Saint Afra Church

The Pfarrkirche Eggendorf im Thale is a Roman Catholic church in Eggendorf im Thale, a village in the municipality of Hollabrunn in Lower Austria. It stands north of the village centre and is the only church in Austria dedicated to Saint Afra. The building belongs to the Hollabrunn deanery and is protected as a monument. The parish was founded around the middle of the 11th century, possibly after Afra’s canonisation in 1064. Its first written mention appears in a 1135 document where Margrave Leopold III renounced tithes for thirteen parishes, including Eggendorf. In 1156 Duke Henry II Jasomirgott granted the parishes of Pulkau and Eggendorf to the Benedictine Abbey of Our Lady of the Scots in Vienna, which administered the parish until 1995. After the Reformation the church became Protestant from 1565 until the Counter-Reformation restored Catholic worship in 1604. The church combines a neo-Gothic nave built between 1897 and 1899 by Karl Bösig with a 14th-century Gothic choir and a largely Gothic south tower. Inside, the nave has a net-ribbed vault and a pointed arch separates it from the single-bay choir with a five-sided apse. The high altar, side altars, pulpit and pews date from the church’s late 19th-century refit. The organ, built in 1862 by Benedikt Latzl, was installed here in 1896 after being replaced in its original church.