The Minorite Church and Monastery

The Minorite church and the monastery are monuments of equal rank and significance to the Reformed church. The opinion that the church of the Minorites in Nyírbátor already existed in the 14th century has been widely expressed in the literature, but this cannot be confirmed by authentic data or by the building, which appears to be essentially intact and unified. All evidence indicates that the Transylvanian voivode István Báthori was the builder of this church, and since he was buried there in 1493, the church must have been ready by then. The Minorites, however, had actually settled in the city earlier, at the beginning of the 14th century, and had established their first humble cells on the site of the present-day monastery. It is likely that after 1479, István Báthory further developed the existing building. This monastery was later annexed to the northern wall of the church, at the site of the present-day Baroque building. In the middle of the 16th century, with the spread of the Reformation, the Catholic church ceased to function in the city, and the monastery and the church were abandoned. In 1587, Voivode Petraškó plundered the church and the monastery, and even looted the building. We have no information about the ruined building complex for the next 130 years. The ruined and abandoned building complex was revived in the first half of the 18th century. In 1717, Bishop Gábor Erdődy of Eger gave the building to the Minorite order, which was taken over by Kelemen Didák, a Székely Conventual Minorite.