Kehely paténával és bőrtokkal

This chalice is from the Roman Catholic parish church built between 1772 and 1775 in the town of Császár, which had belonged to the Tata estate of the family of the counts of Esterházy since 1727. It came along with its leather case and paten to the Museum of Applied Arts in 1972 through a purchase during the comprehensive and costly renovation of the church. However, due to the iconography related to the founders of the Trinitarian order (Ordo Sanctissimae Trinitatis Redemptionis Captivorum), the Paris theologian Saint John of Matha and the hermit Saint Felix of Valois, it seems that it may have belonged to one of this order’s Hungarian churches originally. It may have landed up in Császár following the dissolution of the Trinitarians in 1783, where just at that time, between 1775 and 1803, the church was being furnished and the devotional items were being acquired.

There are fields containing either the repoussé heads of cherubs or floral decorations alternating on chased backgrounds in the lower band of the horizontally divided, sexfoil base, and there are three colored gemstones in each valley between the lobes. The upper section of the base is slightly concave, and painted enamel medallions in frames comprised of applied plates decorated with eight set gemstones alternate with repoussé compositions framed by scrollwork on a chased background on each lobe. The first of the medallions depicts Saint Catherine of Alexandria and the second Saint Agnes (with the symbols of their martyrdom), while the vision of Saint John of Matha appears in the third enamel painting. While celebrating his first Mass, John saw an angel wearing a dazzling white robe with a red and blue cross on the chest (which appears in the general emblem of the order), who was resting his crossed hands on the heads of two captives in chains, one a Christian and the other a Saracen. The Instruments of the Passion can be seen in the intermediary frames (the pillar and the whip; the crown of thorns with the rods and the reed scepter; and the dice, the cross, the nails, the sponge set on a reed, and the lance). Above these, there is one rosette each in a frame with a Baroque profile that extends into the upper, stem-like portion of the base, which is then topped by a collar of leaves. The sides of the hexagonal, inverted pear-shaped node are adorned with pairs of winged cherub heads in heart-shaped frames or crosses made of applied metal plates with gemstones set in them. The Instruments of the Passion of Christ (his betrayal and crucifixion – the cords, the pincers, the hammer, the nails, the glove, the rooster, and the bag of coins) are framed by scrolled cartouche decorations on the openwork calix of the cup. Alongside these are three medallions with enamel paintings framed in a similar manner to those on the base. They depict the Holy Trinity as well as Saint John of Matha and Saint Felix of Valois, with the latter including the stag with a red and blue cross in its antlers that appeared to him in a vision.

The stamp of the guild of Vienna with the year 1722 (Rosenberg 7855; Reitzner 1952, P 108) and the master’s mark of Johann August Stadler (“IAS” on an escutcheon, see: Reitzner 1952, N. 468; Neuwirth 2004, N. 663), who was active in the years around 1700, are on the edge of the chalice’s base. The original wooden case sheathed in leather with imprinted linear decorations has survived, but the plain paten is of a more recent date. Based on its quality and age, the chalice may have been one of the devotional objects from the Trinitarians of Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia).

by Anna Ecsedy