Szatmári Imre: Békés megye középkori templomai (Békéscsaba, 2005)
158 to make it evident: the mediaeval church architecture of this region of the Great Plain was in close relation with that of other region of the mediaeval Hungary, with equal respect to the architectural style, quality and number of churches. Also, regarding the earliest date of church building, this region was at the head in promulgating Christianity, since while e.g. Transdanubian churches were dated back to the 13 rd century (particularly by earlier literature), churches in the Great Plain more times went back to the 11" century. An outlook on the Carpathian Basin or a wider Europe can be neglected regarding the mediaeval tendencies in the rural church architecture of the mediaeval Hungarian Great Plain, since in the areas located far from ruler's centre, the great European trends were reflected only through filters of the royal court and aristocracy, coming here with considerable, even several century-long delay and in an extremely simplified form. In the chosen topic adaptation to a given environment in a smaller area is more considerable and characteristic than the distant and local reception of great European tendencies by smaller or bigger communities. For its particulars had already been determined by the spiritual character, everyday customs of the geographic environment and chiefly the local population of the given place. So the features of the ecclesiastical architecture and cemeteries of a given land, such as the Great Plain, were bound to be formed by the founding and walling materials available in the region, specification of the required and sufficient basic area and the forms of the burial customs meeting the local demands. Nevertheless this forms an inseparable integration with the living space of the given settlement, inhabitants, identified with the direct environment of the everyday life. GeoMediaeval Churches in Békés County morphology of this part of the Great Plain determined the structure of the settlementsystem of the region and the life of each settlement through the whole Middle Age. A specific character of the land is that the area can be divided into two parts: the northern part of the county is formed by surface features of the Körös Valley, while its southern part is occupied by the alluvial fan of the River Maros. Geography, soil, surface of the two lands are considerably different, and these variations are shown also by the archaeological findings. The direct natural environment determined basically each settlement's location, extension and the farming methods chosen there. In the cadastre forming the basis of the treating, there are 237 records suggesting that a sacred building stood in the past or stands now in the involved area. So apart from the uncertainties, we have got records on at least 200 mediaeval ecclesiastical buildings in the area of the today Békés County. It is doubtless that a clan s monastery stood in the Mágor-hill in Vésztő and Gerla, both of them were in the hand of the Csolt Clan and their existence was proved by excavations, but we have got other historical data on monasteries in Gyula and Ugra. The builder clan is known only in case of the one in Csolt and Gerla (Csolt), we have got suspicions regarding the one in Ugra (Barsa). The one in Gerla is suspected to belong to the Benedictines. In addition to the clan's monasteries two other monastic quarters existed in the county. Representatives of the observant branch of the Franciscans lived in both. One of them was rebuilt in Gyula at the first half of the 15 th century, the other one operated in Gerla in the 1530s. Chapels stood only in two more important settlements: two in Békés (Chapel Mary and
