This public lecture is held in the framework of the Faculty Research Seminar.
This paper concerns a dichotomy connected to the buildings and architecture of the religious military orders in medieval Hungary. Although the important orders (Order of St. John, Templars, Teutonic Order) were all active for a certain period in the territory of this medieval kingdom, their architecture is rarely present in the summaries dealing with the buildings of these orders. Very often, no visable traces remain to testify to their presence so that buildings related to these orders can only be studied though archaeological investigation. In a similar way, the Teutonic Order occupied an area in Burzenland (south-eastern Transylvania), but identifying the architectural monuments of this period remains a much debated question.
In general, only very few castles are associated with this context while church buildings connected to these orders are also problematic. Often later architectural periods of buildings, not related to the religious military orders, cover architectural information from earlier periods, while in other cases, there are difficulties in the identification of buildings occupied by these orders. The paper offers a summary of this research question. The extent to which different aspects (relatively short periods of occupation, major destruction periods during the Mongol invasion in Hungary and during the Ottoman-Turkish period) play a role in creating the problematic character of this architectural heritage will also be discussed. The various possiblilities for identifying buildings connected to the Teutonic Order, partly connected to their second period of occupation in Hungary will be reviewed.
Jozsef Laszlovszky is professor in the Department of Medieval Studies at CEU. His main research fields are medieval archaeology, monasticism, and material culture. His main publication connected to this lecture include:
The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity. Edited by Zsolt Hunyadi and József Laszlovszky, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University (Budapest), Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE), Budapest, CEU Medievalia 1, 2001.
Magyarország és kereszteshadjáratok. Lovagrendek és emlékeik. (Hungary and the Crusades. Religious Military Orders and their Heritage). (ed.) Laszlovszky József, Majorossy Judit, Zsengellér József. Budapest, 2006. 337 p.
