Basilica of St. Giles: A Late Gothic Parish Church in Bardejov, Slovakia
Site at a Glance
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- 4.8
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- Medium
- Country
- Slovakia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Hungarian
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page36 sections
History
The Basilica of St. Giles is a Roman Catholic parish church in Bardejov, Slovakia, whose present form developed through successive medieval and modern building phases. Its origins reach back to the early thirteenth century, when Cistercian monks from Koprzywnica in Poland established a monastery dedicated to St. Giles at or near the site. The church became a major late Gothic ecclesiastical building and remains the parish church of St. Giles in the Archdiocese of Košice.
Monastic origins and the medieval parish
The precise date and location of the Cistercian foundation are uncertain. One tradition connects it with King Andrew II of Hungary, but the first written evidence for a church in the Bardejov area is a charter issued by King Béla IV in 1247. The document refers to the Cistercian brothers from Koprzywnica and to their lands, known as Terra Bardfa. The monks had left the area by about 1269 to 1271, probably because of political changes, and the later history of their monastery and church is not known until the medieval town had developed further.
German settlers occupied the abandoned area in the early fourteenth century. A charter of King Charles Robert of Anjou from 1320 mentions both a parish priest and a church at Bardejov, generally identified with St. Giles. In 1352, King Louis I the Great granted the town an eight-day annual fair beginning on 1 September, the feast of St. Giles. The saint, also known as Aegidius, was traditionally associated with protection, healing, and forests. His feast therefore linked the dedication of the parish church and the town with one of Bardejov’s important annual commercial events.
Bardejov was raised to the status of a free royal town in 1376. This development is associated with the existence of its Catholic parish and parish church. Construction of the present basilica-type building probably began in the middle of the fourteenth century. The three-aisled basilical section was completed in 1415, and the tower was built between 1420 and 1427. By 1427, the church was described as a three-aisled basilica with simple arcades. Sculptures from a former altar, dated to about 1390 to 1400, also show that the church already had an altar in the late fourteenth century.
Late Gothic rebuilding
From 1448, the town council sponsored a major enlargement and rebuilding. The stone mason Nicholas began the work, particularly on the presbytery, but its vault apparently collapsed because of structural problems. In 1464, the builder Stephen of Košice completed a new vault and enlarged the eastern part of the church with a sanctuary, choir, sacristy, and an upper gallery or chapel later known as the Oratory of King Matthias. He added a stone pastophorium, a specialized liturgical structure for the storage and preparation of the Eucharistic elements, in 1465.
In 1466, Master Jacob of Sącz made a Gothic high altar. The altar itself did not survive, although its sculpture of St. Giles remains in the church. The late fifteenth-century rebuilding continued under the local builder Urban, probably a pupil of Stephen. Between 1482 and 1486, three chapels were added on the south side: the Chapel of the Virgin Mary, the Chapel of St. Elizabeth above the main entrance, and the Chapel of St. Andrew. The Chapel of the Virgin Mary was built in 1483 with a donation of 3,000 florins from Veronica, widow of the Bardejov merchant Peter Mager, and is consequently also known as Veronica Mager’s Chapel.
The tower underwent a further rebuilding completed between 1486 and 1494 by Franklin Stemasek of Ansbach in Bavaria. By the end of the fifteenth century, St. Giles had become one of the important ecclesiastical buildings in Slovakia. Its late Gothic fabric and furnishings reflect the sustained involvement of the town council, local guilds, wealthy townspeople, and specialist craftsmen.
Reformation and confessional change
Bardejov joined the Reformation in 1525. The Reformation was the sixteenth-century religious movement that challenged the authority and practices of the Western Catholic Church and led to the formation of Protestant churches. In 1527, the Catholic parish priest Christoph was removed and expelled, and the church subsequently served mainly the town’s German population, which helped transmit Reformation ideas.
In 1557, an assembly of churches from five eastern Slovak towns met in Bardejov to discuss practices its participants regarded as traditional ecclesiastical superstitions, including the blessing of water. Radical crypto-Calvinists, people who maintained Calvinist beliefs or practices without openly identifying as Calvinist, attempted to remove the church’s altars, images, and sculptures. The interior was preserved through the efforts of more moderate Protestants, especially the Lutheran humanist and reformer Leonard Stöckel, together with members of the Bardejov town council. The church returned to Catholic use in 1671.
The building continued to require repairs and alterations. Work on the vault and supporting pillars took place in 1517 and 1519, while the tower was repaired in 1550 and 1551. After 1580, the Italian brothers Ludovico and Bernardo Pelo of Lugano introduced Renaissance alterations to the southern entrance porch. Between 1651 and 1655, the old Gothic high altar was replaced by an Early Baroque altar, and in 1655 the Gothic doors were replaced with Baroque doors.
Fire, earthquake, and restoration
The church suffered fires in 1550, 1577, 1640, 1774, and 1878. It was also affected by earthquakes in 1725 and 1836 and by bombing in 1944. The fire of 1640 weakened the tower, so a separate bell tower was built south of the church in 1669 and the bells were moved there. The original tower collapsed during the earthquake of 29 January 1725 and the storm that followed. After the fire of 1774, the church remained without a tower until the nineteenth century.
During the 1705 uprising of Ferenc Rákóczi, Bardejov was occupied by rebels and the parish church again became Protestant. Imperial troops retook the town in 1710, after which the church returned to Catholic use. A catastrophic town fire in 1878 destroyed the roof and damaged the vaults, although the interior survived without damage. From 1878 or 1879 to 1899, the church was restored and partly rebuilt in a nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic manner. The work began under the direction of Imre Steindl and, from 1899, continued under the supervision of Frigyes Schulek.
The restoration removed Renaissance alterations, rebuilt the tower, demolished the seventeenth-century bell tower and southern enclosure, and renewed the roofs over the chapels and main nave. It also introduced a Neo-Gothic high altar and pulpit, renewed the pillars and walls of the main nave, added new chapel roofs, and applied deeply scored exterior plaster intended to imitate ashlar masonry. Interior painting was adapted to Neo-Gothic decorative ideals. The approximately twenty-year campaign produced much of the appearance of the basilica today.
Modern conservation and continuing use
Twentieth-century interventions included replacement of the supporting part of the pastophorium in 1957 and 1958, roof repairs in 1963 and 1964, and restoration of the Gothic wall paintings on the southern side of the tower in 1978 and 1979. A major repair campaign continued from 1986 to 1999, and exterior stonework on the church and tower was restored during the 1990s.
The historic Urban and John bells cracked in 1990. New bells were installed in the tower in 1995. In 2001, after the church had received the title of minor basilica, the bell John was replaced by a new bell named Joseph, weighing 700 kilograms. A minor basilica is a church given a special papal title because of its religious, historical, or pastoral importance, distinct from the architectural meaning of the word basilica.
St. Giles was designated a Slovak national cultural monument in 1970. On 23 November 2000, Pope John Paul II granted the church the title of minor basilica by apostolic brief. Bardejov’s historic town centre, including the basilica, was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. The church remains a parish church and continues to serve its religious function. Its historical and artistic importance rests particularly on its late Gothic architecture and the unusually rich body of medieval furnishings that preserves the development of Gothic construction in Slovakia.
The church library
A medieval book collection was established in the church during the thirteenth century. Around 1540, it became the town library and was the first public municipal library in the Kingdom of Hungary. Townspeople enlarged the collection through donations, including 141 books left by the town rector Gaspar Seifreid after his death in 1639. Since 1915, the collection has been kept in the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest.
Remains
The basilica is an east-west oriented, three-aisled church measuring approximately 50 metres in length and 31 metres in width. Its central nave rises 24 metres, while the tower reaches 76 metres. The sanctuary lies at the east end and the principal entrance is on the south. A high central nave stands above lower side aisles, creating the basilical arrangement. The main nave and sanctuary share a gabled roof, while the aisles and attached chapels have lower roof forms. The church can accommodate about 3,000 people, including approximately 500 seated.
Core church and tower
Sanctuary and nave
The polygonally terminated presbytery is covered by a net vault, a rib vault whose intersecting ribs form a network pattern. A broad, profiled stone triumphal arch separates it from the main nave and supports a late fifteenth-century Calvary group. The nave and presbytery have net rib vaults resting on five-sided capitals decorated with stylized vegetal ornament and a central coat of arms. Their ribs have simple double chamfers. High Gothic windows, mostly divided into three sections and fitted with glazing, light the main nave and sanctuary.
The central nave is raised above the side aisles and receives light through basilical windows on the south. The side aisles have simple quadripartite vaults resting on the perimeter walls and figurative capitals. The capitals vary rather than repeating a single design. The roofs of the main nave and sanctuary are separated by a stepped fire wall topped by a small bell turret with a cross. Most other roofs are covered with fired tiles, while the southern aisle has a very shallow metal-covered lean-to roof.
West end and organ oratory
At the western end, a Gothic buttress system reinforces the facade, with arches spanning the passages. The stone gable is edged with crockets and crowned by a large rose window. A two-leaved gate leads from this side toward the park, and its tympanum contains a Neo-Gothic relief of the town coat of arms with three angels. The western end of the nave also contains a royal organ oratory, carried on an arcade with profiled bases and covered by a star vault. A stone spiral staircase provides access to it.
South-western tower
The large tower occupies the south-western corner of the church. It has a square plan and six stories, separated externally by stone string courses. The fourth story contains the belfry, the fifth accommodates the clock mechanism, and the sixth contains a wooden arcaded gallery and viewing platform. The upper structure has a carved railing, a pyramidal roof, and a four-metre metal cross, with four smaller roofs at the corners. The tower’s present form is substantially the result of the late nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic rebuilding. A stylized stone relief of the town arms decorates its southern wall.
Chapels, sacristy, and upper spaces
Southern chapels
The southern side contains a porch and three chapels. The Chapel of the Virgin Mary has a polygonal eastern termination and a pyramidal roof. Above the entrance porch is the Chapel of St. Elizabeth, while the Chapel of St. Andrew stands between the porch and the tower. St. Andrew’s Chapel retains its original vaults and has a stone balustrade with flame-like tracery, an ornamental framework of flowing, flame-shaped stone forms.
The southern addition beside the aisle includes two chapels with richly ornamented semicircular portals and flanking pinnacles. The eastern chapel has an irregular polygonal termination and a net vault with simple chamfered ribs. The southern oratory has a simple net vault with conical consoles and opens toward the southern aisle through a pointed arch. The western chapel has rectangular walls, a simple net vault, varied consoles, and a southern window with two mullions and geometric tracery.
Sacristy and northern choir
The sacristy is attached to the north wall, with the Chapel of St. Catherine above it. This upper space is also described as the northern choir or an upper chapel. Two separate Gothic profiled portals provide access to the sacristy and northern choir. The smaller portal leads by a stone spiral staircase to the choir. Both spaces have net rib vaults. In the oratory, recessed ribs are cut directly into the wall, and a figurative console depicts St. George fighting the dragon.
Floors and roofing
The main nave, both side aisles, and the two southern chapels have ceramic-tile floors laid in concrete. The southern oratory and the space beneath the tower have concrete floors, while the northern oratory has brick paving. The sacristy and western oratory have plank flooring. The northern aisle and northern oratory share a lean-to roof, and the tower is covered by a pyramidal roof.
Sculpture, paintings, and liturgical furnishings
Calvary and pastophorium
The Calvary, or Golgotha, group beneath the triumphal arch belongs to the late fifteenth century. Its central cross is eight metres high and has a span of nearly five metres. The carefully modelled figure of the crucified Christ is accompanied by two smaller crosses bearing the two thieves. The Virgin Mary and St. John stand beneath Christ’s cross.
At the junction of the sanctuary and main nave stands the stone pastophorium made by Stephen of Košice in 1465. The tower-like Gothic structure has gilded metal doors and is richly ornamented with pinnacles, crockets, tracery, and sculptures of saints. Its form reflects the specialized liturgical role of a pastophorium, a structure associated with keeping and preparing the Eucharistic elements.
Font, stalls, doors, and tomb slabs
The surviving sculpture of St. Giles came from the Gothic high altar made by Master Jacob of Sącz in 1466. It is now incorporated into the Chapel of the Virgin Mary. The church also contains a late Gothic bronze baptismal font dated to 1485. Its cover is made of copper sheet and carries biblical quotations added in the seventeenth century.
Other furnishings include fifteenth-century Gothic choir stalls, seventeenth-century Renaissance benches with rich figurative carving from the workshop of the Levoča woodcarver K. Kolmitz, and Gothic doors dated 1448. A late fifteenth-century Gothic metal chandelier, late Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque liturgical objects, and sandstone and marble tomb slabs from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries add to the surviving interior furnishings.
Wall paintings and exterior statue
Fragments of wall paintings survive on the southern walls of the tower’s first story. Jan Kraus painted them in 1521, showing three kings of Hungary and St. Christopher. The surviving paintings were restored in 1978 and 1979. Outside the church stands a late Baroque stone statue of St. Florian, the patron of firefighters, shown in armour. It commemorates the great fire of 1774. The historic Urban and John bells are displayed near the statue in front of the basilica.
Gothic winged altars
The church contains eleven Gothic winged altars dating from about 1440 to 1520. A winged altar is a late medieval altarpiece with hinged painted or carved panels that reveal different images when opened or closed. The group remains in one place and, to a considerable extent, in its original arrangement.
High Altar of St. Giles
The original High Altar of St. Giles was made in 1466, but the Gothic structure did not survive. An Early Baroque altar replaced it in 1655 and was removed during the nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic restoration. Its surviving central painting, The Descent from the Cross, was made by the Bardejov painter Peter Stöckel as a copy of a work by Peter Paul Rubens. It now hangs in the north side aisle beside the Pietà altar.
The present seventeen-metre-high Neo-Gothic altar was installed in 1878. Imre Steindl designed it, and the workshop of Móric Hölzel carved it. The paintings are by the Hungarian artist Gyula Aggházy. Sculptures of St. Giles, St. Stephen, and St. Ladislaus dominate the structure, which belonged to the Bardejov carpenters’ guild.
Altar of St. Andrew
The Altar of St. Andrew, also called the Altar of All Saints, dates from about 1440 to 1460. It is the only surviving panelled winged altar from the church’s original furnishings. St. Andrew occupies the central panel, while the lower scenes show the Madonna, the Calvary, and the Pietà. The wings contain saints, saintly women, and cycles devoted to Christ and the Virgin Mary. Bishops, prophets, John the Baptist, and the Adoration of the Magi appear in the gables and upper structure.
Altar of St. Barbara
The Altar of St. Barbara dates from about 1450 to 1470 and has a Neo-Gothic upper structure. St. Barbara stands in the shrine, accompanied by female saints. The open wings show the Adoration of the Magi and scenes from her life, while the closed wings depict the Annunciation. The predella contains a late fifteenth-century Trinity of Mercy group flanked by St. John and St. Mark.
Altar of St. Elizabeth the Widow
The Altar of St. Elizabeth the Widow dates from 1480. Its painted panels depict scenes from the life of St. Elizabeth, and the altar belonged to the Bardejov tailors’ guild.
Altars of the Virgin Mary
The Altar of the Virgin Mary, formerly the Altar of St. Anne, dates from 1485. Its small sculptures date from about 1390 to 1410. The wings show episodes from the lives of St. Anne and St. Joachim. The shrine contains the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, flanked by St. Apollonia, St. Elizabeth, St. Barbara, and St. Dorothy.
The Altar of the Virgin Mary known as Veronica Mager’s Altar dates from 1489. Its shrine contains the Madonna and Child with saints at the sides. Reliefs from the life of the Virgin Mary appear on the open wings. The closed wings show St. Barbara and St. Catherine, Saints Cosmas and Damian, St. Ursula and St. Elizabeth, and St. Andrew and St. Erasmus.
Altar of the Nativity
The Altar of the Nativity dates from about 1480 to 1490 and was funded and maintained by the Bardejov weavers’ guild. Its central carving shows the kneeling Virgin Mary before the newborn Christ Child, surrounded by five angels. A town and shepherds with sheep appear in the background, while angels above carry a ribbon bearing the words Gloria in Excelsis Deo. St. Dorothy, St. Margaret, St. Barbara, and St. Catherine flank the shrine.
The predella contains the Adoration of the Magi, the Annunciation, and the Visitation. When open, the wings show scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary; when closed, they display a Passion cycle. The wing paintings are based on engravings by Martin Schongauer.
Altar of the Suffering Redeemer
The Altar of Vir Dolorum, meaning the Suffering Redeemer, dates from about 1500 to 1510. Its shrine contains a sculpture of the Suffering Redeemer. The open wings show scenes from the Passion, while the closed wings depict St. Catherine among scholars, her martyrdom, and her beheading.
Altar of the Holy Cross
The Altar of the Holy Cross dates from about 1480 to 1490. Its shrine contains the Crucified Christ, the Virgin Mary, and St. John. The open wings show the twelve apostles, and the closed wings depict the discovery of the True Cross. The predella contains a Vera Icon, or true image, in a circular frame.
Altar of St. Nicholas, St. Erasmus, and the Virgin Mary
This altar dates from 1505. The shrine contains the Virgin Mary, St. Nicholas, and St. Erasmus. Its wings show scenes from the lives of the Virgin Mary, St. Nicholas, St. Erasmus, St. Lawrence, and St. Eligius.
Altar of St. Apollonia
The Altar of St. Apollonia, also called the Altar of St. Anne Mettercia, dates from about 1485. Its shrine contains St. Anne with the Virgin and Child, St. George, and St. Apollonia. The wings depict the torture of Christians, the Massacre of the Innocents, St. Bibiana, St. Denis, and St. Sophia with her daughters.
Pietà Altar
The Pietà Altar, also called the Altar of the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, dates from about 1480 to 1490. Its shrine contains a sandstone group of the Sorrowful Mother with Christ, made about 1430 to 1440. The wings depict the dead Redeemer, the Transfiguration, and legends of St. Roch and St. John the Almsgiver. Beside the altar hangs The Piercing with the Spear by Peter Stöckel, which came from an earlier Renaissance altar.
Bells
Urban
The original Urban bell was cast in 1584 by the bell founder Jan of Tarnów and his son Jan, using older material. It cracked in 1655 and was recast by an unidentified founder in its original form. The bell has a diameter of 162 centimetres, a height of 165 centimetres, and a mass of 4,000 kilograms.
John and Joseph
The Gothic bell John was made in 1486 by Master Jan Wagner of Spišská Nová Ves. It measures 140 centimetres in diameter and 120 centimetres in height and weighs 2,200 kilograms. It served the church until it cracked in 1990. A replacement weighing 700 kilograms was installed in 2001 and named Joseph.
Signum and the bell display
The tower also contains the Signum bell, made in 1625. New Urban and John bells were installed in the tower in 1995, while the older Urban and John bells are displayed on the pavement in front of the basilica, near the statue of St. Florian.
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