The Church of Ják [antikvár]

Architectural H !storyTravelling southwards from Szombathely through the wooded, hilly countryside of Vas County in north-western Hungary, our eyes are drawn to a church with twin towers. This is the basilica, built in the Romanesque style, of the former Benedictine Abbey of Ják. Scarcely any other Hungárián church has been more fre-quently described in architectural periodicals, whether at home or abroad, the first article having been published in 1856 in the perio-dical of the Committee for Architectural Monuments in Vienna. Since that time it has never failed tofind a place in every succeeding publication, Hungárián or other, dealing with Romanesque architecture. Such'famé is well-deserved, for the church of Ják is not only an example of a mature architectural form (it is one of the most highly elaborated of clan monasteries), but it alsó has frescoes and a wealth of architectural sculpture. It must indeed be regarded as a most outstanding building of great architectural significance, symbolizing the realization of the Romanesque style in Hungary. It was built by Márton of the Ják clan, known to his contem-poraries as Márton the Great, as research workers have recently learned from the parchments of old deeds; and we can dis-36 cover what he looked like from the fresco on the lowerwall of the south-west tower.The artistic richness of this church, its impressive size, and the masterly manner in which it is situated in the landscape, is in marked contrast to the character of the small village in which it stands, for neither at the time of its construction nor at any time since has Ják been other than a small village. Even today there are scarcely more than 2,500 inhabitants, though there are days when twice that number of tourists are present as visitors. This contradiction indicatestheneedfor a moreprofoundstudyof the social history ofthetimes when the church was constructed if we wantto discover why it was in that very spot that this monumental church was built.Although Ják had never grown into a town, not even a small mar-ket-town, we can see from its géographie situation why it inevitably became a centre for the inhabitants living in the surrounding areas. The village lies in the valley of the Sokoró, within a range of hills bordered by the Rohonc, Perint and Sokoró streams running south-east of Szombathely, and by the Rába, the river to the south, and the rivulet Pinka to the west. The fact that Ják was at one time