The Church and the Settlement: Church and Settlement Interaction in Medieval Pezinok

Abstract

The development of many settlements was not only determined by regional and economic factors, but could rely on a quite different motivation, when it was firmly tied to an important magnate family, for whom the town would become a residential and memorial environment. This was, of course, linked not only to the construction of a representative family residence, but also to the appertaining ecclesiastical centre, which usually functioned in the already existing, older local church. Therefore, in our study we will take a closer look not only at the settlement of Pezinok itself and its military guard, toll and market functions, but also at the formation of its ecclesiastical centre – the parish and the Parish Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary – because the factor of the magnate’s residence gave it a distinct position in the territory of the Bratislava Provostry. Pezinok was already of considerable importance in Great Moravian times, as it was a settlement situated in the immediate vicinity of a strategic pass through the Little Carpathians. It was this location that resulted in the fact that even after the establishment of the Kingdom of Hungary, its importance was preserved and by the eleventh century at the latest, a Hungarian guard garrison settled here, in the vicinity of an older Slavic settlement with a market and toll function. The settlement situation and archaeological findings make it possible to express the opinion that there must have been a sacral building here already at this time, which survived until the major rebuilding in the fourteenth century. From 1207 Pezinok became the property of the noble Hont-Poznan family, the ancestors of the local counts. After being settled by a German population, it developed towards urban agglomeration, as a result of which it has been called a town since the fifteenth century. Throughout the period, its parish church was an important centre of the settlement.