Prakfalvi Endre: Roman Catholic Churches in Unified Budapest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2003)

The Church of St. Elizabeth of the House of Árpád, 1901

Born in 1202, Elizabeth died in 1231 and was canonized in 1235. The church dedicated to her in Marburg, the town where she lies buried, consists of a nave and two aisles. The polygonal closure of the aisles, together with the chancel-like transept combine to form a unique blend of longitudinal and central design. Steindl's main altar also echoes an obvious Marburg prototype in the reliquary of St. Elizabeth. The influence of yet another St. Elizabeth Church can be observed—that of the one in Kassa (Kosice). The latter (built around the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries) was a major scene of the architect's activities as a restorer, carried out in the spirit of purism (i.e. motivated by an urge to "improve and purify" architectural style). What refers back to Kassa in Rózsák tere is the diagonal placement of a subsidiary chancel on each side. (That layout is likely to have been responsible for his contemporaries attributing a French character to the layout employed in Kassa, assuming that such an arrangement of chancels had been imported to this country by Villard de ffonnecourt of Picardy, who was en route to Hungary—en Le tierre de Hongrie—in the 1220s, as he recorded on the side of a drawing he made of a section in the nave of Reims cathedral.)

The walls of the church have a pressed-brick facing, while the courses, the tendrils and finials, the parts exposed to the extremities of weather, are made of ceramic and carved stone. The roof is covered with quarry slate. The aisles have cross-rib vaulting, while the upper covering of the sanctuary bay and the apse after the crossing (to its east) consists of a combination of reticular and stellar vaulting. On either side of the apse are oratories, each accessible via an octagonal stair turret. The interior decoration bears the signature of the best artists of the period. The stained glass in the two-mullioned and three-mul- lioned trellised lancet windows was made by Miksa Róth, Gida Walther and József Palka, the ironwork (the crown chandelier in the crossing) by Gyula Jungfer, and the woodwork, the mayoral stall is the work of Károly Lingel and the organ was built in the workshop of Sándor Országh and Son.

Over the ceramic rosette framed with Evangelical symbols on the royal gallery stands a statue, made of Zsolnay pirogranite, of the Virgin Mary, Patroness of Hungary, with St. Stephen on her left and St. Ladislas on her right (by Miklós Köllő). Above on the pediment, set in the tympanum extended with three foils, is the throne of grace (Gnademtuhi). Sitting on the throne, the Lord Almighty is holding the crucified Christ, while the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers above them. The statue of St. Elizabeth standing at the top of the pediment is the work of György Kiss. The figures in the lunettes of the canopied main portal and the side entrances represent the elevation (elevatio) of St. Elizabeth after her canonization. To the

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