SLOVAKIA Marianka

Marianka is the oldest pilgrimage site in Slovakia which history has been recorded since 1337. Originally the Church of the Virgin Mary’s Birth is gothic. This is the oldest pilgrimage site in Slovakia and its origins and history are partly shrouded in legend. Historians from the Pauline Order, which looked after the site, recorded an oral tradition about a hermit who lived in the valley and carved a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary from pear wood (the Pauline monk Ľudovít Kummer gives a date of 1030). During the disturbances that afflicted Hungary after the death of King Stephen, the hermit had to abandon his hermitage. He hid his statue in a hollow tree. It was rediscovered several decades later.

The way the statue was found is also mysterious. The most widespread legend tells about a robber living in the valley whose partner gave birth to two disabled children. When he saw them, he promised to mend his ways and began to do penance. The Mother of God appeared to him in a dream and showed him a place where he should dig in the ground to find the statue and underneath it a spring. If his children bathed in the spring, they would become healthy. Everything happened as the Blessed Virgin said and the former robber devoted his life to serving God.