Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 33/4. (2013)
Articles
254 Zs. Nyárádi organ made by János Szabó was placed on it. In 1748, through the donation of István Borsai Nagy, the church received a new preacher chair. In 1761, Borsai and his wife Éva Ecsedi commissioned a Transylvanian Saxon craftsman to build a richly painted loft with a twisted parapet, bearing Saxon features, which can still be seen today. The southern door was also made in the same year.14 In 1841 the tower with its wooden porch was rebuilt, elevated and fitted with Baroque windows and decorative elements. The elevation of the tower, however, generated some unexpected problems as the tower itself was built in the 14th century, it couldn’t bear the weight overload and its western side began to sink. In order to prevent it from collapse it was surrounded with thick buttresses but as a result, the western entrance became unusable and so it was walled up. During the work on the tower, some minor changes were also done on the church: a window was built into the northern wall with the donation made by Mrs. János Ugrón baroness Ágnes Györffy, and it was then that they stumbled upon traces of the forgotten wall paintings, which were exposed during the renovation done in 1898, under the guidance of József Huszka.15 However, they were not restored at that time, not even in 1943, when Dezső Dercsényi, following his on-spot inspection, proposed their conservation. Despite the fact that the church has an important place among historical monuments, little is known about its construction phases and the exact date of its beginning. This is mainly due to the fact that although the church’s standing visible parts were studied by many art historians,16 archaeological and other types of research were always somehow neglected during the building’s restoration. New restorations were done on the church in 1966 but its thorough investigation was once again postponed, however, the notes and sketches done by Sándor Vetési, following the replacement of the floor inside the church offer us vital data even today. According to his observations in the place of the sanctuary of today’s gothic church there was a not much smaller Romanesque sanctuary with a semi-circular apse. It also turned out that there was a crypt inside the sanctuary, inside the nave, at a depth of a mere half a meter. The gothic floor was still intact and carvings, unknown until then, also turned up 14 Dávid 1981, 87. 15 Dávid 1981, 88. 16 Entz 1996, 137. with fragments from the gothic terracotta ribs.17 Following the removal of the church’s external plastering in the 1990’s, new medieval carvings were discovered and recorded by Elek Benkő in his photographic documentation. A program for the adequate restoration and investigation of the church was launched in 2009. As part of it, during that year, a group made up mostly of architects surveyed the entire inside of the church. Meanwhile some preliminary archaeological excavation was also done under the guidance of András Sófalvi, in concordance with the demands of architecture blueprints. The primary objective of the three small surface excavation trenches (one explored the area of the tower and nave and their connection on the southern side, while the other two explored the vestry’s outer and inner surfaces) was the static inspection of the church’s foundation walls and acquiring information about the site’s stratigraphy and condition. In spite of the shortness of the investigation and the small archaeological surfaces, it still yielded much new information. In the pit opened in the south-western part we managed to point out that the nave and tower, as assumed earlier, were built as one single structure. The excavated graves, containing no additional objects, superimposed with each other, and the church’s southern wall, pointed out that the southern walls location was once occupied by an earlier graveyard so there also must have been an earlier church. The foundation walls of the vestry predating the gothic phase appeared on the northern side. Underneath the foundation of the wall built in the 14th and 15th century the remains of a burial site belonging to the first church were uncovered (GR-10). Here, as inventory we found a hair ring with an ‘S’ shaped ending, which lead us to believe that the burial dates back to the 12th and 13th century.18 The historical monument’s specific restoration was done in 2012. The archaeological excavations, in spite the fact that they were under the complete subordination of the restoration and the work being done as part of this, and that they were mostly intended to be rescue excavations (we could only inspect the specific surfaces and depths designated by the architects, so we were not able to excavate the earliest graves). As such, these did not add much new data to the research done until now, but we made corrections and managed to confirm observations made so far. Based on the 17 Dávid 1981, 78, as well as Sófalvi 2010, 31. 18 Sófalvi 2010, 34.
