A bánffyhunyadi református templom helyreállításának művészettörténeti dokumentációja
Art History Documentation on the Rehabilitation of the Calvinist Church in Huedin

Summary/Abstract: The paper is based on the art history survey of the rehabilitation of the Protestant (Calvinist) church in Huedin (2019–2021) and examines the medieval evolution of the building. In its current form (characterized by a special floor plan, featuring a long but low nave, a massive western tower, and a polygonal, high choir to the east, with an axis strongly displaced to the north) three different medieval phases can be identified. From the first phase the northern wall of the nave has remained, more precisely, its eastern three quarters. Archeologically, later on through wall-research the remains of the original western wall have been found, which continued to the southern wall. The latter was completely rebuilt in 1772, following the earthquake of 1765. The phase can be dated to the turn of the 13-14th centuries. On the original wall, which extends over 17 m in length, figurative mural paintings were revealed across three registers (possibly including a lower register featuring drapery), realized in the same phase. Because of its poor condition, only limited iconographic assumptions can be made about the upper register: it appears to have depicted two separate narrative cycles of two saints. The eastern cycle (in better condition) was probably the legend of Saint Ladislas (identifiable by the horses without riders near the eastern end of the register), while the western half might have depicted the (rarely represented) legend of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, the patron saint of the church. Narrative compositions depicting the life of the Virgin can be found on the central and lower registers, followed by a cycle illustrating the Passion of Christ. Despite many lost scenes, iconographic and stylistic analysis suggest that the murals date from the 1350s to 1360s. Their distinctly provincial character reveals the dominant influence of the trecento, alongside elements of the late Romanesque painting and of the early international Gothic. At the beginning of the 15th c. the nave was extended to the west and the tower was built, originally higher, which touched the fortified enceinte from the inside (the round enceinte was demolished at the end of the 19th c.). The ground-floor of the tower (originally vaulted) had a passage in north-south direction (today partially walled-in). So, the first floor of the tower was originally accessible from the nave through a door recently discovered, and the tower might have had a defensive role, too. The Bánffy family obtained the royal estate of Bologa in the early 1430s, which included Huedin as well, with the status of a market-town. The last medieval building phase was the elevation of the monumental, polygonal choir in late Gothic style, at the turn of the 15-16th c. (however the “year inscription” 1483 from the older literature is the incorrect reading of an 1583 graffiti). Perhaps after the choir was built, there was a plan to reconstruct the nave proportionally as well, but this was never realized. The choir had a sacristy on the north, which was preserved after the Protestant reform as well, as the crypt of the Bánffy family was made there (more crypts were uncovered within the choir). In the 1765 earthquake the sacristy and the vault of the choir collapsed (its traces were recently discovered), and two of the traceries of the Gothic windows were remade during the rehabilitation works from the 1780s. During the current rehabilitation works, the fragments of a Renaissance tabernacle on the northern wall and a sedilia on the southern wall were found.

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