Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)
Church of the Sacred Heart, 1891
Romanesque church at Ják does in fact appear on the fapade of the parish church in Rákospalota, at No. 3 Bácska utca in District XVI.) Because we should "follow the example set by that monk [Miklós Révai] filled with piety and patriotic sentiment, who was able to reconstruct an entire grammar on the basis of the Funeral Oration [the oldest of surviving texts in their entirety written in the Hungarian language, dating back to the late 12th century] we should also construct, on the basis of a handful of relics, an alphabet and vocabulary to enlarge our experience with the treasure trove of our growing sense of artistic value, as we should continually invent and search for Hungarian materials and a Hungarian style". These aspirations, whose phrasing owes much to the exalted mood of the "great millennial celebrations” marking the anniversary of the Hungarian settlement of the Carpathian basin (1896), were to be shaped into a programme by Ödön Lechner in his work "A Hungarian Idiom of Architecture is a Thing of the Future Not of the Past" and quoted above. Ödön Lechner's nephew Jenő (Kismarty) Lechner summed up the art of Kauser’s architecture in an obituary he wrote in 1919 in these words: "... it is not so much to the originality of his invention as to an accurate conception of shape in the manner of his own Eclectic style that he owed his distinction in matters of taste and interpretive power, which set him above his contemporaries. Uninterested in popularity, he refused to bow to the reigning Art Nouveau fashion of the times, as he followed the ideals living in his soul and served with affection his trade, a trade he knew by heart—by an artist's heart.” Standing on the pediment above the main entrance is the Archangel Michael, guarding the church. On the carved consoles of the ledge above the dual portal opening from the porch are the symbols of the Evangelists in their Biblical order—the angel standing for Matthew, the lion for Mark, the ox for Luke and the eagle for John. The plaster relief in the spandrel above the door was sculpted by Ignác Langer in the form of two angels adoring the Heart on the Altar (with the lamb before it who takes away the sins of the world). The referent of the allusion in the composition is the Eucharist. The inscription on it reads, SANCTIFICAVI DOMUM HANC QUAM AEDIFICA(vi)STIS ET ERIT COR MEUM IBI CUNCTIS DIEBUS (1 consecrate this house, which you have built, and my heart will be here every day.) The inscription provides a link to the Hungarian words on the triumphal arch of the chancel, which reads, Learn of me; because I am meek and lowly in heart (and ye shall find rest unto your souls, Matt. 11.29). (The "Queen of the Heavens" parish church in Szent István tér, Újpest, was also designed by József Kauser, and built in 1880-81.)
