The Church of St. John the Baptist in the Vlach Village of Orawka (the 17th century) – Identification of Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage Assets

Abstract

The church of St. John the Baptist in Orawka, located close to the present-day Polish-Slovak border, is one the most valuable monuments of wood architecture. It is considered the oldest wooden monument in Orawa and a symbol of the region’s complicated history. Its heritage is a testament to the interacting cultures of different nations and ethnicities, among others: Vlach, Ruthenian, Hungarian, Slovak and Polish. This article’s objective is a new attempt at identification of assets of cultural heritage found in the church in Orawka. We present historical objects of art, as well as the iconographic program of the church’s interior. We also describe the main rituals and customs linked to the church, practiced by the local population to this day. In our research, we employed qualitative methods – analysis of historic and iconographic sources, as well as open-ended interviews, and participant observation conducted in the years 2015–2019 in the local community of Orawka. In the analysis of the material, we use both the perspectives of ethnography and cultural anthropology, supplemented with an input from other scientific disciplines and sub-disciplines, primarily history, historical anthropology, history of art and theology.