Szatmári Gizella: Walks in the Castle District - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2001)

The Church of Our Lady (Matthias Church)

sculptural decoration as an effect of the acclaimed Parier workshop in Prague. (The architect Peter Parier designed the St. Vitus Cathedral and the Charles Bridge in Prague.) It was in this church where the marriage ceremony of King Matthias and Beatrice of Aragon was held at Christmas 1475. Matthias is credited with the construction of the Royal Oratory by the southern chapel and the reconstruction of the South Tower. There are sources according to which it was from here in 1514 that Archbishop of Esztergom Tamás Bakócz called, in the name of Pope Leo X, for a Crusade against the Turks, appointing as commander György Dózsa, a “Székely” noble warrior from Transylvania. The Turks, upon capturing Buda, proceeded to convert the church into a mosque. (While a “djami” was a major centre of Muslim devotion with a tower, or minaret, a mosque was a common house of prayer.)

As a precaution, the burghers of Buda are said to have walled in the picture of the miraculous Virgin Mary. (Alternatively, it may have been the Turks themselves who, being wary of removing it altogether, hid the picture in such a manner.) During the siege in 1686, the wall tumbled down, revealing the Madonna, which was

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