THE HISTORY OF THE MEDIEVAL ST. DOMINIC’S ORDER MONASTERY IN THE BEREHOVO: CURRENT ISSUES AND PROSPECTS FOR RESEARCH

Abstract

The medieval history of Transcarpathia is one of the most interesting but still least studied pages of national history. The little-studied aspects include church history. There are only brief mentions of catholic churches and monasteries. One of the monks’ tabernacles was the monastery of St. Dominic's beggar order in Berehovo. The purpose of this research is to highlight the key stages of the Dominican monastery history in Beregszasz (Berehovo) based on the analysis of available written sources and archeological findings, as well as to attempt to identify the tabernacle location. Currently, the history of the medieval Dominican monastery in Berehovo and the issues of the monastery location have not been investigated. The authors note that the monasteries of St. Dominic's Order in the territory of North-Eastern Hungary of the Middle Ages (including the territory of modern Transcarpathia) appear on the days of Anjou kings’ reign. The Dominicans had their monastery in Berehovo, in the territory of the Berezkiy Comitat. The exact date and circumstances of the monastery foundation are unknown. The historical tradition of founding the Dominican monastery associates it with Queen Elizabeth of Poland. It is known reliably that in 1366, the monks were already in town. The monastery’s possessions have been expanding, and the monks have conducted their economy successfully until the late 1550s, when they were persecuted by Protestants. At that time, the last reconstruction of the still functioning monastery was performed. The final blow to the Dominican monastery in Beregszasz was the mayhem by Tatar hordes in 1566. To establish the location of the Dominican monastery in the city, the authors refer to individual monographs by T. Lehotskyi, M. Feher, Y. Rupp and state that there is not much controversy in the versions of Berehovo’s Dominican monastery location; the monastery must have been located around or near the Roman Catholic parochial church. A thorough archaeological research would have helped to specify the monastery location. So far, no such work has been done. The findings of sporadic excavations do not provide enough material to draw convincing conclusions.