Journal ARS 33 (2000) 1-3

Ingrid CIULISOVÁ

Stredoveká podoba bratislavského františkánskeho kostola
[Bratislava's Franciscan Church as It Was in the Middle Ages]

(Summary)

The present study brings together the results of research over a period of time on the medieval core of Bratislava's Franciscan church of the Annunciation, one of the most important Gothic buildings in Slovakia. The author attempts to address a number of hitherto unanswered questions concerning the periodization of what is now a Gothic-Baroque complex of buildings. Summarising the social context of the time she also illuminates the circumstances immediately motivating the architectural choice, emphasising the connection between the building of the church and the prevalent ideological leaning of the order after 1260. This sought systematically to advance the cult of the order's founder, St. Francis of Assisi, and went so far in pursuit of this that the requirement of prestige took precedence even over the essential ideas of poverty and humility set out by the saint himself in his testament. The church thus emerges as a monumental and opulent shrine built specifically to promote Francis' spiritual legacy. The study brings together the results of research over a period of time on the medieval core of Bratislava's Franciscan church of the Annunciation, which is without question one of the most important Gothic buildings in Slovakia, primarily due to its exceptionally fine Chapel of St. John. A series of new findings made during restoration has provided answers to several hitherto unresolved issues concerning, for example, the periodization of what is now a Gothic-Baroque cluster of buildings and its stylistic affiliations. These findings have also helped to give us a more palpable vision of the building's original medieval form.

The paper is in two parts. The first draws on the new findings to advance a hypothetical reconstruction of the church in its Gothic form. It points out those parts of the building which exceed the strictly codified regulations drafted for mendicant buildings and whose application in the present instance was, to say the least, unusual. The second part looks at the social context of the time to elucidate circumstances which directly motivated the choice of the particular architectural realisation. Here the dedication deed offers invaluable testimony. It is dated March 26th, 1297, and in it the archbishop of Esztergom, Lodomer, affirms that the church was dedicated to St. Mary on Annunciation Day (i.e., March 25th 1297) by the vicar-general Jacob in the presence of the archbishop, of bishops from Nitra, Pécs, Vác and Győr, the Hungarian king Andrew and numerous members of the nobility. The question arises, however, of what was understood by the words of the dedication "Ecclesie Marie Virginis" - the whole church or merely a part thereof? Was the church in its entirety consecrated or only the nave or presbytery? Study of the surviving fabric has confirmed that the Gothic ground plan of the church was laid out at the close of the thirteenth century and within one stage of building. It would seem highly probable, therefore, that the consecration was in fact that of the complete, and presumably already functional, church. This building comprised an oblong nave of 1:2 ratio and terminating in a presbytery. While the latter had two compartments of cross vaulting with stone ribs, the nave had at consecration an open roof truss from facade to the presbytery arch. The Gothic presbytery was originally illuminated by seven large windows with pointed arches and plate tracery. A small simple portal flush with the masonry of its southern (exterior) wall provided access. The nave was illuminated by three tall lancet windows on the south side and by two windows set into the west facade. Entry to the nave was by means of an imposing Gothic portal with elaborate stone sculpture which has partially survived, and a Gothic blind arcade enlivened and accented the interior west wall. In addition to the main west entrance there were probably a further two points of access functional around 1300 - one on the southeast side of the nave and a second to the northern wing of the monastery on the southwest side. A third entrance, discovered in the northwest reach of the nave and still visible in the interior of St. John's chapel, probably issued to the exterior. In all three cases these were massive portals with brick segmental arches.

A short time after consecration the original wooden roofing structure was removed. The presbytery was temporarily isolated and work was begun on supplying Gothic stone vaulting to the nave. This is confirmed by surviving external buttresses and by fragments of imposts and pyriform ribs. Immediately prior to the middle of the fourteenth century plate tracery was evidently added to the nave windows. It is possible that the process of vaulting the nave may have entailed an overall change to the disposition of this part of the church. The pair of massive windows on the west facade and the general disposition of the original Gothic windows on the south side of the nave, corresponding with the location of the surviving external Gothic buttresses, indicate that the original nave could have been modified - before the middle of the fourteenth century - into a cross-vaulted double nave divided by three monumental pillars. Such a modification would have its counterpart in the Minorite church at Enns in Austria, where in the course of the fourteenth century an originally undivided nave was similarly modified. The Bratislava church witnessed a further period of intense building work after the middle of the fourteenth century. The internal disposition of the nave was modified by the addition on the north side of an imposing chapel, two storeys in height, to St. John, and its external contours were accentuated by a tower. Archive documents permit a latest possible dating of the chapel to 1351. Investigation of the surviving fabric of the nave has confirmed that the chapel as originally conceived gave onto the nave through a massive arcade, as was the case at the Dominican church in Imbach in Austria and its integral Chapel of St. Catherine, dating from almost a century earlier. Within a short time, however, this spacious arcade was filled in, although the new plan, too, envisaged communication between church and chapel. The present stage of research does not allow us to say with certainty whether the chapel's arcade - which survives - was actually at any point functional. The existence of an earlier building, preceding the Gothic presbytery and evidently organically related to the present Franciscan church, was revealed by a discovery at the southwest part of the present presbytery at the chord. It comprises a section of masonry with a painted surface, a fragment of the dedication cross and a stone impost which supports a massive oblong rib. These finds can be matched by virtue of style and disposition to a surviving Romanesque window in the corridor of the present-day sacristy and can be dated to the period before or around 1250. This discovery has re-opened the question - frequent in earlier art-history literature - of what the earliest version of the Franciscan church was and what form it took. The extent of the surviving original Gothic fabric is such as to have enabled its formal analysis and the establishment of its stylistic associations and affinities. Taken together, the surviving presbytery and nave, as they were built at the end of the thirteenth and in the first half of the fourteenth century, make up an entity complex in structure which in its formal composition embodies a compromise with the influences of the Gothic architecture of Western Europe. In addition to Early Gothic and classical Gothic the presbytery and nave of the church at the time also evince post-classical Gothic to a marked degree, lavishly represented by three monumental bosses with foliage decoration. In its Eucharist iconography this small medieval florarium in the vaulting of the presbytery emphasised the idea of Christ's sacrifice. It also underscores, in its symbolic implication, St. Francis' idea of Christocentrism, his identification with the eschatological mission of the angel of the sixth seal as interpreted by Thomas of Celano and later by St. Bonaventure. The signs of post-classical Gothic are also in evidence in remains of the west portal. Here, as with the three bosses of the presbytery vaulting, the key element was familiarity with the architecture and stone sculpture of Saxony-Thuringia of around and after 1250, as represented by the cathedrals - influenced by Cistercian building practice - at Naumburg, Magdeburg and Meissen.

It is clear from the above that in their architectural and artistic ambition the surviving Gothic presbytery and nave far surpassed all that was built in Slovakia at that time. The elegance of the design clearly indicates the close linking of the Minorite and the Arpád dynastic agenda - something, in other words, which in its resultant embodiment countered the legacy of St. Francis as formulated in his testament of 1226 and which also transgressed the stringently formulated regulations constraining mendicant building and art, as we might today designate the Narbonne statutes as drawn up in 1260 by St. Bonaventure. The question, then, is this: "Why were the restrictions deriving from the legacy of St. Francis not respected in Bratislava around 1300? Why was this particular architectural conception chosen? Why - and to what - was the Order of the Friars Minor reacting in making the choices they did?" The death of St. Francis brought into the open difficulties within the order, cleaving precisely on the interpretation of poverty into two camps - one which endeavoured to evade the austere precepts set out by St. Francis and the other which adhered strictly to those tenets as formulated by the founder. A series of Papal Bulls ensued which on the one hand progressively marginalized the legacy of St. Francis and on the other radicalised the wing of Spirituals, as the advocates of true poverty - invoking the poverty of Christ and his apostles - styled themselves. The Pope's radical withdrawal of support for Franciscan privileges and the enduring argument about Christ's poverty brought about a legitimisation of the Spirituals' opposition movement. It further led to their approximation with secular authority as represented by Pope John XXII's prime political adversary, Louis of Bavaria. In 1328 Minister General Michael of Cesena came out openly against the Pope. His excommunication and deposition followed, and the order received a new leadership, one loyal to the Pope.

The events we have here briefly sketched out formed part of the historical context in which Bratislava's Franciscan church was built. The question is whether this context is also evident from the actual building itself as we have analysed it. It is clear that the building as it was at the end of the thirteenth century and first half of the fourteenth fulfilled the requirements of court and prestige. It is clear, too, that a building project of such ambition could only have been undertaken with substantial financial support and the broad assistance of secular authority. And here we need to go back a number of decades. The requirement of an ambitious and visible propagation of the order and its founder became policy after 1260. At this time the prophetic idea of Abbot Gioacchino da Fiore of the advent of a third age of the Holy Sprit - of which the Franciscans deemed themselves the heralds - was once and for all laid to rest. It is also symptomatic that it was in that very same year at the general chapter in Narbonne that the restrictive building statutes of Franciscan church architecture were formulated by St. Bonaventure and that six years later the general chapter in Paris took a decision to destroy all previous biographies of St. Francis and establish as the only orthodox source on the saint's life Bonaventure's Legenda Maior. The requirement of the official propagation of a cult of the founder of the order was evidently so pressing in the case of a relatively young order - and one only gradually establishing itself amid stiff competition - that even the very legacy of that founder was obliged to retreat - and retreat it did. It is in the spirit of this movement that Bratislava's Franciscan church was built. The cult of the saint, which the church manifested profusely in its architecture, must have evoked a fervid response in a town sorely tested and on the brink of economic devastation, suffering in interminable wars between Hungary and Bohemia. The Church of St. Mary of the Friars Minor could thus have been regarded not least as a monumental, opulent shrine, built for the systematic propagation of the most valuable asset that the order possessed - the saint's spiritual legacy.