History
The church was built around the second 30 years of the 13th century. The village of Hokovce itself, situated on an important medieval road connecting Esztergom with the Middle-Slovak mining towns and Poland, was mentioned in written sources for the first time in 1245 as part of the Premonstratensian monastery in Šahy. In the middle of the fifteenth century, a new polygonal chancel was built, which replaced the original, smaller ones of unknown shape. In the years 1743-1744 after the disaster of the fire, the building underwent baroque reconstruction. In 1854, a tower was added, west of the gothic nave. The church restaurant was completed in 1958. The building received a new roof, and a romanesque stonework and gothic windows were discovered on the southern wall of the nave. Further works were carried out in 1996-1997 and 2008-2009.
Architecture
The church was originally a simple structure consisting of a single nave ended with an apse. In the mid-fifteenth century, the old chancel or apse was removed, and in its place a gothic chancel was erected with a polygonal closing on the eastern side. Its walls were reinforced with buttresses, between which pointed windows were pierced. At first, the nave was illuminated from the south by small, low, semicircular romanesque windows, and then early Gothic pointed, narrow but high windows with stone traceries. The entrance to the interior led through a gothic portal in the western wall, a gothic saddle portal also led from the chancel to the northern sacristy. Inside, the presbytery was covered with a rib net vault referring to the style of Petr Parler, flowing onto the suspended corbels, three of which have a figural form. The nave was originally covered with a wooden ceiling or an open roof truss.
Current state
From the Romanesque period, at least the western part of the southern wall of the nave has survived, with bricked up Romanesque windows, one of which is partially covered by a newer buttress. The chancel with the original vault and a few architectural details comes from the Gothic period. Gothic is also the western portal, the portal to the sacristy and two bricked up early-Gothic windows in the eastern part of the southern wall of the nave. In the northern wall of the presbytery there is a stone gothic pastophory.
bibliography:
Website apsida.sk, Hokovce.