The Reformed Church of Turda Veche
The Reformed Church of Turda Veche is registered in the list of historical monuments in 2015 with no. 1321, with code no. CJ-II-m-A-07793.
The church is located in the centre of Turda, having in the immediate vicinity another building, a historical monument, namely the Voivodal Palace, today the Turda History Museum, code no. CJ-II-m-A-07794.
Turda is the first town in Romania, where religious freedom for all religions was declared (at the time), at the General Assembly of Transylvania in 1568, so Turda was an important cultural, religious center already in the Middle Ages, and this place of worship had an important historical role.
The Reformed church in Turda Veche is the only standing Augustinian church in Transylvania.
Literature claims that the present church was part of the monastery of the Knights of the order of Saint John, first attested in Turda in 1274: even in two documents of that year the crusader Frustan, a member of the order, is mentioned. The last information about the existence of the order in Turda dates back to 1391, in the middle of the 15th century. The Augustinian monks (1450, 1455, 1459, 1493, 1507, 1515, 1519), who took over the monastery from the Crusaders, appear more and more often in documents.
In 1550-1560 the monks were expelled from the monastery, which remained empty for decades.
The bastioned fortress around the church was built in the 1560s and 1570s after the town took over the monastery. The fortress was trapezoidal in plan, with rhomboidal bastions at the corners and a gate tower on the western wall. The church building was on the north side of the fortress, parallel to the north wall (‘base’ of the trapezoid).
At the end of the 19th century, traces of the northern courtyard were still visible, which met the Camara House (History Museum). Gheorghe Rákóczi I. (1630-1648) helped with donations to repair the church: during his reign the new roof of the place of worship and a tower in the choir area (collapsed in 1862) were built.
The fortress was renovated in 1678-1679.
In 1705 the fortress was burned down and demolished, probably when the medieval nave vault and the church choir collapsed almost entirely. The present inner vault and the engaged supporting pillars, together with the roof and the galleries, were made in 1803-1805.
The monumental neoclassical organ was built in 1812 and painted by the French craftsman Maurice Auguste Dupont in 1822.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the church underwent a general renovation, and between 1904 and 1906 the tower was built next to the medieval south chapel, which was partially demolished.
In the Turda battles of 1944 the church was also damaged, especially the organ and the tower’s cap, these damages were repaired in the 1960s.
The last major repairs on the church were the exterior and interior plastering in 1985 and the renewal of the roofing in 1991.
Of the medieval complex of buildings, only the monumental hall-like nave of the church has survived. Traces of the polygonal choir are clearly visible both on the east wall of the nave and on the ground. The engaged pillars and the triumphal arch gates have been preserved, but are only visible from the outside. The consoles and capitals decorated with vegetal ornament are very finely crafted. The external appearance of the church has preserved the medieval architectural design.
The longitudinal walls of the nave have six buttresses, the original Gothic vault of the nave had five beams. The church has four galleries, two on the east side and two on the west side. These tribunes are on two levels each, with access between them provided by wooden stairs. The structure of the tribunes is made up of two beams which are set on stone pillars at one end and the other end are set into the wall. From the upper east tribune there is also access to the attic via a wooden staircase.
From the outside, one can see the splendid Gothic portals on the west and north sides, an ogival doorway on the south side of the nave in a plastered state, and the south ogival windows of the nave partially plastered.
About the Church
Uniqueness and characteristics of the Reformed church complex
The choir of the church was located towards the centre, today only the richly decorated triumphal arch remains. The choir was as wide as the nave, a common arrangement in the churches of mendicant orders (especially the Poor Clares), the Teutonic Knights and the Carthusian hermits. On the basis of the 18th-century plan it can be established that the chancel end had a spindle closure, which from the 1360s appears in several Prague churches of the Parler workshop, but it should also be borne in mind that the indication of the spindle closure may also be a design error. At the bottom of the triumphal arch are the brackets of some statues, and other brackets are included in the beamed pillar of the triumphal arch. The chamfered shape of the brackets is rare in Transylvanian Gothic, the profiled elements are joined in the plane of the wall by an arched chamfer. This solution can be found in the chapel of St. Catherine of Karlstein (Parler workshop, ca. 1360), in the church of the Claris of Sankt Veit an der Glan (Austria, 1330s), in the lower level of the royal chapel in the fortress of Buda (period of Louis of Anjou), in the fortress of Diósgyőr, and in several buildings in the Spiss area, including the Carthusian cloister in Cerveny Klastor (completed in the 1340s). In addition to these distant analogies, we find similar consoles in Transylvania, for example in the choir of the Evangelical church in Reghin, dated in the 1330s by an inscription, and this dating in the case of Turda may be related to the privilege document of 1331 mentioned above.
The church nave is after the Franciscan church in Cluj (the present Reformed church on Kogălniceanu street) the second in length among the churches of the mendicant orders in Transylvania. The narrowness of the nave in relation to its length (ratio of 1/4) and the gothic vault beams with a square plan (based on buttresses and vault footprints) are surprising. Similar ship plans are not very common, but appear in several important churches of mendicant orders (e.g. San Francesco in Assisi, 1228-1253). In Austria and Hungary the Carthusians used this type of plan (Gaming, after 1330, Aggsbach-Dorf, 1380-1392, and Letanovce in the Spiss area). Many special solutions of the Carthusian monasteries appear in Turda: unitary interior space, buttresses on both sides, square plan beam, triumphal arch with an almost symbolic decrescence. The relationship is probably based on the common traditions of the two orders of hermits (the original hermit churches were not frequented by parishioners, and there was no need to separate the nave from the choir).
The church ship had three entrances. The southern entrance, facing the monastery, is the simplest. The monumental east and north portals are similar: the richly profiled ambraze has an elegant capital frieze formed of leaves. The northern portal faced the centre of the town. The portals are included in a series of widespread anchorages from Cârța and Alba Iulia, which were used in Transylvania until the mid-15th century, especially in Saxon churches in the Târnavelor area. The leaf types of the friezes are found on some important sites in Transylvania: the second phase of the choir of the church of St. Michael in Cluj (ca. 1370s) and on the capital of the free-standing pillar of the south tower (a little later), respectively on the hall-type choir of the church of Sebeș-Alba (before 1382). It seems that the portals were made in the 1370s and 1380s, so they are later than the actual church building, which has many archaic elements. A blind moulding frieze and figural gargoyles were inserted into the north portal in the 1430s. The particularly intricate mouldings with lily-decorated tops follow the ornamentation of the nave of St Michael’s Church in Cluj, originally from Kosice. Unfortunately, the two fragments of mural painting on the north façade are indecipherable, only the decoration of the border can indicate certain stylistic relationships.
The system of artistic-stylistic relations presented has several unresolved problems, but it can be seen that the church in Turda was influenced by the most important sites in medieval Transylvania and Hungary. The later parish church, but of equally high artistic pretensions, indicates that all this was not accidental in Turda, the town being one of the important landmarks of the geography of medieval Transylvanian art.
Inside the church you enter through the doorway opened in the east wall in the early 19th century, and the Gothic west doorway has been narrowed with a similar doorway. The interior of the place of worship is reminiscent of the local Catholic church, as its present appearance is due to the same craftsman, János Kövecsi. Kövecsi replaced the 18th-century ceiling with four shorter sail vault beams, which intersect the nave windows. The vault is decorated with stuccowork. At the two ends of the interior are two tiered galleries. The monumental organ was placed on the west gallery in 1812, and was gilded and painted in 1822 by Maurice Auguste Dupont, but unfortunately the original painted decoration is no longer visible. The organ, which had a great sound, was damaged in the Second World War. The most beautiful element of the interior is the pulpit carved in 1824 from grey marble by the tumultuous sculptor Antal Csűrös from Cluj. The pulpit staircase was built into the plinth of the northern portal. On the body of the pulpit are three representations inspired by the poetic imagery of the Song of Songs. The interior furnishings also date from the early 19th century, among the pieces of which the priests’ pew is worth mentioning.
From the nave of the church, a medieval semicircular arcade leads to the prayer hall, which was built on the site of the medieval chapel and from which we reach the ground floor of the tower.
From the data and information presented above, the uniqueness of the heritage objective is clear, both in terms of its age and from an architectural, cultural, historical and religious point of view, being one of the most important monuments of the locality and of Cluj county.
The main architectural and artistic values of the church
- The church's volume (of the medieval nave) and the remains of the choir, respectively the historic tower.
- Medieval and early 19th century anchorages.
- Medieval fresco on the north façade.
- Renaissance inscription and frieze in the attic.
- Neoclassical design of the church interior.
- The galleries.
- Neoclassical organ.
- The pulpit and period furniture.
- Stucco decoration of the vaults.