Roman Catholic Church – Bilje (Bellye)
The Roman Catholic church of Bilje, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, stands in the centre of this village in Drávaszög (Baranja). Its history is closely linked to the castle of Prince Eugene of Savoy, whose chapel served as the village parish church for decades.
After the victory at the Battle of Zenta (1697), Emperor Leopold I granted extensive estates to Prince Eugene of Savoy in gratitude, among them the Bilje estate. Between 1707 and 1712 the prince had a hunting lodge built here, probably designed by Johann Lukas von Hildebrandt. The cellars of this square building with an inner courtyard once held some 400,000 litres of wine. The castle also had a chapel: the first child was baptised there in 1721, and the chapel served as the parish church until 1775.
The parish of Bilje was founded in 1758, and the present parish church, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, was built in 1775. It was renovated in 1862, and new altars were consecrated in it the following year. After Prince Eugene's death in 1736 the estate passed to the treasury, and in 1780 Maria Theresa granted it to her daughter Maria Christina and her husband, Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen; it then remained in the hands of the Teschen branch of the Habsburgs until the First World War.
During the war in the former Yugoslavia the church was badly damaged: the sacristy burned out, its furnishings and organ were completely destroyed and its bell was taken away. Its restoration began in 1997 and was completed in 2002. The church of the village's Reformed community, present here since the 16th century, also burned down in the war; its renovation was completed in 2019.
Pilgrimage feast: the titular feast of the church is the Immaculate Conception, 8 December.
Visiting: Bilje lies about 5 km north-east of Osijek, on a loess plateau above the Drava floodplain. The church stands in the village centre; the Savoy castle, fully restored in 1974, is on the edge of the village beside the Kopački rit floodplain, and the Reformed church of neighbouring Kopačevo is a few kilometres away.
Sources: Wikipedia · Wikipedia (English) – Savoy Castle · Wikipedia – Kotlina (history of the Bilje estate)
Photo: Spacious AAA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Spacious AAA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Town:
Bilje (Bellye)