History
The church was built in the second half of the 13th century. There is no historical records of it from the Middle Ages, it was not documented on the known papal tithing list from 1332-1337. At that time, it was probably not a parish church, but only a chapel of ease. It operated at the settlement of Hermanovice, which disappeared in the first half of the 15th century, perhaps due to the war activities of the Hussites of Jan Jiskra. In 1470, the functioning of the new village of Henckovce was already confirmed on the site of the first settlement. The first written mention of the church is associated with canonical visits from the renaissance and Baroque periods. In the 17th century, during the threat of Turkish raids, the building was renovated, decorated with renaissance wall paintings, vaults were built in it, and the entire church was surrounded by a defensive wall with a small belfry. During this period, the medieval windows of the temple were also transformed. In 1900 the church burned down and then was rebuilt. After subsequent years of falling into ruin, thorough repairs began in 2011, followed by a review and renovation of the wall paintings.
Architecture
The church was built on a small hill in the southern part of the settlement, as typical temple for the medieval area of Gemer, a small sacred rural building surrounded by a cemetery, associated with the wave of colonization of German settlers. It received a form consisting of a rectangular, short nave and a narrower, square chancel on the eastern side. Both of these elements were strengthened in the corners with diagonal buttresses. Due to its location on a hill south of the village, the semicircular entrance portal was placed unusually to the medieval building tradition in the northern facade of the nave.
The interior of the church was originally illuminated by two narrow windows: one from the southern side of the nave and one in the eastern facade of the chancel (currently the southern one is enlarged, and the eastern one is bricked up). Additional slit openings were placed in the gable parts: two on the west side and one on the east gable of the nave. The nave was separated from the presbytery by a semicircular arcade, and in the western part of the nave there was probably a wooden gallery. The crowning of both parts of the church was probably initially only a wooden ceiling (possibly an open roof truss in the nave). The modest interior of the church was enriched in the second half of the fourteenth century with wall paintings. During the recent renovation, the image of a rider on the north wall of the nave (probably St. Ladislaus) attacking with a spear pointing downwards with the silhouette of the town visible in the background was unveiled.
bibliography:
Kalinová M., Paulusová S., Kostol Všetkých svätých v Henckovciach – výsledky architektonicko-historického a umeleckohistorického výskumu [w:] Najnovšie poznatky z výskumov stredovekých pamiatok na Gotickej ceste II, red. M.Kalinová, Bratislava 2018.
Website apsida.sk, Henckovce.