One people perishes there. The walls fall to pieces. The name of the town passes into oblivion. And again there comes another people, which builds upon the ruins, gives the place a new name; and while the old stones, cast one upon another, seem to bewail the past, the city, radiant with new palaces, rejoices in its youth like a flattered beauty.
The hill on which Transylvania's only fortress stands was once covered with massive buildings by Diurban's race. Who now remembers so much as its name? The Roman legions subjected the nation, threw down the shapeless walls, and instead of the altar dedicated to the Blood-God, and stained with human sacrifices, there arose a temple of Vesta; the wooden palace of the Dacian duke vanished, and the marble halls of the proprætor took its place, with their Corinthian columns, their white mosaic floor, their artistically carved divinities. The place was then called Colonia Apulensis.
Again the town grew old, fell down, and died.
A new and mightier race came into it; the former inhabitants were buried beneath the ruins of their palaces and temples, and instead of the proprætor's palace, the gilded and enamelled dwelling of Duke Gyula,[42] with its skittle-shaped roof, towered up like an enchanted castle from the Thousand and One Nights, and on the ruins of the temple of Vesta the pagan forefathers of the Magyars built altars under the open sky, where they worshipped the sun, the stars, and a naked sword. Then the town was called Gyula-Fehervár.[43]
[42] Gyula = Julius. The heathen Prince of Transylvania at the end of the tenth century.
[43] Gyula-Fehervár. White Julius' town.
A century passed, and Stephen, saint and king, cast down the altars of the fire-worshippers, and built a vast church on the spot where so many false gods had been adored. The sun-worshippers disappeared, and the Christian world called the church after the name of the Archangel Michael.
What sort of church was it?—Nobody can now tell! Two centuries later the Tartars came, levelled town and church with the ground, and put the population to the sword. On their departure they gave to the town the scornful nickname Nigra-Julia.[44]
[44] Nigra Julia. Black Julia.
Our nation's greatest man, John Hunniady, rebuilt it. Traces of his huge Gothic arches may still be found there. In the crypt, built at the same time, all the Princes of Transylvania were buried in richly-carved sarcophagi. Here rested Hunniady himself and his headless son Ladislaus.[45] They rested here, but only for a time. Robber-hordes came and scattered the sacred relics, and devastated the church, and the succeeding princes who patched it up again during the Turkish dominion, added to the Gothic groundwork the peculiarities of Arab architecture, serpentine columns, and Moorish arabesques.