File din cronica unei restaurări eşuate: I. Reconstrucţia bisericii medievale din Suseni-Colţ, jud. Hunedoara
Pages from the Chronicle of a Failed Restoration: I. The Reconstruction of the Medieval Church in Suseni-Colţ, Hunedoara County

Summary/Abstract: The medieval church in Suseni-Colţ (Hunedoara County) is a religious foundation of the Romanian noble family of Cândea of Râu de Mori. It was built after the middle of the 14th century and was decorated with Byzantine frescoes either in the late-14th or early-15th century. Functioning from the beginning as a monastic church, the religious edifice was abandoned by the late-16th century, after its patrons had embraced Calvinism and were assimilated to the Hungarian elites. Not having been in use all this time, the church was already a ruin in the mid-19th century and continued to decay throughout the 20th century, despite its unusual architecture and its remarkable mural decoration. Paradoxically, the monastery’s reestablishing in 1995 represented a serious blow for the historical monument which, at the initiative of the Arad Bishopric, was reconstructed between 1995 and 1996 by the new monks and with the help of architect Şerban Gubovici and ingineer Liviu Hanţiu. Later on, in 2001, the church’s mural decoration was unprofessionally restored by painter Viorel Ţigu. By examining the documents kept in the archives of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Bucharest and the Arad Archbishopric in Arad, the present paper discusses the medieval church’s unaccomplished restoration projects of 1982 and 1990, and then examines its illegal reconstruction in 1995–1996, which was made by the newly-established monks, at the initiative of the local church authorities, and without the approval of the state institutions of cultural heritage protection.

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