Szucs Tamas

Hungary - 05-Jun-24 -

Bač - to my surprise - is next year's candidate for the World Heritage List for Serbia. It was to be expected, as they already tried in 2023, but the very fact that this sleepy little town has been targeted for Serbian heritage protection agency is thought-provoking. There are many truly outstanding sites in the country, from Lepenski Vir to the synagogue in Subotica, that are not even on the tentative list. Bac is neither a tourist site nor a historically significant one. There are quite a few castles like Bač on the territory of historic Hungary, and the only one that has made the World Heritage List is the castle of Spis. However, the fact itself that the Serbian heritage authority has placed Bač on the tentative list suggests that there is a twist in the story that is missing from the general descriptions of the castle. There must be "outstanding universal value" somewhere. Well, actually there can be - but I"m far from sure that it will be enough to convince the ICOMOS. If yes, that will mostly be due to the fact that Serbia is very much behind in World Heritage terms.

Today, Bač is an insignificant little town in Vojvodina with a population of just over 5,000, close to the Croatian border, with only 15,000 inhabitants, including the small villages that belong to it, and the number is falling dramatically year on year. On a sunny but cold winter's day, there were barely anybody on the streets, and there was not even a decent cevap place in the centre. That there was once a bigger bang for the buck here is indicated by the fact that most of the road from Pest is in the territorial unit that still bears the name of the town (Bács-Kiskun County). According to the Hungarians the name is of Hungarian origin, according to the Slavs it's Slavonic  But the place was inhabited long before the arrival of the Hungarians and Slavs, although only a few stones in the cloister of the Franciscan monastery tell us about the Roman period. According to local tradition, in 441AD, when Sirmium fell - it was ravished by the Huns - the bishop's seat was moved to Bács. Bács could relate to Sirmium like Ravenna to Rome - instead of the prestigious imperial capital, a place protected by wild swampland was a worthwhile refuge in turbulent times. And Bács, where the Danube and the Mostonga then flowed together to form many small islands, would have seemed an ideal place.

In 530, the bishopric was confirmed, and in 535, Iustinian I recognised the diocese, in which Latin was still the common language of the rite. In 870, Pope Adrian II appointed Methodius as bishop of St Andronicus - and (at least according to the local Croatian interpretation) this means the bishopric of Sirmium (which had fled to Bács) (Slovaks suspect otherwise.) It was at this time that the Greek liturgy under Roman jurisdiction was introduced in the region, and the Glagolitic script used here until the 12th century - in the monasteries in the area until the 14th century. This very impressive history of the Migration Period - which is written in correct Hungarian on the local tourist brochure - is quite hypothetical. When the Huns sacked Sirmium (today's Sremska Mitrovica), there was little left to rescue. Those who were not killed were taken as slaves. Bács, on the other hand, also fell in the way of the Huns, it is hard to believe that it could have been evaded or resisted. According to the sources, the late Roman provinces slowly recovered after the collapse of the Hun Empire (death of Atilla in 453), the former urban centres shrunk and were marginalised, but did not disappear completely, and Christian communities survived. After a few decades of Ostrogothic interlude, a strengthening Byzantium restructured the region, both administratively and ecclesiastically, and at the Synods of Salona in 530 and 532 the four bishops present determined, among other things, the boundaries of the province, where the bishopric of the province of Savia was designated as the northernmost area. One solution to this somewhat vague formulation could be Bács, while the other, more likely candidate for the bishopric of Sava, is Siscia (Sisak), where archaeological evidence of a continental population, an urban way of life and the use of the name as evidence of continuity has also been preserved. So, without denying the Roman foundation of Bács and the existence of an early Christian community, the evidence of a bishopric seat in the Migration Period remains to be proven.

By the 10th century, this area was also occupied by Árpád's Hungarians. Early Árpád Greek sources describe it as a major trading town and ecclesiastical centre. In the early 12th century, the archbishopric of Kalocsa was joined to the archbishopric of Kalocsa in the 11th century by the centre of Bácsot (around 1090), and from the 12th century the archbishops practically lived in Bácsot. (I will not go into the debates surrounding the foundation and status of the archbishopric of Kalocsa, for those interested in more details, read the works of László Koszta.) The conquests of King László in the south - in Croatia - not only led to the supervision of the diocese, which was growing in area, but also to the missionary activity in the Balkans, which moved the archdiocese's headquarters further south. Kalocsa, on the other hand, was located at the northernmost tip of the entire archbishopric, but also the closest to Esztergom and the later royal court.

Within the archdiocese - and the country - the importance of Bács grew. The town prospered, as is shown by the fact that in 1188 the Knights Hospitallers founded a hospital here, which was approved by Pope Gregory IX in 1234. At that time Archbishop Fabian had the church built which is the foundation of the present Franciscan church. Today it is the oldest standing building in Vojvodina - the only one dating from before the Turkish era - and it also has the oldest wall paintings in the region. Don't expect some kind of Sistine Chapel, it's barely two palms across, but it's interesting.

The first castle was probably built at this time - at that time it was mainly to protect the settlement against the Byzantine armies - and in 1158 Géza II spent the Easter holidays here. The Mongols - and before them the retreating Kumans - destroyed everything in this area too. After the Mongol invasion, the church was rebuilt by the Templars, but a few decades later it was already in the hands of the Franciscans. By the middle of the 15th century, the monastery had joined the more austere, observant branch of the Franciscans, becoming one of the largest centres of the Franciscan order in Bosnia, very active in missionary work and in the fight against heretics (Bogomils, Muslims).

It was under Charles I that the construction of the castle, still imposing in its ruins, began, in accordance with the requirements of the time - with a central tower, a polygonal floor plan and corner towers.

In keeping with the castles of the lowlands, it was built of brick, stone was used only at statically important points, and for decoration, for the Gothic window profiles. The raw stone blocks were floated down the Danube from Pécs and the necessary elements were carved out locally.

The castle enjoyed its heyday at the end of the 15th century. The most significant rebuilding was carried out by Peter Váradi, a distinguished,  educated archbishop. He was for a long time a confidant of King Matthias. However, for reasons that remain unclear to this day, king Matthias imprisoned his high priest. Váradi was released only after Matthias' death and devoted much of the last decade of his life to reorganising his diocese. He reclaimed the properties alienated during his captivity, including a long trial to recover the Cistercian abbey of St Petersburg from Pope Alexander VI, the infamous Rodrigo Borgia. Faced with the threat of Ottoman expansion, he spent much of his income on fortifying his castles on the Danube, in St Petersburg and Bača. The island character of the Bács castle was enhanced by the fact that the waters of the Mosztonga were discharged into the moat system surrounding the castle. The late Gothic and Renaissance carvings found during the first excavations at the end of the 19th century are in the National Museum (the material for the current exhibition comes from later excavations).) In 1494, King Ulászló II stayed in Bács for several weeks, when he organised a successful campaign against Prince Lőrinc of Újlak, who called the king an ox with a noble simplicity. The last Archbishop of Kalocsa before Mohács, Pál Tomori, also paid great attention to Bács and Petrovarad. It was not their fault that the Ottoman Empire could not be stopped.

The four-storey residential tower still stands in the centre of the castle. It was the only part of the castle to be restored during the renovation that began in 2006. Today there is a small exhibition on two floors showing the remains excavated in the castle's surroundings.

Originally, the castle was surrounded by more ramparts and tributaries of the Mosztonga, so it was practically an island. Today, nothing remains of this - after the canalisation of the 19th century, the tributaries dried up. The castle was taken by the Turks - by trickery - in 1529 and held until 1686. The garrison steadily dwindled, and at the end of the conquest there were only a few Serbian mercenaries left, who abandoned the fortress at the news of the approaching Christian army. It was finally blown up in 1705, during the Rákóczi War of Independence, like so many castles in Hungary.

The city was rebuilt after the Ottomans, but it was nowhere near as important as it once was. The monastery building was built next to the Franciscan church.
And the church was restored by Viennese and Italian craftsmen. Because of its location, the Viennese court preferred to develop the fortress of St Petersburg. Bács, drowned in swamps, mosquitoes and infectious miasma, became uninteresting. (In the mid-18th century, a team of Italians was sent from Vienna to drain the swamps. In the Franciscan church is an 18th-century copy of an 11th-century image of the Madonna of Turin, brought by the Italians to protect them from the plague.)
But the changes were also marked by the construction of a major Serbian monastery near the town, in the 18th century. This is the oldest Serbian Orthodox monastery in the region, founded in 1478 after, according to legend, a Dalmatian merchant passing by was cured by the waters of the Danube.  There's something very odd about the monastery - the church in the middle of it is in the Byzantine tradition, but the monastery building itself is typically Central European. Some pretty public buildings were still being built in the 19th century. And then - and in the early 20th century - the small farmhouses of the castle valley were built, which now make the walk from the castle to the city centre - just a few minutes - a really charming one.

At the beginning of the last century, the town had a population of nearly 4,000 - almost half of them German, and more than 700 Hungarians. The Germans were deported after the Second World War, and during the Yugoslav war most of the Hungarians and Croats left, replaced by Serbs from further south. Today, Croats-Hungarians-Germans together make up barely a tenth of the population. Locals have noted with resignation that there are many more Bac Croats in Zagreb today than there are locally. The demographic-political changes are well illustrated by the fact that the huge Franciscan monastery now houses only one Croatian monk.

They see a clear break-out point in tourism. The castle was declared a historic monument in 1948 and restoration work began in the 1970s, when the tower was covered for the first time. Then, in 2006, a regional cultural tourism project was launched - with significant EU funding - which specifically builds on the region's specific cultural frontier character. 800,000 euros were spent - and in many ways it shows some results. Not only has the castle been refurbished - it has received a Europa Nostra award - but, for example, there are nice brand new signboards everywhere.

A small local history museum has also been set up in the monastery - the Franciscan friar who runs it says he just couldn't afford to restore the artefacts - and the shelves are so badly done that many of them are falling over and breaking.
The results so far are modest. Figures for 2015 are available, when the annual revenue from castle admissions was €550 and from souvenirs €1600. Even if this has tripled since then, it doesn't seem like a success story - there are no hotels or restaurants that rely on tourism. Nor is there any lack of flexibility on the part of the local tourist board - on 30 December they opened the castle just for us, and phoned into the monastery to take a look. We were a little surprised, but understandably the only monk gave a great tour in Italian (as we were the only visitors for weeks, we were unfortunately also confronted with the fallen glass windows.) The hope may be the World Heritage bid. Serbia seems to be working on the matter, albeit slowly, and Bač is one of the five model projects covered by the pre-accession priority funds. Whether there is a chance is a good question. In local - Vojvodina - terms, Bac is a big deal: it has the province's oldest castle, oldest Catholic and northernmost Orthodox church, and only Turkish monument. But this is not enough to qualify for salvation - in this case, for World Heritage status. However, the city has been (and is) for centuries on the border between the Balkans and Europe - Rome and the Barbaric world, the Kingdom of Hungary and Byzantium, and then the Ottoman Empire, the Catholic and Orthodox worlds, leaving a truly interesting and unique imprint on the city. Also of interest is the former aquatic world, the protective function of the marsh waters - this is also described in the section of the application. There are quite a lot of call words in the story that could help such a proposal (intercultural interaction, multi-ethnic settlement, coexistence of religions...) Whether the local community will be able to benefit from it or not depends on the determination of Serbian heritage policy and the agility of local entrepreneurs and local government.

Lisu Marian

Romania - 01-Mar-20 -

Bac - what phonetic consonance best suited this place steeped in history, surrounded by a world of waters. There are lakes, but also a river.
It is almost the border of Vojvodina, a stone's throw from the Karadordevo Reservation. The muddy soil has attracted the man of ancient times here, taking him practically from the middle of nature.
It is practically the area of ​​millennial symbiosis that we can call agricultural archeology - it is so bidding to expose to the viewer the diversity of tools and storage vessels from the darkness of history until relatively new times.
The granary between the waters has thus sustained populations that have prospered, no matter how they were called the masters of the place.
We are talking about the invisible border of the West with the East, here are mixed elements of the old world (with most nations, stately or migratory) with the medieval one (from Romanesque to Byzantine, from Renaissance to Baroque) but also with Eastern influences.
Initially, it is a settlement from the Iron Age, evolving into the Bronze Age, as the first population of the Celts.
In the Middle Ages the massive investment in the defensive system of the area begins, considering that here it was wanted to draw the western demarcation line against the Ottomans.
The proximity of another temporary empire made the place under Habsburg control (first Austrians, then Hungarians), but the region becomes part of the Serb-Croatian-Slovenian Kingdom.
In order to imagine how complex the defensive element had become, we took the castle-fortress, so not only the tower, whose height can be climbed, but also the bastions, the outer walls and the bridge. Initially it is a fortification of Avars, then of the Slavs . Towards the middle of the fourteenth century, the fortress was begun by the care of King Carol Robert de Anjou, it lasted about a century.
The Ottomans definitively conquer it, the signs of the hard battles being visible through the scars left on the towers or the spectacular holes in the trapezoid walls set as the basis of the construction.
The best preserved (and obviously well rehabilitated) is the inner tower, where the knights of the time were, but where the water and food were kept in storage.
The grandeur of the place is best seen in the old maps or the reconstructions based on reality that we find in the halls allocated as museums on the floors of the tower, there are also evidences of the daily life of the population living here from the darkness of the times, but also the exemplification of the way of construction of the fortresses and fortifications.
Over the water we find the cultural element represented by the faith of the place - the two proud monasteries one Franciscan and the other Orthodox, both presenting different styles, as a distinguishing fact being that they did not fit in the compulsory taxation, but followed their own line, which has allowed the important turning of the Serbian identity later.

Read more from Lisu Marian here.