Szegő Dóra - Szegő György: Synagogues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2004)
A Pair of Synagogues in the Buda Castle
as the temple was one of Europe’s foremost synagogues. Due to a lack of resources that prevents its archaeological exploration, it lies imprisoned in a concrete sarcophagus four metres below ground level under the former courtyard of the building at 23 Táncsics Mihály utca known as the Zichy Mansion. (The location can be accessed from the Babits walkway behind the building.) One section of the building in the courtyard was connected to the city wall. Its stone-covered floor lay a few steps above the level of the courtyard. The three central pillars divided the interior into four sections in each nave. Half-pillars built into the central and side walls supported a Gothic cross vault. The octagonal shafts stood on tall square plinths. The crossbeams and ribs carrying the vault extended from the fluted shafts without a capital. The height of the vault was probably 9 metres. Remnants of a red stone ledge were found on the Northern longitudinal wall with iron pegs to hang lamps on. The builders of the great synagogue of Buda had foreign models to follow. A shared feature of mediaeval synagogues as the Prague Altnemchul or the Altichul in Krakow is that while they conformed to the main principles of contemporary Gothic architecture, they lacked such requisites of Christian cathedrals as the three-nave layout symbolising the Holy Trinity, or the transept suggesting the Cross. Inside the synagogue were moveable single prayer stools with supports for the prayer books. The Ark was deposited in front of the southern wall, while the Torah-reading rostrum, the bimah, stood in the central axis of the second vault arch, visible from the women's prayer room. Another relic of the Táncsics utca Jewish quarter comprises remains of a former footbridge surviving in foundation stones and traces left in the wall. Historians assume that the footbridge could possibly have marked the entrance to the Jewish quarter, too. Fragments remaining of the piers of the bridge suggest that it connected the Mendel house with the great synagogue. We can find the story of Imre Fortunatus (Szerencsés), the royal treasurer and lender of money to Louis II for military operations, in historical records. The rich Jewish youth of Hispanic origin and Buda domicile was baptised around 1490 (his godfather was Palatine Imre Perényi), and then acted as councillor in the court of Louis II to László Szalkay, a man promoted to bishop of Vác and Eger. Following a manoeuvre in 1525 involving the debasement of coinage by minting money, an attack was mounted against the Chancellor of the Treasurer representing the court. The attack was spearheaded by István Ver- bőczy, supporter of the Szapolyai faction and leader of the lesser nobility, who regarded the operation as treasonous. The charges brought against Fortunatus, a member of parliament, at the May 1525 diet, provoked a pogrom in Buda. ’4
