Assumption of Mary Church: A Neo-Renaissance Pilgrimage Church in Slovenia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Slovenia
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page19 sections
History
The Assumption of Mary Church is a Roman Catholic pilgrimage church on 543-metre-high Zaplaz Hill above Čatež in Slovenia. The present Neo-Renaissance church was built in 1906–1907 and serves as a branch church of the Čatež–Zaplaz Parish and the diocesan pilgrimage center of the Diocese of Novo Mesto.
Origins of the Zaplaz Pilgrimage
The pilgrimage tradition began with stories connected to a statue of the Virgin and Child. According to one tradition, a devout man repeatedly found the statue in the hill’s shrubland after trying to take it home. After he prayed before it, his gravely ill wife recovered during childbirth. News of the event drew pilgrims from the surrounding area.
Another tradition tells of a child who appeared to have died after being suffocated in sleep. The child’s mother circled the small altar three times on her knees at Zaplaz, after which the child began to cry. These traditions helped establish the hill as a place of Marian devotion.
A shelter made from branches once housed the statue, but it eventually collapsed. The keyholder of the Čatež church then erected a cross at the site. During the reign of Joseph II, the Habsburg emperor whose religious policies restricted pilgrimage practices considered superstitious, the keyholder was imprisoned. A first chapel was nevertheless built before 1808.
Chapels and the First Church
Pilgrimages continued during the Napoleonic occupation. After Austrian rule was restored, the chapel was demolished several times and rebuilt each time. An 1825 report stated that the authorities could not establish who was reconstructing it. The final chapel before the first church measured 4 by 6 metres. It had a small belfry without a bell, a wooden-shingle roof, and a statue of Mary dressed in silk.
As the number of pilgrims increased, the Čatež parish priest Matija Košak sought permission to construct a church. In 1839, authorities threatened to withhold Confirmation at Čatež unless the pilgrimage was ended. Bishop Anton Alojzij Wolf investigated Zaplaz and found no superstitious practices there, allowing construction to proceed.
The first church was built northeast of the chapel and completed in 1848. Franz Kurz zum Thurn und Goldenstein painted Marian motifs inside it in 1850–1851, and Trebnje Dean Jože Rozman consecrated the building in 1855. The church soon became too small for the growing pilgrimage. An enlargement begun in 1866 under parish priest Jože Gregorič involved extensive improvisation and produced a 30-metre-long building with a roof height of 4 metres and two relatively low towers beside the presbytery.
The Present Church
Parish priest Hinko Povše, who arrived at Čatež in 1902, initiated the construction of a new church. After four years of gathering building materials, demolition of the older church began on 24 June 1906. Only its presbytery wall was retained, then raised and vaulted. The new building reached roof level in 1906 and was roofed the following year.
The former church’s main altar and miraculous image were moved to a side chapel, while a new main altar and image were installed. New pews were made in 1912, and Bishop Anton Bonaventura Jeglič consecrated the church on 14 October 1917. The two bell towers were added in 1925–1926.
War Damage and Restoration
During the Second World War, Zaplaz Hill and the church were subjected to 27 military attacks. The heaviest bombardment took place in spring and autumn 1943, especially on 11 October, when 760 shells fell on the hill and its surroundings. The church sustained extensive damage, including serious damage to one bell tower, which began to lean. Worship nevertheless continued.
Postwar repairs removed the damaged wooden ceiling and installed a temporary replacement. Shattered windows were secured, plaster was repaired, and the walls were repainted. A more extensive restoration began in October 2008. The wooden ceiling was replaced with a coffered ceiling, meaning one formed from recessed decorative panels, while the vaults and walls were reinforced with concrete. The facade and bell towers were restored between 2009 and 2010, and the forecourt platform was slightly lowered during the reconfiguration of the area in front of the church.
Diocesan Pilgrimage Center
After the Diocese of Novo Mesto was established on 7 April 2006, the church was selected as its principal pilgrimage center because of its space, parking capacity, and accessibility for buses. It was formally proclaimed a diocesan pilgrimage center on 1 March 2008, with the solemn proclamation held on 4 May that year.
A new sacristy and multipurpose annex were built between 2010 and April 2011. The church’s Grozde Chapel was constructed during the same period. On 27 May 2011, the relics of the Slovenian Catholic martyr and Blessed Lojze Grozde were brought to the church. They were placed in the Grozde side altar during a solemn Mass celebrated by Apostolic Nuncio Juliusz Janusz on 28 May. The church became his final resting place because of its proximity to Šentrupert and its position as the diocese’s central pilgrimage site.
On 27 May 2015, a Reconciliation Monument was blessed in front of the church on the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War. It consists of a large cross, a vessel containing soil from 31 places, and a stone plaque naming locations where victims were killed. The church is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary, the Catholic belief that Mary was taken into heavenly glory at the end of her earthly life. It also has two altars dedicated to Mary, Help of Christians, a title expressing Mary’s intercessory protection of Christians. Other principal dedications are Saint Joseph, Saint Roch, and Blessed Lojze Grozde. The building is registered as a locally significant immovable monument in Slovenia’s Register of Cultural Heritage.
Remains
The church has a rectangular nave, two side chapels, a straight-ended presbytery, and two bell towers at the front of the nave. It measures 31.5 metres in length and 11.5 metres in width, widening to 18 metres across the side chapels, and accommodates 1,500 people. Designed by Rudolf Treo in the Neo-Renaissance style, it combines revival forms derived from Renaissance architecture with a strongly articulated exterior and a spacious, vertically emphasized interior.
Exterior and Main Interior
Facade and Bell Towers
The exterior is organized by pilasters, which are flattened supports attached to the walls, with Ionic capitals marked by spiral volutes. Profiled cornice bands and pronounced rustication, a treatment that emphasizes joints and roughens masonry blocks, give the walls a strongly textured appearance. Tall semicircular windows punctuate the elevations. The main facade and the facades of the side chapels use triangular pediments and pilasters modeled on ancient temples and triumphal arches.
Nave and Presbytery
Inside, the nave is covered by a coffered wooden ceiling and structured by pilasters with geometric capitals. These supports carry semicircular transverse arches. The presbytery alone has a true masonry vault, formed as a groin vault by the intersection of two barrel vaults. Together, the nave, chapels, presbytery, and front towers form the principal architectural frame of the pilgrimage church.
Altars and Chapels
Main Altar
The main altar was designed by Franc Avsec, parish priest of Podkum and a conservator, after the model of the tabernacle at Podkum. Its statue of Mary was made in Gröden in South Tyrol. The figure is surrounded by abundant representations of rays, clouds, and putti, small childlike figures used in European religious and classical art.
Side Altars
The left side altar is dedicated to Saint Joseph and is accompanied by statues of Saint Lucy and Saint Catherine. The right side altar is dedicated to Saint Roch and includes statues of Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Anthony the Hermit.
Chapel of Mary, Help of Christians
The Chapel of Mary, Help of Christians, contains the original statue associated with the story at the beginning of the Zaplaz pilgrimage. Its altar was remade in 2017, and the central statue is accompanied by figures of Saint Anne and Saint Joachim.
Chapel of Blessed Lojze Grozde
The Chapel of Blessed Lojze Grozde was designed by Jože Marinko and his son Matija Marinko. A stone altar stands at its center and contains a wooden sarcophagus with Grozde’s relics. Behind it, a concave wall carries a mosaic installed by Marko Ivan Rupnik and his collaborators on 4–5 May 2011.
The mosaic presents Christ Pantocrator, an image of Christ as the all-ruling figure, in heavenly glory. Grozde holds a palm branch, while Saint John the Baptist points toward Christ. The Virgin Mary and an unidentified woman without a halo also appear. The woman represents either Grozde’s mother, Marija, or his aunt, Ivanka.
A semicircular white spring is depicted behind or above the mosaic wall. Its water appears to pass behind the mosaic toward the altar, move through a tunnel in its lower section, descend steps, and spread into the church. The composition gives this flow a symbolic meaning, presenting divine grace as moving through Grozde and expressing the victory of love over revenge.
Windows, Organ, and Annex
Stained Glass
Stane Kregar made the stained-glass windows in the nave. Two windows in the presbytery were created in 1978 by his pupil Boštjan Putrih. Marko Jerman designed the choir window, whose central scene shows the Assumption of Mary with the Holy Trinity. It also includes the missionaries Friderik Baraga and Ignacij Knoblehar, bishops Alojzij Šuštar and Janez Frančišek Gnidovec, the Zaplaz statue miracle, Lojze Grozde, and the Drina Martyrs, Catholic religious women killed during the Second World War.
Organ
The organ was built by Anton Škrabl. Installation began on 14 November 2016, and Bishop Andrej Glavan blessed it on 23 April 2017. Designed in the French Romantic tradition, it has mechanical and combined registration actions, two manuals, a pedal, 29 stops, and 1,836 pipes. Of these, 314 are wooden, while the remainder are made of tin and lead.
New Sacristy and Multipurpose Annex
The annex completed in April 2011 contains a large sacristy, a pilgrimage office, a confession room for deaf people, and sanitary facilities on the ground floor. Its basement holds a multipurpose hall for 50 pilgrims, a chair store, and a boiler room. These spaces form part of the church complex developed alongside the restoration and the church’s role as the Diocese of Novo Mesto’s pilgrimage center.
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