Dispersed Parts of a Medieval Liturgical Ensemble: The Altarpieces of St.

Mary
Church in Sibiu/Hermannstadt (Transylvania)

In recent decades, research has shown an increasing emphasis on considering

medieval churches as significant complexes integrating architecture, “decoration”, ritual
and public, rather than as simply designed objects, to be fitted in somewhere on an
evolutional scale from Romanesque to Renaissance. The religious architecture of the
Middle Ages is now referred to as a matrix of sacred space and liturgical and devotional
actions. Once deprived of its rituals, as Willibald Säuerlander has pointed out, the church
resembles just a stone shell hiding a mysterious void, an object of abstract stylistic
exercise. Recent studies have contributed substantially to a reconsideration of the
contents of the “real Gothic church”, in its various aspects. On the one hand, much more
attention has been paid to recovering the original interior arrangement of churches, their
fixed or mobile liturgical props and furnishings, which were often largely removed or
replaced in later periods. These elements (portals, altars, chapels, screens, pulpits etc.)
created the background for the performed rituals. On the other hand, research has
attempted to reintegrate the various figural representations in this context. Apart from
those immovable images (mural paintings or painted glass) which never left the church
(but were nonetheless often concealed or altered), mobile imagery such as altarpieces,
epitaphs, coat of arms, and tombstones have been “brought back” from museums and
restored to their original places. Much of these images played a significant memorial role,
evoking the remembrance of those who made the pious donations. Finally, a series of
studies has made much progress in the restitution of the ritual, the medieval liturgy, and
its interaction with the public, as well as in the recovery of public and private devotional
practices taking place in the church. It has been argued that the ritual had a significant
“sensorial dimension” in which images played a pivotal role.
Without denying the individualistic impulses of much later medieval imagery,
other research has suggested that, at least in several well-documented cases, images and
other objects, especially around and attached to altars, were conceived as integrated
statements. Regarding St. Laurence church in Nuremberg, for instance, P. Crossley has
argued that images and liturgical props served to convey a symbolic and abbreviated
journey with anagogical sense. Each altar, each image constituted a station of a
mnemonic and meditative sequence.
Such methodological approaches have produced an increased interest in the study
of medieval church buildings and their furnishings for a wider range of medievalists,
besides those traditionally considered as art historians. Thus, more solid ground for a
multidisciplinary dialogue has been created.
My presentation intends to fit within this methodological framework. It aims to
restore, as much as possible on the basis of the available sources, an altered late medieval
complex: the parish church of St Mary in Sibiu, Transylvania.
Taking into consideration the programme and the participants of this meeting in
Lleida, the region I intend to survey is obviously one of the most peripheral and “exotic”.
Therefore, a short introduction is needed.
Transylvania, nowadays a part of Romania, in the Middle Ages was a province of
the Hungarian Realm, at its eastern border. The region was conquered at about 1000, at
the moment when the Hungarians adopted Christian faith. After a time of hesitation
between Rome and Constantinople, the young reign firmly adopted the Latin Church.
Transylvania became thus the easternmost European region integrated in the Church of
Rome. Its bishopric, recorded for the first time at ca 1090, was planted in the borough of
Alba Iulia. Outside Transylvania, on the east and the south of the Carpathian Mountains,
the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia adopted the Orthodox or Eastern Church.
In time, Transylvania has become a mosaic of ethnic and religious groups. The
Hungarian riders conquered a land sparsely inhabited by Romance and Slavic
populations. Later, the kings colonised the land with hospites: Szeklers and Germans.
The last, the so-called Transylvanian Saxons, came in the 12 th century from the Lower
Rhine region. They became very effective for the development of the province, and the
urbanisation process. In German, the province is known as Siebenbuergen, or Seven
Towns.
Sibiu, or, in German, Hermannstadt was one of the most important settlements of
Transylvanian Saxons, and it became a kind of chief town of the province. At its apogee,
at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, it numbered about 7-8000
inhabitants. Outside the parish church, it housed several religious foundations, such as the
convents of Franciscans and Dominicans, masculine and feminine houses, hospitals, etc.
The parish church in Sibiu, dedicated to Virgin Mary, was by far the most
important religious institution of the town. Its architectural substance is largely due to the
late medieval and Gothic building stages, roughly dating between 1350 and 1520. The
following periods did not bring any significant transformation of the architecture. Instead,
the medieval interior endowment and organisation of the liturgical space have been
radically altered. Firstly, this was due to the adoption of Lutheranism by the town in
1545. Subsequently, several restorations in the 19th and 20th centuries conducted to a
further cleansing of the initial setting.
I attempted to restore this original aspect on the basis of both documentary and
visual available sources. In the context of Romanian actual historiography, this is a rather
pioneering undertake. This state of the art is partly due to the lack of consistent sources,
but also to a methodological retardation. The framework of the present meeting of Lleida
provides a very useful support for such endeavours.

Let us start with the end of the medieval stage of the monument. At about 1530, a
chronicler affirmed that the church of Virgin Mary in Sibiu was richly endowed with 24
altars served by priests, being worthy of a bishop wearing the mitre. In fact, in 1502 the
pope Alexander VI granted to the chief priest of the church, recorded in local documents
as plebanus, the privilege to wear episcopal insignia at 10 specific feasts of the liturgical
year.
Thus, the parish church in Sibiu, at the beginning of the 16 th century was almost a
cathedral. This status was a result of both institutional development and its progressive
richness and endowment.
On the one hand, the Saxons as a privileged corporation within the province
constantly fought for an independent ecclesiastical organisation, separate of the bishopric
of Alba Iulia. They eluded the subordination to the diocesan seat, being directly
submitted to the primate archbishopric in Esztergom, in the centre of the realm. They had
also acquired the right to elect their own priests. The Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg
granted to Saint Mary’s church in Sibiu the benefices of a collegiate church. Later, the
king Mathias Corvinus transferred to the same institution the estates of an antiquated
Cistercian monastery.
On the other hand, the citizens of Sibiu and of the neighbouring areas richly
endowed the church with donations in different kinds. Altars and religious services were
founded in time by different patrons such as guilds, religious confraternities, or individual
families or persons. From a contract between the plebanus and the municipality we find
out that in 1424, 15 different daily masses were officiated in the church. At about 1500,
more than 30 chaplains performed the liturgical services.
22 out of the 24 altars of the church have a recorded dedication, as listed in the
slide. All these altars were removed after 1545. However, on the basis of different
sources the position of some altars could be reconstructed. For example, the presence of a
key-stone representing St Wolfgang probably indicates the place of the recorded altar of
the saint, founded by the guild of the masons.
How than altar images were integrated in, or reflected this liturgical content? Due
to the subsequent cleansing of the church and to the lack of documentary data, we have
very sparse information concerning the endowment of the church with altarpieces. An
example from nowadays Slovakia, once comprised in the same Hungarian kingdom,
could be evocative. In St James’ parish church from Levoča, 12 altarpieces are still, more
or less in their original setting.
The only extant medieval altarpiece still preserved into the church of Sibiu is
today dismembered and its parts are scattered in different parts of the building. The
artwork, created in 1519, represents o good achievement of a Renaissance painter,
recently identified as Symon the painter, the head of the craft in Sibiu at that time. The
painter used graphic sources issued by Durer and Altdorfer. The altarpiece documents
also one of the most coherent transformations of medieval imagery in order to serve the
Lutheran confession. In 1545 the saints from the central panel were removed and
replaced by Biblical quotations. Two initials on the inscription point to the author of the
transformation: Benedictus Moler or the Painter.
Due to its significant dimensions and to its survival into the church, the altarpiece
is traditionally considered as belonging to the main altar. In fact, this is rather false. The
iconography has nothing in common with the dedication of the altare maius and of the
entire church: St. Mary. Preserved examples indicate much more obvious references in
the iconography to the Marian dedications. Instead, the retable in Sibiu is evidently
focused on the Passion of Christ, pointing to a specifically Christological devotion. At the
same time, the monumental aspect however suggests its initial positioning in a very
significant place. This location could have been, in my opinion, the altar of the Holy
Cross in the parish church. It was a common feature of the German (and not only
German) liturgical topography that the altar of the Cross usually stood in the “crossing”
of the nave with the transept. When the church had a choir screen, this specific altar
became the one serving the laypeople, while the main altar, hidden by the screen,
remained for the use of the clergy (the choir). A choir screen existed in St. Mary’s and
very probably the Holy Cross altar stood in front of it.
The main altar might have had an altarpiece with a Virgin Mary as the central
image, like the one now preserved in Brukenthal museum of Sibiu.
The Reformation was associated with the removal of the most part of the
medieval imagery. However, some details concerning the actual process in Sibiu,
suggests rather a controlled one. In 1549, the cited Benedictus Pictor together with a
fellow sculptor named Servacius were charged by the municipality with removing an
“image”. All the evidence indicates that they had to deal with an altarpiece. How else
could be explained the use of two specialized masters (a painter and a sculptor), who
some decades earlier were invited to collaborate in order to create such “multimedia” art
works as altarpieces? The use of specialists for such a task rather suggests that the
Reformation in Sibiu was accompanied by a carefully-coordinated policy of the town
government towards images and not by a random “Bildersturm”.
This also means that other components of the visual programme of the church
might survive.
In the National Gallery of Budapest there is a pair of paintings with a rare
iconography: The Transfiguration of Christ and The Vision of St John in Patmos.
Recently I argued that they belong to a prolific painter from Sibiu, namely Vincentius
Painter. The iconography is also clearly related with a specific liturgical spot in the parish
church in Sibiu. At the end of the 15 th century, the northern arm of the transept was
extended and a chapel was built. I proved that this was a private chapel, sponsored by a
prominent personality of the town: Johannes Lulay. The chapel, as an inscription records,
was dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ and to Virgin Mary. The paintings from
Budapest reflect accurately this dedication.
One of the most important altars of the church was dedicated to Corpus Christi. It
was founded by a confraternity and it received several indulgencies. A weekly procession
into the church, on each Thursday was established, and the feast soon became the
principal festivity of the town. The altar was founded in 1372 on the tribune of the choir
screen altare super lectorio. I argued that for this precise altar was commissioned a
beautiful Pieta at about 1400. At the beginning of the 16 th century a new chapel was built,
in direct connection with the tribune, in order to house the altar. Then a new decoration
for the altar was commissioned. In Brukenthal Museum, there is a central panel
representing a Vir dolorum flanked by two angels. Even badly damaged, the painting,
dating at ca. 1510 is very powerful and expresses in a very direct way the sacramental
content of the altar.
A late gothic panel painting preserved in the same museum depicts the martyrdom
of St Barbara. It is a fine work connected with contemporary achievements in the South
German artistic centres. In my opinion, the piece might have been a part of the altarpiece
commissioned in 1484 by the guild of the goldsmiths. The corporation was the patron of
All Saints altar. The conspicuous presence of a golden chalice in the scene of martyrdom
might be a transparent reference to the activity of goldsmiths.
An impressive statue of St James the Great, preserved in the museum, was very
probably the central image of an altarpiece. It decorated once the altar of the chapel
dedicated to the saint. The chapel stood in the cemetery surrounding the parish church.
A very badly damaged central panel, dating at about 1520 represents Jesus Christ
between the 12 apostles. The predella belonging to the same ensemble depicts the
Apostles surrounding the dying Virgin Mary. They might be the remains of the altarpiece
adorning the altar of The Twelve Apostles, recorded already in 1432.
Another predella pertaining to a lost ensemble from the parish church might have
been the ornament of a Marian altar. Outside the main altar dedicated to the Virgin, the
documents records the altar of St Mary of Recanati, or Loreto, founded by a prominent
citizen in 1485, at the moment when the cult of the Santa Casa was not yet officially
recognized.
Other fragments of altarpieces, painted panels as well as wooden sculptures or
carvings might have belonged to the same liturgical complex that was St Mary’s church
in Sibiu. The idea I would like to emphasise here as a conclusion, is that, excepting the
altarpiece preserved until today in the church, the other images had no history and no
provenance in the collection of the museums. Even the altarpiece of the Passions was
wrongly interpreted. Instead, the researches conducted on the liturgical setting of the
churches provide very useful support for art historical reconstructions.