Stones in Floors and Walls: Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality

ANNALES UNIVERSITATIS APULENSIS SERIES HISTORICA 19/II Places of Memory: Cemeteries and Funerary Practices throughout the Time Edited by Daniel Dumitran and Marius Rotar Editura Mega 2015 EDITORIAL BOARD Radu Ardevan (“Babeş-Bolyai” University Cluj-Napoca) Barbara Deppert-Lippitz (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut Frankfurt am Main) Alex Rubel (Institute of Archaeology Iaşi) Michael Vickers (Jesus College Oxford) Keith Hitchins (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Eva Mârza (“1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia) Bogdan Murgescu (University of Bucharest) Ernst Christoph Suttner (Universität Wien) Acad. Alexandru Zub (“A.D. Xenopol” Institute of History Iaşi) EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Daniel Dumitran (Chief-editor) Sorin Arhire (Secretary) Ileana Burnichioiu, Mihai Gligor, Valer Moga Cosmin Popa-Gorjanu, Marius Rotar Linguistic revision by Ginevra House Cover I: Ileana Burnichioiu Emblem on the catafalque of Katalin Perényi († 1693) in Marosvécs. Photograph: Zsolt Kovács Copyright © 2015, “1 Decembrie 1918” University of Alba Iulia Unirii Street, no. 15-17 Tel.: +40-258-811412; Fax: +40-258-806260 E-mail: aua_historia@uab.ro Web: http://diam.uab.ro/index.php?s=2&p=4 ISSN 1453-9306 www.edituramega.ro CONTENTS Introduction 5 STUDIES AND ARTICLES DEFINING THE PLACE ANAMARIJA KURILIĆ AND ZRINKA SERVENTI Buried Far Away: Easterners in Roman Liburnia DMITRI BUDIUKIN Small Burial Churches in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Russian Monasteries SUSHANT KISHORE From the Rajghat to India Gate: Places of Memory, Sites of State Sovereignty and Public Dissent SAVANNAH D. DODD Death at Lunchtime: An Ethnographic Study of Locals Lunching at Cimetière Des Rois 13 37 43 59 THE FUNERARY PRACTICES CHRISTINA LUNDBERG AND MIHAI GLIGOR Place of Death and Place of Rest. Commingled Human Remains from Alba Iulia-Lumea Nouă 2015 Early Eneolithic Funerary Discovery JÚLIA BARA Funeral Traditions of the Hungarian Aristocracy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: An Overview HILDA MACLEAN “The Defunct Celestial:” Chinese Funerary Practices in Nineteenth Century Australia ANNA E. KUBIAK Legal and Economic Issues of the Polish Funeral Industry 71 105 133 141 KEEPING OF MEMORY DÓRA MÉRAI Stones in Floors and Walls: Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality 151 CONTENTS JEWELL HOMAD JOHNSON Medieval Remembrance: Mak Dizdar and the Stećak of Bosnia CRISTINA BOGDAN Recalling Devices: From Ossuaries to Virtual Memorials 175 195 RESEARCH METHODS AND PRESERVATION DAWN C. STRICKLIN Bringing the Dead Back to Life: Reconstructing Cemetery Burial Registers DANIEL DUMITRAN Jewish Cemeteries of Romania: Alba Iulia Case Study 215 Abstracts List of abbreviations List of authors 259 267 269 4 235 STONES IN FLOORS AND WALLS: COMMEMORATING THE DEAD IN THE TRANSYLVANIAN PRINCIPALITY DÓRA MÉRAI This paper deals with a problem of terminology in classifying stone funeral monuments from the Transylvanian Principality. Though a number of early modern period stone memorials have been presented in scholarly literature published since the nineteenth century, no comprehensive catalogue has been created yet.1 Transylvanian sixteenth and seventeenth-century funeral monuments have mostly been discussed as pieces of stone carving and, more recently, in the context of sepulchral art, but have not really become a subject of international research into early modern funeral monuments and commemoration. Considering, however, the multi-ethnic and multiconfessional character of the environment in which they came into existence, they deserve attention even in a broader European perspective. Most of these objects are generally seen as tombstones, that is, stones that covered or simply marked the place where the dead were interred, and that commemorated the individual. Memorials that are today found built into the wall are sometimes called “epitaphs” in scholarship. Some of these indeed look different from tombstones, but others display forms that are similar to the latter in many respects. This paper will examine how (and whether) we can distinguish epitaphs from the tomb monuments set up in early modern Transylvania, and how we can define the term epitaph in this context. Ultimately, is this category useful at all here, and does it add to our understanding of stone memorials and the commemoration of the dead in the time of the Principality? The discussion is based on a comprehensive study targeted to collect and analyse funeral monuments from the time and territory of the early modern period of the Transylvanian state formation.2 The inventorying of stone memorials from the period between 1541 and 1700 was carried out over three years of fieldwork covering all of Transylvania.3 Based on the fieldwork and a  Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University; e-mail: MeraiD@ceu.edu. This catalogue is a part of my PhD thesis to be defended in 2016 at the Department of Medieval Studies of Central European University, with the title “Memory from the Past, Display for the Future. Funeral Monuments from the Transylvanian Principality.” 2 This was called Principality after 1570, but took shape from 1541, when the Ottoman Turkish forces took over Buda, the centre of the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom. Béla Köpeczi, ed., History of Transylvania, 3 vols. (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 2002), vol. 1, 593-656. 3 From 2011 to 2014; I received financial aid from the CEU Doctoral Support Research Grant, the Isabel and Alfred Bader Research Grant of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and the New Europe College in Bucharest. The inventory would 1 Annales Universitatis Apulensis Series Historica 19, II (2015): 151-173 DÓRA MÉRAI literature review, about 330 surviving stone memorials have been identified in churches, cemeteries, and museum collections, in a varying state of conservation. Stone memorials from the Transylvanian Principality The majority of the funeral monuments that have survived – more than two thirds – are simple rectangular ledgers. Ledgers were either decorated with the full- or half-figure portrait of the deceased or with a heraldic device: a noble or symbolic coat of arms according to the deceased’s social status. Portraits and heraldic images were also combined, and were often complemented with an inscription plaque bearing a commemorative sentence, a verse, or a biblical quote. Texts identifying the subject of the memorial appear also as border inscriptions running around the upper surface of the ledger. In contrast with the large number of ledgers, only six complete tomb chests have survived, and the fragments of about 15 more. Most of these displayed a full-figure portrait on the top, and a few presented a heraldic image. Surviving side panels were also decorated with heraldic representations and inscription plaques. Most of the tomb chests were freestanding structures set up somewhere in a church interior, except for two that were attached to walls: the memorial for Queen Isabelle in Alba Iulia, and that of György Sükösd originally in Tirimia4 (d. 1632).5 The only wall monuments with complex architectural structures that are known from the Transylvanian Principality were set up for the princes and their family members in the medieval bishopric cathedral in Alba Iulia. All of these were imported from abroad, from Poland, and only their structural elements have been preserved, mostly incorporated into side altars in the eighteenth century.6 Tomb chests and – with one or two known exceptions – ledgers as well were set up in church interiors. Two types of grave markers seem to have been, however, characteristic for the graveyards in the period: coffin-shaped and coped gravestones. Coped gravestones served as headstones, and were simple stone slabs have been impossible to make without the assistance of several friends, colleagues, local priests and laypeople all of whom I owe gratitude; the list would be too long to include here. 4 Now in the collection of the National History Museum of Transylvania (inv. no. 2678). Place names are mentioned in the paper in their present official, Romanian form, and the German and Hungarian forms are given in table 1 as an appendix. 5 Throughout the paper I will refer to the funeral monuments in the following form: name of the subject, present location, dating. In case the dating is based on the date of death, it is marked with d. before the year. 6 József Herczog, “Újabb adatok Bethlen Gábor és Károlyi Zsuzsanna síremlékéről” [New Data on the Funeral Monument of Gábor Bethlen and Zsuzsanna Károlyi], Századok 55-56 (1921-22): 5556; Mihály Détshy, “A gyulafehérvári Rákóczi-síremlékek” [The Rákóczi Funeral Monuments in Alba Iulia], MÉ 15 (1966): 26-30; Árpád Mikó, “Báthory István király és a reneszánsz művészet Erdélyben” [King István Báthory and the Renaissance Art in Transylvania], MÉ 37 (1988): 123. 152 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality with the upper edge turned into a protruding cornice to protect the inscription and images from rain and snow. Most of the coped stones bear a simple commemorative text and a heraldic motif or symbol. Coffin-shaped memorials, unlike tomb chests, were made of a single solid block of stone formed into an oblong shape with a roof-like top. Both types appeared from around 1600 among the surviving memorials. Most of the existing pieces came from the area of Cluj, and a few from the Székely territories, mostly Târgu Mureş. Other forms of headstones must have also been used, such as plain natural boulders, but there is no way of dating these.7 The “epitaph problem” Various terms have been applied by researchers for these forms of funeral monuments in Transylvania. The word “epitaph” has been used for a number of memorials, which deserves a deeper look, as the term generally refers to an object type in scholarship that does not exactly equate to funeral monument. Not only modern research has used this term, but local sixteenth and seventeenth century sources as well, even in the inscriptions of the memorials. This leads to the question of how the modern meaning is related to the early modern use, which might even show differences as compared to usage in other regions of Europe. Victor Roth, the author of the first comprehensive work on Transylvanian funeral monuments, made a distinction between epitaphs and funeral monuments even in the headings of his book. He presented alabaster, wooden, metal and stucco epitaphs located in the Lutheran church in Sibiu.8 The only stone memorial he called an epitaph was that of Margareta Budai, wife of Peter Haller (Sibiu, d. 1566; Fig. 1), though he treated it among the gravestones as well.9 This already forecasts that the distinction between the two is not that simple. The Haller memorial is a rectangular stone plaque measuring 160 x 80 cm, and it is now built into the wall of the northern transept of the Lutheran church in Sibiu. The small figure of Margaretha Haller is depicted kneeling in front of the crucified Christ, together with her four children. Two panels in a scrollwork frame bear the commemorative inscription and a metrical epitaph.10 The comprehensive work edited by Virgil Vătăşianu on sculpture in See, e.g., János Herepei, A Házsongárdi temető régi sírkövei: Adatok Kolozsvár művelődéstörténetéhez [Old Tombstones from the Házsongád Cemetery: Data on the Cultural History of Cluj] (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1988), 498-499; Iván Balassa, A magyar falvak temetői [Cemeteries of Hungarian Villages] (Budapest: Corvina, 1989), 70. 8 Victor Roth, Geschichte der Deutschen Plastik in Siebenbürgen (Strassburg: Heitz & Mündel, 7 1906), 145-160. 9 Ibid., 136-137, 148. 10 See Ioan Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt aus dem Mittelalter und den frühen Neuzeit (Hermannstadt: Hora Verlag, Arbeitskreis für Siebenbürgische Landeskunde Heidelberg, 2002), 57-58, Cat. no. 52, fig. 23. 153 DÓRA MÉRAI Romania labelled all the ledgers now in the wall of Saxon Lutheran churches as epitaphs.11 These measure about 180-210 x 70-90 cm, and the overwhelming majority display the full- or half-figure portrait of the dead or a heraldic image. Vasile Dr฀guţ gave an even broader definition of epitaph in his encyclopedia of Romanian medieval art: a funeral monument with inscription or the inscription itself.12 Ioan Albu included the following elements in his definition of epitaph, provided in his work presenting memorials in Sibiu: epitaphs are located relatively high on the wall or a pillar of the church, usually but not necessarily close to the grave, and they can have the form of a gravestone, a metal plate or they can be made of wood and alabaster in the form of a winged altarpiece. He also distinguished the stone memorial of Margareta Haller, which he called an epitaph, from the large ledgers now built into the wall of the Lutheran church in Sibiu.13 It seems that the term was used by scholarship in general for those memorials that were perceived in some way as distinct from the ledger stones, such as the memorial of Margareta Haller – it is relatively small and displays an image characteristic of painted and sculpted epitaphs from further west than Transylvania. Accordingly, the memorial of Despina Paleologa was called an epitaph by Gustav Gündisch (Fig. 2).14 Despina Paleologa, who died in 1575, was the newborn daughter of the Antitrinitarian theologian Jacob Paleologus. The stone plaque that commemorates her is located high up on the wall of the triumphal arch of the Lutheran church in Alţâna. It displays the swaddled infant among trees and plants with wind-blown, lance-shaped leaves and a commemorative text on a strapwork framed plaque. The panel measures 105 x 44 cm, so it is relatively small. There is one more stone memorial in Sibiu that Ioan Albu defined as an epitaph. It commemorated Leodegar de Montagnac who, according to the inscription, was on his way to the Ottoman Porte as the legate of the French king when he passed away in the town in 1574. The memorial, set up by his brother, can today be seen on the wall above the entrance of the sacristy. It is composed of an inscription plaque and a coat of arms in a simple architectural frame.15 The memorial of Gabriel Literatus was called a stone epitaph by Árpád Virgil Vătăşianu, ed., Istoria artelor plastice în România [History of the Plastic Arts in Romania], 2 vols. (Bucharest: Meridiane, 1970), vol. 2, 167. 12 Vasile Drăguţ, Dicţionar enciclopedic de artă medievală românească [Encyclopedia of Romanian Medieval Art] (Bucharest: Editura Știinţifică și Enciclopedică, 1976), 136. 13 For the latter he uses the term “Grabplatte”. Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, xxiv. 14 Gustav Gündisch, “Der Hermannstädter Bildhauer und Steinmetz Elias Nicolai”, Studien zur siebenbürgischen Kunstgeschichte (Cologne: Böhlau, 1976), 224. 15 Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, 73, Cat. no. 67. 11 154 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality Mikó.16 It had previously been seen on the wall of Alba Iulia Cathedral but had been lost by the time Mikó published. A photograph by Jolán Balogh, who called it an epitaph-like gravestone, preserved its image.17 It displayed an inscription with a coat of arms in a simple Renaissance architectural frame; the size is unknown. András Kovács used the term epitaphium when he discussed the heraldic ledger of Borbála Homonnai, wife of Ferenc Kendi, voivode of Transylvania, found in the Calvinist church in Matei.18 Another stone slab bearing a dedication inscription had been seen built into the southern pillar of the triumphal arch in the same church since the nineteenth century. Though the original position of the two panels is not possible to reconstruct any more, András Kovács suggested that the first ledger was also set into the wall, as it bears no traces of trapping feet. Here the determination of the ledger as epitaph seems to be based on its – assumed – spatial position. Based on the overview of literature it appears that there is no unified set of attributes that would qualify a stone epitaph. It is equally difficult to find a clear definition of the genre in the international scholarship, especially if trying to cover the entire period and area characterised by the presence of objects denoted – on whatever basis – by this term. It is a challenge to identify the common characteristics that would hold this group together, as well as those traits that clearly distinguish them from funeral monuments. The confusion is especially conspicuous concerning the use of the term for sixteenth and seventeenth century objects. The word, of Greek origins, referred to something that was or took place over or at the grave.19 In ancient Roman times it labelled an inscription stating the name and age of the deceased as well as the date of his or her death.20 In the Late Middle Ages the word epitaphium was applied for panels bearing an inscription and fixed on the wall. This was not associated closely Mikó, “Báthory István király és a reneszánsz művészet Erdélyben,” 124. Jolán Balogh, Kolozsvári kőfaragó műhelyek. XVI. század [Stone-Cutter Workshops in Cluj. 16th Century] (Budapest: A Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Művészettörténeti Kutató Csoportja, 1985), 223, 303-304, fig. 288. 18 András Kovács, “A szászmátéi református templom 16. századi síremlékéről” [On the Sixteenth Century Funeral Monument of the Lutheran Church in Matei], Művelődés 42, no. 1 (1993): 44. 19 ἐπιτᾰ ́φιος, see Maria Pantelia, dir., The Online Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon. Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (Irvine: University of California, 2011), accessed on 3 February 2016, http://stephanus. tlg.uci.edu/lsj/#eid=42409&context=search&action=hw-list-click 20 Renate Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil. Die Entwicklung des frühneuzeitlichen Grabdenkmals,” in Macht und Memoria: Begräbniskultur europäischer Oberschichten in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Mark Hengerer (Köln: Böhlau, 2005), 25; Pál Lővei, “Posuit hoc monumentum pro aeterna memoria: Bevezető fejezetek a középkori Magyarország síremlékeinek katalógusához” [Introductory Chapters to a Catalogue of the Funeral Monuments of Medieval Hungary] (Dissertation for the title Doctor of the Academy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2009), 49. 16 17 155 DÓRA MÉRAI with the grave, but evolved from images reminding of a pious donation and was only later equipped with a meaning in a commemorative context. The genre acquired characteristic representational forms from the fourteenth century, first in the German and Dutch territories.21 The function of the medieval epitaph was defined within the sphere of liturgical memory: to evoke prayers for the salvation of the soul of the dead.22 Philip Ariès interpreted the appearance of commemorative inscriptions on church walls within the process of personalizing the burial starting from the thirteenth century, and he saw epitaphs simply as a specific type of funeral monument, but distinct from donation plaques. These latter reminded of the individual, but not the place where his or her body was interred.23 In the view of Alfred Weckwerth, the difference between epitaph and tomb monument was that the former was not set up to signal the burial place. It invited the faithful for devotional contemplation and to pray for the dead.24 As far as the form is concerned, no unified definition can be identified: epitaphs displayed a text about the deceased and often a portrait combined with a religious image, most popularly with the Crucifix or the Holy Virgin. However, this definition excludes those commemorative plaques that were put on the wall, were independent from the grave, but displayed inscriptions with a heraldic image or only text.25 Furthermore, this iconography was not restricted to the epitaph function, but appeared on funeral monuments marking the grave as well, together with the same kind of commemorative text that was written on the epitaphs.26 Proceeding in time to the Early Modern Period, some elements in these definitions can by no means be considered valid any more. As far as the function is concerned, with the Reformation all types of commemorative objects lost their role in evoking prayers for the soul. According to the new theology, neither the inhabitants of the earthly sphere nor of the heaven could intercede for the dead.27 The forms were changing as well. Concerning the Alfred Weckwerth, “Der Ursprung des Bildepitaphs,” Z Kunstgesch 20 (1957): 150-151; Doreen Zerbe, “Memorialkunst im Wandel. Die Ausbildung eines lutherischen Typus des Grab- und Gedächtnismals im 16. Jahrhundert,” in Archäologie der Reformation: Studien zu den Auswirkungen des Konfessionswechsels auf die materielle Kultur, ed. Carola Jäggi and Jörn Staecker (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007) [Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte], 119-121; Douglas Brine, “Evidence for the Forms and Usage of Early Netherlandish Memorial Paintings,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 71 (2008): 139-168. 22 Weckwerth, “Der Ursprung des Bildepitaphs.” 23 Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, trans. Patricia M. Ranum (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 46-50. 24 Weckwerth, “Der Ursprung des Bildepitaphs,” especially 150-151, 173. 25 Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 25. 26 Zerbe, “Memorialkunst im Wandel,” 119-121. 27 See Dóra Mérai, “Funeral Monuments from the Transylvanian Principality in the Face of the Reformation,” NECY (2012-2013): 201-237. On the new, Reformation iconography and content 21 156 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality iconography, scholarship distinguished three main types of early modern epitaphs: those with a devotional, primarily religious image (called Bildepitaph in the related literature, mainly in German), those with the portrait or the heraldic device of the deceased (Personepitaph), and those centred around a text (Inschriftenepitaph). All three types appeared all over Europe in an endless range of variations.28 Accordingly, early modern objects named epitaphs display a broad variety of forms, from small inscription plaques to large structures with life-size figures. The term seems to be less problematic concerning those painted wooden epitaphs the form of which resembled an altarpiece. This was the most popular type in certain regions of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.29 In addition to these, various forms of stone epitaphs have also been discussed in the scholarly literature. According to the broadest definition, every commemorative object made of stone is called an epitaph that was installed against or upon the wall, either starting from the floor or hung higher above.30 Some of these are, however, categorised as funeral monuments in other art historical works.31 of the epitaphs, see Jan Harasimowicz, Kunst als Glaubensbekenntnis. Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Reformationszeit (Baden-Baden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 1996) [Studien zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte]. 28 Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 26; Katarzyna Cieślak, Tod und Gedenken: Danziger Epitaphien vom 15. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Lüneburg: Verl. Nordostdt, 1998) [Einzelschriften der Historischen Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung], 1-2. 29 See, e.g., Harasimowicz, Kunst als Glaubensbekenntnis. Beiträge zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte der Reformationszeit; Gurun Anderson, “Der Tod als Statusbekräftigung. Epitaphien und Gräber einer schwedischen Stadtelite 1650-1770,” in Macht und Memoria. Begräbniskultur europäischer Oberschichten in der Frühen Neuzeit, 47-70. 30 See the roundtable discussion in Walter Koch, ed., Epigraphic 1988 (Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1990), 283-314. For an application, see Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 25-26. 31 E.g., the structures standing on the floor in front of the wall and including a life-size image of the deceased that were popular in Austria and Upper Hungary in the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth century are called epitaphs according to one classification and funeral monuments in the other. See Mária Aggházy, “Felvidéki XVII. századi főúri síremlékeink stíluseredete” [The Stylistic Origins of Funeral Monuments of Aristocrats in Seventeenth-Century Hungary], MÉ 6 (1957): 166-173; Árpád Mikó, “Késő reneszánsz és kora barokk síremlékek a Magyar Királyság területén (1540-1690)” [Late Renaissance and Early Baroque Funeral Monuments in the Territory of the Hungarian Kingdom], in Idővel paloták... Magyar udvari kultúra a 16-17. században [Palaces with Time... Hungarian Courtley Culture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries], ed. Nóra G. Etényi and Ildikó Horn (Budapest: Balassi, 2005), 625-660; Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil," 2931. Another example is Stephanie Knöll’s analysis of university professors’ memorials set on the wall in Oxford, Tübingen and Leiden, which she all calls funeral monuments. Stefanie Knöll, Creating Academic Communities: Funeral Monuments to Professors at Oxford, Leiden and Tübingen 1580-1700 (Haren: Equilibris, 2003). 157 DÓRA MÉRAI The term “epitaph” as used in sixteenth and seventeenth century Transylvania The application of the term epitaphium for sixteenth and seventeenth century objects seems to be justified by the fact that it was used by their contemporaries as well. It needs further clarification, however, what exactly they meant, and how it relates to the scholarly definition: whether it is useful at all in this respect. The word epitaphium appears in the inscription of a number of Transylvanian memorials from the period, such as on the ledgers of Gábor Bocskay (1573, Aghireș),32 Tamás and Domokos Damokos (d. 1600, Cernat; Fig. 3), Sándor András Tordai (d. 1579, Deva),33 and Barbara Theilesius (d. 1640, Mediaș),34 on the tombs of Tamás Zólyomi (d. 1588, Săcueni)35 and Georg Heltner (d. 1640, Sighișoara),36 and on a series of ledgers in Sibiu: those of Andreas List (d. 1561), Pastor Georgius (d. 1603), Peter Kamner (d. 1621), Lucas Löw (d. 1641), Petrus Rihelius (d. 1648), and Tobias Sifft (d. 1651).37 Though they are not in their original places any more, it is known that at least four pieces in Sibiu – the memorials of Andreas List, Peter Kamner, Tobias Sifft, and Petrus Rihelius – were inserted into the floor, so probably marked the grave. Concerning their form, they all conform to regular funeral monuments: five are ledgers displaying a real or symbolic coat of arms and an inscription panel, and one is the top of a tomb chest with the portrait of the deceased. The only exception is the above mentioned memorial plaque of Margaretha Haller, which is called an epitaphium in the inscription. It can easily be fitted into a narrower definition of epitaph as it appears in the scholarly discourse according to its size, form, (present day) location and image. The word appears as the title of a piece of poetry on the ledgers of Peter Kamner and Tobias Sifft. It can be interpreted as referring to the inscription in other cases as well among the aforementioned examples. It seems that the term was used to designate an object, but also a piece of funerary poetry in early modern Transylvania, which is not very surprising in a late Humanistic János Herepei, Bocskai Gábor egeresi síremléke és mestere [The Funeral Monument of Gábor Bocskai in Aghireș and Its Master] (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Tudományos Intézet, 1947). 33 Emese Sarkadi Nagy, “Adatok az eltűnt dévai templom történetéhez” [Data on the History of the Disappeared Church in Deva], in Építészet a középkori Dél-Magyarországon. Tanulmányok [Architecture in Medieval South Hungary. Collected Papers], ed. Tibor Kollár (Budapest: Teleki László Alapítvány, 2010), 935-965. 34 Victor Roth, “Barbara Theillesius sírköve” [Funeral Monument of Barbara Theilesius], ArchÉrt 44 (1910): 97-101. 35 Tamás Emődi, “Monumente funerare figurative renascentiste din Transilvania” [Renaissance Figural Funeral Monuments in Transylvania], in Artă românească, artă europeană. Centenar Virgil Vătăşianu [Romanian Art, European Art. Centenary of Virgil Vătăşianu], ed. Marius Porumb and Aurel Chiriac (Oradea, 2002), 138, 139, 143, fig. 132. 36 Roland Melzer, “Die Grabsteine in der Bergkirche von Schäßburg,” Siebenbürgisch-Sächsischer Hauskalender. Jahrbuch (1980): 99, 100-102. 37 Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, 52, 88, 118, 134, 168-169, 170. 32 158 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality environment. The term appears in testaments too, clearly with the meaning of funerary poetry, for example in the testament of Tamás Debreczeni from 1645. He ordered that no epitaphium should be written on his funerary coat of arms, which he had had prepared in advance, only his name, age and the date of his death.38 “Epitaph forms” and forms of memorials called epitaph in Transylvania As it appears from what is said above on the lack of agreement in international scholarly literature concerning the forms of epitaphs, it is not that easy to identify such memorials in Transylvania based on their form. In the following I will look at how Transylvanian forms are related to those called epitaphs elsewhere by scholarship, and at the appearance of those pieces that were identified as epitaphs in Transylvania. Altarpiece-shaped commemorative objects characteristic in many parts of early modern Europe have unanimously been called epitaphs in the scholarly literature. This form spread in Transylvania as well, mostly made of wood, often combined with alabaster. A number of early modern altarpiece-like structures survived in the Saxon Lutheran churches, usually with a lengthy text in an architectural or ornamental frame, sometimes combined with images that corresponded to representations widespread in Europe in such context.39 Wooden epitaphs hung on church walls include more simple painted wooden panels as well. In a number of cases a stone funeral monument that marked the grave of the same person also survived. These wooden epitaphs – similarly to the stone memorials – have never been collected in Transylvania, nor analysed as a group or as a genre; most of them are unpublished (with the notable exception of the epitaphs in Sibiu presented as inscription bearing objects by Ioan Albu). However, as this paper is about stone memorials, I am not going to discuss these in any more detail. A similar form, but on a smaller scale and carved exclusively from alabaster, is housed in the Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu.40 It commemorated Margaretha Glockner, wife of Valentin Franck, who died in 1692. The central part of the 71 x 64 cm structure includes the catafalque portrait of the deceased, two angels holding blazons above, and the upper part displays an image of God the Father with Christ kneeling in front of him on the left and the deceased Kinga Tüdős S., Erdélyi testamentumok. III. Erdélyi nemesek és főemberek végrendeletei 16001660 [Transylvanian Testaments. III. Last Wills of Transylvanian Noblemen and Aristocrats 1600- 38 1660] (Marosvásárhely: Mentor Kiadó, 2008), 156-163, 263. 39 Roth, Geschichte der Deutschen Plastik in Siebenbürgen, 145-159; András Kovács, “Képfaragók és dekorátorok a 17. századi Erdélyben” [Image Carvers and Decorators in Transylvania in the Seventeenth Century], Dolgozatok az Erdélyi Múzeum Érem- és Régiségtárából 3rd series 1, 11 (2006): 163-178; Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, xxxiv and cat. nos 174, 212, 228, 239, 250, 269. 40 Inv. no. M 5208/ AD 369. Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, 229-231, Cat. no. 260. 159 DÓRA MÉRAI with her six children on the right. Alabaster carvings as pieces of church furnishing were widespread in Western and also in Central Europe. These often ready-made small-scale objects or elements of larger stone or wooden structures, mostly produced by Netherlandish masters, were easy to transport.41 A simpler version of architectural frame characterises the stone memorial of Leodegar de Montagnac located in the Lutheran church in Sibiu. The frame is reduced to a pair of pilasters on the memorial of Gabriel Literatus, also called an epitaph in the literature; this solution was, however, popular on ledger stones as well. These two memorials do not include any images. The Glockner memorial and that of Margaretha Haller conform to the iconography also characteristic of painted epitaphs in Europe, originating from medieval devotional images: they display the individuals praying in a kneeling position in front of God the Father and the Crucified Christ respectively. Praying portraits can be found on Transylvanian ledger stones as well. A group portrait of the kneeling children accompany the life-size portrait of Barbara Theilesius, and all the family members kneel in line on the memorial of Georg Heltner. Two infants pray at their swaddled brother’s catafalque on a side panel of the Apafi tomb chest (1637-1661, from Mălâncrav, now in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest).42 Apart from this, the only other representation of a swaddled child appears on the memorial of Despina Paleologa, referred to as her epitaph in the literature. The memorial of Despina was installed by her parents according to the inscription. Her father, Jacobus Paleologus was a prominent theologian of the international Antitrinitarianism, who sought refuge in the religiously relatively tolerant Transylvania, coming there from Poland in 1572. He stayed there until 1575, then left back to Poland. On the basis of the memorial it appears that his daughter died during his stay in Transylvania. The image of the swaddled infant, without any known parallel in Transylvania from that time, was well known elsewhere in Europe, and particularly popular in Poland where an extremely large number of funeral monuments were set up for children.43 Though neither the material nor the stylistic forms exclude that the memorial was created in Transylvania, the unique type and representation may have been initiated by the patron due to his previous encounters with infants’ monuments. The choices for the rest of the stone memorials that conform to epitaphs Aleksandra Lipińska, “‘Ein tafell von Alabaster zu Antorff bestellen’: Southern Netherlandish Alabaster Sculpture in Central Europe,” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 32, no. 4 (2006): 231-258. 42 Dóra Mérai, “Apafi György síremléke” [The Funeral Monument of György Apafi], Credo 11 (2005): 3-26. 43 See Jeannie Łabno, Commemorating the Polish Renaissance Child. Funeral Monuments and Their European Context (London: Ashgate, 2011). 41 160 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality from west of Transylvania, concerning size, form and iconography, can also be attributed to personal foreign relations. The Hallers in Sibiu originated from a rich patrician family in Nuremberg, and the family maintained tight personal relations there.44 The bronze grave monument of Peter Haller the Elder, installed in the Lutheran church in Sibiu, was imported from his homelands in Germany,45 and probably the appearance of a form unique in Transylvania but wide spread in the German lands (and also in Upper Hungary) on the memorial of Margaretha Budai can also be explained by the foreign relations of her husband’s family. In the case of the memorial of Leodegar de Montagnac, the choice of form can probably be attributed to the foreign origins of the subject and patron. The spatial position of stone memorials in Transylvania A common element in all the definitions of epitaphs is their spatial position: they were set up on or against a wall. The problem with this seemingly clearly distinctive element is that often it is useless when categorising a specific object, as there is no information on its original position or on the location of the grave – this situation is not exclusively characteristic for Transylvania. Many of the ledgers are now found in the walls of churches, in a vertical position. There are several cases when this position can be identified as resulting from a nineteenth or twentieth century re-organisation of the church interior. In contrast, there are no data that would clarify the original location of any of the surviving ledgers. Sources provide no more than an idea regarding the eighteenth and nineteenth century situation. What can be figured out based on this is that many of the ledgers – a little less than one third – now in the wall were found in the floor at that time. A similar position is implied by some other factor in the case of at least another 50% of the monuments: for example, the foot-worn surface of the ledger showing that it was in the pavement for at least some time. Iron rings served to lift those ledgers that functioned as crypt or rather vault covers (e.g., that of Michael and Andreas Hegyes, 1589, Sighișoara46). However, there is no information on the previous positions of about one third of the stones. To sum up, none of the ledgers can be proved to have originally been situated in the wall, and in a considerable number of cases they seem to have been set into the floor of the churches. There are simple rectangular slabs among those called epitaphs in the scholarly literature, but these could easily This presentation of the family is based on the PhD thesis of András Péter Szabó, “Haller Gábor – egy 17. századi arisztokrata életpályája” [Gábor Haller – The Career of a Seventeenth Century Aristocrat] (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, 2008), 11-16. See also Iván Nagy, Magyarország családai czímerekkel és nemzedékrendi táblákkal [Families in Hungary with Their Coats of Arms and Genealogical Tables], 13 vols. (Pest: Beimel és Kozma, Ráth, 1857-1868), vol. 5, 26-27. 45 Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, 61-62, Cat. no. 57. 46 Melzer, “Die Grabsteine in der Bergkirche von Schäßburg,” 110-112. 44 161 DÓRA MÉRAI have been fitted into the floor as well, and there is practically no way to prove the original place and position if there is no direct source testifying to it. The use of stone memorials: their relation to the grave There is one more crucial element in the scholarly definition of epitaph that seems to be relevant for the entire period during which it has been distinguished as a genre: its relation to the grave; that is, it did not mark the grave but was independent from it.47 Similarly to the spatial position of early modern Transylvanian stone memorials, it is a challenge to determine their relation to the grave. Rarely, excavations prove that they marked the place of burial, such as the Apafi and Sükösd tomb chests48 or the ledger of Johann Mankesch in Braşov (d. 1699).49 An overview of a broader range of sources, however, suggests that this relation could be quite diverse; there are many more possibilities than simply marking the grave or not. Memorials starting from the floor and set against the wall, or even hung on the wall, could also mark the place of a grave located right next to the wall. The functional distinction – here understood only in the context of marking a grave or not – between a funeral monument and an epitaph is not that simple in such cases.50 This could have easily been the case concerning the memorial of Despina Paleologa.51 Some stone monuments were installed within the church but commemorated a deceased whose corpse was placed in the crypt beneath the building.52 Memorials were installed at a place that was entirely different Weckwerth, “Der Ursprung des Bildepitaphs,” 147-151; Cieślak, Tod und Gedenken, 1-2; Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 21-26. 48 András Kovács, “Apafi György almakereki sírkápolnájáról” [On the Burial Chapel of György Apafi in Mălâncrav], Rsz 96 (2003): 42-43, 380-382; Melinda Mihály, “Monumente renascentiste, baroce şi neoclasice din patrimoniul Muzeului Naţional de Istorie a Transilvaniei” [Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Classicist Monuments in the Collection of the National History Museum of Transylvania] (PhD dissertation, Universitatea “Babeş-Bolyai”, Cluj-Napoca, 2013). The latter one was set up for György Sükösd who died in 1632, by his wife, in the village church in Tirimia. 49 Julius Gross, “Die Gräber in der Kronstadter Stadtpfarrkirche,” Jahrbuch des Burzenländer Sächsischen Museums 1 (1925): 140-141. 50 Renate Kohn pointed out that the inscription of many epitaphs installed in the German territories are themselves “unreliable” in this respect, as their text contains versions of the hic iacet formula, which would signal that they were related to the burial or at least considered as such. Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 24, footnote 14. Similar cases can be identified in Sibiu as well, e.g. Albu, Inschriften der Stadt Hermannstadt, Cat. no. 133, 155. 51 There is a large, plain, hard limestone slab on the floor right under the memorial, but in the absence of any inscription or image, its dating and relation to the latter or to the grave is unknown. 52 The category of “crypt cover” or “crypt plate” was introduced by researchers too, which is a useful term for a functional description but cannot always be recognized on a purely formal basis if the stone is in a secondary position. For the application of the term, see e.g. Lővei, “Posuit hoc monumentum pro aeterna memoria,” 410-414; Kohn, “Zwischen standesgemäßem Repräsentationsbedürfnis und Sorge um das Seelenheil,” 22-23. 47 162 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality from that of the burial, for various reasons. The corpse of Governor János Hunyadi did not lie in the cathedral in Alba Iulia, where a freestanding tomb chest was installed to commemorate him, for reasons connected to political strategy.53 It could also happen that the deceased never ended up lying under the grave marker erected in his or her lifetime. Consequently, not all memorials classified as funeral monuments concerning their form (tomb chest, ledger, etc.) were related to the burial. There seems to have been a difference in the function of funeral monuments that is not always visible in their form: they could mark the exact place of the grave, they could commemorate the subject in the same interior, and they could be set up at an entirely different site, thus bringing there the memory of the individual. From all that has been said up to this point about the appearance of tomb monuments, it is clear that they were described according to two categories: their type was defined as ledger, tomb chest, wall monument or coped headstone; and they belong to different iconographic groups, such as portrait or heraldic monuments, or inscription plaques. Stephanie Knöll applied a three level typology to classify funeral monuments of professors from Oxford, Leiden and Tübingen displaying an especially broad variety in their appearance.54 Though the Transylvanian material is by far not that varied, I find it useful to apply Knöll’s system as it reveals differences that are important when analysing material in the context of commemorative practices. One such useful element is the third variable of Knöll’s typology which she called the “main class” of the memorial. It refers to the spatial position with relation to an architectural structure, in most cases to a church. Knöll distinguished freestanding structures, monuments set against the wall but starting from the floor, those placed on the wall, and ledger stones set in the floor. Based on the field survey it seems that these four “classes” are suitable to present and classify all Transylvanian funeral monuments as well. Ledgers set into the floor and those built into the wall could fulfil different functions: most of those in the floor supposedly closed a grave or vault. They appear in an essentially different form and are experienced in a very different way as well: people walk on the one in the pavement while they walk and participate in the liturgy among those in the wall. The awareness of this difference is reflected by the nineteenth and twentieth century trend in Ágnes Ritoók-Szalay, “Hunyadi János (†1456) gyulafehérvári síremlékének domborművei” [Reliefs from the Funeral Monument of János Hunyadi (Ioan de Hunedoara) in Alba Iulia], in 53 Történelem – Kép. Szemelvények múlt és művészet kapcsolatából. Kiállítási katalógus, Magyar Nemzeti Galéria 2000 [History and Image. On the Relation of the Past and Art. Exhibition Catalog, Hungarian National Gallery, 2000] ed. Katalin Sinkó and Árpád Mikó (Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 2000), 297-299. 54 Knöll, Creating Academic Communities, 90-92. 163 DÓRA MÉRAI Transylvania of elevating the monuments from the floor and building them into the wall of the churches. Walking on the stones was not acceptable any more as they were perceived as belonging to past human beings and as a part of the local and national heritage. Consequently, they were displayed vertically to be looked at. It is the result of exactly this new way of displaying, but equally of the changes in the perception of what type of interaction is acceptable with – especially portrait – memorials, that a number of sixteenth and seventeenth century Transylvanian ledgers have been treated as wall monuments or epitaphs in the scholarly literature. As was concluded above, the form and class of the memorials do not indicate their connection to the actual grave. This is why I consider it a solution for this methodological problem of classification to add a fourth layer to Stephanie Knöll’s typology: the spatial relation to the burial. This is important in understanding the way a particular memorial functioned in the commemorative context. This aspect, unfortunately, cannot be determined in Transylvania in most cases due to a lack of information, which means that the role of the objects in the context of commemoration cannot be fully explored. The validity of the data is essential to clarify in this respect when analysing stone memorials as functional objects – and also those called epitaphs at any point in the history of scholarship. An attempt to classify some memorials along these lines affords reflection on the usefulness of this four-level typology. The type, form and iconography of the stone plaque commemorating Margaretha Haller corresponds to many elements in the definitions of epitaph – the form, iconography, position within the building – but no information is available on its exact function, that is, its relation to the grave. The same can be concluded concerning the above mentioned memorials of Despina Paleologa and Leodegar de Montagnac. As far as the two ledger stones commemorating Borbála Homonnai are concerned, there is no information on their original arrangement in the church of Matei. As evidently only one could cover the grave, the other one – probably the one seen in the wall – could be an epitaph concerning its function, though its form and iconography would not distinguish it from regular ledger stones. Another, similar example from Sânpaul dates from more than a century later. János Haller died in 1697, and two ledgers commemorating him are now found walled into the tower within a chapel complex, the burial site of the Haller family (Fig. 4a-b). One displays his coat of arms and a Latin commemorative inscription, the other one is a simple rectangular slab that bears only an inscription in Hungarian. There is one more case where, in addition to a tomb monument covering the grave, a separate inscription panel was set up as well in the same church: the memorial of György Sükösd (Figs. 5 and 6a-b). It was originally 164 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality located in the village church of Tirimia. In its present, reconstructed form, in the National History Museum of Transylvania in Cluj, it appears as a two-level altar-like structure. It consists of a tomb chest as the basis for the sculpted effigy and an upper part on the wall behind the figure: an inscription plaque topped by a tympanum. The Sükösd monument made a career in twentieth century historiography as an Italian-type wall monument.55 Mid-nineteenth century observers, however, who saw it still at its original site in Tirimia, described it in an essentially different way.56 The lower part, that is basically a chivalric tomb chest, was situated right next to the wall of the church nave, and the grave was excavated under the tomb chest.57 The inscription plaque with the triangular pediment was fixed higher on the wall (a little less than 4 meters from the floor), so separately from the tomb chest. The two are even depicted as two distinct illustrations in the book by Balázs Orbán. Consequently, the memorial complex in Tirimia was definitely not an Italian-type wall monument, but a tomb chest marking the grave and a separate commemorative inscription panel in a simple architectural frame. Simple inscription plaques set onto the wall could serve as grave markers as well. Nine stone memorials survived that were installed into the city wall of Cluj in the last quarter of the sixteenth and the first decade of the seventeenth centuries. These display only the name of the deceased and the date of death, some in the form of a tabula ansata. They were located at a height ranging from 0.6 to 2 metres, but it seems that they were somehow connected to the exact site of the burial, as the territory between the two ranges of the double city wall of Cluj served as a cemetery in the Early Modern Period.58 The memorial plaque of Martinus Schinder (d. 1583) was found during construction work that took place next to the city wall in 1910, and nearby to the inscription See, e.g., Jolán Balogh, “A későrenaissance és korabarokk művészet” [Late Renaissance and Early Baroque Art], in Magyar művelődéstörténet 3 [Hungarian Cultural History 3], ed. Sándor Domanovszky (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1940), 513-570; Jolán Balogh, “A Korarenaissance. Későrenaissance” [Early Renaissance. Late Renaissance], in A magyarországi művészet története [History of Art in Hungary], ed. Dezső Dercsényi and Anna Zádor (Budapest: Corvina, 1970 [1955, 1966]), 244-245; Mária Aggházy, A barokk szobrászat Magyarországon [Baroque Sculpture in Hungary], 3 vols. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959), 16-17. Árpád Mikó understood the Sükösd memorial as a simple, local variant of the Polish type wall monument. Mikó, “Báthory István,” 125. 56 Lajos Medgyes, “Sükösd Györgyről” [On György Sükösd], Nemzeti Társalkodó, no. 1 (1840): 180-181; Balázs Orbán, A Székelyföld leírása történelmi, régészeti, természetrajzi s népismei szempontból [Description of the Székely Lands from Historical, Archaeological, Natural Geographical, and Ethnographical Points of View] (Pest: Ráth Mór Bizománya,1868; reprint edition: Budapest: Helikon Könyvkiadó-Magyar Könyvkiadók és Könyvterjesztők Egyesülése, 1982), vol. 1, 46-47. 57 Mihály, “Monumente renascentiste, baroce şi neoclasice,” 380-382. 58 Balogh, Kolozsvári kőfaragó műhelyek. XVI. század, 159, with further literature. 55 165 DÓRA MÉRAI two skeletons were discovered.59 The tradition of placing the commemorative inscription related to a nearby burial on the ashlar of an already standing structure was known already in the Middle Ages.60 Conclusions As these examples demonstrate, a simple classification into grave monuments and epitaphs is not really useful as an analytical framework in the case of Transylvanian stone memorials. The word epitaphium as used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not refer to any specific object type. The term as applied in art history is not helpful either when trying to distinguish any group of stone memorials with a particular form and function in Transylvania. The scholarly understanding of what an epitaph is in the Early Modern Period is more or less clear in the case of painted and sculpted altarpiece-shape objects, which appeared in Transylvania as well, made of wood and alabaster. If, however, stone memorials are the focus, researchers have applied the term for a broad variety of forms. Most of the definitions overlap in two elements: stone epitaphs were fixed on the wall of a built structure and they did not mark the grave but were spatially independent from the exact location of the burial. As there is no information on the original position of any stone memorials in Transylvania, those created to be set on the wall cannot be distinguished from those inserted into the floor. A few pieces can be identified that are clearly distinct from ledgers to be set into the floor concerning their size and form, and it is justified to suppose that these were fixed onto the wall even in their original arrangement. Interestingly, the choice of the specific forms can probably be explained by the direct foreign connections of the patrons in each case. Even if the spatial location of the memorial can be reconstructed, it does not automatically imply its relation to the grave. As the plaques in the city wall of Cluj suggest, memorials could even be installed on the wall with the purpose of marking a particular burial below. It seems to be more useful to introduce the relation to the grave into the classification of tomb monuments and involve it in the analysis when there is any information at disposal. Accordingly, stone memorials are to be described according to four variables: their spatial position with respect to the architectural environment, their spatial relation to the grave, their form, and their iconography. When applying this four level classification to the funeral monuments of the Transylvanian Principality, it appears that stones displaying similar forms and iconography seem to have fulfilled different functions in commemoration 59 The bones were not taken to the museum as they were destroyed by the workers. See Mihály, “Monumente renascentiste, baroce şi neoclasice,” 44. 60 Lővei, “Posuit hoc monumentum pro aeterna memoria,” 193-195, 414-415, figs. 726-728. 166 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality in terms of their relation to the burial. A few memorials emerge as a distinct group: simple commemorative inscription panels set up in addition to a proper grave monument. The exact spatial relation of these to the grave is, however, unknown in most of the cases. The popularity of this practice cannot be judged. Even if there were more inscription panels like these, their chances for survival were relatively low as, due to the lack of images, they were probably not very attractive to later generations. The overview of the questions emerging around the term “epitaph” sheds light on a more general methodological issue: it can be misleading to analyse a selected group of memorials without its context. This is why it is necessary to examine the entire set of funeral monuments that survived from the Transylvanian Principality, as well as its various groups, with an outlook on the local and broader art historical context and commemorative practice. ANNEXES List of Transylvanian settlements mentioned in the paper Romanian Aghireș Alba Iulia Alţâna Braşov Cernat Cluj Deva Mălâncrav Matei Mediaș Săcueni Sânpaul Sibiu Sighișoara Târgu Mureș Tirimia Hungarian Egeres Gyulafehérvár Alcina Brassó Csernáton Kolozsvár Déva Almakerék Szentmáté Medgyes Székelyhíd Kerelőszentpál Nagyszeben Segesvár Marosvásárhely Nagyteremi 167 German Erldorf Weissenburg Altzen Kronstadt Klausenburg Diemrich Malmkrog Mathesdorf Mediasch Hermannstadt Schäßburg Neumarkt am Mieresch Gross-Wachsdorf DÓRA MÉRAI Fig. 1. Stone memorial of Margareta Budai, wife of Peter Haller jr (d. 1566). Sibiu, Lutheran church. 168 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality Fig. 2. Stone memorial of Despina Paleologa (d. 1575). Alţâna, Lutheran church. 169 DÓRA MÉRAI Fig. 3. Funeral monument of Tamás and Domokos Damokos (d. 1600). Cernat, Calvinist church. 170 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality b a Fig. 4 a-b. The two stone memorials of János Haller (d. 1696). Sânpaul, Haller Chapel (so-called “Imola”). 171 DÓRA MÉRAI Fig. 5. Funeral monument of György Sükösd (d. 1632). Cluj, National History Museum of Transylvania. 172 Stones in Floors and Walls. Commemorating the Dead in the Transylvanian Principality a b Fig. 6 a-b. “Memorial plate” and “memorial tomb chest” of György Sükösd in a nineteenth century woodcut. Source: Orbán, A Székelyföld leírása, vol. 1, 46-47. 173