Saint Oswald Church

Pfarrkirche St. Oswald stands on a gentle slope in the village of Sankt Oswald bei Zeiring, part of the municipality of Pölstal in the Murtal district of Styria. The Roman Catholic parish church is dedicated to Saint Oswald and belongs to the Upper Styria West region of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau. Both the church and its adjoining cemetery are protected as historic monuments. The building’s history begins with a church recorded in 1285. Its remarkable two-aisled late-Gothic hall was begun around 1468 by the master builder Caspar, a citizen of Judenburg, and vaulted between 1496 and 1499 by Christoph Marl. After a 1903 renovation, the interior was restored in 1956 and the exterior in 1980. The exterior shows stepped buttresses and a three-storey west tower built in 1471, heightened in 1558 and repaired in 1733, topped by an octagonal onion spire with side gables. Inside, a two-aisled, five-bay hall has a net-ribbed vault with a central square panel on octagonal piers. The raised choir is single-bay with an eight-sided end, its vault resting on three-quarter-round responds. The high altar of 1772, painted by Ignaz Loy of Judenburg, features a central image of Saint Oswald flanked by statues of four saints.