Memories Carved in the Wall : A 16th-Century Type of Funerary Monuments in Transylvania

Abstract

Graves for the deceased were usually cut into the floor of churches, created in churchyard cemeteries or in the newly established public cemeteries in Transylvania in the sixteenth century. Not all graves were marked with stone funerary monuments. Wooden memorials were presumably widespread, but no contemporary sources inform about these. Grave markers from the cemeteries are simple or coped headstones and coffin-shape stones, preserved for example in Cluj (Kolozsvár) and Târgu Mureş (Marosvásárhely). These gravestones display commemorative inscriptions and simple imagery. A funerary inscription recently discovered in Ocna Mureş (Marosújvár) was carved into an ashlar within the external buttress supporting the choir of the church. This stone bearing an inscription represents a specific type of funerary monument from early modern Transylvania, most examples of which are known from Cluj. The paper presents these stone memorials: who and why chose this form of commemorating the dead.