Fortified Churches: Relics of Faith and Fear
By Patrick Anderson, Cedar Key, FL
Recently Bill Leonard and I traveled with our friend, Otniel (Oti) Bunaciu, in Romania and drove north of Bucharest into the Translyvania Mountains. For two days we drove to hard places to see six of the 40 or so fortified churches dating from the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. For nearly 900 years these large church structures, surrounded by walls and other fortifications, were central features in remote villages as well as the central town of Sighisoara. The importation of Saxons in the 12th century by King Geza II was designed to defend his crown, as well as to bring Saxon civilization into the ancient area, although the region had consistent inhabitation since about 2000bc.
The Saxons also brought craftsmanship and superior organization and agricultural techniques to the area and enjoyed a very prosperous, but troubled, few hundred years. The occasional invasions of Turks led to the fortification of the churches. Now, centuries later, it is stunning to see the walled church grounds, ancient church buildings with worn furnishings, artwork, and statuary of worship. Amazingly the Romanian government has not classified the churches as national historical monuments and many are in very poor repair. This will not remain the case forever I am sure, because this is a relatively untouched tourist’s and historian’s dream. The fortified church in the center of the town of Sighisoara is well-known and oft-visited. Sighisoara is the second most important city in the area and sits on the main highway and rail line. But most of the other fortified churches languish in isolated villages, off the beaten path.
Oti, Bill, and I drove the hard trails to get to some of them. One, the Duetschweisskirch, was initially built by a Szekler community. The Saxons added to the barn-like structure in the 13th century and fortified the grounds with additions and renovations in the 15th, 16th , and 17th centuries. As I stood in the main tower, I could see for miles and miles in every direction. I could only imagine the terror which must have struck the people as they watched the Turks approach. I could almost see and hear the panic and rush toward the church and hear the bell of alarm ringing. I could imagine children running from their homes carrying whatever few precious possessions the family valued, while fathers and mothers drove the cattle, sheep, chickens, and pigs inside the walls.
The hooks still show where large cured hams were hung from the ceiling in the main tower to be safely rationed and to be available for sustenance. Large rooms were dedicated to hold all the food the villagers could muster. Groups of people took up their assigned tasks, protecting children, passing the ammunition, filling containers with water, boiling oil. When under siege, the people huddled inside the fortified church and watched helplessly as the invaders looted and sacked their homes, living off of the crops and shelters left behind, minding their time for attack until after they had taken and used anything they wanted from the abandoned villages and farms. Terrified villagers manned the archers’ windows and reinforced the gate, watching helplessly the desecration of their homes while the necessary rage built within them for the fight which was sure to come in due course.
I can only imagine the scene in the churches as priests prayed, babies cried, and mothers fretted while the men shouted threats and abuse at the invaders, threw stones from the walls to repel the forward observers, poured pots of boiling oil on any Turks who tried the gate, and archers loosed their arrows from the narrow parapets at any who encroached the field of fire. Patience must have been hard to maintain in the context of such tension and fear. “Pray to God, but fight for our lives!” they must have shouted. Sleep must have come fitfully if at all throughout the weeks of siege.
We also visited the Biserica Fortificata Biertan in the small village of Homorod. Oti asked around and found the caretaker, a man of Saxon descent in his 80s, Mr. Thome. Bill and I sat with the man and his wife in their home, drinking the offered homemade plum brandy on this cold and snowy day. Oti retrieved the car to carry the elderly caretaker the short distance to open the fortified church. He used a large key, and the door creaked open revealing the quiet and overgrown courtyard. Few visitors have had this experience. The man spoke German and, of course, Romanian.
He was proud of his German-Saxon heritage, but told us only seven Saxons remain in the town, and about thirty Romanians and about 1200 Gypsies. His body sagged as he made that final revelation. His entire world had collapsed around him, it seemed. He told us of Turk invasions, Romanian invasions, Hungarian invasions, the Lutheran Reformation, the Nazi invasions, the Russian invasions, and finally the Gypsy invasions. He covered 9 centuries of history as if he had personally experienced each event and they all had occurred last week.
The caretaker also showed us a plaque on the church wall which listed the WWII dead. He said the Nazi army came into the region in June of 1944 and rounded up all of the males over the age of 14 and took them to the Russian front. By September, they were all dead. He sadly pointed to the names of his father and uncle. He said he had hidden in the woods with his mother and sister while the roundup took place, avoiding conscription. Then, after the war, the Russians came. Since the people were German speaking and had served (albeit unwillingly) with Hitler, they took many of the men off to suffer in gulags. But mostly his attention was focused on the gypsies, who were pressing in all around his tranquil village right now.
When told we were involved a social ministry to provide hope and opportunities for Gypsies (Project Ruth), he said in German, “It is a waste of your time. You cannot do any good. I am not a racist, but God save America and all civilized countries from the Gypsies!”
We also visited a village called Viskry, far off of the paved roads in the mountains where two valleys converge. Here the caretaker, an elderly woman also in her 80s, welcomed us. We were tired and the day was late, but again we walked the grounds and sat in the church as the woman described her childhood and the traditions of the church. We wondered at the richness of the whole scene.
The church is stunning—the faded artwork on the furniture and walls, the statutes, the pulpit—incredible, but in a deteriorating condition. The kind lady explained to us where each family sat during worship—where single men sat and where the widows sat, according to their age, next to a painting of angels. The nearer to the painting the widows sat the closer to the end they were assumed to be. She demonstrated how one was never to turn one’s back on the altar, how women were never to expose an ankle while stepping over or around a bench. She showed us a string that ran from the pipe organist’s bench to a small bell near the billows which alerted the pumper to pump the bags to fill the pipes for music at the assigned time in the worship service.
All of the churches were Catholic when construction began in the 1200s and 1300s, but most became Lutheran in the 16th Century, standing as the far easternmost reach of the Reformation. The cataclysmic changes within and among congregations as they wrestled with the transition from Roman Catholic to Lutheran Protestant is difficult to imagine, given the strong ties to tradition among the early Saxons. They continue to retain their traditional German identity. The few parishioners who attend the churches when sporadic services are held hold firmly to practices which were first established centuries ago. And, they are dying.
The churches were built from faith, deeply held faith by the first generations of transplanted Saxons who traveled by ox carts across the rivers and mountains into this region, many dying from disease and deprivation along the way. The priests helped them keep faith alive, strong faith demonstrated by the central position the strongly built churches hold in the communities.
The people who previously inhabited the area were “others,” technologically deficient in agricultural methods and considered inferior by the Saxons. Saxons never fully integrated into the pre-existing culture, choosing an insular neo-Saxon society instead. Later, as the invaders from the East came, the people looked to the church for salvation, not eternal salvation but immediate, physical salvation. They fled to the churches from fear of these violent others. Over time they fortified the churches, made them stronger citadels against the outsiders, constructed concentric walls, and created strategically placed defensive posts. They turned the centers of worship into places of refuge.
The fortified churches stand today as mute reminders that they survived all challenges, but they also stand today as irrelevant monuments with crumbling walls and silent sanctuaries. During many tranquil decades over several centuries, villagers worshipped each Sunday, married and buried, baptized and chastised, and continued to thrive as the socially and culturally dominant group.
These fortified church buildings have survived. But the parishioners have fared poorly over the years, since they were constantly under attack by invading Muslim hoards for reasons of conquest, by Roman Catholics and Romanian Orthodox for ecclesiastical conquest, by Romanians and Germans and Russians for political domination, by an exodus of young generations for economic reasons, and now by the gypsies. Their faith sustains the shrinking few that remain, as they sit in bitter resignation to forces beyond their control. Fear is seen in their eyes, always present. Regret is not far from their lips, paralyzing them from meaningful worship and service, isolating them from this world, and hardly preparing them for the next.
It would be easy to interpret the fortified churches of Transylvania as a metaphor for today’s fearful church, where the faithful are inspired to build houses of worship, and then are tempted to fortify them against the “others” who surround and frighten us. That image is not far from our minds when we see ourselves in retreat from “invaders” who have lifestyles, political persuasions, social standards, and cultural practices different from the faithful.
Perhaps that metaphor is unfair. Perhaps I am not sufficiently respectful of the many families who worshipped and served God year after year, decade after decade, century after century, in churches far removed from civil or military authorities upon which to rely in times of mortal danger.
I have experienced no threat, real or imagined, comparable to what those saints of old experienced. I sit safely in a free and safe environment. But still there is a lesson here. When we use the church as a fort to which to run for protection in times of fear, rather than as a place of faith from which to embrace the “others,” we also risk becoming relics of a bygone era, with no relevance now or ever..
