Culic Dan

Din judeţul Sălaj, în ultima vreme, au fost semnalate şi publicate o serie de studii referitoare la arta rupestră1. Unele din monumentele prezentate în acestea sunt sanctuare în natură pentru diferite divinităţi, unde au loc iniţieri, reprezentând totodată locuri de oferire, închinăciune, jertfă etc.
Semnele de pe ele ne oferă posibilitatea de a determina uneori perioada de timp, dar un loc sacru, odată cunoscut, este păstrat în tradiţii, iar el inspiră sentimente de veneraţie care oferă respect deosebit pentru urmaşi. Unii vizitatori doresc să semnaleze trecerea lor prin acele locuri,
marcându-şi numele sau redând unele din simbolurile pe care le cunoaşteau. Pentru aceste semne ulterioare este greu de precizat perioada când au fost realizate, ca, de altfel, şi pentru primele, fără studii detaliate despre uneltele sau instrumentele cu care au fost marcate. Asocierea semnelor ne oferă uneori posibilităţi de interpretare. Dar, pentru interpretarea lor, trebuie să ţinem cont de vecinătăţile istorice, ca şi de drumurile sau cărările în vecinătatea cărora se află.

When talking about modern day Sălaj county, with its patrimony of ecclesiastical monuments, the general
and correct perception, is that the county is very rich in
well-preserved wooden churches. These architectural wonders, most of them dating to the 18th and 19th centuries, are generally the subject of ethnographical studies, and less the focus of art historians. But the large category of ecclesiastical monuments also covers another type of architectural heritage, the medieval and early modern stone or brick wall churches constructed by Catholics and Protestants. There are still many such churches in Sălaj county that still stand and are in use. Not all medieval churches have survived, however, and several such churches have been discovered in the county. There are parish churches that faded away along with their perished villages, churches that belonged to forgotten medieval monasteries, or churches that were rebuilt from the ground up in modern times.

REZUMAT: Când vorbim azi de județul Sălaj cu zestrea sa de monumente ecleziastice, percepția generală este cea de areal al bisericilor de lemn. Articolul abordează însă o altă categorie de monumente ecleziastice, cea a bisericilor medievale și premoderne dispărute. Au fost identificate până în prezent nu mai puțin de șapte biserici dispărute. Dintre acestea unele au fost biserici ale unor mănăstiri, precum Sfânta Margareta de pe Meseș și ruina din satul Cheud. Altele au fost biserici parohiale care au pierit împreună cu satele lor, cum sunt cele din vetrele satelor dispărute Sándorhaza și Bőnye sau se ascund sub temeliile actualelor locașuri de cult, precum biserica Reformată din Zalău sau cea din Șamșud. O situație aparte apare în cazul bisericii dispărute din hotarul satului Pericei, unde biserica veche
a fost demolată, fiind construită una nouă în altă parte a
satului.

The present study, the second in the Monumente uitate series, focuses on the ruin of a medieval church from the territory of the village of Cheud (Sălaj County). Located on the right bank of the Someș, near Țicăului Pass, the ruin of the church once belonged to a medieval monastery. The few written sources that make reference to Aranyas suggest the existence of the monastery’s customs ever since the 13th century. An earth-and-timber fortification was built in the proximity of the monastery in the 14th century.
Vince Bunyitay was the first to show an interest in the story of the ruins in Cheud towards the end of the 19th century. He believed that they belonged to the abbey of St. Margaret on the Meseș. In his famous monograph work dedicated to Sălaj, his contemporary Petri Mór also supported this idea. Art historian Virgil Vătășianu also mentioned the ruins in Cheud. On the basis of the descriptions of its decorative
elements performed by his forerunners, the historian in question attributed the edifice to the ogival style. The first archaeological researches in Aranyas were performed in 1989, but the results have remained unpublished as yet. Part of the on-site documentation and of the collected archaeological material contributes to one’s
completion of the monument’s history. Several diary notes, one profile of the archaeological section, the ground plan and surveys of the walls and several axonometric perspectives have been preserved from these excavations.
The collected archaeological material was very rich in profiled stones, but there were also tombs from which bones were recovered but no data have been recorded.
On the basis of the existing ground plan and surveys, together with certain observations on the details of the construction, specialists have elaborated a virtual reconstruction variant of the church. Far from being a perfect reconstruction, it fails to clarify certain aspects, such as the initial height of the tower, the number of windows on the tower’s upper floors, the entrance to the tower, the entrance to the sacristy etc. Some of these uncertainties, such as the one connected to the access into the tower or the sacristy, can be clarified by future archaeological researches, but those regarding the tower’s upper floors remain unsolved.
There is no document to directly mention the church. The few existing documents only contain explicit mentions of the near-by earth-and-timber fortification called Aranyas. A single document mentions a dispute between the monastery of St. Benedict and the new owners who had usurped the right to collect the custom tax in Aranyas.
In 1292 one knows that the new owners in question were members of the Guthkeled family.
An earth-and-timber fortification was built during the 14th century in close proximity to the church that had
been built, in all probability, before. The new archaeological researches performed inside the precinct of the fortification confirm the dating of its construction during the 14th century. In 1383 it belonged to the Drágfi family and then, in 1387 and 1388, it features part of the patrimony of the Jakch de Coșeiu family, together with 16 Romanian villages and 13 Hungarian villages that formed the castllany. One can only presume the fact that the fortification and the church were contemporary to each other. The study of medieval documents reveals the fact that salt was extracted
in Ocnele Dejului and then transported along the Someș. Thus, a customs point was located in Aranyas.

After more than century of archaeological research and thousands of artefacts discovered in the Roman age settlement of Porolissum, the rare medieval finds were not given much attention. Also the preoccupation of studying the roman ruins was, justly predominant at the expense of the few medieval sites that can now be sketched on the map of the Roman settlement. The artefacts found in Porolissum, dated from different periods of the Middle Ages indicates us that the same geographical features that made humans inhabit that specific area since Prehistory, thru the Iron Ages and culminating in the Roman Era, made the medieval people to live among the ruins.

The old medieval church from Mineu village (Sălaj county), was the subject of salvage archaeological digging. There were three archaeological trenches that were placed on the north, south and east sides of the monument. Even if the diggings did not give new data on the evolution of the building, some important data was recovered from the medieval graveyard. There were 67 graves discovered, some of them with inventory. The earliest ones are perhaps dated back from the 15th century or even from the fourteen hundreds.

Ucraina. Spada medievală a fost descoperită în hotarul localității Mara, în vechime Crăcești, în timpul unor exploatări forestiere. După descrierile conjuncturilor în care a fost descoperită, știm că a fost îngropată cu vârful în jos, fară alt context arheologic. Piesa în discuție face parte din categoria spadelor de două mâini și se încadrează în tipul XIIIa a lui Oakeshott, folosit de către marea majoritate a celor care au studiat și publicat asfel de piese.