BECKOV / Beckó. Tradition holds that the fortified site of Beckov had been built before the appearance of the Hungarian tribal alliance in the Carpathian Basin. Under the Árpád dynasty it was the seat of a royal castle district (Hung. várispánság; Lat. comitatus castri). The castle was then acquired by the oligarch Máté Csák, who held it until his death (1321). Later, Beckov developed into one of the most formidable knightly strongholds of the medieval kingdom of Hungary. Jacob Hassko, Bishop of Nitra, founded a Franciscan friary in the market town of Beckov in 1691. In 1729, the town was ravaged by a fire that spread over to the castle. Although it was burnt to ashes and subsequently abandoned by its owners, the Gothic windows of the castle chapel and their carved embrasures were still in a good state of preservation in the middle of the 19th century. The painter László Mednyánszky was born in the town in June, 1852.

Bibliography: Ethey, Fekete Nagy, Janiss, Kerekes, Kristó, Lovcsányi, Luppa, Marosi, Mednyánszky 1829, Mednyánszky 1844, Mednyánszky 1981, Mednyánszky 1983, Szombathelyi, Szombathy 1979, Rupp