Heritage as a silent score – resurrecting the past in Pécs
Pécs were added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites
MúzeumCafé 15.
People living at the foot of the Mecsek Hills in the 4th century A.D. already knew the Te Deum, having encountered Christianity and its promise of eternal life to come following death. Guarding the corpse and preparation for resurrection was an important element of the new religion, involving burial and adoration within one complex. The remains of sacral constructions containing tombs in Pécs were added to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in November 2000. The first and so far most lavishly painted early Christian burial chamber, the so-called Peter-Paul No. 1, was discovered by chance in 1782. Uncovered was an ornamented vault (with a Christogram, peacocks, heads and elements of portraits) and richly decorated walls. The next development occurred in 1939 when No. 2 burial chamber ‘with the wine pitcher’ was found. The image of a slim pitcher remained in a niche. It could have been a Eucharistic symbol, as on Rome’s 3rd-century catacomb paintings, for example in the secret hall under the Santi Giovanni e Paolo Basilica. The pitcher is surrounded by a winding vine tendril, an iconographic code like the mosaics on the circular vaulted ceiling of its contemporary Santa Costanza, also in Rome. However, parallels can involve exaggeration, even though we know that burial constructions of already ‘legal’ Christianity, such as in Pécs, contained images echoing those of the illegal catacombs of the Eternal City and its rich church decoration. The Province of Valeria, to which Sopianae belonged, was far from Rome but still very close to the north-eastern limes. Imitation here was highly appreciated. Between 1913 and 2004 ruins bearing traces of a further four sarcophagi were uncovered – decorated twin tombs near the Dome, nearby a peculiar burial chapel with an octagonal groundplan which was converted still in its own era, a thoroughly plundered chamber section with a Christogram under the Chapter Archives, and a construction a few years ago where parents together with their early deceased child may have been laid to rest. The so-called early Christian mausoleum was situated in the southern part of the necropolis and its present name stuck because of its size rather then its function. The church which reached above the ground at the time and the underground burial chamber with its huge sarcophagi and another two ruined coffins were sensational. The finding, excavated in 1975 by archaeologist Ferenc Fülep, was restored in 1986 and opened to the public in 2007 – with another cycle of frescos with stylistic marks of Rome and the Balkans, including another Adam, another Eve and a rather life-like Daniel surrounded by lions. The oddly-shaped Cella Septichora is situated to the east of the painted burial chambers. Only the beginnings of the walls remained with openings indicating hoisting apparatus. These are surrounded by a solid, unpainted structure of stones and bricks. According to archaeologist Zsolt Visy the building may have been thick-set. Seven sides of an elongated octagonal groundplan were extended by seven semicircles. The groundplan is shaped in the manner of an ornamented earring or – remaining with religious symbolism – like a ripe cluster of grapes. It was probably never completed and though constructed as a house of the dead it never saw corpses. Its builders probably fled from the Huns, the ‘system-changers’ of Pannonia, as the region was then known. The method of exhibiting the early Christian burial chambers has no precedent in Hungary and there are not many examples elsewhere in Europe, either. The glass concrete entrance wall in Pécs already transfers the opening image into virtual space. This Hungarian invention welcomes visitors with the dim light of the afterworld befitting time travel, until they are embraced in the space of the Cella Septichora by natural light coming through the glass roof. The stones and the covering rendered on the bricks can be viewed and observed from the inside. Deus ex machina – as if God is appearing 1600 years after the Te Deum was sung.