History
The small parish church in Sazdice was built around 1330. The owners of the village in the fourteenth century were important figures in the royal court: the court physician of Charles I of Hungary named Gekmin, probably from Wallonia, then the royal physician of Louis I the Great and the financier Jacob Saracén from Italy. Probably to one of them can be attributed the initiative of decorating the interior of the building with frescoes. This was done in the 70s of the 14th century by an unknown Italian artist, distinguished by very high artistry. Then, at the end of the 15th century, the church was slightly rebuilt in the late Gothic style.
Around 1700 the church was baroqueized, probably then the original chancel vault was destroyed and replaced with a new one. The renovation of the interior fittings was carried out in the years 1865 – 1866. In 1885 the roof truss was replaced, but in 1897 the church was closed due to another renovation. During it, medieval polychromes were discovered, which were later restored, and a gallery was installed inside. Despite renovation works, the condition of the building deteriorated significantly in the following years. In 1927, an initiative was taken to expand the church, fortunately this project was not implemented, and only in 1932, a small porch was placed on the west side. The renovation of the church was also carried out in the years 1988-1993, and in the years 2000-2007 the medieval frescoes were restored.
Architecture
The church was built as a small single-nave building with a square, narrower than the nave chancel on the eastern side, to which the sacristy adjoined on the northern side. The latter received quite impressive dimensions for such a small church.
The entrance to the temple was placed in the southern wall of the nave, in a pointed, Gothic portal with a moulded only upper part. The interior of the church was illuminated by small, pointed-arched windows, slightly larger and decorated with trefoil only in the presbytery. In the middle, the nave was covered with a flat, wooden ceiling, while the chancel and sacristy were topped with cross-rib vaults. In addition, a sedilia was placed in the southern wall of the presbytery, embedded in a semicircular recess, the inner surface of which was decorated with a figural painting, and in the eastern wall of the chancel, there was a stone pastophorium in the shape of a pointed recess filled with trefoil.
The interior of the church was covered with wall paintings. At the time of the domination of the Gothic style, the Italian artist already brought to them elements of the rising Renaissance. The artist used the fresco technique of precise, geometric sketches before painting. Their exceptional qualities were evidenced by the originality of the concepts of the shown scenes, which were not, as was most often the case in medieval wall painting, taken from a template, but had original, unique motifs.
Current state
The church in Sazdice is one of the best preserved rural Gothic buildings in Slovakia. It has survived practically unchanged with all the window jambs, the entrance portal, the vault in the sacristy as well as the recesses of the sedila and the pastophorium in the presbytery. The early modern transformations were limited to the western porch, turret on the ridge of the roof and the rebuilt vault in the presbytery. A very valuable example of wall painting of an exceptionally high artistic level have partially survived. The frescoes are best preserved on the southern and eastern wall of the chancel and on the chancel arch.
bibliography:
Website apsida.sk, Sazdice.