St Nicholas Church – Lockenhaus (Léka)

St Nicholas Church – Lockenhaus (Léka)

St Nicholas Church in Lockenhaus (Léka) is one of the most important early Baroque churches in Burgenland, built by Ferenc Nádasdy, Judge Royal of Hungary, beside the friary of Augustinian Hermits he had founded. Beneath it lies the Nádasdy family crypt, and it is both a parish church and a place of pilgrimage.

The parish of Lockenhaus was already active in the early 13th century, and in the 14th century pastoral care was provided by Franciscans; their medieval friary was destroyed in the Ottoman campaign of 1532. By the end of the 16th century the population had become Lutheran, and the Catholic parish was not re-established until 1660. The turning point came with Ferenc Nádasdy: influenced by a Viennese Augustinian, Nicholas Donellan, the young magnate publicly converted to Catholicism at Csepreg in 1643 and launched a Catholic revival on his estates.

In 1655 Nádasdy founded a friary of Augustinian Hermits in Lockenhaus and had the church built for it to designs by the Italian Pietro Orsolini, who also directed the work. The foundation stone was laid on 2 July 1656; cracks in the walls delayed construction, and the church was consecrated in 1669 in honour of St Nicholas of Myra and the Augustinian St Nicholas of Tolentino. The double dedication also alludes to Father Nicholas, who played a part in Nádasdy's conversion. Nádasdy was executed in 1671, his estates passed to the Esterházy family in 1676, and the friars lived in the monastery until 1820.

The church is laid out as an elongated Greek cross with four semicircular niche chapels at its corners; its façade bears the joint Nádasdy–Esterházy coat of arms. The three-tiered high altar of 1656 fills the entire sanctuary wall; its altarpiece showing the two patron saints was painted by György Kéry in 1675, and its statues include the holy kings Stephen and Ladislaus. A stairway beneath the gallery leads down to the crypt, where members of the Nádasdy and Draskovich families – among them Ferenc Nádasdy – rest alongside Augustinian friars; the chancel of the crypt is decorated with a Dance of Death painted in 1772. The 35-stop Rieger organ, built in 2003, is the largest in the region.

Pilgrimage feast: the feasts of the church's two patrons are St Nicholas of Tolentino, 10 September, and St Nicholas of Myra, 6 December.

Visiting: Lockenhaus lies about 13 km west of Kőszeg, in the valley of the Güns (Gyöngyös) stream. The church stands on slightly raised ground above the main square, with a broad flight of steps leading up to its façade and the former friary adjoining it. Together with nearby Lockenhaus Castle, the church is a venue of the international chamber music festival, and an organ festival has also been held in Lockenhaus since 2003.

Sources: Wikipedia – Léka (Lockenhaus) · Wikipedia (German) · Wikipedia (English)

Photo: C.Stadler/Bwag / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photo: Arths-at / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0