History
Dražovce (Hungarian: Zobordarázs) was first recorded in 1113, along with seventy other settlements, in connection with the reconnaissance of the property of Benedictine Abbey of St. Hippolytus in Zobor, following the devastating raid by Otto II, Prince of Olomouc, in 1109. At that time, “De villa Drasey” was still a private knightly estate, within grounds a Bronze or Iron Age fortified settlement was located, and the first Romanesque church was built around the mid-11th century. It was likely destroyed in the following century.
A second Romanesque church was built in Dražovce at the beginning of the 12th century, on the foundations of an earlier church. In the 12th or 13th century, it came under the administration of the Benedictine monastery of Zobor. Presumably, it was rebuilt at the monks initiative after the Mongol invasion of 1241-1242. At that time, the upper sections of the walls were rebuilt, a western turret was added, and a gallery was most likely placed inside. In the later Middle Ages, Dražovce was recorded sporadically in documents. Among them, the first mention of the church itself was recorded in 1414 (“in Orozey Capelle sancti Michaelis”).
Following the dissolution of the Benedictine monastery, Dražovce along with other abbey properties passed to the Nitra bishopric. In the second half of the 17th century, the church was in poor condition. At the end of the 18th century, it was rebuilt, during which the perimeter walls of the nave were raised, the entrance was widened, the gallery and tower windows were modified, and the interior furnishings were replaced. In 1803, a new church was built directly in the village, thus eliminating St. Michael’s church from its original purpose. Fortunately, it escaped demolition, and renovations were carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Architecture
St. Michael’s church was built on a lofty promontory of the Zobor massif, surrounded by a wide bend of the Nitra River, which flowed a few hundred meters to the north and west, and further south. To the west, the building was bounded by very steep escarpments. High and steep slopes also existed to the north and south, while to the east, the promontory was enclosed by the stone and earth rampart of a former prehistoric stronghold, which separated the promontory from the rest of the hill. Furthermore, in the Middle Ages, the church was surrounded by an oval cemetery measuring approximately 30 x 35 meters.
The original 11th-century church had a similar layout to the later one, consisting of a rectangular nave and an eastern apse. However, its nave was slightly narrower than the 12th-century nave, and the apse was more horseshoe-shaped than semicircular. The first church was built of rubble stone, bonded with a yellowish, very uniform mortar. The 12th-century church was built on old foundations, using flat unworked stones of various sizes, reinforced at the corners with large blocks, perhaps taken from an older structure in the Nitra area. After the church’s reconstruction in the 13th century, the original walls were preserved to a height of approximately 3-3.5 meters, while the upper sections were rebuilt in bricks.
The 12th-century church was built as a small, Romanesque structure, approximately 10 meters long, with an aisleless nave ended with a semicircular apse on the east side and a quadrangular turret from the 13th century, rising from the western part of the nave. The nave’s internal dimensions reached 6.3 × 4.4 meters, while the apse was 2.9 meters wide. The walls were irregularly thick, approximately 0.7 meters. The only windows in the nave, like those in most medieval rural churches, were placed high on the south façade. Additional windows illuminated the apse, where initially a single, splayed on both sides and semicircular opening placed on the axis, and in the 13th century a second, slightly larger window was added to the southeast. The wide windows in the turret were originally located on two levels: lower windows on the north and south sides, and upper ones on all four cardinal directions. The lower windows had three late Romanesque flat arches, the upper ones were semicircular. The entrance to the church was located in the southern wall of the nave, closer to the western corner. After the walls were rebuilt in the 13th century, the apse was decorated with a frieze in the shape of a repeating Cyrillic letter Ұ.
At the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, a two-space annex was built on the southern side of the church, perhaps related to the fact that the church was then owned by Benedictine monks. The main part of the annex had external dimensions of 6.5 x 3.8 meters, making it almost as long as the nave, and on the eastern side it was connected to a smaller rectangular room measuring 3.2 x 2 meters, so that the entire extension reached approximately the length of the entire church. The annex obscured the church’s original three southern windows, so two or three new openings were made higher in the southern wall of the nave. The old windows were renewed when the annex was demolished at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, while the openings from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries were bricked up.
A gallery (matroneum) was built inside the church’s nave, most likely added later, after the church had been built. This is evidenced by the uneven spacing of the pillars and only a single pilaster along the wall. The gallery on the ground floor rested on three semicircular arcades, supported by rectangular pillars with simple, quadrangular, cup-shaped capitals, created by a strict cut of the mass without moulding. The ground floor was originally covered only with arch bands connecting the gallery wall to the western wall of the nave. Later, the gallery was vaulted with domed bays. On the first floor, the gallery originally had a wall only with a central semicircular arcade, probably filled with a wooden balustrade in the parapet. Later, a wall was added to the sides, into which two wider and lower arcades were inserted. Access to the first floor was likely via a wooden staircase. The interior of the apse was covered with a conch. Wall shelves were created in its northern and southern walls.
Current state
The church of St. Michael in Dražovce is one of the most valuable monuments of early medieval architecture in Slovakia, and at the same time it is exceptionally picturesquely situated. Its current appearance is the result of a 13th-century reconstruction, combined with alterations introduced in the early modern period. The latter resulted in the heightening of the nave walls, which obscured part of the tower walls and led to the bricking up of its lower windows, which were partially covered by a higher roof. Unfortunately, the original entrance portal to the nave has not survived, but the original 12th- and 13th-century windows in the apse and Romanesque windows in the nave are still visible. The latter were partially transformed during later renovations. The tower is now pierced by early modern windows, fortunately simple enough not to significantly affect the Romanesque character of the building. Furthermore, a single bricked-up opening can be seen in the center of the nave, made due to the addition of the unpreserved southern annex. A significant element of the church is the preserved gallery in the nave.
