Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
322 Z. Soós offered by a mid size market town in central Europe but there are also objects directly connected to different activities of a large Franciscan friary. With the comparison of the objects found at the friary and the material identified trough the research of the medieval bells and baptismal fonts produced in the workshops of the larger Transylvanian Saxon town’s one will see the differences in its content and decoration. The work of E. Benkő (2002) revealed that most of the ornamental material used at the bell foundries was a specific collection partly brought from abroad and partly gathered from the local goldsmith workshops that cooperated with the foundries. While the ornamental material of the bell foundries was mainly composed of elegant clothing accessories (belt buckles, discs, pressed plates or clothing ornaments) and book cover ornaments, the bronze material of the friary contains a large number of objects connected to everyday life activities such as bone carving workshop, horse accessories, fishing, tableware (knife and spoon handles), local commerce (weight balance) and only a smaller part of the friary’s material is composed of ornamental clothing and book binding accessories. We found similarities between the ornamental discs used in the foundries and between the diadem discs found in the grave M52 (Soós-Gál 2010), but these similarities are again very general, the Anjou lily and the running deer are very widely used in the 14th and 15th centuries. The symbols on the discs are not closely related to the symbols used in the Transylvanian foundries and they were very probably produced in the central part of the Hungarian kingdom. Their close analogies are to be found in the Cuman cemeteries of the great Hungarian plane (Hatházy 2002) and in today’s Slovakia in the medieval cemetery of Nyitrazobor (Ruttkay 2005). Moreover, the ornamental elements from the friary are rather produced in the region; while the bell foundries gathered specific material from abroad as well; therefore we have only few similar items in the two materials. In the foundries some ornaments were used for generations and each generation added new ornaments and medallions to the collection; therefore it is possible to identify the origin of the bells based on the ornaments and letter types used in a workshop. It became clear that the foundries were closely connected to the goldsmiths, carpenters, engravers and sculptors from where they obtained a part of the ornaments or they remade the used ornaments (Benkő 2002, 183-184). Regarding the workshops we have found important data about the activity of the Transylvanian bronze foundries. Besides producing bells in case of need they produced a number of special objects such as weight balance and very probably bronze bowls and three legged pots (grappe). We have at the friary a number of specific objects such as candle extinguisher, bronze pot leg, fragments of bronze bowls, two stili, several thimbles and we believe that all these products except maybe the elegant stilus were produced in the Saxon towns of Transylvania in Hermannstadt, Kronstadt or possibly in the nearby Schässburg. The difference between the ornamental objects found in the friary and used in the bronze foundries can be explained by the nature of the friaries material that came from many different sources through the wide range of donations and pilgrimage, so it is almost impossible to establish the direct source. The only exception is the seal of the Győr Franciscan friary’s guardian, which was probably produced in one of the workshops of the western side of the Hungarian kingdom (maybe Pozsony or Buda) or in the nearby Vienna. The bronze material of the friary identified during the archaeological excavations offers important data regarding the richness of medieval Transylvanian material culture and about the intensity of the commercial relations. A number of objects such as the knife handles (Styria, Nürnberg), diadem discs (central Hungary), seal (western Hungary) arrived here either
