Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
ST MICHAEL'S CHURCH 82 the congregation, were Germans, for instance in 1430 the priest was called Johannes Unrest. The basement, which can be seen today in Március 15 Square, once belonged to a large Gothic building. It was built in the second half of the 14th or the first half of the 15th century in the place of a smaller church built in the 13th century in late Romanesque style. This three-aisled building with slender lancet windows and buttresses met the requirements of the age: it was able to hold many more people and also to represent the godliness and the affluence of the inhabitants of the German town, The small sidechapel annexed to the southern part of the church as well as the vestry on the northern wall were probably built one or two generations later. Above the porch on the northern facade we can see a slender spire on the engravings around 1600; therefore it must also have been erected before the Ottoman era. After the Ottoman occupation in 1543 this was the only church left in Christian possession: its congregation, which turned Protestant in the middle of the century, paid annual taxes on it to the Ottoman occupiers. According to the register in 1570 there were Turkish shops and stalls belonging to the busy market place in the square outside the ramshackle fence, along the graveyard wall. During the Ottoman era the sieges could have damaged the church as well, but we have no exact information from that age. In 1669 the congregation had a huge tower erected on the south-western corner of the church, or at least we can draw this conclusion from the letter they wrote to Mihály Apafi Prince ofTransylvania in 1671 asking for support to reconstruct the tower that had been built two years before but had collapsed in the previous winter. In 1686, as a result of the war of liberation, Vác became under Christian control again. During the following decades - apart from the few years of the Kuruc Age - the bishopric, which had returned to its seat, regarded St Michael's Church as the cathedral. This was the place where the bishops celebrated The excavation of the medieval St Michael's Church The Main Square during the excavations was followed by the graves all around, well separated from the former Hungarian burial places. In 1332 St Michael's Church turns up again - at least it seems probable that Stephanus (István in Hungarian) was the priest of this church and admittedly his income was 20 marks (i.e. more than 4 kilos) of silver. He paid tithes due to the archbishop of Esztergom, which indicates that although his church was situated within the territory of the Diocese of Vác just a short way off, due to its privileges it was independent of the local bishop in canon law. Just for the sake of comparison: the annual income of St Margaret's Parish in the Hungarian town of Vác was estimated at 5 marks, and that of the village parishes about 1 mark. In the oncoming decades the special position of St Michael's Church was mentioned in several charters, while in 1480 it was already under the authority of the bishop of Vác. Before the Ottoman era the priests, like most of
