Romanesque Architecture in Hungary [antikvár]

introduction It was after long migration that, at the end of the ninth century, the Magyars, a people of FinnoUgrian origin, crossed the passes of the Carpathian Mountains and found a new country. From their ancient home in the region of the Volga and Kama rivers, they wandered southward and lived for two centuries within the framework of the Khazar Empire, mixing with Turkic peoples. From 830, the Magyars became independent and settled in an area referred to by chronicle writers as Etelköz (a name indicating a territory between two rivers, namely the Don and the lower reaches of the Danube). From here, attacks by Bulgaro-Pecheneg tribes drove them west in the later wave of the Great Migrations. They reached the same land as had the Scythians, the Huns, the Gepids, the Lombards and the Avars, but, whereas these peoples took possession of this country for periods of varying length, the Magyars settled down for good. The historical fact that the destiny of the Magyars took a different turn from that of their predecessors in the region, and they could found here a state which has been in existence for over a thousand years, was made possible not only by the existing situation and policy being adapted to circumstances, but alsó by the fact that the Magyars had attained a higher level of social development and were better qualified to found a state. The Khazar Empire, progressing towards feudalism, may be supposed to have played a significant role in the transformation of nomadic tribes into the conquering Magyars, who cultivated the lands around their permanent settlements and kept 011 the march between their winter and summer riverside quarters, breeding livestock by planned ley farming. From our viewpoint, the importance of belonging to the Khazar Empire lay in the fact that the Magyars grew acquainted with the Persian-Arabian dvilization and art which-without going into other aspects here-difFered radically from that produced in the Carpathian Basin and by the surrounding Byzantine, Mediterranean and Germanic peoples. From the art of the conquering Magyars, only pieces of metál or bone have come down to posterity; such mementoes, buried with the dead, have not been reduced to dust with the passage of time. These sabretache or purse plates (see Plates x, 3), sabres, sets of harness, saddles, discs decorating female attire and a gorgeous golden table service, the Nagyszentmiklós treasure now in Vienna, create the impression of a craft executed with remarkably rich creative imagination and fine, assiduous workmanship. At the same time these objects, indicating the social rank of members of the ruling strata for whom they were made, without doubt alluded to the profound-in most cases still obscure-meaning of the totemistic creation myth, to the life hereafter interpreted by shamans while under a trance; last but not least, they were thought to invest the bearer with superhuman strength and speed. From tombs exposed in burial-grounds of the common people, much plainer relics have been brought to light; though produced in industrial series (mostly east), they actually represent the same forms but are far less significant as regards artistic value. 5