Church of St. Leonard (Jesenice)
Encyclopedia
The Church of Saint Leonard is a Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 Parish Church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....

 located in the town of Jesenice in northwestern Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

. It belongs to the Archdiocese of Ljubljana
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Ljubljana
The Roman Catholic Metropolitan Archdiocese of Ljubljana is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovenia. It was erected as the Diocese of Ljubljana by Pope Eugene IV on 6 December 1461 and was immediately subject to the Holy See from its creation until erected...

.

History

The church stands on a small hill in the Murova neighborhood, the town's historic core, and is dedicated to Saint Leonard of Noblac
Leonard of Noblac
Leonard of Noblac or of Limoges or de Noblet , is a Frankish saint closely associated with the town and abbey of Saint-Léonard-de-Noblat, in Haute-Vienne, in the Limousin of France.-Traditional biography:According to the romance that...

. It is first mentioned in documents dating to 1460 and was originally dedicated to Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene
Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus' most celebrated disciples, and the most important woman disciple in the movement of Jesus. Jesus cleansed her of "seven demons", conventionally interpreted as referring to complex illnesses...

. The original Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....

 church had a rectangular nave
Nave
In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

 and pentagon
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.- Regular pentagons :In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and...

al presbytery
Presbytery (architecture)
The presbytery is the name for an area in a church building which is reserved for the clergy.In the oldest church it is separated by short walls, by small columns and pilasters in the Renaissance ones; it can also be raised, being reachable by a few steps, usually with railings....

, and was surrounded with a defensive wall, fortified with three square towers, one of which partially survives in the southern support wall. It was built in the mid 15th century and has its first major rebuilding in 1524 and was remodelled in the Baroque style in the early 18th century.

The west facade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

 features a statue of the Risen Christ
Resurrection of Jesus
The Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus states that Jesus returned to bodily life on the third day following his death by crucifixion. It is a key element of Christian faith and theology and part of the Nicene Creed: "On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures"...

 on a column, a result of an expressionist-inspired
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...

 1930s renovation, planned and to a great degree carried out by the architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

s Dragotin Fatur (a student of Jože Plečnik
Jože Plecnik
Jože Plečnik , was a Slovene architect who practised in Vienna, Belgrade, Prague and Ljubljana.-Biography:...

) and Miro Kos. In the 1960s, the church was again partially remodeled by Ivan Pengov. Most of the church's present appearance is a result of the renovations. Exceptions include the gothic floor plan, Baroque ceiling decorations in the presbytery, and the gothic portal leading to the belfry
Bell tower
A bell tower is a tower which contains one or more bells, or which is designed to hold bells, even if it has none. In the European tradition, such a tower most commonly serves as part of a church and contains church bells. When attached to a city hall or other civic building, especially in...

. Of the former baroque altar
Altar
An altar is any structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes. Altars are usually found at shrines, and they can be located in temples, churches and other places of worship...

s only a few statues and paintings they once held survive. The pipe organ
Pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

 casing was made in 1936 in Šentvid near Ljubljana
Šentvid
The Šentvid District or simply Šentvid is a city district of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia....

.
The stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

 in the eastern lunette
Lunette
In architecture, a lunette is a half-moon shaped space, either filled with recessed masonry or void. A lunette is formed when a horizontal cornice transects a round-headed arch at the level of the imposts, where the arch springs. If a door is set within a round-headed arch, the space within the...

 and south window were manufactured in 1969 in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

 according to Pengov's plans. The church contains paintings by locally well-known artists such as Tone Kralj, Matevž Langus and Ivan Vavpotič.

External links

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