Árpád Mikós

...

What, then, was the geographical and political context of this region's Late Renaissance architecture? This is not as simple a matter as it may seem. For one thing, the Principality of Transylvania is often identified with the lands that belonged to the pre-Trianon Kingdom of Hungary and are now part of Romania. Such is not the case. It was an entity with constantly changing borders, both historically and geographically speaking, that first came into being in 1541 with the fall of Buda and the tripartite division of medieval Hungary, and only gradually did it gain independence from what was left of Royal Hungary under Habsburg rule. The Principality was forced to survive as an Ottoman vassal for a century and half, only to be occupied by the Habsburg armies after the Ottoman Turks had been driven out of most of what had earlier been Hungarian territory. In the principality's golden age, under Princes Gabriel Bethlen (1608-13) and George I Rákóczi (1630-48), its territory expanded northwards to swallow seven of the counties of neighbouring Upper Hungary (roughly modern Slovakia), including the major city of Kassa (now KoŠice). The territory then shrank substantially as a result of the catastrophic foreign policy pursued by George II Rákóczi (1658-60) after the incursions of Ottoman-backed Tartar forces. Nagyvárad (Oradea) fell to the Turks and Szatmár (Satu Mare) to the Habsurgs, while the northern frontier was pulled back to Királyhágó Pass (Piatra Craiului), which turned Kolozsvár, one of the principality's main strongholds, into a border fortress. The reign of Michael I Apafi (1661-90) marked a regeneration of the state though, as its artistic relics testify, the period could not compete with those preceding it. Transylvania's constitutional position was settled by the Diploma Leopoldinum of 1691, under which it ceased to be recognised as an autonomous principality and its territory was annexed to the Habsburg Empire. So much for the bare facts, to which it should be added that present-day thinking about Hungarian history breaks from Romantic nineteenthcentury historiography by no longer attributing to the Principality of Transylvania a decisive role in the political evolution of the Kingdom of Hungary.

That cannot be said to be the case when it comes to culture, however. The princely court in Transylvania was not just a sanctuary for Hungarian opponents of the Habsburgs: it also became a major centre of far-reaching influence for the propagation of Hungarian-and primarily Protestant-cultural values. It was a uniquely important locus for Hungarian literature and art throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As far as architecture goes, the earlier literature tended to overemphasise the influence of Italian models; however, as András Kovács demonstrates- and this represents a huge shift in art-history perspectives on Transylvania -Italian designs did not arrive directly from Italy but, generally, by way of Austrian, German, Bohemian or Moravian intermediaries. He also ascribes a key role in the process of transmitting styles to etchings and engravings and imported items of applied art that had been previously overlooked. Broadly, he argues that Transylvania's peripheral position, and hence its relative isolation, accounts for Renaissance stylistic elements being preserved for so long in its arts. Indeed, conservative eclecticism dominated: Renaissance forms persisted in architectural sculpture and decoration until well into the seventeenth century and, conversely, Baroque stylistic elements did not appear in Transylvanian buildings before the eighteenth century. In this easternmost borderland of Western culture, the bulk of the constituent "nations" of its inhabitants professed the Protestant faith (the Hungarians being Calvinists or Unitarians, the "Saxon" Germans Lutherans) and therefore unresponsive to the Baroque. Clearly a scarcity of master builders trained in the latest fashions also played its part, a dearth that was evident throughout the seventeenth century.
Of the three "nations" that made up the body politic of Transylvania, the Saxons and the Székely were distinct from the Hungarians in, among other things, being granted their own separate administrative territories-so-called "seats" (székek) -that retained their "ancient" (i.e., medieval) privileges in regard to self-government, the administration of justice, obligation to perform military service, etc. The Hungarians and the Székely shared a language, while the Saxons spoke a German dialect that, due to long separation from the German lands, preserved many archaic elements. So great were the inroads made by Protestantism that few outside the Székely lands were still Catholic by the latter half of the sixteenth century. The principality was in fact conspicuous for a freedom of religion that was uncommon in Europe at that time, with four "recognised" denominations: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism. Of its princes, John Sigismund (d. 1571) professed the Unitarian faith, while among his successors those of the Báthory family were Catholic, while Gabriel Bethlen and the Rákóczis were Calvinist. (It may be noted that the serfs, though obviously not partaking of high art and culture to any great extent, were similarly diverse when it came to their religion; most of the Romanians were Greek Orthodox.) Such religious tolerance was a magnet for many foreigners, including intellectuals and artisans, who had been driven out of their own countries due to their religious beliefs. Transylvania, with its multilingual population, was also a flourishing centre of book printing. Pre-eminent among these printers was the firm of Hoffgreff-Heltai, which operated for a long time (until 1660) in Kolozsvár-Klausenburg and whose output included Hungarian-language books, and that of Johannes Honterus in Brassó or Kronstadt (Brasov), which even printed Greek texts. Kolozsvár was also the place chosen by Miklós Tótfalusi Kis on his return from Amsterdam (where he is now credited with designing a font, previously attributed to Anton Janson, that became widely used throughout Europe), to set up his own printing shop, which was active between 1693 and 1703.

...

The frequent wars of the period lent considerable importance to the building of fortifications. A curious anomaly, though, is that all the large fortresses, with defences designed to withstand cannon fire, were built along the northwestern border with Hungary, not in the south, as the Porte would not permit fortifications in the Principality, which was under their suzerainty and thus their nominal ally. A strong defensive line would have hampered their ability to occupy territory whenever they pleased. At the same time, there was no sense in constructing fortifications in the interior of the country, because the mountainous terrain made it impossible to deploy the heavy artillery of the day, even though the sixteenth century was the heyday throughout Europe for the construction of fortifications alla moderna, i.e., with a symmetrical ground plan. The first signs of this being taken into account in Transylvania were to be found in the refurbishment of the medieval fortifications of larger towns like Brassó and Nagyszeben. The first modern castle to be given new Italian-style bastions was that of Szamosújvár or Armenierstadt/Neuschloss (Gherla), work on which commenced in 1538 on the orders of King John I (Szapolya) of Hungary and was then continued on the instructions of (Friar) György Martinuzzi (with a gate house built in 1542); its completion dragged on, as was generally the case with fortresses, into the seventeenth century. The most ambitious of the fortifications was the modernisation of the castle at Nagyvárad, or Grosswardein, which was remodelled to a pentagonal planimetric design. Work on this started during the reign of Prince John Sigismund (1558- 71), with a certain "Julius Caesar" as the architect- most likely Giulio Cesare Baldigara, a military engineer who is known to have been employed by the Habsburgs.

There were other instances of trained architects from Habsburg Royal Hungary being employed to pass on their expertise to Transylvania. Thus, active though Gabriel Bethlen was in pursuing building programmes, the work on Nagyvárad Castle was still incomplete at the end of his reign and was thus carried over into that of George I Rákóczi. It was also under Bethlen that a start was made on refashioning the walls of the princely residence of Gyulafehérvár to Italian specifications (with the construction of two of the eventual four bastions), but that too was suspended because the castle, located at the foot of several hills, was hard to defend. Bethlen was also responsible for commissioning Italian bastions for the fortifications at Fogaras (Fa˘ga˘ra˘s¸), a residence fortress which during the latter half of the seventeenth century became the principal refuge of Transylvania's princes.
Fortified churches were a distinctive type of architecture in Transylvania's smaller market towns, created by putting up a wall around the church and reinforcing it with towers and bastions, depending on what resources the settlement was willing or able to afford. The Saxons of southern Transylvania were the first to fortify their churches in this manner, as early as the fifteenth century, and extension of them continued (e.g., at Höltövény or Heldsdorf [Ha˘lchiu], Prázsmár or Tarlau [Prejmer], etc.), the spur for which was given by the sporadic incursions of Turks from the South. The Székely areas, being further away from that threat, faced the same problem only somewhat later and did not start to fortify their churches until the sixteenth century. Fighting at the turn of the sixteenth into the seventeenth century prompted some communities, such as Nagyajta (Aita Mare) and Sepsiárkos (Arcus¸), to beef up their defences with modern Italian bastions and towers, or at least fortifications that were reminiscent of these. The final stage in this series of developments is the fortified church at Kézdiszentlélek (Sianzieni), which was constructed early in the eighteenth century, though the defensive function of the peculiar polygonal star-shaped walls with four cylindrical towers had become completely obsolete by then.
In the next chapter of his superb book, Kovács goes on to look at châteaux, castles and manor houses. For the most part, we are dependent on written sources for any insight we may have into the kind of life that was led by the occupants of these residences and their associated cultural trappings. The most important of these sources are the inventories that were compiled to provide a provisional record, every now and then, of the contents of such a residence, from furniture and carpets to pots and pans, from the various parts of its main edifice to its gardens and farm buildings. Narrative sources, such as chronicles, travel accounts, letters and, in the case of the princely court, reports from envoys allow us to catch a glimpse of everyday life and, at times, the manner in which festivals were celebrated. So do the memoirs that make up one of the major genres of Transylvanian literature.

Pride of place in this chapter is given to the Prince's Palace in Gyulafehérvár. This complex of buildings, laid out around three courtyards, largely stands to this day, having been in the hands of a succession of military authorities until very recently. It started off from a kernel of buildings- the medieval Episcopal Palace and Dean's House- close to the Cathedral and reached its greatest extent by the mid-seventeenth century. It was destroyed twice- first in the upheavals that followed Sigismund Báthory's abdication (1598), then in the sack of the city by Turks and Tartars in early 1658- and we have only written sources to turn to for what it was like at its peak, in the days of Gabriel Bethlen and George I Rákóczi. It was under Bethlen that it assumed an imposing presence, the most striking feature of which, from the outside, were the battlements crowning the cornice- another instance of just how decisive a role the construction work initiated by Bethlen had on seventeenth-century Transylvanian architecture.
Kovács disposes of one of the older legends of art history by showing that not a single château with a symmetrical ground plan was constructed within the Principality in the sixteenth century. The ground plan for the château built by István Bocskai at Egeres (Aghires¸), which supporters of the earlier view used to cite as their prime piece of evidence, turns out to have been asymmetrical when it was originally built, and every last one of the country houses that went up in the final third of the century differs in its ground plan. Thus, János Gálfi's château at Bólya or Bell (Buia)- sadly, a ruin nowadays- was likewise constructed to an irregular ground plan. At Fogaras, the medieval fortress was transformed into a palatial residence, with the court façade of one wing being furnished with a loggia in which the arch of the vault seems to slip in a Mannerist fashion. The Old Castle at Szentbenedek (Ma˘na˘stirea) supplied the nucleus for the ensemble of buildings that make up the Kornis Château. Of special interest is the Veres Bastion at Marosillye (Ilia Eilenmarkt), which was originally a corner-bastion belonging to the outer defensive wall of a demolished older castle. Instead of being filled in, it was remodelled into a suite of rooms intended for formal functions, its walls in part decorated with murals.
The palatial mansions that date from the Bethlen-Rákóczi era arose during Transylvania's most glittering days. These were erected on regular ground plans, with exteriors that, like the princely palace in Gyulafehérvár, were enriched by windows topped by triangular pediments and italianate, crenellated cornices. The earliest examples of this made an appearance in constructions for the princely court. Alvinc or Winzendorf (Vint¸ul de Jos) was planned to be one of the very first, but work on it was never entirely finished. Here the single-storey wings were to have been set on a regular hexagonal ground plan of a huge area, with an Italian bastion at each corner, with the façade articulated in part by twin windows. When archaeologists excavated the middle of the courtyard, they came across the foundations of the medieval monastery in which Friar György had been murdered in 1551. The grandest of the two-storey residences was planned by Prince Gabriel Bethlen to be the centre of Nagyvárad Castle. Like the fortress, this would have risen on a pentagonal ground plan, but it too failed to reach completion. Symmetrical designs were also adopted by members of the princely entourage. Square mansions with corner towers were built by Simon Pécsi, a chancellor, at Radnót (Iernut); by Ferenc Mikó, constable of the seats (székek) of Csík, Gyergyó and Kászon, at Csíkszereda (Miercurea Ciuc); and by Zsigmond Lónyai, high sheriff of Kraszna County, at Aranyosmeggyes (Medies¸u Aurit). A substantial castle, also of rectangular ground plan but with round corner towers, was raised by George I Rákóczi at Gyalu (Gila˘u). The models for these types of construction were provided by country houses that had been built by the aristocracy of Upper Hungary, such as the square château at Tavarnok (Tovarníky, Slovakia) or the hexagonal castle of the Forgách family at Gács (Halic·, Slovakia); their instigator was most likely Giacomo Resti, who went on from that part of Hungary to serve the princely court in Transylvania.

Árpád Mikós
is Curator of the Old Hungarian Department of the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest.