DEMSUS

DEMSUS. – Village of Transylvania where the oldest church in Romania, today Romanian Catholic, exists. Built with stones, altars, and bas-reliefs taken from the nearby Roman ruins, in the nineteenth century it was considered a mausoleum or an ancient pagan temple. Iorga established that it was a Byzantine church, dating, in his view, from the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries. The temple has only Byzantine elements, but it is built according to a local style. It may date from the thirteenth century; indeed, according to the opinion of Prof. Vătăsianu, of the Romanian Academy in Rome (1946), it would date from the end of the twelfth century, on account of the Dalmatian-origin motifs of the tenth century found there.