Budapest Régiségei 15. (1950)

Gerevich László: Gótikus házak Budán 121-238

development of the German dwelling house, timber houses played the most important role. These data can be correlated with Strzygowski's opinion, according to which medieval architecture developed from southern types and under the influence of the northern timber constructions. It is difficult to imagine, that the wooden architecture, which prevailed in Central and Northern Europe before the Romanesque Period had not influenced stone architecture coming from the South, especially in its civil branch. It is not an accident, that the

. development of Romanesque architecture coincided with the changement taking place in the second half of the eleventh century, when the wooden towndistricts of the episcopal residences were gradually changed into stone-towns. But the wooden dwelling house — in partly Gothicized form — survived till the Baroque Period. We may presume even without many proofs, that the so called Gothic framed building (»Fach werkbau«) which developed during the second flourish of the timber house in the fourteenth and chiefly in the fifteenth centuries, had been rooted in this earlier architecture of a northern character. In Hungary, this Gothic timber house is generally missing, which points to a different way of development. Here the wooden house of a Slav type, taken over from the neighbouring people and differing from the western type probably prevailed. The Gothic framed building, which dominated in the West even the most fashionable quarters, could not develop from this type. The construction of the Hungarian wooden house was probably not suitable for adapting and developing the Gothic style. The wooden houses in smaller towns and in the suburbs, which were insignificant from the point of view of the prevailing style, probably displayed the character of folk-art, besides the stamped mud buildings of a definite Hungarian character. These are only presumptions, which precede a detailed research and are based only on a few important data, but the3

r point to the most decisive problems of the development. In the Mediterranean, we find a different situation. Since the Antiquity, stone houses prevailed. We are informed by Gregoir de Tours, that in Marseilles there were large stone buildings even in the sixth century. F ven on the north side of these houses, there were porticos facing the street. The same author informs us, when describing Paris, that the merchants used these porticos for unloading of goods. Florentine and Tuscan houses of the thirteenth century display a similarity to the Roman dwelling house types of the Imperial Age (Walter Paatz). Besides the houses in Ostia, St John's and St. Paul's House on the Coelius is a late-Roman example. In France, stone and timber alternated as building material. There is a difference between the southern and north-eastern areas. Arnoulf II lived in a wooden palace already in 1099; this sort of building was common in whole Flanders. In the South, Roman traditions and the use of stone had ceded only slowly to the second flourish of the timber house, in which the Gothic construction was even more evident than in stone buildings. A great number of these pompous timber houses still exist, the earliest dating from' the middle of the fourteenth century. In Germany, France and especially in England, the ancient Germanic wooden architecture — even if it did not create the style, — could express itself in the prevailing Romanesque and Gothic styles and brought about masterpieces of wooden architecture. In Hungary we find a different trend of development. At the foot of mountains, in the towns, of the transitionary regions and in the transDanubian district, no traces of the medieval timber house exists. Tater we shall see, that the same is true for Buda and Pest, and, actually, wooden houses of the German type are very rare in the whole Carpathian Basin. But this is an intricate problem and the descriptions and monuments often furnish contradictory data. 231