St. Margaret's Parish Church, Planina pri Sevnici

St. Margaret's Parish Church stands in Planina pri Sevnici, a village in the hills above Sevnica in the Posavje region of southeastern Slovenia, on a slope among meadows, orchards and woods. The district is typical of this part of Lower Styria, with scattered farms, small vineyards and ridges that run toward the Sava valley, and the church is the main historic building of the settlement, the place where the community has gathered for services, weddings, funerals and village feasts for centuries. Details of its history are modest, but they illustrate the way that a rural parish church grew and changed over time.

The oldest parts are medieval. The nave and the presbytery, the chancel where the altar stands, are believed to go back to the fifteenth century, a period when many Gothic village churches were built or rebuilt across the Slovene lands with a rectangular nave and a narrower chancel at the east end. Churches of this type usually have steep roofs, small pointed windows and thick walls of rubble masonry, and they were often placed on a rise so that they could be seen from the surrounding hamlets. The bell tower was added later, in the first half of the seventeenth century, a typical feature of the period, usually topped by a pyramidal or onion-shaped roof.

Around the year 1700, the interior was remodelled in the Baroque taste. The flat or ribbed ceiling was replaced with a barrel vault, which gave the nave a smoother, more unified look, and the church was furnished with altars and sculptures in the style of the time. Much of the furniture that can be seen today dates from the eighteenth century, with altars carved and painted by regional craftsmen, and the church was renovated again in the nineteenth century, in 1871, which accounts for some of its present appearance. The result is a layered building in which Gothic bones, Baroque vaulting and later furnishing sit together.

The patron saint is Margaret of Antioch, a martyr of the early church who is often shown with a dragon, since according to legend she emerged unharmed from the belly of a dragon. She is invoked as a protector of women in childbirth, and her feast is celebrated in July, which is when parishes in her name often hold a pilgrimage or a village fair.

Visits are best arranged around services or by asking locally, since village churches are not always open outside worship. The church suits visitors interested in religious architecture and local history, and it makes a pleasant stop on a drive or bicycle ride through the hills of Posavje. Dress modestly, and keep in mind that it is a working parish church.