An Exhibition on the Early Benedictine Universe

“Kings, Saints, Monasteries – Early Benedictine Universe in Hungary in the Light of the Latest Academic Research”; this is the title of the exhibition opened in Pannonhalma on 14 February. Following Archabbot Emeritus Várszegi Asztrik’s welcoming words, Balogh Balázs, the Director General of HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities gave an inaugural address.

Whose burial place is hidden in the nave of the abbey church of Pannonhalma? Were the bones of Andrew I or Prince David found in Tihany? Whose tomb was covered by the famous tombstone bearing a processional cross in Tihany? What does LIDAR technology detect, while other methods do not? Could Saint Gerard live in the hermitage of Holy Well in Bakonybél? Where was the mediaeval monastery’s cloister in Bakonybél? What genetic types characterised the Atyusz family in the age of the Arpads? What methods of archaeogenetics are applied in examining many-hundred-year-old bone relics? Among others, these questions can be answered for the visitors by the travelling exhibition of the HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, which introduces the project entitled “Kings, Saints, Monasteries” in the Archabbey of Pannonhalma after Tihany, Bakonybél and Budapest. The exhibition highlights the early period of the Benedictine monasteries of Tihany, Bakonybél, Pannonhalma and Almád through the results of archaeology, art history and bioarchaeology.

The exhibition can be visited in the Archabbey’s Exhibition Hall until 21 April.