CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Unige Bencze |
|---|---|
| Title | On the Border: Monastic Landscapes of Medieval Transylvania (Between the Eleventh and Sixteenth Centuries) |
| Summary | The aim of the dissertation is to draw attention to and to explore the nature of monastic landscapes of different monastic orders within the boundaries of medieval Transylvania. Landscape archaeology and land use studies have gained ground in the recent years in monastic studies, through which a better understanding of a given religious community can unfold. Issues such as monastic economy or using the resources of various geographic regions of medieval Transylvania had enjoyed attention from scholars only in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century with scattered studies in the last ten years but showing a rising interest in the subject. The focus of scholars had shifted to the reconstruction of different economic histories of individual monasteries or orders but did not extend to a wider understanding of land use of various environments or landscape shaping activities of monks. Besides historic analysis architectural studies had proven to be one of the fruitful lines of investigation. In parallel also archaeological excavations took place in the early twentieth century on the site of large monasteries, such as Kerc and Kolozsmonostor. However, these excavations generally concentrated on the monastic church or the close-by areas of the convent, but never touched upon economic buildings, mills or fishponds. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is manifold, it looks into the reevaluation of the earlier studies, applies a new methodology with new sets of data and provides analysis of a wide area with case studies from the main regions of medieval Transylvania. Based on these features the dissertation builds up a fresh approach and analyzes how far Transylvania represents a unique area as the eastern border region of the Kingdom of Hungary in terms of monastic landscapes. In the same time, my inquiries shall focus on whether Transylvania as a historical region can be defined as an independent, unitary monastic region. As it will be seen in the coming parts even though several encompassing studies had seen light dealing with the monasteries of medieval Hungary none of these looked at Transylvania separately, as a distinct monastic region. Thus, the present dissertation proposes to initiate and to carry out in-depth case studies on the settling features of monastic orders in medieval Transylvania and to analyze their landscape shaping and land use activities through a holistic approach. The following questions constitute the basis for the research: When and how did the estates of various abbeys spread over Transylvania? What was their relationship with the surrounding neighbors? Can property clusters be recognized? If so, then what could influence the structure of monastic clusters? Can perhaps, preferences of certain types of lands by the monastic orders be recognized? How can the estates of a monastery be identified and their boundaries pinpointed on the ground? What can still be recognized or found on the field? How did the monasteries use their lands? Can different monastic landscapes be identified based on the types of estates and land use of the abbeys? Are there differences among the orders in terms of land use and income? |
| Supervisor | Laszloszky Jozsef; Szende Katalin |
| Department | Medieval Studies PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/bencze_unige.pdf |
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