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12 September 2015

Mária Prokopp

The Castle Chapel in Esztergom – The Royal Seat of Béla III


The city of Esztergom (known as Strigonium in Latin and as Gran in German), perched on a rocky plateau rising above the Danube in the middle of the Carpathian Basin, directly along the limes of the Roman empire, was the location chosen by the Grand Princes of Hungary to hold their court from the 10th century. It was here that Prince Géza (Gejza, 970–997) received Saint Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, to be baptised by him, and it was from here that he administered his acclaimed European policy. Géza also arranged a marriage there between his son Stephen and Giselle (980–1059), the sister of Henry II of Bavaria, who would later become Holy Roman Emperor (1014–1024). On Christmas Day of 1000, in the presence of Emperor Otto III, the Archbishop of Esztergom inaugurated Stephen as King of Hungary by placing on his head a crown allegedly sent to him as a gift by Pope Sylvester II. Of all the Central European principalities, Hungary thus became the first to advance to the rank of a kingdom, recognised by all major European powers as a result of Géza’s efforts. Thereafter, this established renown and authority was earned and confirmed over and over again by the Hungarian Kingdom, vis-à-vis the Eastern Roman and the Holy Roman emperors among others, through tough battles and wise diplomacy. Attesting to this lofty standing, in 1095 King of Hungary, Saint Ladislaus (László) was elected by European powers as chief commander of the first Crusade at the Synod of Clermont-Ferrand. Although his early death prevented Ladislaus from honouring the appointment, his repute as a valiant knight would continue to be cherished throughout Europe for long after.
 
The daughter of Ladislaus, Piroska became the much-respected wife, bearing the name of Eirene, of John Komnenos II in Constantinople from 1104 to 1133. The splendid mosaic in the Hagia Sophia representing the married couple was presumably made on the occasion of the crowning of John in 1118. Eirene was heldin high regard as a champion of charity by her extended family and the whole Empire. Comparable fame was achieved by Saint Margaret, Queen of Scotland (1045–1093), the granddaughter of King Stephen, who married Malcolm to rule Scotland together with her husband. Over the next decades, the Hungarian dynasty continued to supply Europe with a number of pre-eminent statesmen and saints.(1)
 
After an interval, Ladislaus was followed on the throne by Béla III (1172–1196) who, like him and Saint Stephen, went onto attain great esteem and authority in the eyes of the European powers of the time.(2) The second son of Géza II and Eufrosina, Princess of Kiev, Béla had a number of Russian, Byzantine and Serbian princesses among his relatives in his own House of Árpád as well, and was thus quite favourably disposed to the Orthodox Church. In 1172, upon the death of his elder brother Stephen III, the majority of Hungary’s lords voted for Béla to succeed to the throne. The Byzantine Emperor Manuel, in whose court Béla had been reared, also came down in support of his succession, on condition that he enter into an alliance with Byzantium as a way of preempting any hostile move on his part against the Emperor’s seat. The stipulation of this alliance was a living proof of the power of the Hungarian Kingdom. In 1172, following a tenure in Byzantium that had lasted nine years, Prince Béla rode into Hungary in the company of his wife, Anne de Châtillon, also known as Agnes of Antioch, and a glorious entourage. Béla, however, was only able to occupy the throne ten months later, on 13 January 1173, because Luke (Lukács), Archbishop of Esztergom, adamant about defending Hungary’s two centuries-old allegiance to Western Christianity and its attendant independence from Constantinople, had refused to crown him on account of his Orthodox faith and Byzantine upbringing. Finally, Béla was crowned by Andrew (András), Archbishop of Kalocsa, bearing a special license from Pope Alexander III.
 
Once crowned, Béla III came under pressure to demonstrate his loyalty to Western Christianity, and he passed the test with flying colours. He took the initiative by supporting new French monastic orders, particularly the Cistercians and the Premonstratensians, already settled in Hungary under the reign of his father, in their efforts to gain further ground throughout the country. He provided the freshly recruited intellectuals of his Chancellery with a university education in Paris, and established branching relations with European countries near and far. In his seat of Esztergom, he ordered a full-scale renovation of the existing fortified royal palace in the latest Eastern style of the late Romanesque and early Gothic. On the prominent southern cliff of Castle Hill he built a donjon for quarters, abutting a large palace wing with an L-shaped floor plan on the western front overlooking the Danube. It was the splendid sections of these two buildings that archaeologists excavated in 1934–37, in preparation for the anniversary of Saint Stephen in 1938. The highlight of this project was the restoration of the castle chapel, the structure that had survived relatively unscathed compared to the other parts of the complex. Although the vaults and the apse had caved in during the Ottoman sieges of 1543–95, the restoration – a sophisticated professional effort by any modern standard – managed to preserve and showcase this gem of Béla’s royal compound, which the king used as his own private place of worship.(3) The exquisitely crafted western entrance comes into view from the small first-storey balcony. The gate is flanked on either side by two staggered, geometrically carved stone columns capped with capitals in the Corinthian style, supporting a richly ornamented pediment (tympanum) with an arched tip. Above is the huge radiant rose window whose circular shape symbolises the infinity of God’s power and love. Forming the spokes of a great wheel, the 12 small columns in red marble, with their intricately carved acanthus capitals in white marble, allude to the 12 apostles of Jesus, whose teachings would lead man to the eternal joy of God. Originally the wheel of the cart of the Roman goddess Fortuna, the motif was adopted by Christianity as a symbol of God, author of the ultimate bliss to be experienced by man. The sustaining rays of divine light percolate into the chapel through tainted splinters of glass, suffusing the sacred interior with a rich, kaleidoscopic range of colours.
 
Passing the entrance, one mounts two steps to arrive in the solemn ambience of the chapel’s interior. The gaze alights on the sanctuary, elevated by another two steps in front of us to open up an infinite horizon beyond a majestic, lanceted triumphal arch. The sanctuary itself has a semi-circular apse wall, fronted by three dual columns on either side, again graced by knob-leaf capitals, and arranged in a splendid rhythm of space. The eight partitions of the cross vault overhead rise in a sweeping arch to be clustered by a boss decorated with a relief representing dextera Domini, the right hand of God, as a badge of blessed divine presence in the chapel. Between the twin column pairs, high lancet arches harbour narrow sedilia set in the wall, totalling seven in number, which share the same air space of the sanctuary, although each is separated from the next by a solid wall beyond the column terminations above. The entire chapel exudes a solemn, monumental air despite its modest floor space of only 13 x 6m, owing to the master architect’s success in employing a transparent structural geometry, fine proportions of carefully considered aura sectio, and a purely musical rhythm of forms.
 
The vaults hovering above the nave, again in a cross vault design, rise higher than those of the sanctuary, and are held together by a boss in the shape of a rosette. The profile of the vaults is not the same as that of the sanctuary. While in this and other architectural solutions this section of the chapel is clearly distinct from the sanctuary by design, a number of shared features employed by the distinguished architect positively underline the organic unity of the whole. Indeed, what differences there are cannot be used to justify an assumption of two separate and consecutive period styles. More specifically, the more recent, early Gothic structure and forms of the sanctuary, harking back to the Cistercian monasteries in Hungary, so dear of Béla III as a patron, do not give any indication that the nave was designed by a master other – and later – than the one who built the sanctuary itself. It may have been on the specific order (or design brief, as we would call it today) of Béla, who commissioned the building of the chapel, that the builder imparted a richer, more formal air to the sanctuary as a place of God’s presence and a venue for the priest celebrating the liturgy, as a space in which all mortals can experience the joy of being elevated to God. By contrast, the nave, precisely two steps down from the sanctuary floor, was presumably to serve as the abode of lay believers, even if they happened to belong to the royal family. This idea had actually been embraced in the late Romanesque style of nave design, still highly influential in Hungary at the time. The notion that the chapel was built at one fell swoop, by the same architect, is certainly supported by the consistent artistic concept across the structural solutions of the two sections, and by the equally consistent high standards of execution. As for securely dating the construction from the laying of the first flagstone to completion, this would be a futile enterprise given the vicissitudes surrounding the succession of Béla III. After all, a chapel with a floor space of only 13 x 6m could have been erected in a single year even in those days – quite possibly from 1172, when the royal couple arrived in Esztergom, to the crowning moment in 1173.
 
Concurrently with the construction, sculptors and stonecutters got down to work in the workshops of the royal compound in Esztergom. Undoubtedly a bevy of masters with widely differing schooling and provenance, each of them apparently occupied the pinnacles of their trade, as evinced by the rich and diverse motifs of the knod-leaf capitals and the sheer technical standards of execution. The nave of the chapel features sculpted human images in greater number than the sanctuary. A case in point is the bearded male head that stares down at us sternly under bushy brows from each capital of the columns flanking the twin sedilia. Perhaps not coincidentally, the telling gaze of these two faces has prompted early researchers to conjecture that they were portraits of the supposed building masters of the chapel, one Hungarian, the other French – an unlikely assumption, to be sure, when talking about the private chapel of a European king at the end of the 12th century. On the other hand, knowing the artistic penchant in those days for hiding a wealth of symbolic purport in representations of the human body, it is quite feasible that these two prominently located and markedly distinct portraits carry a reference to Béla’s political ambitions to forge a union between the East and the West.
 
The capitals of the columns flanking the entry to the side chapel illustrate a combat between full-figure, skirted knights with a similar haircut but, this time, each with a clean-shaven face. On the front of the capital facing the chapel, we see a rendition of Samson astride a lion, forcing apart the mighty cat’s jaws. The stunning realism is evident in the lion’s left hind leg, which is raised in pain. The third facet of the capital, the one facing south, depicts a raptor, perhaps an eagle, pierced by a sword thrust backwards by a man while busy fighting knights pitted against him. These representations obviously treat of the subject of Psychomachia, the fight of Good and Evil, which inevitably ends with the triumph of the former, embodied in a victorious Samson.
 
The exquisite decoration of the rosewindow is the tour de force of the same superb stone-carving shop that wrought the details of the entire structure. The master artisans working here were also responsible for the red marble flagstones, which contribute a purple glow enhancing the magic exuded by the exceptional architectural concept and embellishments of the chapel. The red marble of Esztergom from a nearby quarry was prized throughout Central Europe in the Middle Ages.
 
Knowing the relics and monuments surviving from the late Romanesque and early Gothic periods, it seems safe to say that the architectural solutions employed in the castle chapel in Esztergom cannot be deduced from either of these two mainstream styles. The sedilia of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris (1163), the Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay, the Notre-Dame in Noyon, and other examples frequently cited as influences by researchers, are fundamentally different in terms of proportion, rhythm and placement from those of the Esztergom chapel, which stands on its own by virtue of its design and execution as a prominent, incomparable work of European architecture around 1170.(4) It is one of the few monuments of early medieval Hungary which occasioned the assignment of the master architect Villard de Honnecourt to the Hungarian Kingdom from the workshop in Reims, from where the crowning cathedrals of the rulers of France had emerged!(5)
 
In addition to sculpture, painting made an equally important contribution to the decoration of the chapel, bringing all wall surfaces and reliefs to life. The sophisticated restoration research project, begun in 2000 and still in progress under the supervision of Zsuzsanna Wierdl, state-decorated restoration specialist and president of ICOMOS Mural Painting International Scientific Committee, has determined that the chapel’s interior was first painted, directly upon the completion of the building, in plain red and white, without any figurative representation. The walls were then hung with ornate silk brocade tapestries, as was the custom in both Constantinople and Western Europe at the time.
 
Agnes of Antioch, Queen Anne of Hungary, bore seven children to Béla III. Emeric (Imre), the heir, was born in 1174, and was later to marry Constance, Princess of Aragonia. Margaret, renamed Maria in Constantinople, was born in 1175, and was given in marriage to the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos. The following year, 1176, saw the birth of Andrew (András), whose wife by royal arrangement became Gertrud of Andechs-Merania. Following the death in infancy of two further sons, Constancia was born in 1181, and later married to King Ottokar I of Bohemia. Emperor Manuel’s death in 1180 waived Béla from the obligation under the alliance he had made with him. As early as in 1181, the King proceeded to recoup Syrmia and Dalmatia from Constantinople, formerly devolved to the Emperor as part of Béla’s own inheritance. The passing of Manuel weakened the Eastern Empire; the heir and his mother were both assassinated. Béla entered into an alliance with the new Emperor, Isaac II Angelos, directly following his ascension, and cemented the pact in 1185 by giving him his daughter Margaret in marriage. By nurturing this coalition, Béla not only sought to guarantee a period of peace for his country, but also to pave his own way toward the throne of Constantinople, an ambition he never relinquished.(6) When Queen Anne died in 1184, she was buried with great pomp in the royal cathedral of Székesfehérvár, next to the widely revered tombs of St Stephen and St Emeric.
 
In full awareness of his leverage in the European scheme of power, Béla soon began to look around for a second wife. He quickly set his eyes on the ruling French dynasty, and proposed to Margaret Capet of France, the sister of Philip Augustus. The French king knew full well that his own father, Louis VII, had been an ally of Géza II, Béla’s father, who in 1147 had received him in Esztergom with great honours on the occasion of the Second Crusade, and chosen him as the godfather of his firstborn son who had just seen the light of day. It was also a widely recognised fact throughout Europe that Géza II had nourished intimate ties with the French intellectual life burgeoning at the University of Paris, via the monasteries of the Cistercian and Premonstratensian orders. These credentials notwithstanding, Philip requested Béla to furnish a precisely itemised list of his royal revenues. This ledger – kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris – is a convincing document of the wealth of Hungary under Béla III,(7) with royal revenues on a par with those collected by the rulers of England and France at the time. The census, which clearly shows that contributions in kind were all but equalled by pecuniary income, paid in unminted silver, lists the provinces of the empire as Hungary proper, Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and Bosnia.
 
Margaret Capet (1158–1197) was the first-born daughter of Louis VII and Constance of Castile. She was only two years old when betrothed to Prince Henry, of the same age, the eldest son of Henry II of England. The wedding, held in 1172 at Winchester Cathedral, was combined with a ceremony of crowning Margaret as infant Queen of England. When her husband died in 1183, the childless widow, only 25 years old at the time, had to leave the royal court of England, so she returned home to the court of his brother Philip (1179–1223). Here she received a visit in 1185 by Archbishop Jobe (Jób) of Esztergom, Prince Primate of Hungary, as a special envoy proposing on behalf of Béla. Jobe, a man at the right place and the right time to clinch the archbishopric seat, had served as Bishop of Vác and then as governor for the archdiocese in Esztergom, fulfilling vital missions on behalf of Béla in Constantinople and Western Europe. A learned man of the Church, he had studied at Sainte-Geneviève in Paris from 1177 to 1181, and was a staunch supporter of Béla in all his ambitions. The resplendent wedding was held in 1186 in Paris, and then repeated in Esztergom, where Queen Margaret arrived on 25 August with a massive entourage. It was probably for this glorious occasion that Béla ordered the revamping of the palace and the chapel, built 14 years previously. One notable outcome of this face-lift was the first figural and ornamental painting of the chapel’s interior. At around the same time, the silk tapestries in the Parisian palace of Philip were replaced by murals – a durable alternative decoration more immune to the light and heat of candles and torches.
 
The exposition in 1934–35 uncovered the aforementioned lion’s image – a mural that has not ceased to occupy researchers ever since and has been typically linked to the reign of Béla. Employing the latest techniques, the expert cleaning of the mural between 2000 and 2006 stripped the image of various superimposed layers and interventions, exposing a wall painting of exceptional consummate mastery.(8)
 
The image of the lion, the allegory of sovereign power, depicted against the Tree of Life in the background in a circular frame evoking infinity, was a pet motif of Byzantine and Romanesque art. In its standards of execution, the example in Esztergom clearly surpasses contemporaneous representations, including the closely related mural in the crypt of the Chartres Cathedral.(9)
 
The majestic lions in red marble flanking the western Porta Speciosa of the Esztergom Cathedral are comparable to the contemporaneous lion mural, both in terms of general representation and of artistic merit.
 
As another feat of recent research into mural history, newly exposed fragments suggest that the encircled lion motif also ran in two rows along the sanctuary apse wall, and in general claimed a ubiquitous structural and decorative role throughout the whole chapel and the palace.
 
The majority of the ornamental motifs recently exposed are predominantly geometrical in nature, particularly in the sanctuary, with some floral-tendril patterns also in evidence in the nave.
 
The columns of the chapel were painted in imitation red-white and black-green marble veining starting from the 1180s, as were the façades and walls of the sedilia and the internal tympanum of the western entrance. The vaulted ceiling of the nave – and, by all probability, of the sanctuary – was painted a midnight blue with golden stars. The paint employed was sourced from azurite (Chessylite), a deep blue copper mineral worth its weight in gold in those days.
 
Summing up the achievements of the recent restoration project, the interior painting of the chapel dating from 1185–1186 must have relied on a combination of purple (lower side walls), various hues of yellow with black, light blue (sedilia fronts), and glossy azurite (between the vaults). The focal site of the sanctuary, directly over the sedilium, must have been adorned by a painted image of Majestas Domini, while the nave was reserved for figural representations including brightly ornamented Biblical scenes. The rich colour scheme of the chapel was enlivened by black and white contour lines, rendered even more vivid by the rays of the sun pouring in through the rose window to the west and the windows of the sanctuary to the east. The overall effect was amplified by reflections from the red marble floor tiling.
 
It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the interior painted in 1185 as exposed by Zsuzsanna Wierdl. In medieval Western Europe, where churches were in daily use, the interior would inevitably have to be repainted from time to time. Sometimes this would involve painting over figural representations to match the prevailing taste of the age. Most notably, the neo-Gothic and Romanticism put the house of decorations and ornaments “in order”, bringing a certain uniformity to church interiors. Happily, the murals of Esztergom eschewed this eager intervention, and remain for us to enjoy in their original medieval splendour.
 
As for the liturgical paraphernalia under the reign of Béla, we can draw certain inferences from relics bestowed on us by contemporaneous silver- and goldsmiths and bookbinders in Hungary, exemplified by the gilded bronze corpus over the altar in the chapel, and by the Expositiones in Cantica Canticorum, a magnificent volume of glossa attached to a copy of the Song of Songs by Bernard of Perugia, the tutor of Prince Emeric, later Archbishop of Spalato, which had been acquired by the library of the cathedral in Hungary. Strong evidence suggests that the book had been made in the illumination shop maintained by Béla III. Another important extant specimen is the Great Bible, in two volumes, a masterpiece of 12th-century bookbinder’s art (Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), held at the Benedictine Monastery of Csatár, Hungary, between 1138 and 1263. Pawned in 1263 to the Benedictine Abbey of Admont, these invaluable volumes containing the Old and New Testaments along with apocryphal texts were probably penned and illuminated in Esztergom as well.
 
***
 
According to the chief restorer, the chapel’s interior in its original condition as painted in 1185–86 survived intact until the 14th century. Meanwhile, in 1256, the King moved court from Esztergom, entrusting the fortified chapel to the Archbishop, in effect making the prevailing Prince Primate of Hungary the sole owner and custodian of the entire Castle Hill of Esztergom. Around 1340, Archbishop Csanád Telegdi (1330–49), Chancellor to King Charles I of Hungary from the House of Anjou, renovated the fortifications, the cathedral, the palace and the chapel. This was when the chapel received its ornamental Trecento painting that is most visible today.(10)
 
A learned man of the clergy, Csanád had made repeated trips to Italy and studied in Padua. His moment came in 1333, when he accompanied the son of Charles, the young Prince Andrew and heir to the throne of Naples, on a trip to the South Italian kingdom. Travelling the length of Italy from the North to Naples, Csanád had the opportunity to wise up on the latest achievements of the Trecento, a style born from the forking connections between Antiquity and the Gothic, and became an ardent fan. The new trend permeated by serene Franciscan spirituality focused on the joy over divine creation. This radiant Weltanschauung, rendered in the Trecento by vibrant colours and a poignant depiction of deeply human sentiments, quickly took roots across the Hungarian Kingdom, from the courts in Temesvár (today Timişoara in Romanian Transylvania), Visegrád, then Buda, conquering the loftiest circles, lay and ecclesiastical. Naturally, the Franciscan order, by then a welcome presence in Hungary for a century, played a major role in its propagation. It is for a reason that the new artistic style, reflecting a fresh approach to religion, had found its first major expression in the order’s monastic centre in Assisi, around 1300. This means that Csanád, the dignitary second only to the King in Hungary in rank, as he embarked on his major renovation of Esztergom, had a tradition of Trecento to rely on that had been naturalised in Hungary for a generation. Although we do not know the identity of the master painter (relevant documents perished in the Ottoman wars of the 16th and 17th centuries), it is without a doubt that the Archbishop set about the project with the Trecento as his artistic reference. This is evident in the rendition of eight apostles, the scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary in the nave,(11) including the Assumption, the capture of Jesus with the kiss of betrayal by Judas, or the image of Peter slicing off the ear of Malchus in testimony of his allegiance to Jesus.
 
As a triumph of the restoration project of 2015, headed by Zsuzsanna Wierdl, the mural-adorned bozzi, unearthed from the ruins in 1934–37, were finally placed where they belong, in the chapel walls, with their precise location determined in collaboration between Mária Prokopp, Konstantin Vukov and Zsuzsanna Wierdl herself.
 
The fabulous Trecento wall paint of the chapel only survives in fragments today. The siege of the fortification in 1594 demolished the vaults and the sanctuary, and cannons were mounted on the ruins to aid the fight against the Ottoman invasion, which continued for another century. The chapel remained buried for 340 years, until the excavation project undertaken in 1934–35. The extant fragments of Trecento paint suggest that in the second quarter of the 14th century, the commission was given to an exceptionally gifted master with qualifications matching those of his 12th-century predecessor.
 
The restoration project steered by Zsuzsanna Wierdl proceeds as we speak by removing recent cement grouts, grits of earth deposited over the centuries, as well as the plastic coat and drawing completions perpetrated in the 1960s.(12) As a result, the 14th-century murals are now on full display in a shape faithful to the artists’ original intent, if a little worn for time, attesting to a direct link to Italian Trecento and, specifically, the school of Siena. Of particular note is the kinship these pinnacles of 14th-century European art display with the generation following Duccio, specifically Ambrogio Lorenzetti, without being subservient to any single Italian painter. This alone suggests that the Trecento murals at Esztergom should not necessarily be attributed to Italian masters alone, who most likely had been working in tandem with Hungarian painters for some time.
 
Translation by Péter Balikó Lengyel



1 PUSKELY, Mária: “Virágoskert vala híres Pannonia...” [Once a flowergarden, famous Pannonia…], Példaképek a magyar múltból, X–XVII. század [Paragons from Hungary’s past, 10–17 centuries], Budapest, 1994.
 
2 KRISTÓ, Gyula – MAKK, Ferenc: III. Béla emlékezete [Remembrance of Béla III]. Budapest, 1981.
 
3 GEREVICH, Tibor: Magyarország románkori emlékei [Hungary’s relics from the Romanesque age], Budapest, 1938, 75–98.; VUKOV, Konstantin: A középkori esztergomi palota épületei [Edifices of the medieval royal palace of Esztergom], Budapest, 2004.; PROKOPP – VUKOV – WIERDL: A feltárástól az újjászületésig, Az esztergomi Királyi Várkápolna története [From uncovering to rebirth. The history of the chapel of the royal castle of Esztergom], Esztergom, 2014.
 
4 Referring to a charter published in 1198 by the son and successor of King Béla III (Knauz Ferdinandus (ed.): Monumenta ecclesiae Strigoniensis I. Strigonii, 1874, 156) which describes the royal castle of Esztergom as “unfinished”, several scholars date the construction of the chapel to the years around 1200. However, the text of the charter of 1198 refers not to the castle of Béla III, but to the transformations decided by his successor Imre, whose nuptials with the princess of Aragonia Constance were celebrated in Esztergom the previous year.
 
5 BARNES, Carl F. Jr: The Portfolio of Villard de Honnecourt (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS Fr 19093). A New Critical Edition and Colour Facsimile. Farnham – Burlington; ROSTÁS, TIBOR: Magyarország földjére küldtek [I was sent to the land of Hungary], Budapest, 2014.
 
6 MORAVCSIK, Gyula: III. Béla és a Bizánci Birodalom Mánuel halála után [Béla III and the Byzantine Empire after the death of Manuel], Századok 67 (1933), 518–528.
 
7 HÓMAN, Bálint – SZEKFŰ, Gyula: Magyar történet I [Hungarian history I], Budapest, 1935. 403–404.; BARTA, János Jr – BARTA, Gábor: “III. Béla király jövedelmei” [The revenues of King Béla III]. (Megjegyzések középkori uralkodóink bevételeiről [Notes on the incomes of the medieval kings of Hungary]), Századok 127 (1993), 413–449.
 
8 WIERDL, Zsuzsanna: “III. Béla király esztergomi kápolnájának restaurálása” [The restoration of the chapel of King Béla III in Esztergom]. In: PROKOPP – VUKOV – WIERDL: op. cit., 2014, 65–128.
 
9 ENTZ, Géza: “Az esztergomi királyi kápolna oroszlános festménye” [The lion mural of the royal chapel of Esztergom]. In: Esztergom Évlapjai, Az Esztergomi Múzeumok Évkönyve I [Yearbook of the Museums of Esztergom], 1960, 5–9.
 
10 PROKOPP, Mária: “Az esztergomi várkápolna 14. század falképeinek stílusvizsgálata” [A study on the style of the 14th century murals of the royal chapel of Esztergom ], Művészettörténeti Értesítő [Bulletin of Art History].

11 PROKOPP, Mária: “Az esztergomi várkápolna ikonográfiai vizsgálata” [An iconographical study of the royal chapel of Esztergom], Művészettörténeti Értesítő [Bulletin of Art History].
 
12 PROKOPP – VUKOV – WIERDL: A feltárástól az újjászületésig. Az esztergomi királyi Várkápolna története [From uncovering to rebirth. The history of the chapel of the royal castle of Esztergom], Esztergom, 2014. 136 p., 111 illustrations.


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