St Valentine's Church – Batina (Kiskőszeg)

St Valentine's Church – Batina (Kiskőszeg)

St Valentine's Church in Batina (Kiskőszeg) stands on a height above the Danube in the north-eastern corner of Baranja (Drávaszög). Built in 1927, the parish church carries on the centuries-old religious tradition of what was once an important Danube crossing.

The Romans already built a fort on this riverside height as part of the Danube limes. The medieval castle of Kőszeg belonged to John, son of Henry, of the Héder clan, from whom King Charles Robert took it by siege in 1316; it was later returned to a member of the family, Péter Herczeg, who founded a Pauline friary here dedicated to the Holy Saviour, standing by 1333. The village was deserted after 1526 and was resettled only after the expulsion of the Ottomans, in the 18th century, by Hungarian, German and South Slav settlers.

The visitation of 1757 found a brick church with a tiled roof and three bells, consecrated in 1758 in honour of St Valentine the Martyr; the parish was founded in 1780. The present church was built in 1927 to designs by Fran Funtak of Vukovar, on a height beside the cemetery. At that time the village was still largely Hungarian: in 1910, 1,854 of its 2,740 inhabitants declared themselves Hungarian.

The single-nave church has two side chapels, a polygonal sanctuary and a sacristy. Its monumental character is emphasised by the columned, round-arched portal of the façade, while the motif of the cross recurs throughout the interior. The high altar is dedicated to St Valentine, and the side altars to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The organ was built in the Angster workshop in Pécs in 1887. The village also has a Baroque niche shrine with a statue of St John of Nepomuk, erected in 1756.

Pilgrimage feast: the church's titular feast is the day of St Valentine the Martyr, 14 February.

Visiting: Batina lies on the right bank of the Danube, at the end of the 638-metre road bridge to Bezdan in Serbia, opened in 1974, about 5 km east of Draž. The church stands on a height above the village, beside the cemetery. Above the village rises Antun Augustinčić's 1947 monument commemorating the Battle of Batina of November 1944.

Sources: Wikipedia – Kiskőszeg (Batina) · Wikipedia (German) · Wikipedia (Croatian)

Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Pasztilla aka Attila Terbócs / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0