A Debreceni Déri Múzeum Évkönyve 1968 (Debrecen, 1970)

Mesterházy Károly: The spread of Byzantine Christianity in Hungary during the Árpád Dynasty (11th–14th centuries)

Károly Mesterházy The Spread of Byzantine Christianity in Hungary during the Árpád Dynasty (11 th-1 it h centuries) During the year 1966-67 a Romanesque church was unearthed in the vicinity of Hajdúhadház, at a place called Demeter. The church itself has one aisle, its apse is crescent shaped, the tower built in front of its western wall if of later origin. The foundation is made of tamped clay, the walls are brick. In the couple of graves around the church no furniture was found. It was only in Grave No. 8., opened up inside the church, where the following furniture was rescused: 2 iron rings, 1 iron buckle and 1 iron nail between the 2 iron rings. These objects were the accessories of the clothes of a monk or priest. On the basis of the ceramics unearthed in the course of the excavation, the burial place can be dated to the turn of the 12th-13 th centuries, whereas the corpus made of bronze or copper plates and imitating the Limoges enamel technique points to the second half of the 13th century. The Grave No. 8. with its furniture allows of another time definition (end of the 12th century), especially if parallel examples are considered. The ground-plan of the church is clearly of the 12th-13th century type, the tower is likely to have been built in the second half of the 13th century. Its peculiarity is the apse whose size is half of that of the aisle. This fact may be explained by an information taken from contemporary charters, which says that noblemen and their wives during the mass had their seats in the sanctuary.

13 This custom has its origin in Byzantium. In the western part of Europe the nobility had their place in the so called Westwerks. In the territory of Hungary both customs are encountered simultaneously.

14-19 Demeter village is first mentioned in charters in 1292; then it had a consecrated church named after St. Demetrius. The last mention of the village was made in 1557.

20-31 The name of St. Demetrius is a characteristic example of giving place names: villages very often received name of the patron saint of their church. The earliest instances of this custom date back to the beginning of the 13th century (1202-1203). St. Demetrius was one of the favourite saints of the Byzantine church. Besides this name one comes across the names of St. Nicholas, St. George, St. Kozma and Dámján, St. Pantaleon as well. In the following paragraph we attempt to find out whether the examination of the names of the patron saints of churches provides any clue to tracing the spread of Byzantine christinanity. Unfortunately our collection is not complete. We start off with the fact amply documented by historical events, that the name of the patron saint of a church remained unchanged even if a new church was built in the same place or when the church was taken over by an other religious order. For this reason data from a later age (from the 15th century) have also been included in our catalogue. e6-e8 The number of patron saints and monastic estates is 309, as proved by contemporary surveys, and this figure could be considerably enlarged, but their total number remains only a conjecture/'

9-70 The next problem to be solved is whether the worship of Byzantine saints was taken over by the Hungarians directly from Byzantium or through the western church. Our earliest book of lithurgy, the Szelepchényi Codex renders valuable help in clarifying this process.

77 It enabled us to prove that the days of St. George, St. Nicholas and St. Demetrius in Hungary were held in accordance with the calendar of the eastern and not the western church. The day of St. Nicholas was declared a public holiday in Hungary only as late as 1092. Several data point to the fact that this saint was worshipped already during the reign of St. Stephen, the first king of Hungary (10001038). Similarly, the worship of St. George, St. Demetrius, St. Pantaleon, St. Kozma and Dámján can be attributed to eastern influence.

79=92 It can also be proved that the worship of Byzantine saints spread not only by an indirect way (over the Balkans), but there were direct contacts with Byzantium as well. The indirect influence came undoubtedly with the help of the Southern Slav and Rumanian population, and proofs of a direct link are afforded by the Byzantian mission and Greek monasteries in eastern Hungary in the loth century. 178