The Reformed Church of Livada
The reformed church of Livada is one of the most significant village churches of Satu Mare county, built in the Middle Ages. Despite the restorations, the building retained its Gothic style. It is said that, according to the tradition, Zsuzsanna Báthory, the wife of ban Móric Meggyesi, had the church built in 1450. The village was first mentioned in our documents in 1339, but in Sătmar there were two villages called Újlak having as prefix Sárköz- and Szamos-, so it is hard to decide which village was mentioned. A village called Uylak was definitely mentioned in the record of Papal Tithe of the years 1334-1335. The village is located north-eastward to Satu Mare, built on the plain between the Tur and Someș rivers. The population of Újlak had already joined Calvinism before 1556 and it shortly became the part of the Presbytery of Baia Mare. From the 17th century on, Újlak was owned by the Protestants of the lesser nobility, who have been continuously patronizing the church. Its church was renovated in 1621 and 1647 and also in the following century, in 1779 and 1797. The slightly bell tower was erected in 1811.
Having a dimension which commands respect, the church has got a stone foundation and its walls were also made of broken stone while its tectonic and decorative elements were made of ashlar. The nave’s ground-plan is rectangular and an octagonal apse is annexed to it. The nave has diagonal buttresses on the western and eastern sides while the longitudinal walls have perpendicular buttresses, which embrace the building; the apse was also fortified with similar support. Once, a sacristy was annexed to the northern wall of the apse, and this is proved by the lack of the buttress which would fit here, by the sacristy door with a lintel over it in the, closed-off in the northern wall of the sanctuary, and by the taper of the wall at the height of the old vault. The year was carved on the sacristy’s portal in the medieval period, which can be 1407 or 1457.
The western facade has got a lancet arched portal spanned by a richly banded archivolt, on which is decorated with half billers, pear profiles and thin splays.
The southern facade of the nave is fragmented with lancet windows spanned by archivolt and decorated with traceries and near the middle buttress a closed-off door with a lintel above it can be found. On the southern portal there are pear profiles and splays. The northern wall of the nave has not got any opening, but the apse has got two triple lancet windows on its southern wall and one on the south-western wall. In the interior of the church the lancet arched chancel arch made of ashlar is impressive, and its splay crosses the pyramidal plinth. On the northern side of the apse, the remains of a sawn-off tabernacle were found. On the south-eastern wall we can see a smaller, stone framed, accolated niche which was used as a tabernacle, and near this a segmental arched sedilia was excavated recently, during the restoration. The sacristy is covered with a double-cell vault. The western part is simple, groined cross vault, while the eastern is more complex. The whole vault is based on funnel-shaped consoles, decorated with shields, except two consoles on the northern and southern part, where the ribs spring out of two rusty busts. The vault has got two corner stones: On the eastern there is a shield with a coat of arm on it, on which a bird, with its neck shot, is standing on a branch with flowers, and on the western one the inscription “1899” refers to the restoration.
The year carved on the sacristy door can be the year of the building, namely 1457: many of the architectural elements of the building became widespread in Hungary during that period. The coat of armour on the shield, illustrating a bird, can be easily explained, because the proprietor of Livada was the Újlaki family and the illustration on the cornerstone can be identified with their coat of armour.
The building of the church was entirely resorted and the process ended in 2014. As a result, new furniture was established and the thanks to the removal of the plaster, the carved medieval elements can be seen in their original look.
