Haris Andrea szerk.: Koldulórendi építészet a középkori Magyarországon Tanulmányok (Művészettörténet - műemlékvédelem 7. Országos Műemlékvédelmi Hivatal,)

Mezősiné Kozák Éva: A vértesszentkereszti apátság a dominikánusok idején

The Abbey of Vértesszentkereszt at the Time of its Dominican Occupancy Éva Mezősi-Kozák At the top of the Vértes Mountain, far removed from the places of human habitation, there are the considerable remains of the monastery founded by the Csáky family for the Benedictine Order. Established sometime during the 12th century, the monastery was first mentioned in the documents in 1146. In the course of the archaeological excavation we were able to form an overall picture about the construction of the group of buildings making up the abbey, revealing the various stages of the work. In its earliest form, the monastery consisted of a church with rectangular chancel and an adjoining building. At the beginning of the 13th century a richly ornamented aisled church was built south of the original monastery. The Romanesque monastery, which consisted of an eastern and a western wing enclosing a yard, was erected between these two sacral buildings in the second quarter of the 13th century. The construction work is associated with the names of Ugrin II and his heir, Miklós I. of the Csák family. The first half of the 13th century can be regarded as the golden age of the monastery, but it also enjoyed royal patronage during the reign of King Louis the Great and King Sigismund Luxembourg. The actual decline of the monastery began in the period following the reign of King Sigismund. As revealed in a petition written in 1475 to the Pope by Miklós Újlaki, the buildings of the abbey were decaying, its revenues were insignificant and only two monks lived in it. Finally, it was King Matthias who raised the issue of the abbey in a letter written in 1478 to Pope Sixtus IV, asking permission for its incorporation into the Dominican Monastery of Fehérvár. The permission was granted and the Pope's bull about the merge of the two orders was issued on July 15, 1478. The Abbey of Vértes remained in its Romanesque condition at the time of the Dominicans' arrival. The construction work carried out by the new order in the years following 1478 was greatly determined by the existing conditions, the surviving buildings. The western wing of the Romanesque monastery was demolished right down to the level of foundations, together with a part of the church. The material of the demolished buildings were used for the reconstruction of the eastern wing and for the newly built wing on the north side. This new block took over the functions of the demolished rooms in the western wing. A chapel with rectangular chancel was added to the eastern wing. A cloister was built around the garth and on the western side the building ended in a section of the western corridor. The reconstruction work of the 13th century church was kept to a minimum: the glazed roof was replaced with a new cover. Inside only a new chancel screen was added in order to separate the clergy from the laymen. Within the preset limits, the Dominicans tried to meet their own demands as much as possible (winter-summer refectory, first-floor cells, etc.). The windows and doors were built in the Late Gothic style of the late 15th century. The surviving details suggest that the formal and structural examples of the Late Gothic art of the royal palace of Buda exerted an influence on the Monastery of Vértes.