Early Christian cemetery in Pécs

Early Christian cemetery in Pécs
UNESCO world heritage
Burial chamber of the mausoleum
National territory:	Hungary
Type:	Culture
Criteria :	(iii), (iv)
Surface:	3.76 ha
Reference No .:	853rev
UNESCO region :	Europe
History of enrollment
Enrollment:	2000  (session 24)

The early Christian cemetery of Pécs is part of a necropolis in the ancient city of Sopianae , today's Pécs in Hungary , and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000 .

location

The ancient necropolis is overbuilt by today's city; the tombs must therefore be visited in different places. The following are open to the public:

• Janus Pannonius utca / Káptalan utca: Cella Septichora with visitor center (from here access to several graves, including the Peter and Paul burial chamber);
• Janus Pannonius utca: mausoleum;
• Apáca utca 8;
• Apáca utca 10.

history

The city of Sopianae was founded in the 2nd century AD by colonists from Pannonia and Italy at the intersection of important roads. It experienced its heyday in the 4th century and was the capital of the Roman province of Valeria . During this time, several public buildings were erected in the area of ​​the forum.

There are no written sources on the history of Christianity in eastern Transdanubia ; but one can assume that Sopianae was a bishopric.

There were several burial grounds. One of them was in the north of the city; around 500 burials are known. In the west of this northern burial ground, in an area about 250 × 300 meters, "a not exactly poor Christian population group" was buried. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire , these buildings were used as living space by the Huns , Teutons and Avars .

The continuity in this place is remarkable: "It cannot be a coincidence that the diocese of Pécs was built at the beginning of the 11th century ... in the part of the early Christian burial ground with the best and largest chapels." An explanation would be that in 1009 late antique buildings still stood in the area of ​​the cathedral and the best of them was repaired and used as the main church.

description

The early Christian cemetery is located in the area directly in front of the Pécs Cathedral , in ancient times this was a terraced area. By 2000, fifteen structures had been uncovered in a more or less fragmentary state. Most of them are memorial chapels ( cellae memoriae ), from which one reaches an underground burial chamber ( cubiculum ) via a few steps . They have a rectangular floor plan and mostly an apse and a barrel vault . There are few comparable structures for this two-storey grave structure, which has been found several times in Sopianae.

"The cellae memoriae on the upper floor were probably used for the funeral meal , the lower burial chamber ( hypogaeum ) was intended exclusively for the dead."

Similar to the Roman catacombs , the walls are adorned with Old Testament motifs that were typologically related to the Resurrection ( Noah , Jonah , Daniel ), as well as with the most important characters of the New Testament: Jesus Christ , Mary and the apostles . It is believed that these murals were made by wandering Italian artists.

In addition, a burial chapel with a cloverleaf-shaped floor plan ( cella trichora ) and one with seven apses ( cella septichora ) were found, which are probably memories of families. The most remarkable building is the so-called mausoleum: it is much larger than the others, has particularly high quality wall paintings, and contains a marble sarcophagus.

Archaeological investigation

With the support of the European Union, the early Christian burial ground in Pécs was archaeologically examined between 2005 and 2006 by a team from the Janus Pannonius Museum under the direction of Zsolt Visy. Zsolt Visy was able to show that the anteroom to the burial chamber had been filled with earth, i.e. inaccessible; only the grave chapels were available to commemorate the dead.

The individual buildings of the world heritage

(Arabic numerals: the counting used in the nomination for UNESCO World Heritage; Roman numerals: the new counting order developed by Olivér Gabór, which is used in recent literature and in the exhibition on site):

No.		Surname	location	description	image
1	I.	Peter and Paul burial chamber	Szent István tér	Discovered in 1782 when a building was demolished. The above-ground memorial chapel was partially torn down during the discovery, the barrel-vaulted burial chamber with a vestibule was preserved. The wall paintings in the burial chamber remained intact: Peter and Paul refer to the Christogram ; Adam and Eve , Daniel in the den of lions (?), Jonah; Noah's Ark; Mary with the child; three men in the fiery furnace. Ceiling painting: a christogram in the center, portraits of the buried in the four corners; floral ornaments.
2		Wine jug burial chamber	Szent István tér	Discovered around 1800 while building a cellar, but only excavated in 1939. The barrel vault of the two-story burial chamber had collapsed and the rubble of the memorial chapel lay over it. A niche in the burial chamber was painted with the motif of a wine jug and a glass; vines were depicted on the walls of the chamber.
3			Szent István tér	Discovered in 1913, a collapsed burial chamber without painting.
4th			Szent István tér	Discovered in 1913, intact burial chamber with sarcophagus, without painting.
5	V		Szent István tér	The archaeological investigation was not yet completed in 2000. Gábor Kárpáti uncovered an octagonal mausoleum sunk into the earth with walls up to 4 meters high; the mausoleum of Diocletian in Split is comparable . It remained unfinished, probably because the province of Valeria was abandoned in the 5th century, and was probably also planned as a Christian mausoleum because of its proximity to clearly Christian tombs.
6th			Szent István tér	Only a small part of the burial chamber has been preserved.
7th			Szent István tér	Burial chamber with vestibule containing numerous small finds from the 9th and 10th centuries, probably used as living space at that time.
8th			Szent István tér	Plastered burial chamber without painting.
9			Szent István tér	Remains of a memorial chapel; including a burial chamber.
10	XXXI	Cella Trichora	Szent István tér	Chapel with three apses excavated in 1922; Standing masonry no more than 130 cm high. Terrazzo floor; Traces of wall painting from the 4th century that was painted over in the 10th century.
11	XXXII	Cella Septichora	Káptalan utca	1938–1939 excavated building with seven apses, which is very unusual (comparable to St. Gereon in Cologne with nine apses). 22.67 meters long, west-east oriented with the entrance on the west side. Hillside location, sunk about 1.50 meters into the ground when it was built, so that steps made of earth led down. The building was left unfinished when the province of Valeria was abandoned in the 5th century and the population migrated (presumably to Italy). Signs that a construction site was left behind here are perhaps lumps of lime in the interior that were supposed to be used to plaster the walls, which no longer happened. 55 burials, mostly in brick graves, have been found around this chapel; the only stone sarcophagus from Soponiae was also found here. An elderly man was buried in it, with a glass jug as the only addition. Since burials took place in the cemetery during the Arpad period, and there are some other indications, it is assumed that the Cella Septichora was provided with a wooden roof in the Arpad period and was used as a sacred space.
12	XXXIII	mausoleum	Szent István tér	Excavated and restored 1975–1976 under the direction of Ferenc Fülep . Early Christian church interior with narthex ; underground burial chamber with collapsed vaulted ceiling. In the chamber, which was originally completely painted, were the fragments of a white marble sarcophagus with personified seasons as decoration. On the east wall the Christogram between ornaments. The following are preserved from the painting: Adam and Eve with the tree of knowledge and the serpent; Daniel in the lions' den; Noah's Ark (fragment). During the migration period the chamber was used as living space.
13			Apáca utca 14	Chapel without burial chamber.
14th			Apáca utca 8	Painted double grave.
15th			Apáca utca 8	Unpainted burial chamber.
16		G / 4 burial chamber	Apáca utca 8	Community burial chamber with remains of plaster.

World heritage status

Wall painting in the mausoleum: Daniel in the lions' den

Since discoveries have been made in the area of ​​the necropolis since the 18th century and not everything was documented during the excavations in the 19th and early 20th centuries, part of the historical substance, such as the antique floors, has been lost. However, the damage is not so severe that the authenticity of the early Christian cemetery would be impaired.

• Criterion I: Among the contemporary necropolises outside Italy (for example Salona and Split in Dalmatia , Sofia and Niś in Bulgaria, or La Alberca in Spain), the necropolis of Pécs occupies an outstanding position. The wall paintings are unique in Italy (Priscilla catacomb).
• Criterion IV: The ensemble of late antique tombs offers a rare example of continuous development on this site from late antiquity through the migration period to the Middle Ages. The focus here is also on the nearby medieval buildings of Pécs (bishop's palace, university) and Ottoman buildings (mosques, hammams , graves).

Web links

Commons : Early Christian Necropolis of Pécs  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Early Christian Cemetery of Pécs on the UNESCO World Heritage Center website ( English and French ).
• Application by the Republic of Hungary for the inclusion of the complex of 16 buildings of the Pécs (Sopianae) Early Christian cemetery into the World Heritage List
• Early Christianity in Eastern Transdanubia - Project report (PDF) A joint project of the University of Pécs, Department of Archeology, and the University of Vienna, Department of Early Christian Archeology, under the direction of Renate Pillinger and Levent Nágy ; completed in 2016.
• Own website

literature

• Zsolt Visy: From Sopianae to Fünfkirchen: Recent studies in the early Christian burial ground of Sopianae. In: Peter Herz (ed.): Between region and empire: the area of ​​the upper Danube in the Roman Empire . Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86596-313-0 , pp. 77-98.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Early Christianity in Eastern Transdanubia . S. 7 .
2. ^ Zsolt Visy: From Sopianae to Fünfkirchen . S. 77 .
3. ↑ Zsolt Visy: From Soponiae to five churches . S. 91 .
4. ↑ Zsolt Visy: From Soponiae to five churches . S. 95 .
5. ↑ Early Christianity in Eastern Transdanubia . S. 8 .
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Early Christianity in Eastern Transdanubia . S. 9 .
7. ^ Zsolt Visy: From Sopianae to Fünfkirchen . S. 81 .
8. ↑ Application by the Republic of Hungary for the inclusion of the complex of 16 buildings of the Pécs (Sopianae) Early Christian cemetery into the World Heritage List. (PDF) 2000, accessed June 8, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Zsolt Visy: From Soponiae to five churches . S. 86 .
10. ↑ Zsolt Visy: From Soponiae to five churches . S. 89-90 .
11. ↑ Zsolt Visy: From Soponiae to five churches . S. 91 .

Coordinates: 46 ° 4 ′ 39.4 ″  N , 18 ° 13 ′ 27.8 ″  E