Haris Andrea szerk.: Koldulórendi építészet a középkori Magyarországon Tanulmányok (Művészettörténet - műemlékvédelem 7. Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal,)

Lukács Zsuzsa: Előzetes beszámoló a Szeged-alsóvárosi ferences kolostor kutatásáról

some 19th century authors, this picture captured a "truly Turkish view" of the monastery; lately, however, it was believed to depict the monastery after the start of its Baroque reconstruction. Research of the past years have proved that the drawing recorded the condition after the end of the Turkish conquest and before the Baroque reconstruction. But taking in consideration the specifications of the turkish authorities, this means that the picture shows the monastery essentially as it was before 1543. From the viewpoint of research, the survey in 1713 has the following important points: Behind the porch (the foundation wall of which have been uncovered) in front of the western entrance of the church a deeply recessed shafted doorway was indicated. The tower north of the church, between the choir and the chapter-house, had not been fully built, its walls only reaching the height of the choir. On the drawing, the monastery is a one-storey building, flanking the cloister-garth from the north and the south; only along its eastern side do we see some out buildings. The monks' cells were situated in the western wing of the monastery. The plan shows the cells arranged on both sides of a corridor; light enters the corridor through a window from the south. A striking feature of the northern wing (where the refectory is found) is that all its rooms are vaulted. Similarly refined was the execution of the corridor running along the courtyard and then turning to enter the eastern wing; having reached the staircase, however, the corridor abruptly comes to an end, without providing access to the outbuildings on the east side. Then plan indicates a beginning of a wall here. In front of the southern and eastern wing along the cloister there is a two-storey corridor, which was built of brick on the ground floor and was half-timbered on the first floor. (The plan also indicates a corridor in frout of the western wing.) The Baroque reconstruction of the monastery took place between 1713 and 1772. That was the time that the uniformly designed two-storey building consisting of vaulted spaces with their entrances to the vaulted corridor surrounding the rectangular cloister was completed. The upper two levels of the tower were also constructed then. In 1862 the town architect Pál Molnár carried out a survey of the church. It was through his work that we know about the fragmented pieces of the curvilinear tracery of the windows. The buttresses beside the south entrance are missing from his drawings, the same way as they are missing from the plan of the reconstruction of 1713. In 1876 Imre Steindl drew up some ambitious plans for the reconstruction of the church. The execution of these plans was foiled by the great flood in Szeged in 1879. In 1900 two buttresses were added close to the south entrance, while the entrance of the crypt underneath the choir, known only from drawings, was demolished, together with the surviving tracery of the windows. The external survey of the church was carried out in 1984-1985. The results are to be complemented with the observations made at the end of the 1980s, already after the submission of this manuscript; in view of the fact that the survey of the church is suspended for the future, we find it necessary to publish the results in the present study.