Petercsák Tivadar - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Magyarország védelme - Európa védelme - Studia Agriensia 24. (Eger, 2006)

MAGYARORSZÁG VÉDELME -EURÓPA VÉDELME BALASSI BÁLINT ÉS BOCSKAI ISTVÁN KORÁBAN - TÜDŐS S. KINGA: Székelyföld - Egy különleges határvédelmi rendszer. A templomvárak a 16. századtól a 18. századig terjedő időszakban

During the Renaissance, in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite the strict manner in which the defensive walls met their functional requirements there was still sufficient scope to include crenellation (merlatura) which proved popular in Transylvanian architecture around the middle of the 17th century. One of the early Renaissance crenellated ecclesiastical monuments in the Principality of Transylvania crowns the wall of the Unitarian church castle in Bölön (Belin).

It was in the 16th and 17th centuries that the church castles of Háromszék acquired their characteristic appearance, something that was influenced as much by the social composition of the settlement and its demography, as its natural attributes and historical setting. During the course of our analysis we discovered that the construction of the Háromszék church castles was mainly the work of the free Szeklers, that very section of society which, despite the deeply ingrained feudal structure within Szekler society at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, was still predominant. As regards the demography one can conclude that the most extensive defensive systems were not always built in the most heavily populated places. The Háromszék church castle nevertheless continues to interpret faithfully the wisdom, the tastes, the mentality and the needs of those people who inhabited those villages on the eastern borders of western civilisation to this very day.

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