Folia archeologica 23.
Ferenc Fülep – György Duma: Examinations of the Wall Paintings in the Cella Trichora of Pécs
214 F. FÜLEP - GY. DUMA ed even Thessalonica 2 8 at the end of the 9th century or at the very beginning of the 10th. Only Nicephoros Phocas 2 9 succeeded in the second half of the ninth century, in 961 in recapturing Crete. After this date, around 1000 A.D. Arab masters may have worked in Athens who might have left behind original Arabic inscriptions as well, but later on the Greek masters had copied the Arabic letters that had become barely ornamental. 3 0 Anyhow, these decorative elements, the centre of which was Athens, do not occur in a single church of Athens either before the 1 ith century. 31 This is supported by the chronological table of H. Megaw about the establishment of Middle-Byzantine churches dating all these in Athens as well as in the whole of Greece to the nth-i2th centuries. 3 2 According to G. C. Miles as well Kufic (Kufesque) letters were popular in the early nth century. 3 3 This fashion had subsequently spread over the whole of Greece from Athens. He mentions Corfu and Amphissa (in Phocis) as the most distant stations. 3 4 In the North ornaments of Kufic origin can be traced in the Macedonian Kastoria, 3 5 but this may be put to a much later time. The brief deviation above was necessary to show at the light of most up-todate research that the main period of the spread of ornamental motif deriving from the Kufic pattern is the 1ith-i2th centuries in Greece. Consequently if the use of Kufic letters as ornamental motifs cannot be established earlier than the beginning of the nth century even in Greece having direct contacts with Arabic culture, it excludes the possibility that this decorative motif could have occurred in the midninth century in north Pannónia i.e. the date of the Conversio. If the original Greek examples are kept in mind the closest one to the motif of Pécs is the painted decoration of one of the capitals in the Hosios Loukas 3 6 consisting of the vertical ducti turned towards one another the base of which is connected with a horizontal motif and from the middle of the horizontal line a twisted pattern of S shape branches off. This can be traced back to an nth-century prototype. 37 A rather similar motif can be found on an early 12th-century capital with niello in the SS. Vittore e Corona church at Feltre. 37 a On the other hand, if we consider the application of the Kufic letters as ornamental motifs in western art and its spread in western European art and that typological table that was compiled by Kurt Erdmann then the occurrence of tendril motif similar to the one in Pécs can be found primarily in 13th-century French material of western art. 3 8 Similar tendril motifs can be seen on 14th-century 2 8 Ibid. p. 9: In July, 904. Otherwise Setton, K. M., op. cit. p. 313 : July, 894. 2 9 Ibid. pp. 31 iff. 3 0 Soteriou, G., op. cit. pp. 2Ó8ffand pp. 27iff. ; Setton , K. M., op. cit. p. 318.-Otherwise Berchem, AL-Str^ygomski, J., op. cit. p. 375. 3 1 Soteriou, G., op. cit. p. 272.; Setton, Ai. K., loc. cit. 3 2 Megaw, H., The Chronology of Some Middle-Byzantine Churches. BSA 32 (1931-32) pp. 99 and 129. 3 3 Miles, G. C., op. cit. pp. 22ff.-on p. 25 : dates as late as the 12th-13th centuries. 3 4 Ibid.; Similarly Setton, K. M., op. cit. pp. 317IT. 3 5 Soteriou, G., op. cit. p. 267.; Miles, G. C., op. cit. p. 28.; Setton, K. M., op. cit. pp. 3 17fr. 3 e Miles, G. C., op. cit. p. 27., Fig. 58. 3? Ibid. p. 27. 37 a Ibid. p. 27., Fig. 60. 3 8 Erdmann, K., Arabische Schriftzeichen als Ornamente in der abendländischen Kunst des Mittelalters. Akad. d. Wiss. und d. Lit. Abh. d. Geistes-u. Sozialwiss. Klasse Jg. 1953. Nr. 9. (Mainz-Wiesbaden) p. 478. Nr. 35, 36, 37.; p. 479. Nr. з8/г,а,с,е.
