Lipovník, Church of St. John the Baptist

For more than a century before the oldest known written mention of Lipovník, in a document from 1243 issued by Bel IV. mentions a monastery which, according to the analysis of the description of the borders, lies on the territory of today's Lipovník district. From this document we learn that Belo IV, then King of Hungary, donated to Comes Philip and Detrician for help in the fighting against the Tatars, as well as for other services, the property of poor Comrade Borsa and also some royal property. In the deed of gift, when describing the boundaries of the donated territory, the monastery is mentioned, which together with the territory of Dubodel and the castle the monarch removed from the donated territory and kept.

The fact that there was a monastery on the territory of today's Lipovník in the Middle Ages is also evidenced by the local church. Given the surprising extent of the Romanesque part of the building, it is clear that it was not a simple village church, but a majestic, important in its dimensions, and from the historical point of view extremely valuable architecture. According to these findings, it can be assumed that the original church belonged to the abbey and was built by local monks.

Older literature states that it was a Cistercian abbey founded in 1141. Several historians have pointed to the misinterpretation of the mention in one register of abbeys and the subsequent rewriting of this information without verification. In our monograph on the village, which has only been published in Hungarian so far, we have paid more attention to this topic.

The lack of written as well as other reports on the existence of the monastery does not allow us to give more detailed answers to the questions to which church order this monastery belonged (it is considered a Benedictine or St. John's). We can assume that the abbey disappeared as early as the 13th century or at the latest, at the beginning of the 14th century.

The church is a single-nave building with a polygonally terminated presbytery, a sacristy and a tower. The current tower and extension of the nave date from 1894. The planned documentation of the church from the time of the last reconstruction in the 19th century indicated a defunct chapel on its northern side, which was confirmed by a geophysical survey from 1990 and later archaeological research.

Like the sacristy, the presbytery can be dated to the beginning of the 15th century. The triumphal arch separating the presbytery from the longitudinal nave has heel ledges. The nave is vaulted with a shallow segmental barrel vault with hints of lunettes. There is a brick organ choir on the west side. The facades are smooth, only the tower has a pseudo-Romanesque design and is finished with a brick pyramid.

Inside the church above the entrance to the sacristy below the vault there are Gothic murals from the early 15th century depicting the scene of the Nativity. On the north wall at the head of the vault, another part of the original Christological motif of the Adoration of the Magi was proved by a sounding. The survey also proved the existence of murals on the walls of the polygon and on the south wall of the presbytery.

Thanks to Viktor Myskovsky, who can be considered one of the founders of monument care in Hungary, his drawings depicting paintings in the presbytery from the 14th century have been preserved, as they could be seen during the reconstruction in 1882. Miskovszky further describes the state of preservation, resp. . damage to these rare frescoes. Unfortunately, despite his efforts to prevent this rare painting from becoming further devastated, it became even more severely devalued over the next 100 years. It is current research that gradually reveals these medieval paintings.

The main altar, pulpit and side altar are part of the furniture, which was made for the church at the end of the 19th century by Count Dionýz Andrássy and his wife František. They also ordered colored stained glass windows for the sanctuary.

The main altar is neo-Gothic, with a horizontally designed two-wing architecture on the sides of the central tabernacle with a sanctuary made in the manner of early Gothic medieval altars made of polychrome wood carving. Sculptures of four evangelists and two angels are placed in the shallow niches of the arcades of the arcade wings. At the top of the tabernacle there is a second sculpture of the heart of Jesus and on the sides of the altar on the canteen there are two sculptures of kneeling adoring angels. It is located on the left side of the triumphal arch. The side altar located on the south side of the triumphal arch is also made in the second half of the 19th century. It is an altar with a three-part altar cabinet with statues of St. Stephen, St. Ján Nepomucký and the statue of St. Families. It is made of polychrome woodcarving. The altars, like the pulpit, were made by the carver and gilder Július Fuhrmann in a workshop in Spišsko-Novove (originally from Budapest) in the second half of the 19th century.