Saint Catherine of Alexandria Church, Tabán

About

The St. Catherine of Alexandria Church (Hungarian: Alexandriai Szent Katalin-templom, German: Pfarrkirche zur heiligen Katharina) is a Roman Catholic church in the Tabán quarter of Budapest, Hungary. It is the parish church of the Tabán Parish which also comprises parts of Gellért Hill and Naphegy. The church is a listed monument that was built in Central European Baroque style between 1728 and 1777. It was reconstructed several times in the 19th–20th centuries.

The southern part of the Lower Town between Castle Hill and Gellért Hill was devastated by the Siege of Buda in 1686. The area had few inhabitants until November 1690 when a group of South Slavic refugees were resettled there by the Cameral Administration. The majority of the new arrivals were Orthodox Serbs who built their own quarter on the banks of the Ördög-árok stream. Their chapel later became the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The Roman Catholics settled on the southern slopes of Castle Hill and near the Danube around the mosque of the Ottoman governor ( beylerbey ) Sokollu Mustafa Pasha (1566-1578) which survived the war.

In 1689 the head of the Cameral Administration of Buda, Johann Stephan Werlein asked the Franciscans of Bosna Argentina, who had a house in the Víziváros district, to take on the pastoral care of the Catholic Slavs who lived in the area. The Franciscan fathers already had a presence in Buda during the Ottoman period, and they spoke the Illyric language. The mosque of Sokollu Mustafa Pasha was converted to a chapel in 1692 and it was consecrated to St. Catherine of Alexandria. A house was built by the chapel for the friar who settled there in 1693. The friar also served as a schoolmaster because the Franciscans built a school on the edge of the cemetery which had been established around the chapel. This small stone building had a single room, and a few shops provided income for its maintenance. The Cameral Administration has granted approval to finish the construction of these shops on 31 May 1697.

The medieval parish was re-established in 1702, and its patron became the Council of Buda according to the 1703 letter of privilege of the town. The guardian of the Víziváros friary served as parish priest but actual pastoral care was entrusted to a Franciscan administrator who lived in the Tabán district. The baptismal register was started in 1692, marriage and burial records have been kept from 1709. In 1706 the council granted a 2.3 ha vineyard on Gellért Hill to the parish.

A drawing from 1721 documented the Baroque reconstruction of the converted mosque. The original dome was replaced by a steep conical roof, the upper part of the minaret was demolished to the height of the main building and the remaining part was topped with a belfry and an ornate spire. A porch was built in front of the entrance door. The chapel had four bells: two older ones and two new bells that were cast in 1723 by Jacob Nosbicher, a bellmaker in Pest. The new bells were dedicated to Apostles Matthias and Thomas, and the Virgin Mary.

Tabán quickly became the most densely populated quarter of Buda in the first decades of the 18th century in spite of the several natural disasters and epidemics that hit the district. The number and percentage of the Catholic population also increased. In 1702 there were only 250 Catholics among the taxpayer heads of families (the Orthodox Serbs numbered 461) but the canonical visitation in 1756 found more than 4000 Catholics in Tabán. Their number grew to almost 5000 in 1802. At first almost all of them were Illyrs (South Slavs) but German immigrants arrived in large numbers from the 1720s. In 1783 the Germans already outnumbered the Illyrs while the Hungarians and the Slovaks were still few in numbers. From the middle of the 18th century sermons were delivered in German and Illyric, and teaching in the parish school was also bilingual.

The Franciscan presence in the district also increased as one more friar settled in the small Tabán parish house in 1732. The old house was replaced by a more spacious building next to the church in 1759. The six room house was large enough to accommodate three friars from 1770 on. A new schoolhouse was bought in 1756 where secular schoolmasters taught. From 1757 the Franciscan house in the Víziváros district (and the friars of the Tabán parish) belonged to new Province of St. John Capistrano. The majority of the friars, who served the parish in the 18th century, were Illyrs (Croatians).

Between 1728 and 1736 the church was enlarged by Christian Obergruber, a master builder originally from Carinthia. A Baroque nave was added to the older part that was retained as the chancel. The main pieces of furnishings, including the pulpit and the altarpiece, were constructed in the 1740s. A crypt was built under the whole nave in 1749. The slow pace of the construction shows that the financial resources of the parish were limited, although several citizens had left donations for the church.

The next phase of the works began on 11 August 1750 and lasted until 1753. A new Baroque facade and a tower was built by Matthäus Nepauer, a masterbuilder originally from Vienna, who worked on several churches in Buda at the time. The tower had an ornate spire with a lantern, and the facade was decorated with volutes, two stone vases, a cross and the statues of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Andrew and Saint Peter. The stone parts were made by sculptor Anton Eberhardt and stonemason Johann Kugler. Four new bells were cast in 1755 by Anton Czeichner. The canonical visitation on 25 March 1756 described the rich Baroque furniture: a main altar with the painting of Saint Catherine and several statues, an ornate pulpit decorated with statues of the Evangelists, St. Francis and seven angels, and side altars dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, St. Antony of Padua, St. Anne and the Holy Cross, all decorated with paintings and statues.

A further enlargement became necessary due to the rapid growth of the Roman Catholic population, and the old chancel – the converted Ottoman mosque – was demolished in 1765. The construction of a new section of the nave, the chancel and a two-storey sacristy on the western side was finished on 15 May 1777 when the cross was raised on the roof. The architect of the expansion was probably Matthäus Nepauer. Two new side altars were erected in the 1770s that were dedicated to St. Sebastian and St. Joseph, and a third one was dedicated to the Fourteen Holy Helpers in 1775. A new organ was built in 1797 by Wilhelm Hartmann, and a new main altar was erected between 1803 and 1806 (a work by stonemasons Franz Hofhauser and Antonio Allio, sculptor Friedrich Held and painters Josef Helm and Karl Josef Schöft). A new clock for the tower was made by Josef Hibling in 1808.

The church burned down completely in the Great Tabán Fire of 1810 which destroyed the whole district. "The tower of the Catholic church in Rácváros caught fire after midnight yesterday, and collapsed horribly in the morning; the church itself also burned, illuminating this terrible night", a contemporary report claimed.

The reconstruction was begun by József Dankó the Elder in 1812 and it was finished by Ludwick Kimnach in 1818. Due to a shortage of funds, the ornate spire of the tower was replaced with a symple pyramidal roof in 1823. The interior and the new furniture was not finished until the 1830s. A new parish house was also built in 1818-19.

During the Hungarian War of Independence the church was damaged again when Buda was sieged by the Hungarian revolutionary army in May 1849, and Tabán was hit by artillery fire from Buda Castle. It was quickly repaired in the same year, the chancel was decorated with new frescoes and two altarpieces were added in 1850-51.

The 232-year-long Franciscan administration of the parish ended with the death of the last administrator, Paskál Kostroschitz who served here from 1850 until 3 March 1868. In October 1868 the Council of Buda appointed a member of the secular clergy as parish priest although the Illyrs protested against the change, and still demanded a Slavic-speaking priest. Franciscan friars served as Croatian chaplains until 1887 but the gradual assimilation of the Illyr population made their further presence unnecessary. Sermons were delivered in Croatian until 1910, and singing in Illyric ceased four years later. Hungarian became the primary language of the Roman Catholic community of the district in the last decades of the 19th century.

At the time of the unification of Buda and Pest in 1873 the chancel and the northeastern side of the church was surrounded by a narrow churchyard, enclosed by the neighbouring houses, and there was a small square in front of the facade. The street which connected Szarvas tér and Templom tér was named Templom utcza or Kirchengasse (later the name was changed to Palota utcza, then Attila körút). The new patron, the Municipal Authority of Budapest built a large new parish house on Attila körút by the side of the church for 48.000 forints in Neo-Renaissance style in 1877.

The church was reconstructed in 1880-1881 by the Municipal Authority of Budapest: the facade was rebuilt in Neo-Baroque style, the shape of the pediment was changed and the facade was decorated with three statues by Gyula Szász. The simple pyramidal roof of the tower was replaced with an ornate copper spire. The porch in front of the entrance was rebuilt in Italianate style. The plans of the reconstruction were made by the Engineering Office of the Municipality. The interior was decorated with new frescos in the following years.

The surroundings of the church changed again when the new circular grand boulevard of Buda was created. The level of Szarvas tér was lowered in 1894, and the parish office building with the sacristy was demolished to make way for the new road which was named Attila körút. Although the Council of Budapest planned to build a new parish house, the project never came to fruition. A new sacristy was built on the west side of the church, and the parish office moved to different rented buildings nearby. The parish office was located at no. 6 Hadnagy utca from 1908 until 1938 when this building was also demolished due to urban redevelopment.

The interior of the church was renovated again in the early 1910s. During the First World War the bells of the churches in Budapest were requisitioned by the Austro-Hungarian Army. Four larger bells from the 18th century were removed from the tower and taken away to be melted for military uses in 1916. Only the two small bells were retained.

The parishes of Budapest were reorganized in 1922 to better suit the needs of the population which had been growing rapidly in the previous decades. The ancient Tabán parish was reduced to its core area, and lost a large part lying to the south of Gellért Hill. The districts of Kelenföld and Lágymányos were originally sparsely populated but the urbanization of the area made necessary to establish an independent parish because the majority of the parishioners already lived there. The Tabán parish was compensated with a small area that was detached from the Krisztinaváros parish but overall its population decreased from 27'568 (in 1920) to 6772. The reduced parish covered the Tabán area, the northern slopes of Gellért Hill, the southern part of Naphegy and the hilly neighbourhoods around Sas-hegy. The territory of the Tabán parish was further reduced when the new Farkasréti parish was established in 1950.

Two new bells were installed in the tower on 29 November 1925; the larger one weighing 500 kg was dedicated to Saint Catherine, the smaller to Saint Joseph. The bells were made by László Szlezák, the most important Hungarian bell-founder at the time. They were mostly financed by donations collected by the Tabáni Oltáregyesület, a local charitable organization. The church was renovated by the municipality in 1928.