A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Közleményei 20. - Száz éve alakult a Békéscsabai Múzeum-Egyesület (Békéscsaba, 1999)

Szatmári Imre: Medieval Csorvás and its church

A középkori Csorvás és temploma EFM = Erkel Ferenc Múzeum, Gyula ltsz. = leltári szám МММ = Munkácsy Mihály Múzeum, Békéscsaba Múz. Hír. = Múzeumi Híradó. A Békés Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága tájékoztatója, Békéscsaba Rég. Ad. = Régészeti Adattár Rég. Füz. = Régészeti Füzetek, Budapest Medieval Csorvás and its church - Imre Szatmári Résumé The medieval settlement antecedent of present-day Csorvás (Békés county) was first mentioned in the documents in the 15th century and it was destroyed at the turn of the 1617th centuries. Its site, however, was continuously indicated on the later maps (fig. 1-4). In June, 1997 we had a two-week excavation to discover the church of medieval Csorvás (fig. 5-6). During this excavation we dug out part of the church of the former settlement: the remains of its choir, of the northern nave walls and also of the north-west corner of the church (fig. 7-11, 30-32). We opened up five graves from the surrounding graveyard, nd we also found the pit of an ossarium (fig. 7, 13, 33/3). It used to be a single-naved church with a semicircular choir. The foundations of the choir were made from stone laid on stamped earth, strengthened with locally slaked lime (fig. 12, 31, 33/1-2). The foundations of the walls had almost completely been removed, so where they used to have the nave walls, we could only see the foundation pits. The church may have been built around the turn of the 11-12th centuries. The Arpadian origin of the settlement is also proved by the vessel fragments collected on the village site (fig. 17, 18/3), by two 12-13th century coins found on the site and in the close neighbourhood of the church, by three rings with S-shaped tips and by a lunula fragment (fig. 14/7-8; fig. 15/1-2; fig. 26/7-8; fig. 27/1-2). The church walls, in accordance with the formal requirements of Gothic style, were supported by buttresses, probably in the second half of the 15th century. The choir was strengthened with three, the northern nave wall with two buttresses, and where once the choir and the nave were joined, they built a double buttress (fig. 7, 8, 32/1-2). Quite a lot of surface findings from all over the medieval settlement had earlier been taken to our museum (fig. 14, fig. 16/2, fig. 17-26, fig. 28/1, fig. 29), and thanks to this latest excavation, their number was increased (fig. 15, 16/1, 27, 28/2-4). One of the excavated graves in the graveyard around the church was found inside the choir, another one right outside the junction of the choir and the nave and three more of them under the buttresses (fig. 7, 13). The latter three graves proved that the buttresses had only been attached to the building additionally, in the area of the graveyard 111