St. Demetrius Serbian Orthodox Cathedral (Budapest)

About

The Church of Saint Demetrius or the Church of the Holy Trinity (Hungarian: Szent Demeter-templom, Szentháromság-templom, Serbian: Crkva Svetog Dimitrija, Crkva Svete Trojice) was a Serbian Orthodox church in Budapest, Hungary, located in the Tabán quarter. It was built between 1742 and 1751 in Central European Baroque style by the Serbian community of Buda, and served as the co-cathedral of the Eparchy of Buda. The church was seriously damaged during the siege of Budapest in 1945, and was demolished in 1949.

The first group of Serbian refugees from the Balkans arrived in Buda in early November 1690. They belonged to the Great Migration of the Serbs from the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Empire led by Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević, the Archbishop of Peć. The Cameral Administration of Buda resettled almost 600 families between Castle Hill and Gellért Hill in the Lower Town which had been destroyed during the siege of Buda in 1686. The new neighbourhood was called Tabán, also known as Raitzenstadt, meaning "the town of the Serbs". The first census in 1696 recorded more than 1,000 Serbian families there (about 5,000 people). The majority of the new settlers followed the Eastern Orthodox faith. In 1702, 461 taxpaying heads of households belonged to the Serbian Orthodox Church, while 250 belonged to the Catholic Church.

Since the former Ottoman mosque of Sokollu Mustafa Pasha was converted into a Catholic church, the Serbs built their own temporary chapel nearby. Construction of a permanent church dedicated to Saint Demetrius began shortly after the Cameral Administration issued a permit on 23 September 1697. It was consecrated in 1698 by Arsenije III Crnojević, and a tower was added in 1716. The Tabán parish had stavropegial status, meaning that it was directly under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch. During the 18th century the Serbian community increased in number and wealth, and established its own institutions.

Due to the frequent flooding of the Danube, the church was repeatedly damaged, and in 1738 the townspeople, in consultation with the Bishop of Buda, Vasilije Dimitrijević, decided to replace it with a more durable and monumental structure. The design of the new church was entrusted to Adam Mayerhoffer whose contract was signed on 29 March 1741. The parish applied for a building permit on 12 August 1741. The Serbs argued that the project was a reconstruction, as the roof of the existing building was leaking and the surrounding wooden houses posed a fire hazard. They emphasized that both the foundation and the walls of the new church would be made of stone for greater safety. The city council denied the request because the construction of new Eastern Orthodox churches was not permitted. After an appeal by the Serbs, the Lieutenancy Council authorized the project, accepting that it was a necessary reconstruction. The building permit was finally issued on 28 April 1742.

Construction work began on 1 May 1742, and the vault and the roof of the nave was already complete on 26 November. The plans were slightly modified in the final build. Due to a shortage of funds, the new church was equipped between 1745 and 1747 with icons salvaged from the previous building. In 1751 Bishop Dionisije Novaković consecrated the church to the Holy Trinity, while a chapel in the loft was established in honor of Saint Demetrius to carry on the tradition. This was the largest church building in the whole Metropolitanate of Karlovci and the only one with two rows of windows.

At first, the tower had a simple pyramidal roof clad with shingles, but in 1775 a richly decorated copper spire was added. Designed by Mihajlo Sokolović, it was considered one of the finest Rococo church spires in Central Europe. A painted and gilt wood model was made by Joseph Leonard Weber in 1774 which still exists.

The surroundings of the church were narrow and cramped, and the houses were mainly built of wood or mud bricks. In 1766, the Serbian community sought to enlarge the churchyard because the church was surrounded by "small hovels" and they could not even hold a procession. They requested a property-tax exemption for the entire plot that was granted the following year. In 1769, the site included a house for the magistrate’s office and the school, and another for the schoolmaster and the sexton.

Petar Vitković (Péter Vitkovics) served as the church’s priest from 1803 until his death in 1808. An erudite and jovial polyglot who spoke Serbian, Hungarian, German, Latin and Greek, he wrote several treatises and orations, and had a large personal library. His younger son, Jovan Vitković (1785–1849) succeeded him and formed close friendships with Benedek Virág, a Hungarian poet and historian living in Tabán, and Matija Petar Katančić, a Franciscan friar, pioneering archaeologist, and Croatian writer.

The church was burned out in the Great Tabán Fire of 1810, which destroyed the whole district; as a contemporary report recorded, "only its copper spire survived." The reconstruction was a lengthy process that continued into the early 1820s.

At the end of October 1814, the three rulers of the Holy Alliance, King Francis I, King Frederick William III of Prussia and Emperor Alexander I of Russia visited Buda during the Congress of Vienna. Archduke Joseph, the Palatine of Hungary, accompanied them to the Serbian Orthodox church, where the young priest Jovan Vitković, who was the archduke’s protégé, received them. At 10.30 a.m., the church was full of people when the three rulers arrived. On this occasion, Vitković delivered three orations: he greeted King Francis in Latin, the Emperor of Russia in Slavic, and the King of Prussia in German.

The church was damaged again by the Great Danube Flood of 1838, when the water reached a depth of 110 cm inside the building. The surroundings of the cathedral have changed with the renewal of the area after the disasters, when a new square was created along the southern and eastern sides of the church. It was called Kirchenplatz (Egyház tér) and served as the main square of the district. In this new setting, the church had a narrow churchyard to the south and east, and was surrounded on the northern and western sides by an enclosed courtyard and smaller buildings owned by the Serbian parish.

The housing conditions of Tabán improved gradually in the 19th century, especially after the unification of Budapest in 1873, when the city grew into a booming modern capital during the age of the Dual Monarchy. In the late 1890s, the Serbian Orthodox parish built a large new tenement house on a nearby lot, which also served as the headquarters of the deanery. At the same time, the church was restored in Neo-Baroque style. Its urban context changed fundamentally between 1898 and 1903, when the central part of Tabán was rebuilt, creating new roads and squares, demolishing the poorest quarters, and constructing a new bridge across the Danube.

In the second half of the century, Jeremija Mađarević (Jeremiás Magyarevics) served as the parish priest from 1864 until 1896. He was loyal to the Hungarian state and a long-standing member of the Budapest Legislative Committee.

In 1907, the church was fitted with a new bell, which was consecrated by Bishop Lukijan Bogdanović and first tolled on 8 June, the service marking the 40th anniversary of Franz Joseph 's coronation. In the spring of 1916, the bells were requisitioned by the government and melted down for war purposes. In 1933–1934, much of Tabán was demolished by the municipality of Budapest, but the church, which was still in use by the Eparchy of Buda, was preserved. The 1934 urban plan envisaged the creation of a sunken courtyard around the church and a row of arches along a planned new thoroughfare. However, in the following years a new park was laid out on the site of the demolished district, and the excavated Tabán ruins were incorporated into the design of the green area. The last buildings around the church, including the large tenement house owned by the Serbian parish and the old parish house, were demolished in 1938. In the last ten years of its existence, the church stood isolated in the middle of a park, as almost all traces of the former Rácváros had disappeared due to large-scale demolitions. The Serbian Orthodox population in the area was also greatly reduced as a result of these changes.

The building was seriously damaged in the siege of Budapest in 1944–45. The Rococo spire and the roof were destroyed, and parts of the vault collapsed, but the interior and the iconostasis remained intact. The liturgical objects and the paintings were saved by the parish priest, Dusán Vujicsics (Dušan Vujičić). Although the church was no longer fit for use, the priest strongly opposed its demolition. In early 1946, György Zubkovics (Georgije Zubković), the Bishop of Buda, appealed to the government for assistance, but the municipality and the Council of Public Works opposed the restoration of the church. Contemporary urban planners regarded the cathedral as obsolete and a hindrance to the planned restructuring of the bridgehead area.

The ruined church was finally demolished in 1949. The cast-iron railings of the churchyard were re-erected in the garden of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Budakalász, while a few pieces of furniture were transferred by Dusán Vujicsics to the Serbian Orthodox Church in Pest. The area was landscaped, but just over a decade later it was fundamentally redeveloped during the construction of the new Elisabeth Bridge. In 1962, new roads and a traffic interchange were built over the site where the cathedral had once stood. In 2014, a memorial bell was erected nearby, designed by Kristóf Petrika and László Rétháti. The bell bears the coat of arms of the Eparchy of Buda and a Serbian inscription commemorating the foundation and later destruction of the former Serbian Orthodox cathedral.

The first group of Serbian refugees from the Balkans arrived in Buda in early November 1690. They belonged to the Great Migration of the Serbs from the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Empire led by Patriarch Arsenije III Crnojević, the Archbishop of Peć. The Cameral Administration of Buda resettled almost 600 families between Castle Hill and Gellért Hill in the Lower Town which had been destroyed during the siege of Buda in 1686. The new neighbourhood was called Tabán, also known as Raitzenstadt, meaning "the town of the Serbs". The first census in 1696 recorded more than 1,000 Serbian families there (about 5,000 people). The majority of the new settlers followed the Eastern Orthodox faith. In 1702, 461 taxpaying heads of households belonged to the Serbian Orthodox Church, while 250 belonged to the Catholic Church.

Since the former Ottoman mosque of Sokollu Mustafa Pasha was converted into a Catholic church, the Serbs built their own temporary chapel nearby. Construction of a permanent church dedicated to Saint Demetrius began shortly after the Cameral Administration issued a permit on 23 September 1697. It was consecrated in 1698 by Arsenije III Crnojević, and a tower was added in 1716. The Tabán parish had stavropegial status, meaning that it was directly under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch. During the 18th century the Serbian community increased in number and wealth, and established its own institutions.

Due to the frequent flooding of the Danube, the church was repeatedly damaged, and in 1738 the townspeople, in consultation with the Bishop of Buda, Vasilije Dimitrijević, decided to replace it with a more durable and monumental structure. The design of the new church was entrusted to Adam Mayerhoffer whose contract was signed on 29 March 1741. The parish applied for a building permit on 12 August 1741. The Serbs argued that the project was a reconstruction, as the roof of the existing building was leaking and the surrounding wooden houses posed a fire hazard. They emphasized that both the foundation and the walls of the new church would be made of stone for greater safety. The city council denied the request because the construction of new Eastern Orthodox churches was not permitted. After an appeal by the Serbs, the Lieutenancy Council authorized the project, accepting that it was a necessary reconstruction. The building permit was finally issued on 28 April 1742.

Construction work began on 1 May 1742, and the vault and the roof of the nave was already complete on 26 November. The plans were slightly modified in the final build. Due to a shortage of funds, the new church was equipped between 1745 and 1747 with icons salvaged from the previous building. In 1751 Bishop Dionisije Novaković consecrated the church to the Holy Trinity, while a chapel in the loft was established in honor of Saint Demetrius to carry on the tradition. This was the largest church building in the whole Metropolitanate of Karlovci and the only one with two rows of windows.