Saint James' the Elder church is a Romanesque

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

Štvrtok na Ostrove Štvrtok na Ostrove (, , formerly ) is a village and municipality in the Dunajská Streda District in the Trnava Region of south-west Slovakia. Geography The village is in the Danubian Lowland and is in the western part of Žitný ostrov (Csall ...

Slovakia Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's m ...

. The church was first mentioned in 1333. The consecration to Saint James the Elder is the oldest to this

Apostle An apostle (), in its literal sense, is an emissary. The word is derived from Ancient Greek ἀπόστολος (''apóstolos''), literally "one who is sent off", itself derived from the verb ἀποστέλλειν (''apostéllein''), "to se ...

in Slovakia. The prevailing building material used for the original construction in the mid-13th century building boom were bricks. The majority of the romanesque churches in this region of Slovakia is from this period. The two-tower design though makes this church unique on the

Žitný ostrov Žitný ostrov (), also called Veľký Žitný ostrov (; , ) to differentiate it from Szigetköz, Malý Žitný ostrov (; ; ), is a river island in southwestern Slovakia, extending from Bratislava to Komárno. It lies between the Danube, its tribu ...

. The only similar one is the church of the Benedictine Abbey of Diakovce. The original face of the church is unknown. It was a single-nave building with a two-tower facade. What the

sanctuary A sanctuary, in its original meaning, is a sacred space, sacred place, such as a shrine, protected by ecclesiastical immunity. By the use of such places as a haven, by extension the term has come to be used for any place of safety. This seconda ...

once looked like is not known. It is probable that it had the form of an

apse In architecture, an apse (: apses; from Latin , 'arch, vault'; from Ancient Greek , , 'arch'; sometimes written apsis; : apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical Vault (architecture), vault or semi-dome, also known as an ' ...

with a semi-circular ending, like in the neighboring villages of Mierovo and Alžbetin Dvor, or with a straight end, like in the neighboring village of Hubice. The church is not a classic brick building because the foundations and the lower part of the towers along with other architectural details are made of stone. The existing polygonal presbytery replaced the apse in the 14th century. An earthquake with the epicentre in Komárno struck the church in 1590. The impaired structure caused the northern tower to collapse. It was rebuilt and simultaneously the original single-nave space was arched with two supporting pillars which changed it into a two-naved space. The northern nave was built out and a two-storey building with a square ground plan was added to the southern tower. The medieval character of the church was enhanced during its renovation in the 1960s and 1970s when the neo-gothic southern entrance hall was removed and the first floor of the southern tower received a pair of composite windows.

References

Dunajská Streda District Churches in Trnava Region Romanesque church buildings 1330s in Europe {{Slovakia-church-stub