A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 20. (1981)

M. KOZÁK Éva: Régészeti kutatások a szalonnai református templomban

RÉGÉSZETI KUTATÁSOK A SZALONNAI REFORMÁTUS TEMPLOMBAN 37 the 12th, 13th century. No other sacral building is known in the settlement, thus it must have functioned also as a Parish church. The ground plan of the church with the semicircle formed nave and the shrine is a representative of the round church form spread in Central Europe. The outher architectural elaboration is characterised by wall piers propertioning the plane of the wall, the semicircle and dentally engraved elements of the architrave are closed with a stone frieze. The windows are of stepped orders of arches. The original entrance is not known, though its frame stones can be found in the western entrance. Beside the well elaborated outer facade, inner decoration was impertant, too, as it is shown by the remains of the wall painting depicting the legend of Margaret of Antiochy, the titular saint of the church. After the Tartar invasion the church proved to be too small. One third of the nave of the round church was demolished, and the church was enlarged with an ill orientated stone nave towards west. Its quality is far behind that of the round church. The funnel shaped romanesque windows and the western entrance witness about an enlargement no later than in the second half of the 13th c. Under the rule of István Szalonnai and his sons, i.e. at the end of the 14th and during the 15th century, the church was enriched with gothic elements. The church was decorated with coloured wall paintings, some of them made by András Szepesi in 1426. The coloured wooden ceiling, that survived till the beginning of our century, was made during the calvinist era in the 17th c. Probably this was the time, when the wall paintings were whitewashed. The research of several years proved that during the 11-13th centuries the round church was an accepted form of village architecture beside the ones with long naves. The reconstructed church in Szalonna adds to the early examples of architecture of the Árpád-era, and also provides further data to scientists dealing with round churches. Éva M. Kozák