Pfarrkirche Lind

The Catholic parish church of St Martin stands on the village square in the former hamlet of Lind, now part of the town of Spielberg in the Murtal district of Styria. A Roman Catholic church dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, it belongs to the deanery of Knittelfeld in the diocese of Graz-Seckau and is listed as a protected monument. The building began in 1103 when Duke Henry III of Carinthia gave it to St Lambrecht Abbey, which installed a convent of seven monks in 1155. The original Romanesque structure gained a Gothic choir, while the nave was later vaulted in the Baroque style. Inside, frescoes from the early 15th century were uncovered in 1971 beneath layers of later paint, showing scenes of the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion and Saint Martin. Visitors enter a three-bay nave with Romanesque walls and a Baroque cross-ribbed vault. The raised Gothic choir has a five-sided apse and ribbed vaults supported on carved corbels, two bearing inscribed scrolls and two bearing coats of arms. On the north wall of the nave, a late 18th-century fresco depicts Saint Michael. The high altar, altered in the 19th century, holds a painting of Saint Martin from the late 17th century, and a bell cast by Hans Mitter in 1456 still rings.