A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 21. (1982)

FELD István: A zubogyi református templom kutatása

After the relative peace of the first two thirds of the 17th c. the village stood close to being deserted in course of Turkish attacks about 1670 and 1680, and the wars of independence against the Habsburgs. A slow development started in the first half of the 18th c, but it never could regain its former importance. The inhabitants of the village were very poor even in the 19th c. The first written source about the church is from 1596, but it was built much earlier. Its first form shows one of the base types of the Hungarian village churches of the Middle Ages: a body of oblong form, planeroofed nave ending in a straight closed lower shrine, lacking the tower. The southern wall was broken through by a gate and three fissure windows above it. This simple church form was spread throughout Hungary between the 11th and the 13th c. The western side of the nave had to be reconstructed probably because of damage. This was the time when the lancet gate was built. A small semicircular niche was attached to the eastern side of the shrine, the function of which is not known. Such a niche can be found, the closest to Zubogy, in Vysoké Ujezd, in Bohemia. The sacristy, serving also as a chapel was added to the northern side of the chapel also at that time. The old shrine was demolished in the second half of the 15th c. or at the beginning of the 16th c, but the sacrity remained intact. The new shrine, ending in irregular polygonal structure, was vaulted. The carved stones of the tracery windows of the southern part and of the vault were not made on the spot. First no buttresses were built to the shrine, but the weight of the vault made the builders add them later. According to the researchers this type of the shrines is characteristic of the village and country town building in Hungary of that time. The nave proving to be two small was broadened towards west probably after the spreading of the Reformation. A western gate was built with a hall before it. The redundant chapel was demolished, and a buttress was erected on its place. 67 silver coins and the gothic chalice were hidden in a pot among the uncertain circumstances of the 1670ies. Later the church burnt down and collapsed. It was rebuilt between 1710—1720. The whole southwestern part, the arch and the northern part of the shrine were built in that decade. The remains of the gothic vault were carved off, the fluting was used as building material. The western gate was blocked up, the hall was demolished. The most important part of that building period is the painted wooden ceiling preserving the structural traditions of the Middle Ages. The characteristic Calvinist furniture was built in 1758: benches, galleries and a pulpit are among them. The painted parts of the furniture are covered with several layers of paint. The large windows were also cut at that time, the southern hall together with the bell tower were erected in the 18th c, too. The badly preserved walls were strengthened later only with buttresses, gaining thus the present form of the church. It was renovated in 1935, when a mural from the Middle Ages was found, but the builders knocked it off. The National Intendence of Historical Monuments made the plans of the reconstruction of the church and the restoration of the precious furniture in 1974. Earlier, in 1968, the Intendence carried out the investigations of the walls and the layers under the present ground level. As the result of the investigations the complex history of the building of a church characteristic of the village church building traditions becomes outfolded. István Feld 57