A miskolci ortodox templom és sírkertje (Miskolc, 2001)
A miskolci ortodox templom és sírkertje (Összegzés angolul) Zimányi Katalin
were 100 representatives (families) of a non-Catholic community in a settlement it was allowed to them to build a church but only inside a yard with a door opening not on the street. According to the orders in 1782-1783 the Greek Orthodox community bought the ground-plot where firstly the church, later the hospital and the parsonage were built. For the sake of building the church the collection of endowments began in 1782. There were different plans made in 1776, 1784 and also in 1785 for the construction of the church. (Unfortunately the first and the finally realised third plans have not survived in the collection of the local files. The author of the study, István Dobrossy gives a detailed description of the available second plan from 1784.) The building contracts were signed in 1785 and hence we know the name of the master builder: Joan Michael Schajdler. Putnik Mozes the archbishop of Karlóc gave the permission for the laying of the foundationstone and sent frater Meletius Mihalovics on this occasion to Miskolc. The archbishop suggested St. Nicholas as patron saint to the church though to keep the original name, St. Naum, would have been rational. According to the documents hidden in the foundation stone and the words above the western entrance of the building, the church was built in the honour of the Holy Trinity. The phases of the church building, the names of the people working there are known from the number of accounts remained. The walls inside were painted by Anton Kuchelmeister, the gilding was made by Christopher Ruppont, the iconostasis by Nicholas Jankovics and the stonework by John Adami. In 1875 the tower collapsed and it was rebuilt by a firm (Kaiser and Fried) in Budapest only in 1887. The plate-pieces used then can be seen in the Miskolc Orthodox Museum even nowadays. (To cover the tower 270 m2 special sheet of red copper was needed.) The bells were made in the same year, but in 1916 two of them had to be removed and used for war aims. The present bell, the largest one was founded in 1851 in Wiener-Neustadt. (Relying on the words engraved, it was re-founded.) The author writes about the church as the centre of religious life, when speaking about the articles used during the liturgy. Recently we know a lot of names from the 18 th-19 th centuries. The members of the community gave different works of art, icons, chalices or books, so their names have remained in the testaments or in the inventories of the works of art. The names of the masters who had made the icons or the chalices can be read on the articles as well.
