It is one of Kőszeg’s best known statues, which was erected following a decision adopted by the local council in November 1710 as a token of gratitude for escaping the black death.
The monument referred to as the plague column took three years to build and it has been in its current position since October 1713, on the square in front of today’s Church of the Sacred Heart. The creator of the column had been unknown for a long period of time until research, conducted in the 1970s into the local archives, revealed the artist’s name: Servatius Leitner, the descendant of a German family of sculptors who emigrated from Germany and settled in the town of Sopron. The self-conscious artist had specified the conditions of the assignment in a very detailed contract, the major parameters of the monument as well as the costs of the raw materials and his fee.
The column can also be seen as the representation of Baroque religious conviction, becoming more widespread in the early 1700s and accelerating with recatholization efforts. With a height of 8.5 meters, it is imposing but not monumental. The central figure is the Holy Father holding his son, the crucified Jesus; other figures in the composition include characters known as the plague saints as well as angels and children. The statue is complete with the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit.
There are altogether three inscriptions in the column of which only one can be read (written in Latin) which translated in Hungarian as follows: “Holy Trinity, please save the distressed from their fate, the plague, and the war.” The other two inscriptions were added during the two successive phases of reconstruction; the first one in 1813, and second one in 1869. Among the figures of the column, we can see St Roch (1340/50 (?)-1379) who treated people with self-sacrificing devotion in Italy and succeeded in curing people contracting the plague.
In Piacenza, he also fell down with the plague but eventually recovered. Legend has it that so as not to infect others, he retreated to a cave and a rich citizen’s hound brought him food. The other figure on the column is St Sebastian, a protector saint against the plague and other diseases and a 3rd-century old Christian martyr. Sebastian was a soldier who fought in Roman emperor Diocletian’s legion. He was also a devout Catholic who earned fame for his martyrdom. The third figure is a recurring character on plague columns, Santa Rosalia of Sicily, the daughter of an affluent family who lived in isolation from the rest of the world and is claimed to have saved her country from the Black Death. Her cult was introduced by Pal Eszterhazy in 1666 and since the castle of Kőszeg and the surrounding estate was owned by the Eszterhazys from the 17th century, the respect for Rosalia was also spreading among the locals.
