Déva

DÉVA and its surroundings has been populated since the Stone Age. Déva (Deva, Rumania today) played an an important role in the Middle Age, mostly because its fortress on the hilltop. In the village was born Mátyás Dévai Bíró (1500-1545), the reputed Protestant agitator, and András Sándor, another Protestant ideologist, became the first Protestant bishop of Transylvania, in the 16th century. Basta, the merciless Habsburg military commander, held a diet (session of parliament) in Déva, in the early 17th century, when he passed the bill which ordered the Hungarian noble-class to buy their status by paying one-fourth of their wealth to the Austrian court.
On the top of the 371-meter-high hill stands the impressive ruins of the fortress of Déva. There had been a fortified construction on the hill, as early as in the era of the Dacians and the Roman Empire. In the 13th century, the Hungarian kings built a castle here, which was one of the first royal fortresses built in the historic Hungary. During the Tartar invasion of 1241, the castle was destroyed but Hungarian king Béla IV (1235-1270) of the House of Árpád rebuilt it. In 1307, during the Interregnum in Hungary (a period between 1301-1308, when the House of Árpád disappeared and the House of Anjou appeared on the Hungarian throne as regal dynasties) Lászó Kán imprisoned Ottó, the official, though transient, Hungarian king in the fortress of Déva. He also took away from him the Hungarian Holy Crown. Habsburg king Ladislaus V (1452-1457), also reigning the Hungarian throne, donated the fortress of Déva, with its 56 villages to Hungarian János Hunyadi, the great defender of Hungary against the Turkish invasion. During the reign of the Hungarian renaissance king Matthias (1458 -1490), son of János Hunyadi, Déva was a property of Matthias's uncle Mihály Szilágyi. After this periods, the fortress was transferred to the Austrian court, and, since 1800, Déva ceased to be a military object, however, it was still rebuilt in 1817. A huge gun powder explosion destroyed it 1849.
Ferenc Dávid (1510-1579), the founder of the anti-Trinitarian, also referred to as Unitarian, denomination in Hungary, during the Protestant movement, was imprisoned in the fortress for his ideas. He died in the prison of the fortress of Déva, a plaque on the wall of the ruins remembers his fate.
One of the best-known Hungarian folk-ballads, titled Kelemen Kõmûves tells about the construction of the fortress of Déva. According to this ballad, the wife of one of the masons, Kelemen Kõmûves, had to be built in the walls of the fortress of Déva, to have her spirit hold the walls.