St. James in Levoca

Unfortunately, due to the no photography rule, the photographs that I have from St. James in Levoca are poor and blurry, so I'm going to have to describe this church to you, dear readers, instead. (St. James is the church with the "Cage of Shame" outside of it.)

This church is most remarkable for containing the tallest Gothic altar of any church. Master Pavol, or Master Paul, a 16th century sculptor, created this altar. Master Paul's Madonna, from the Levoca church, used to be on the old Slovak 100 SK note, as you can see in the picture, before they changed to Euros several years ago. Master Paul seems to have gotten his start in Krakow before ending up in Eastern Slovakia, and they are quite proud of him there. Below is a detail from the altar, which I found a picture of on the good old internet.


At one point, St. James was a half-Protestant and half-Catholic church--the front half was Catholic and the back half was Protestant. I'm really not sure how that worked, except that the pulpit is located in the back half of the church (which is much farther back than most Gothic church pulpits) and is remarkably ornate. This pulpit is sitting squarely on Moses' head (a Moses with horns, which I always like). I'm not really sure what the idea is of putting the pulpit on Moses' head--in another church I visited (in Switzerland), the pulpit was sitting on Abraham's head.

But really, my favorite part of St. James in Levoca is the pew of the White Lady of Levoca. The White Lady of Levoca. The story is that the White Lady of Levoca was remarkably beautiful. She would arrive late each week at mass and walk to her special, carved pew in the front of the church. She would distract all of the men. After a while of this, they moved her to the back of the church, behind a pillar, where no one could see her and she would be less of a distraction. The story is that if a young unmarried woman sits in that pew, she will be married in a year and a day.

This White Lady, Julia Korponayova, really existed. There are more legends about her, which I'm unclear about, but which have her betraying the town to rebels because she fell in love with their leader (by giving them keys to a secret passageway, which you can see her unlocking in the picture above). She still haunts the town.