Church of Saint Wenceslaus in Lažany, Religious monument in Lažany, Czech Republic.
The Church of Saint Wenceslaus in Lažany is a single-nave Gothic church with Romanesque foundations, standing on a slight hill by the main road. It has a three-sided presbytery, a trapezoidal sacristy on the north side, and a prismatic tower with slit windows at its base. The presbytery has cross-ribbed vaulting with figural corbels, while the nave has a flat ceiling.
First documented in 1350 as a parish church of the Litomyšl diocese, it was built during the settlement of the northern Bohemian-Moravian Highlands supported by the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice. In 1425 Hussite troops damaged it after the abbot of Podlažice was burned at a pond in Lažany. A south porch and a raised tower were added in the second half of the 16th century under the Berka of Dubá family, as the dates 1545 and 1599 on the first-floor tower portal show. It became a filial church of Skuteč in 1677.
The church is linked to the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice, known for the Codex Gigas, whose abbot was burned at the pond "Spálivka" in Lažany in 1425. The Rychmburk estate owners installed priests here and buried family members in the church; the Šťastný of Valdštejn family also used it as a burial place.
The church stands on a slight hill by the main road in Lažany, part of the town of Skuteč in the Pardubice Region. A wall with a Baroque gate and a statue of St Wenceslaus in a niche surrounds the whole grounds. The building has been under reconstruction since 2018; the interior and the tower plaster were finished in February 2021.
Restoration surveys before the 2018 works uncovered a sgraffito on the tower, a decorative technique not previously recorded there. The tower itself was raised in the second half of the 16th century under the Berka of Dubá family, as the dates 1545 and 1599 on the first-floor portal show.
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