Little Wooden Churches in Eastern Slovakia.

Slovakia has become a country of various kinds of culture thanks to its location in the centre of Europe and due to the historical development. Becouse of that it has got a lot of looks and faces nowadays. During the centuries valuable monuments have been risen. Some of them belong to the treasury of the world culture indisputably. A part of it is a group of little wooden churches of the eastern rite - "cerkva" in the Ruthenian-Ukrainian parts of Northeastern Slovakia. They are protected as national cultural monuments. The most of them date back to the 17^th and 18^th Century. The oldest building have not been left becouse the material, of which they were constructed, was not weather-resistant enough.

All little wooden churches have got a dominant place in the housing of the villages. They are usually situated on higher sites, sometimes rather difficult accessible, excentric to the other buildings in the village. Small cemetries with simple wooden, sandstone and cast-iron crosses are their part, too. The whole complex is enclosed by a log or stone fence with a shingled gate. In some cases a wooden bell-tower completes the architectural complex very suitably.

The little wooden churches in Eastern Slovakia have the basic construction of a blockhouse. The construction offers a lot of opportunities from the point of view of the ground plan design and of the formal shape of the object. That´s why beside the rectangular blockhouses there are interesting polygonal constructions in the region. Originally no metal nails were used to joint the logs and other parts of the building.

A characteristic feature of the little wooden churches is their three-part room that symbolized the Holy Trinity as well. The three-part room is intensified with three towers that are gradually hingher towards the west.

The shingles were used as an exclusive material for the roofs of the cult buildings. Various geometric ornaments of carpenters or artists of wood-cut may be found on the roof and other architectural details. The decoration resulted even from the putting and profiling the shingels and lathwork. In some cases metal was used as a special decorative or functional elemant (railing, window´s and door´s mounting). Iron crosses are especially interesting; they represent artistic skills of village blacksmiths.

The interiors of the little wooden churches are unique and absolutly charming. They were rich decorated with wall and ceiling paintings that were based on the themes from the evangelism. The most important and necessary part of a wooden church is an iconostasis (from Greek - eikon - picture, stasis - building, i. e. a wooden wall with some pictures separating the altar from the main body of the church). It is an artistic and functional core of that religios object, at the same time a touchable evidence of the eastern, i. e. old-Russian, Ukrainian resp., origin. The inconostasis from Galician part of Poland, from Transcarpathian region of Ukraine and from Eastern Slovakia is according to its design very close to that in Byzantium and Balkan.

A characteristic feature of an iconostasis is a strict arrangement of its icones, their advance determined number and composition of the themes. The construction system is also predeterminated by icongraphical rules, so it is common for all sacral buildings of that kind. In the region the oldest monuments of the iconegraphical production date back to the 15^th - 17^th Century. The end of the 16^th Century and the beginning of the 17^th Century represented the bloom of the iconostasis in the region. In an artistic synthesis it joints architecture, monumental paintings and decorative wood-cut.

In Northeastern Slovakia similar to Bojkov region in Transcarpathian Ukraine and Lemkov region in Poland specific historical, political, social-economical, cultural-social as well as natural-climatic conditions resulted in an uniform type of little wooden churches of the eastern rite. The monuments represent a perfect symbiosis of the Christianity and folkart; they are an excellent performance of human genuis through material production. They involve the oldest qualities of the sacral folkarchitecture.

The little wooden churches in Eastern Slovakia reflect not only the basic cultural, moral and esthetic postulates of their authors but the universal spirit of the certain historic period as well. It is an interesting world of the centuries and artistic performance. It was developed during the centuries and up to now people have been fascinated with their unique beauty.