Szentjobb (Sâniob) is a village in Romania, Bihar County, the center of the municipality of the same name. It is famous for its ruined castle and abbey. Location: https://tinyurl.com/46r88u3y
The history of the Abbey of Szentjobb dates back to the canonization of Stephen I (1000-1038) in 1083. Stephen’s sarcophagus was opened in the presence of King László I, but the king’s famous signet ring was not found. The tomb had previously been opened by the treasurer cleric Mercurius, who had stolen the king’s right hand and kept it on his family estate. On 30 May 1084, when King László visited Mercurius at his estate on the shores of the Berettyó, he told a miraculous story of how he came to possess the sacred right.
This is what the legend of St Stephen of Hartvik tells us. King László seems to have believed the story, and in 1084, when he found the Holy Right, hidden and still intact, he had a wooden monastery built to guard it. This was rebuilt into a stone monastery in 1098 by Prince Álmos, brother of King Kálmán the Bookish, and the Holy Right was placed there.
In the first half of the 13th century, the Benedictine monastery of Szentjobb was one of the most populous monasteries in Hungary, along with Pécsvárad, Garamszentbenedek, Somogyvár, Szekszárd, Kolozsmonostor, and Zalavár, with 12-36 monks. In 1241, the monastery was sacked by the Mongols and the monks fled with the Holy Right to Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia). After the Tatar invasion, the abbey was rebuilt and the Holy Right was returned here.
In 1433, the holy relic was already in Székesfehérvár, perhaps moved by order of King Zsigmond. In 1458, Bishop Vitéz János of Várad reported that the monastery was in a pitiful state, almost completely abandoned. King Matthias granted it monastic status. In 1471, after a conspiracy against Matthias organized by Vitéz János, the king again took over the place.
In 1475 the abbey was already fortified, according to written records: ‘Castellum seu fortalitium consequenterque domum Abbatialem dictae Zentjogh’. In 1486, the Abbey of Szentjobb lost its right of authentication and the monastery building was in ruins. In the same year, King Matthias appointed Salonai Antal, bishop of Modrus, as abbot. At the end of 1497 or the beginning of 1498, the Paulinians occupied the Benedictine abbey, which was dissolved. In 1514, Dózsa’s rebellious Crusaders dragged a monk from Szentjobb and beheaded him in the main square of Várad. In the 1550s the Paulinian monks fled the monastery.
Having been used for military purposes several times, the monastery was converted into a castle around 1550. In 1556 the abandoned estates of the monastery were given by King Ferdinand I to the property of Paulóczy Sebestyén and Taróczy István to protect and use. There is a vague record that the castle was built in 1557 by the captain of Várad, Nyakazó Antal, but this is very uncertain.
In 1563, Szentjobb Castle belonged to Némethy Ferenc, who died in 1565 during the siege of Tokaj. In 1584, at the death of Csáky Dénes, Szentjobb Castle was mentioned among Csáky’s final residences, together with Körösszeg and Adorján castles. After the premature death of the sons of Csáky Dénes, the castle and the monastery estates passed to the Kendy family. In 1594, the Transylvanian prince Báthory Zsigmond crushed the Turkish party in Transylvania, executed Kendy Ferenc, and confiscated his property.
On April 27, 1597, Prince Báthory Zsigmond ordered the chaplaincy of Várad to “register in the Szentjóbi castle and its property which had been taken away from Kendi Ferenc and Gavai Miklós to the respected and great Bocskai István, the Lord of Kismarja. Our uncle Bocskai and our chief adviser, the chief captain of Várad, and also the chief Comes of the counties of Bihar, Kraszna, and Inner-Szolnok, shall be made the owner of the entire Szentjobb Castle, also known as Zent Jogh. Likewise the whole village of Szentjobb, also known as Zent Jogh (totale et integrum Castri Zent job, alias Zent Jogh vocatum, ac totales similiter integras possessiones itidem Zent Jogh, alio nomine zent Jogh).”.
In 1598, during the unsuccessful Turkish siege of Várad, the guards of Szentjobb castle routed a Turkish raiding party that threatened to burn down the castle and the settlement. After the third resignation of Báthory Zsigmond, Báthory András became prince and confiscated Bocskai’s estates. Bocskai went to Prague in 1601 to clear his name with Emperor Rudolf. He returned from Prague in 1604, gave up politics, and retreated to his castle in Szentjobb to try to recover his confiscated property. Belgiojoso, the officer of the Habsburg king refused to hand over his property, and as a result, Bocskai contacted Bethlen Gábor, who was in the Turkish camp.
On 24 September Bocskai retreated to the castle of Sólyomkő and summoned here both Örvéndy Pál from Nagykereki and Székely Ferenc from Szentjobb. It was here that he received the news that Bethlen and the people in exile would support him in his bid for the title of Prince of Transylvania. Bocskai ordered his captain of Nagykerek, Örvéndy Pál, to immediately send an envoy to Gyula for Turkish relief troops. On 1 October 1604, the vice-captain Cipriano Concini of Várad passed by Szentjobb on his way to Szatmár.
The captain of Szentjobb, Székely Ferenc, revealed Bocskai’s plans to him, after which Belgiojoso gave Concini 600 men to occupy Szentjobb. On 2 October 1604, the traitors let the Imperials into the castle, who in turn expelled them. A few days later, Concini, leaving 200 men behind to defend Szentjobb, set off with the remaining 400 men and some small cannons to capture Nagykerek, where Örvéndy and the hajdú soldiers who had been called to the castle repulsed his troops and the Bocskai uprising broke out.
At the time of the siege of Nagykerek, Bocskai was still in Sólyomkő, and from there he wrote a letter to Belgiojos to surrender Szentjobb, but the latter demanded the handover of Nagykerek. Bocskai’s troops defeated the troops of Colonel Johannes Pezzen, who was trying to join Belgiojoso’s main army, at the battle of Álmosd-Diószeg on 15 October, and Belgiojoso retreated to Várad and then to Kassa. Without a fight, Bocskai’s Hajdú troops retook Szentjobb and the Csáky castle of Adorján near Szalárd.
In 1607, Prince Rákóczi Zsigmond donated Szentjobb to the captain of Várad, Rhédey Ferenc. In 1621, after Rhédey’s death, his body was buried in Szentjobb in the church he had built. Szentjobb remained the property of the family until it was occupied by the Turks.
After the fall of Várad, Palatine Esterházy wanted to base the country’s defense against the Turks on the medieval system of “national captaincies” and the system of banates. He proposed to set up the captaincy against Várad and Gyula with Szentjobb as its center. Szalárdi János described the castle in his “Lamentable Chronicle of Hungary” and commemorated the capture of Szentjobb by Turks and rebellious peasants on 21 February 1661:
“But the paid armies of Prince Kemény János were under Fogaras and Déva, and had no one to guard Partium region well; from which it followed that the castle of Szentjobb, the chief and most important residence, a fortress with great fine buildings, also fell into Turkish hands; for the Dominus terrestris did not take care of it as he should have done. … the castle had a fine fortress outside, four regular brick bastions, though large, filled with earth, with intermediate wall-crenellations, all around a great wide expanse of the Berettyó River’s water; ‘ and the inner fortress was built in four corners with four rows of very fresh lordly houses, and was fortified with fine howitzers, hook-guns, and muskets so that if there had been sufficient people to defend it, the enemy could not have entered it without destroying and besieging the walls.
But that the castle, for the state it was in, had neither good brave officers nor praesidiurn, and that those who were in it were few enough to defend even one of its gates from the enemy. Moreover, the peasantry was driven against them, together with many Romanians, against whom they dared not resist, but negotiated. Bey Alaj of Gyula boldly went to the gate, telling them that although they were brave-hearted and good Hungarians, they would not be able to resist the terrible overwhelming force. Finally, with great difficulty, they managed to reach an agreement, and the castle inhabitants were allowed to leave in peace, and the castle was surrendered to the Turks on February 21.”
The Turks left 300 janissaries in the castle and “began to fortify the city with battlements and palisades and to occupy it with Turkish cavalry”. On March 4, 1661, Rhédey László learned that his castle had been lost. In 1662, some Turkish soldiers from Szentjobb, who were engaged in hunting with dogs, also served in the castle. Interestingly, a draft of the 1660 payroll is known, according to which the Turks intended to send 136 men to Szentjobb, which was then still in Hungarian hands. In 1667, the Turks repaired the castle of Szentjobb, and the late Kodsa Pasha’s “vakuf” in Várad, Fakrullah Alaibey was appointed to supervise the work.
On 9 February 1686, Antonio Caraffa’s 4,000 men and Petneházy Dávid, who had 3,000 Hajdú soldiers, laid siege to Szentjobb, the town that secured Várad. The 500-strong Turkish garrison trusted the relief army from the nearby fortress and refused to surrender. The Christian artillery blew up the castle’s gunpowder tower, and the defenders abandoned the fortress on 12 February. In 1687, Louis of Baden wrote to his uncle with concern: “According to our latest news, Szentjobb has been attacked by some Turks and about two thousand rebels, caused by the rude behavior of the army.”
On August 30, 1688, the reorganizing assembly of the county of Bihar was held in Szentjobb Castle, and the required officials were elected. Until 1668 Buday István was the vice-captain of Szentjobb, and in 1689 Koss Mihály was the captain of Szentjobb, according to a historical song.
In the spring of 1690, General Nigelli tightened his position around Varad, Gyula, Jenő (Boros), and Papmező, and also fortified the palisades of Szentjobb. According to the sources, a considerable Hungarian army was stationed in the castle. In 1691, the Court War Council ordered Franz Kari von Auersperg’s regiment to be stationed in Szatmár, Kálló, Szentjobb, Nagykároly, Somlyó and Nagybánya. In 1692, Jakob Karl Skalitzky, the master of provisions was responsible for Szentjobb.
On 13 December 1699, the Imperial War Council to the Royal Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery: “After the army had extended the borders of the country to the Száva, Tisza, and Maros, Emperor Leopold decided to keep the borders in the outermost parts of the country and that the places marked in the attached list should be destroyed. Unable to provide for the increased expenses of the garrisons (justified by the burden of all the war, the exhausted imperial and royal treasury, and the losses of the people), it is not possible to leave the fortresses intact, and the destruction of the marked places is therefore just.”
The castles to be destroyed were also listed: Gyula, Etsehed [Nagyecsed], St. Job [Szentjobb], Zips [Szepesvár], Littova [Zsolnalitva], Likoua [Likava,] Leuenz [Léva], Simonthornya [Simontornya], Dottis [Tata], Vesprin [Veszprém], Papa [Pápa], Kerment [Körmend], Tombo [Dombóvár], Capusvar [Kaposvár], Saravár [Zalavár]. On 31 December, the Imperial War Council ordered that the ammunition and artillery equipment from Szentjobb be transferred to Várad. Szentjobb must not have been destroyed at that time, as the outbreak of the Rákóczi War of Independence prevented it.
On 12 December 1703, Prince Rákóczi Ferenc composed a list of Szentjobb and gave instructions for the “restoration” of the castle. Károlyi Sándor made the following proclamation at Christmas 1710:
“And when many doubt this, many do not believe it,” he says, “and the enemy, in his arrogance, would have us believe ourselves utterly defeated,” then God will bring us the happiness we desire, but will also comfort with his protection, by the power of his holy grace, and with the help of his unfailing help, those who have thrown themselves into the enemy’s path.
It pleases me, therefore, that Aranyos-Medgyes, Károly, Sólyomkő, Szentjobb, Sarkad, being no longer of any use to our nation or this land, should be burnt down. The properties should be disposed of at Munkács and Ecsed because the army in the field cannot be kept according to the examples given, and all of them will be lost, then not only will they be buried in the mud, but our arms will be taken and the Hajdú troops will ruin Munkács”.
There is no documentary evidence of whether or not the Kuruc forces damaged Szentjobb on Károlyi’s orders, but the guard surrendered to the Imperials on 1 January 1711. In 1711, after the Treaty of Szatmár, the Imperials destroyed the castle, and Komáromi György, the then-vice Comes of Bihar County, had to watch the destruction.
In 1737 a census was made of Szentjobb: “In 1685 there was still a fortress in the town between the marshes and the Berettyó rivers, made of mud and earth, it belonged to the Oradea castle, it was built to protect the town from Turkish attacks, but over time this fortress lost its importance, the then abbot Mátyás Vinkler started to build a small building here, it was finished by the present Bishop of Nagyvárad, who was the abbot here before. The residence is enclosed by a double ditch, with a wooden bridge at the exit, a garden with peach and cherry trees, the remains of the former bastions still visible; near the gate are three servants’ houses with a chamber and kitchen, a thatched wagon-house at the end, two stables built partly of wood and partly of rough brick, for about 30 horses, and the house of the Hajdú soldiers, with a prison underneath.”
In the first quarter of the 18th century, the later Bishop of Nagyvárad, Csáky Miklós, filled in the moats of the castle and in 1736 he started building a new Catholic church in the northeast corner of the castle. According to a record, the carved stones of the monastery and castle were used for this purpose.
In 2016, excavations began on the site of the former abbey and castle. According to Attila Lakatos, the chief archaeologist, “We found Árpád-period wall remains in one of the trenches, and the Árpád- and Anjou-period pottery fragments that were excavated there increasingly prove that, contrary to the stubborn tradition in the village that the medieval monastery stood on a hill above the village, the early Benedictine abbey was built here, near the Berettyó.” The research proved that the 18th-century manor house rests on the south-east bastion of the castle and the village’s Catholic church on the north-west rampart.
Source: http://www.varlexikon.hu
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Here are a few more pictures of the site of the castle:
