Church of St. Peter and Paul

The so called Kostelní kopec (Church Hill) is a dominant feature of today’s town part Jaktař, and an important location in Opava with a number of archaeological excavations dating to prehistory. Artefacts such as paleolithic flintstons, two mammoth molars, fragments of mammoth tusks, tens of settlement pits with fragments of linear pottery from Early Stone Age, or a bronze lance and an axe from the Bronze Age were found here. It is believed that at the beginning of the 20th century several Celtic coins were found in a sand pit by the church, but they were lost. After the arrival of the Slavonic tribes, the hill could have been used as a fortified settlement, although we have no definite evidence that there was a Slavonic castle by the roads leading to Bruntál and Krnov. From the beginning of the 13th century, the village Jaktař fell under the Olomouc diocese. Some time later it belonged to the so called Moravian Enclaves in Silesia, which until 1928 fell under Silesian administration, but observed Moravian regulation and paid taxes to Moravia. Jaktař was predominantly Czech. When in 1858 a Czech elementary school opened in Jaktař, it was attended by Czech children from Opava and neighbouring villages, because unlike in Opava, Jaktař was free to open a Czech school. The budding Czech culture in the 19th century is closely connected to the activities of Catholic priests. The Jaktař parish played an important role in the process. In the years 1817–1834 the writer Jan Alois Zábranský served a priest in Jaktař. Similarly Jan Vyhlídal, the author of ethnograpic books Slezská svatba or two volumes of Naše Slezsko, also served in Jaktař. In the second and last decade of the first Czechoslovak Republic, chaplain Alois Šebela was transferred from Kateřinky to Jaktař. He later died in Oswiecim. Today the road leading to the church carries his name. Jan Sarkander, who was later canonnized, also shortly served in Jaktař.

The Church of St. Peter and Paul is one of the oldest sacral buildings in today’s Opava Region. It is believed to have been founded before 1246, the construction took place between the years 1241 and 1246, that is before the Mongol Invasion and the first written reference to the church. The chuch is an example of a fortified sacral medieval building. It symbolized the importance of the bishop’s ownership in the area.. The Gothic walls of the almost square nave and the deep presbytery have been preserved. The original ceiling was flat, the nave was supported by five massive buttressess, and in the south it had two portals. The presbytery made of a square field with a pentagonal closing part had one cross and one radial vault. It was supported by three buttresses built on the outside and separated from the nave by a triumphal arch that was later barocized when the nave was vaulted. The sedile reserved for important worshippers and a Gothic sanctuary date back to the 14th century. The sacristy attached to the presbytery in the north has a ribbed vault. The robust pentagonal ribs are joined in the middle by a keystone adorned wit four lilies, which symbolize martyrs’ attributes, and the purity and virtue of Virgin Mary. The early Gotihic church, which is uncommonly large for the rural area, is an evidence of new ideas and artistic expressions in the region.

In the years 1760–1762 the church was barocized by J. G. Werner. The nave was elongated, and a new tower with rounded corners and two pillars with volutes and  a helmet with lantern were built. In the interior there is a sculpture Ecce Homo from the first quaret of the 16th century depicting a sitting Christ with his head in his hands, and an altar painting of St. Peter and Paul in shackles presumably by Felix Ivo Leicher from Vienna. The church is surrounded by a cemetery with a marble sculpture of Christ on the Cross from the beginning of the 19th century, and enclosed by a wall.