These articles were published in the Spectacular Slovakia travel guide, published annually by The Slovak Spectator since 1996. The latest editions can be obtained from our online shop.


Wooden Churches

A Slovak pilgrimage

By Laura Kelly

    
 
 photo: Spectator archives

Dusk on a summer weekday. As the waning sunlight threw its thick orange afterglow over the countryside, I climbed the hill to the wooden church in Šemetkovce, a pinpoint village about six kilometres east of Svidník. Chocolate brown shingles cover the church and its three onion domes. Blue paint trims the windows. Cyrillic inscribes a cross standing near the front door. And then the church bells pealed; the belfry shook with each chime.

A sonic omen, I thought. A sign. I had travelled to north-eastern Slovakia on a pilgrimage to see some of the dozen or so wooden churches in this corner of the country. I wanted to sketch them into my journal, to witness a singular facet of Slovakia, to contemplate the beguiling otherness of these fragile houses of worship.

Svidník is the largest city in the north-eastern corner of Slovakia where the Polish, Slovak and Ukrainian borders draw near. This region is home to the Rusyns (Ruthenians), a minority with Ukrainian roots who don't have a country to call their own and who have knitted over the years their own culture, language and religion. A scattering of wooden churches here is a living and working testimony to the multinational influences that comprise Rusyn culture. The churches lure curious travellers, architecture buffs, photo hounds and erstwhile anthropologists with their quiet elegance and simplicity.

The wooden Rusyn church, like the one in Šemetkovce, is a bit aloof, built away from other structures on a hilltop, crest or ridge so it looks down upon the village in regal positioning. But up close, the churches seem almost miniaturised, the antithesis of the soaring cathedrals that dot Europe. Usually, a cemetery crouches nearby, and the belfry sits separately (in addition to announcing birth and death and the call to services, the devout believe the bells can chase away ominous storm clouds). All have shingled roofs. Most are built of spruce, a hearty wood, but oak and beech are also used. The wood is stained a coffee bean brown but on several - Korejovce and Krajné Čierno are two - a new layer of blonde wood has been added to the exterior as the original wood has fallen prey to termites and the elements. On some, bulbous onion domes (most have three) give the profile a touch of whimsy. Filigreed crosses crown each steeple or dome. Each church sits in a thicket of trees, which were planted to act as light

All are protected monuments but not museum pieces. Services are held, worshippers congregate, the dead are buried, the young marry.

Most of the churches were built in the 18th century, though the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Hervartov - one of the few Roman Catholic wooden churches in this region - is Slovakia's oldest; it was built around 1500. The churches are primarily Greek Catholic or Uniate, a 500-year-old hybrid religion that acknowledges the Pope as the ultimate authority, eschews Latin and conducts its liturgy in its own Slavonic tongue, and practices the rites and rituals of the Orthodox church.

Seeing these architectural gems calls for a car, even though a dozen churches sit in villages on ancillary roads that spider from a 15-kilometer stretch of E371 between Svidník and the Polish border. Beholding the churches means committing to map reading and navigating patched single-lane roads, to visiting villages so small that your arrival will be the day's headline, to succumbing to urges to photograph photograph photograph.

For the actively inclined, a car can be combined with some hiking; trail markers point off of E371 toward a handful of the churches. St. Francis of Assisi church is the endpoint for a 7-kilometre red-marked trail hike from Bardejov. Four churches north-east of Svidník - those in Bodružal, Miroľa, Kožuchovce and Príkra - can be hiked to in a day.

The churches bear Kultúrna Pamiatka (Cultural Monument) plaques and are locked when not in use; most have signs listing the key keeper. Entering the front door means crouching for all except children. Inside, the most sacred and ornate feature is the iconostasis, the area between the nave and the altar. As the name suggests, it is here that the icons of the church's namesake and other sacred figures adorn the walls in tapestries, frescoes, paintings, murals. Iconostases range from florid rococo design to a Shaker simplicity. The scant pews are for the elders.

Nižný Komárnik, built in 1933, has the most photogenic exterior. Its hexagonal domes are trimmed in yellow and russet. A wooden fence encircles it and meadows surround the church, which sits high above a village dotted with shanties. The church in Ladomirová is quiet and lovely with a light dusting of mould growing on the north side of the roof, adding the only colour counterpoint to the dark wood. The three-tower Mother Mary church in Jedlinka, 14 kilometres east of Bardejov, is obscured and dwarfed by a grove of trees. A red fence surrounds Dobroslava's wooden church. Three boxy steeples line up like good soldiers, standing sentinel over the cemetery.

The author of this story visited the following wooden churches for this article: Hervartov, Šemetkovce, Kožuchovce, Miroľa, Krajné Čierno, Korejovce, Dobroslava, Jedlinka, Nižný Komárnik, Hunkovce, Ladomirová, Príkra, Bodružal.

These articles and related information were published in Spectacular Slovakia 2001.


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