H. Kolba Judit szerk.: Historical Exhibition of the Hungarian National Museum Guide 2 - From the Foundation of the State until the Expulsion of the Ottomans - The history of Hungary in the 11th to 17th centuries (Budapest, 2005)

ROOM 4 - Villages and Towns in the Second Half of the 15th century and at the Beginning of the 16th century (Piroska Biczó )31

23. Crockery dug up in the destroyed village of Sarvaly, late 15th - early 16th century 24. Stove tile with the figure of St. Peter, Besztercebánya (Banská Bystrica), late 15th century side. Inspired by the Franciscan church at Marosvásárhely (Tîrgu Mures), towers of this type spread among the Szeklers in Csík and Gyergyó. Against the repeated Turkish raids which began in the 1430s in Transylvania, churches were fortified from the mid-15th century onwards with walls and strong towers. From this time on fortified churches were built in the Saxon settlements as well. An architectural relic of the menace represented by Turkish expansion in the Balkans is the Orthodox church at Ráckeve, finished in 1487. This was erected by Serbian refugees from the Lower Danube region who had fled from the Turks and resettled at Keve, on Csepel Island. Because complete archaeological excavation of the village has made reconstruction possible, a maquette has been put together showing mediaeval Sarvaly, in Zala county, a village inhabited by lesser nobles and destroyed during the Turkish campaigns of the 1530s and 1540s. The way of life of lesser nobles with landed property no bigger than a copyhold did not greatly differ from that of the inhabitants of villages living in feudal dependency; some serfs who produced for the market could even achieve living standards above those of the small nobility. The houses of Sarvaly were without exception log edifices of several rooms each built on a stone substructure. The great majority of them date from the 14th