation of scholars is needed to publish much-needed information and evaluation of Hungary's most important Romanesque monument.
In 1844, during repairs after a minor earthquake, medieval wall-paintings were uncovered in the Calvinist church of Máramarossziget (at that time the capital of Máramaros County, today Sighetu Marmaţiei in Romania). Instead of simply recording this fact in the Historia domus, and covering the paintings over, a detailed report was sent to Budapest, to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which had been founded not so long ago, in 1825. After requesting more information, Imre Henszlmann, the only art historian member of the Academy, delivered a lecture on the wall paintings of Máramarossziget in 1847. By this time, Henszlmann has already published his monograph on the Church of St. Elisabeth in Kassa (Kaschau, Košice, Slovakia) and also in 1846, was among those issuing a general call for the protection of historic monuments.
In delivering his lecture, Henszlmann relied on a plan and view of the church (illustrated to the right) and also a copy of the wall-paintings. He did not describe the copy, and his description of the frescoes is not entirely clear. István Szilágyi, a teacher at the college of Máramarossziget and a member of the Academy corrected Henszlmann's interpretation in a lecture presented in 1850 (as it is well known, Hungary was occupied with a revolution and a failed war for independence in 1848-1849). Szilágyi did not have a chance to see the frescoes himself, but his interpretation was based on first-hand eyewitness accounts, in addition to copies. This episode represents the first true art historical debate in Hungary, concerning a medieval monument.
As it happened, the church of Máramarossziget burned down in 1859. The fire destroyed a large part of the town, the entire roof of the church burned down, and the vaults all collapsed. As a result of this catastrophy, the wall paintings - even more of them - came to light again. This time Szilágyi had a chance to examine them, and a new set of drawings and copies were made. A sad decision had to be made - the remains of the church had to be torn down, with the exception of the medieval tower. Rebuilding the church was halted by another fire in 1872 - the new building was only finished in 1892.
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.