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happened to some provost in Fehérvár in Hungary (cuiusdam preposti in Alba Regali Vngarie).
Since in late Medieval Latin the preposition ―in‖ could both mean ―in‖ and ―from‖, it does not seem to be a significant difference until it is not translated. Only the supposition that the translator‘s Latin source did not report the location can explain why he rendered it closer to the version reported in the breviary in the sense of ―in‖ (magÿer orzagban feÿer varat). So while there is an argument in favour of considering the breviary the direct source of the miracle (the presence of the son of the provost not attested in any other variants) and there is one against (the omission of location of ―Similu‖ present in the breviary), it is doubtless that placing the miracle to Fehérvár is a translation error in the Domonkos Codex, especially since all the Latin versions of the miracle locate the relic to Somlyó.
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In three Dominican churches altars were dedicated to the saint. In addition to the already mentioned Somlyó, the altar of St Dominic in the church of the convent of Kolozsvármentioned for the first time in 1397.325 The convent of Segesvár (Sigişhoara, Romania) was founded before 1298 and one of the chapels of its church was dedicated also to St. Dominic and four other saintly figures.326
References to an altar as well as a chapel dedicated to St Dominic ante fores of the Dominican church of Segesvár from documents discovered in 1859 during the restoration of the (by that time Calvinist) church.327 It comprises, among other valuable materials, testaments that are quite informative about the amount or the precise list of the items and the purpose of the benefaction, witness how significant the role of the Dominicans were in late medieval Transylvania who in return would pray or celebrate masses for the salvation of the soul of the testator or his or her members of the family. Most of them were wealthy burghers but also four widows and four parish priests were among the donors. The parish priest habitually bequeathed ecclesiastical equipments and -in two cases- also smaller estates to the friars.328 Dominus Michael, the parish priest in Villa Budonis, who, feeling ill, made himself transported to the convent to end his life here around Christmastime in 1505, bestowed generous amount of donations to the friars including a fishpond and wished to be buried in front of the altar dedicated to the founding father of the Order of Preachers.329 In the same year, the parish priest of Volkan, Magister Nicasius, who had been a preacher in Kolozsvár then in Beszterce (Bistriţa) and a great adversary of the Dominicans earlier, changed his mind, resigned his parish
325 DL 28765; DL 28764. Quoated from Géza Entz, Erdély építészete a 14-16. században (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum, 1996), 342: ―in civitate Cluswar in sacristia claustri beate Mariae virginis praedicatorum ordinis (...) corpus altaris sancti Dominici (...) manibus ipsorum tangentes‖. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were chased away from their convents in the town in 1556 and all the images and statues representing saints were burnt.For a recent and detailed survey of the Dominican convent of Cluj, see Péter Sas, ―A kolozsvári domonkos templom és kolostor szerepe, jelentősége a város épìtészetében‖ [The role and the importance of the Dominican church and convent in the architecture of the town] in A Domonkos Rend Magyarországon, 353-385.
326 20th March 1298. MOL DF 286699; Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, ed. Franz Zimmermann, Carl Werner and Gustav Gündisch (Cologne: [n. p.], 1892-1991), vol.1, no. 281 and no.294.
327 The documents were edited in Karl Fabritius, ―Zwei Funde in der ehemaligen Dominikanerkirche zu Schässburg‖, Archiv des Vereins für sibenbürgische Landeskunde. 5/1 (1861), 1-40; Arnold Ipolyi, ―Adalékok a magyar domonkosok történetéhez‖, Magyar Sion 5 (1867), pp. 481-497, 590-610, 662-673, 769-776. Attention to their importance as sources of mendicant economy was called by Beatrix F. Romhányi, ―Egy régi-új forrás az erdélyi domonkosok történetéhez‖ [An old-new source to the history of the Dominicans of Transylvania]
Communicationes archaeologicae Hungariae (2004): 235-247.
328 Romhányi, ―Egy régi-új forrás az erdélyi domonkosok történetéhez‖, 237-238.
329 Ipolyi, ―Adalékok a magyar domonkosok történetéhez‖, 606-607, no. 13.
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and moved to the convent with all his belongings.330 He bestowed his books, tithes (decima) and his chasuble on the friars and asked for their pardon and that they should preserve his memory and pray for his soul; he wished to be buried in the habit of the Order at the altar of St Dominic.331 The third parish priest, Dominus Andreas de Ewlysz, in 1520 left some estates and goods to the friars and requested to perform weekly a mass for him and to be buried at the altar of St Dominic in the habit of the Order that he loved so much that he did not want to be detached from it even in his death.332 This altar was the second most important one after the high altar of the church, so its selection as a burial place reflects the social prestige of the parish priests.333 The already mentioned chapel ante fores of the church was dedicated not only to St Dominic but also to the Virgin Mary, St Francis, St Rupert and St Ulrich was built from the generous funds a wealthy widow of Martin Cruez from Brassó (Braşov, Romania) called Dorothy, who originally wanted to join the Dominican Third Order (Sorores ordinis nostrij de penitencia S. Dominici) but as she was refused because of her widowed state, she became a Franciscan tertiary. In her testament of 1520, she prescribed that in exchange for the funds and the rich benefactions, the friars should celebrate a mass each week for the salvation of her parents, her husband and herself.334 Carmen Florea has underlined the importance of this bequest from Transylvania as a typical example of a trend that was widespread throughout Europe in the last centuries of the Middle Ages: the increasing role of the mendicant orders as intermediaries for salvation, which is not only attested by the valuables left to the convent and the requests that that the testators be buried in the mendicant chuches or their cemeteries, sometimes wearing the orders‘ habit, and most importantly, by the high number of commemorative masses celebrated by the friars.335
330 Ipolyi, ―Adalékok a magyar domonkosok történetéhez‖, 607-608, no. 15.
331 Being buried in the habit of the order was allowed only to those who were to be buried in their church;cf. Ferenc Kollányi, ―Magyar ferenczrendiek a XVI. század első felében,‖ [Hungarian Franciscans in the First Half of the Sixteenth Century] Századok 32 (1898): 317-327, 405-419, 510-518, 600-620, 716-731, 814-821, 909-930, at 414.
332 Ipolyi, ―Adalékok a magyar domonkosok történetéhez‖, 663-664, no. 21.
333 Beatrix F. Romhányi, ―A koldulóbarátok szerepe a XV-XVI. századi vallási megújulásban‖ [The role of mendicant friars in the religious revival of the fifteenth and sixteenth century], in Szentírás, hagyomány, reformáció. Teológia- és egyháztörténeti tanulmányok, ed. Beatrix F. Romhányi and Gábor Kendeffy (Budapest:
Gondolat kiadó, 2009), 142-153, at 146.
334 Ipolyi, ―Adalékok a magyar domonkosok történetéhez‖, 662-663, no. 20.
335 Florea, ―The Third Path,‖ 91-92.
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Not only the Dominicans but also two monastic orders named their churches after the saint. A church or chapel dedicated to St. Dominic was mentioned to be in ruins in the Benedictine Abbey of Almád in 1508. A hermitage near Szakácsi (Veszprém county) later used by the Paulines is mentioned to be under patronage of Dominic as early as 1263.. In addition, a church dedicated to St Dominic existed in an estate named Szinye (Svinia, Slovakia) in 1282.
Altars dedicated to the founding father of the Order of Preachers can be found in other types of churches, especially parish churches, too: Csìkszentdomokos (Sîndominic, Romania), Nagytürnye (Vel‘ké Trnie, Slovakia), Sárospatak, Zsid and Pest.336 Also, one of the chapels of the cathedral of Várad (Oradea, Romania) was dedicated to him some time before 1375.337 In the chapel, an altar was erected for him by Bishop Domokos Bebek in 1373-74.338 Its seems, however, that it was not the first altar of St Dominic in the cathedral because Provost Csanád (chanadinus prepositus ecclesie Waradiensis) already founded one between 1317 and 1322 that he dedicated to him along with four other saints. The altar foundations of Provost Csanád (although without the specific indications of the names of the saints) are mentioned in the bull of John XXII in 1319 in which the pope, under certain conditions, provided indulgences of 40 and 60 days for those visiting the cathedral and the altars.339 And finally, it is known from a charter issued in 1347 that in the Church of St. Andrew the Apostle in Dörögd built around the 1330s probably by Miklós Dörögdi, bishop of Eger, that one of the three altars of the church was dedicated to St Dominic. It was that altar in front of or next to which the local noblemen had to stand, while the noblewomen‘s place was in the western direction from it.340
336 Mező, Patrocíniumok, 67-69.The two lists of the church and altar dedications by Romhányi and Mező are not in agreement: Romhányi corrected some of the information found in Mező‘s inventory and does not mention any dedications to St. Dominic in Dominican convents like Dubica (Bosnia-Herzegovina), Esztergom, Székesfehérvár, Szatmárnémeti (Satu Mare, Romania), Vasvár (Hungary).
337 Vincze Bunyitay, A váradi püpökség története [The history of the bishopric of Oradea]. 4. vols. (Nagyvárad, 1884), vol. 3, 42-44; Jolán Balogh, Varadinum. Várad vára [Varadinum. The castle of Várad/Oradea], 2 vols.
(Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1982), vol. 2, 275-276.
338 This altar was under the western right tower; Balogh, Varadinum, vol.2, 277.
339 Theiner, vol.1, no. 709. Three of the altars founded by Csanád are mentioned in the statutes of 1375:
―Edificavit etiam et dotavit tria altaria sita in dicta ecclesia nostra: sancti videlicet Dominici sub campanili dextro occidentali; sancte Anne iuxta aram sancte Crucis; et sancte Elene ex opposito altari sancti Luce‖ in Bunyitay, A váradi, vol.3, 72.
340 Mező, Patrocíniumok, 41-42; the charter is reported in Remig Békefi, ―A Balaton környékének egyházai és várai a középkorban‖ [The churches and the castles of the surroundings of Lake Balaton in the Middle Ages]
(Budapest: Hornyánszky Nyomda, 1907), 132-133.
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The memory of the founding father is also preserved in the names of villages and streets: a village called ―Szentdomonkos‖ (St Dominic) in Heves county in 1483.341 In Székesfehérvár, one of the first towns in which the Order of Preachers settled down in the early 1230s, a reference from 1493 attests that there was a street dedicated to St Dominic ouside the town walls in front of the Johannite Church.342 Similarly in Győr, where the friars settled down between 1239 and 1252, the street where the preachers‘ friary stood was called St Dominic street.343 The two latter examples show that it was a common practice to call the main street leading to the Dominican church and /or convent simply as ―Domonkos utca‖ which refers to the Dominicans in general, not the founder.
Considerably less churches and altars were dedicated to Peter Martyr. Even though one would expect the Order of Preachers to be the primary promoters of Peter‘s cult, in fact, none of their friaries in Hungary were dedicated to the saint. The earliest dedication of a church to the martyr was in the suburb of Buda.344 The church of Peter Martyr, together with the ecclesia of Mary Magdalene were the filiae of the parish church of Our Lady of royal foundation. It was built in all likelihood at the initiative partly of the king, partly of the hospes inhabiting the quarter. The first (indirect) reference to the church comes from 1257 but its name is not mentioned; the earliest reference to the capelle sancti Petri is from 1301.345 The changes in the church building reflect the urbanization of the town of Buda: in the fourteenth century, a bell tower was built to the originally modest, single-nave church, and in the fifteenth century it was completely rebuilt
341 József Teleki, Hunyadiak kora Magyarországon [The Age of the Hunyadis in Hungary] (Pest: Emich és Eisenfels, 1852-1941), 242.
342 Péter Kóta, Regeszták a vasvári káptalan levéltárának okleveleiről: (1330) 1212-1526 [Regesta of the charters of the archive of the Chapter of Vasvár] ([Szombathely]: Szignatúra Nyomda, 1997), 177, no. 542 (df. 262528).
343 On the Dominican friary, see Romhányi, Kolostorok, 28. On the St Dominic Street, see Vince Bedy, Győr katolikus vallásos életének múltja [The catholic past of Győr] (Győr: Győregyházmegyei Alap Nyomdája, 1939), 39.
344 On the St Peter Martyr church, see András Végh, Buda város középkori helyrajza [The medieval topography of the town of Buda] (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 2006–2008), vol.1, 103–104; András Koltai, ―Szent Péter mártìr oltalma alatt‖ [Under the protection of St. Peter Martyr] in A Szent Anna templom és a budai Víziváros katolikus egyházai ed. idem, (Budapest: Felsővìzivárosi Szent Anna Plébánia, 2005), 9-28.
345 Végh, Buda város, vol.1, 35. On the foundation of the filiae of the Church of Our Lady, see András Kubinyi,
―Budafelhévìz topográfiája és gazdasági fejlődése‖ [The topography and the economical development of Felhévìz], in Tanulmányok Budapest múltjából 16 (1964): 85-180. Originally, St Peter Martyr was established for the spiritual care of the non-German speaking inhabitants, but soon became an independent parish district. The suburb of St Peter (Szentpéter) was an important commercial centre: merchants and craftsmen lived here and was also a significant area of wine production.
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as a three-nave parish church.346 From this period survive the requests of indulgences submitted by King Sigismund and his escort to Pope Eugen IV during their sojourn in Rome in 1433 relating the St Peter Martyr parish church. The king was granted to exhibit the (unspecified) relics in the feast of the Holy Trinity that practically coincided with the annual fair of Buda held at Pentecost.347 The centre of the quarter referred to as ―St Peter Martyr‖ (Szentpétermártír) since the fifteenth century was the market place next to the homonymous church, and probably it also had a street named for the martyr.348 The Franciscan convet of Pest established before 1288 was dedicated to St Peter and also the adjacent street was named St Peter Street but in all probability, it was dedicated to the apostle, not the martyr.349 Another early dedication seems to be the church Helesfa (diocese of Pécs) first mentioned in 1305/1320, which might be related also to the General Chapter of Buda.350 Beside the above mentioned churches, in three other settlements (Vista, Náta and Nyitra) were dedicated to the martyr but the Dominicans were not present in any of these places.351
II.3.2 Remnants of the observation of their feasts
Indulgences provided regular, even if relatively low income for the ecclesiastical institutions to which they were granted. The papal grants of indulgences were results of the initiatives of either the religious orders, or of the landlords on whose lands these friaries were – who acted
346 Katalin H. Gyürky, ―Adatok a budai Szent Péter külváros topográfiájához‖ [Additions to the suburb of St Peter in Buda], Budapest Régiségei 22 (1971): 223-243.
347 Albert Gárdonyi and Bernát L. Kumorovitz, Budapest történetének okleveles emlékei [The charter sources of the history of Budapest] (Budapest: Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, 1936-1987), vol. 2, no. 1046, 1053, 1071. On the supplications: Koltai, Szent Péter mártír oltalma alatt, 17.
348 On the quarter of St Peter Martyr, see Végh, Buda város, vol.1, 90-91.
349 According to Karácsonyi, it was dedicated to Peter Martyr, which would be a remarkable case had it been in fact dedicated to the saint of the rival mendicant order, and also Romhányi shares this view; Karácsonyi, Szent Ferencz, vol.2, 225; Romhányi, Kolostorok, 225. In Csánki‘s Magyarország történelmi atlasza, vol.1, 24, in the cited charter only the name Peter is mentioned. The Franciscan convent of Pest does not figure in Mező‘s Patrocíniumok. I could not discover the reason why Karácsonyi regarded it to be dedicated to a Dominican martyr, even if one of the most important churches of the suburb of Buda on the other side of the River Danube was Peter Martyr‘s Church.
350 ―st sac. eccl-e S. Petri mr-is de v. Chelley‖. Anjoukori Okmánytár I, 350. Helesfa (Ellősfalva) was named for Helleus (Achilles) by his relatives who possessed this territory in 1343. In 1242, provost Achilleus accompanied Béla IV to Dalmatia, he was the provost of Székesfehérvár between 1243 and 1250, and became the bishop of Pécs in 1251. I believe that the decision to consacrate the church of the village to Peter Martyr can be also related to his close relation to the royal houase and the general chapter of Buda.
351 Mező, Patrocíniumok, 381-382. Mező mistakenly lists here the collegiate chapter of Székesfehérvár, but it was dedicated to the apostle, not the martyr; see Romhányi, Kolostorok, 61.
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presumably with the consent of the given order.352 Some of them granted indulgences to the feast of the saints of the Order of Preachers. Pope Martin IV gave permission to the Dominicans of Esztergom to provide indulgence on the feasts of the church, including those of Dominic and Peter in 1284.353 A permission of indulgence that does not seem to be related to the Order of Preachers was issued by Pope Boniface IX on 16 March in 1402 to all those who visited the church of the Holy Spirit de Novoforo in the diocese of Zagreb on the feasts of Ss Martin, Mary Magdalene, the Conversion of St Paul, as well as those of Ss Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Peter Martyr and Bridget of Sweden.354
In lines with the prescriptions of the order, the offices and the readings of the saints were added to the Dominican liturgical books. The earliest extant copies of such works in Hungary are dated to the fourteenth century.355 A lectionary originating from the fourteenth century attests the special importance of the founder, since three times nine readings were provided for his totum duplex feast based on his legend by Peter Ferrand.356 In the same codex, Peter of Verona is celebrated with three (but long) readings taken from his bull of canonization.357 Naturally, the feasts of the Dominican saints were celebrated also outside the Order of Preachers as they were incorporated in the Roman Calendar. Masses for Dominic and Peter can be found in the Missale Notatum Strigoniense made in Pozsony before 1341.358
352 Romhányi, Kolduló barátok, 79.
353 ÁÚO IX, 402, no. 286 (1284): ―Cupientes igitur, ut Ecclesia Fratrum Praedicatorum in Ciuitate Strigoniensi congruis honoribus frequentetur; omnibus uere penitentibus et confessis, qui ad ecclesiam ipsam in festis subscriptis, videlicet in die (dedica)cionis et in anniversario eiusdem, in festo beati Petri martiris, in festis Sanctorum Confessorum ---- Dominici et Martini, (in festo sancte) Katerine Virginis et martiris ac Dedicationis ipsius ecclesie festivitatibus (...)‖.
354 Bullae Bonifacii IX 1396-1404: p. 429. 1402. 16. Martii ―(...) ac sancti Martini et sancte Mariae Magdalene ac Conversionis sancti Pauli predicti nec non sanctorum Dominici et Thome de Aquino ac sancti Petri martyris et sancte Brigide vidue ac dedicationis ipsius eccelesie festivitatibus et predictam ecclesiam devote visitaverint annuatim (...)‖. Novumforum in all probability can be identified with a part of medieval Ljbljana.
355 Alba Iulia Bibliotheca Batthyaniana, R I 25 and R I 50.
356 Alba Iulia Bibliotheca Batthyaniana, R I 19, 69v-75r. At the end on the last reading, some instructions can be read what to do if the feast of the founding father falls on Sunday or the vigil or the feast of St Lawrence.
357 Alba Iulia Bibliotheca Batthyaniana, R I 19, fol. 151v-152v.
358 Since the masses composed for Peter‘s and Clare‘s feasts are reported in the supplement to the sanctorale on fol. 319r-v following the funeral masses and the prayers for the dead, it has been argued that the missal is a compilation from several models and the scribe could not originally incorporate them in their proper places. See Missale Notatum Strigoniense ante 1341 in Posonio, ed. Janka Szendrei and Richard Rybarič. (Budapest 1982), 17.
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