The monastery was founded in 1075, or possibly even a little earlier, by Géza I of Hungary. The core of the monastery was the Abbey church and monastery buildings around the so-called paradise courtyard on its southern side. The original Romanesque church, from the period when the monastery was established, was formed by a rather large three-nave building with three semicircular apses on the eastern side and a pair of towers on the western side. We only know the layout of the church from the archaeological excavations that took place here in the 1880s during the restoration of the Gothic church, built in the 14th century, on the site of its Romanesque predecessor. To this day, it still has a relatively coherent High Gothic form despite later modifications. The last substantial modification, that took place in 1881 after a fire in 1881, followed a neo-Gothic style.
The Gothic church is a partial copy of the layout of the original church, a three-nave building with three eastern sanctuaries and two western towers. In the above-ground structure, it is arranged as a three-nave hall with all naves of the same height. On the western side, the layout is supplemented by a matroneum. Elements of architectural morphology, the polygonal forms of the sanctuaries, the cross-rib vaults, inter-nave pillars, piers on the perimeter walls and stone-sculptural decorations, are drawn from the High Gothic repertoire of the Central European area. A richly decorated main portal, set in the central axis of the western façade, leads to the church. The sculptural decoration of the portal has not been wholly preserved. The statues of Christ and the Evangelists under the canopies date from the 19th century. However, the reliefs depicting, among others, the heads of the prophets on the horizontal lintel or the symbols of the four Evangelists on the saddle brackets above the lintel are original. Apart from the church, the most valuable medieval parts of the monastery include, for example, the chapel above the sacristy. It became the place of safekeeping of the precious relic of Christ’s blood (it was donated to the monastery by King Matthias Corvinus in 1483). Monastic life ended in Hronský Beňadik in the 16th century, after which the complex was converted into an anti-Turkish fortress.
Bibiana Pomfyová
