Tari Edit: Pest megye középkori templomai (Studia Comitatensia 27. Szentendre, 2000.)

county, but small fragments of bells are known from 7 sites. We know further 4 bells only from literary data. Textiles There are two outstanding pieces from Pest county. The church of Tököl preserved a textile collection, one piece of it was embroidered with a metallic thread and had a motto of emperor Friedrich III and the year 1448 on it. In Ráckeve we know an embroidered Easter chasuble from the 15

th century. Church architecture The church, as the most significant building of the community, represented the centre of the village in many Árpádian Age settlements. The style of the rural churches reflected the representative architecture formed in the ecclesiastical centres. We can not list the churches by periods, because in many cases the exact dating of these buildings is impossible. So, I list them grouping them according to the shape of their ground plan. The structure of the church is divided into two main parts: the chancel, the place of the priest, the clergy usually elevated to an upper level, than the place for the believers: the nave. The vaulting of the chancel was of lower mass than the usually rectangular nave. There were windows at the eastern, and frequently at the southern wall. The roof of the nave was not vaulted, it must have been a plain ceiling, sometimes with an opentimber roof. The entrance of the church was situated usually at the southern side of nave. Doorway at the western side appeared only rarely. Rural churches frequently missed architectural decorations. Decorative elements sometimes can be found at the windows (orders of arches), but even more frequently at the doorway. A person entering the church gets his/her first impression at the doorway. The really beautiful examples can be seen at the big cathedrals, but in the case of small rural churches this is also the most decorated part of the building. We find here the reminescence of the big churches' both figurai and columnar types of doorways. At the southern side of the nave there were usually three, sometimes two windows with chamfers. Sacristy was usually attached to the northern side of the chancel. Sacristy is a space for the preparations of the priest (e.g. pre-service for purification) and for storing the church furnishings. In our county we found a relatively small number of churches with sacristies, their total number is 19, which is less than the 10% of the whole amount. We know an early sacristy of the 13

th century from the church of Várdomb in Szentendre. Generally it can be assumed that most of sacristies appear in the end of the Romanesque times - beginning of Gothic age in the Hungarian church architecture. The enlargement of the church spaces with a sacristy and a tower became more frequent from the 14

th century. A tower was frequently attached to two-cell churches. The bell situated in the tower played an important role in the life of the community. Usually the tower was attached to the western side of the nave previously destroying the closing wall and binding the tower into the material of the wall. We know just a small number of churches supplied with towers: a total of 32. A record from 1291 referring to a tower of the Árpádian Age mentions a bell tower dedicated to St. Mark. A tower that can be certainly dated to the 249