Budapest

In the 1920s the Paulite monks converted the cave into a pilgrims' chapel. The Paulites are the only monastic order of purely Hungarian origin and were founded in 1308 by Özséb, canon of Esztergom, following the Mongol (Tartar) invasion of 1241. They named themselves after a 3rd-century Egyptian hermit called Paul, who entered the desert in order to be closer to God. His only companion during this period of self-imposed seclusion was a raven, trained to bring him a mere half a slice of bread a day (a charming painted architectural fragment in the Budapest History Museum depicts the saint with his raven). Originally, the Paulites had built a monastery in c. 1300 in the Buda Hills that was destroyed during the Ottoman invasion and replaced by a Baroque successor still extant in Pest.

In 1931 Count Gyula Zichy, archbishop of Kalocsa, by whose efforts the Paulite order had been reestablished after 150 years of inactivity, expanded the Gellért cave chapel into a series of interconnected chapels, where Polish refugees would take shelter during the 1940s (note the wall plaque in the Polish Chapel). In 1934 the order was also responsible for constructing the monastery against the hillside on the riverbank below, a combination of Modern and Hungarian neo-Romanesque styles to a design by Károly Weichinger. Tragically, by the 1950s both chapel and monastery had been seized by the Communists, the order dissolved, the Father Superior executed and the chapel walled up. It was not until August 1989 that the Cave Church and the monastery were eventually returned to the Paulites for reconsecration (an ugly lump of the cave chapel's concrete blocking wall is preserved to the right of the entrance). In the main chapel today can be seen a small apex stone with a relief of St. Paul, his faithful raven still perched on his shoulder.

Adapted from the book Only in Budapest by Duncan J. D. Smith, published by JEL-KÉP Kiadó (2008)