the 14th century A church, and the problem of waterKostol a otázka vody

By the fourteenth century the village had a church dedicated to Saint Ladislaus, the warrior king medieval Hungary liked best — a sign that Kečovo was an established parish and not a temporary camp. Where a village could stand up here was settled by water, not by soil. Limestone swallows rain: it goes down a sinkhole and reappears far off as a spring, so a settlement on the plateau is pinned to a spring, a deep well, or a pond puddled into a pocket of clay. That is why there are so few villages on the Silica plateau, and why each of them sits exactly where it does and nowhere else.V 14. storočí už mala obec kostol zasvätený svätému Ladislavovi, rytierskemu kráľovi, ktorý patril v uhorskom stredoveku k najobľúbenejším svätcom — znak, že Kečovo bolo ustálenou farnosťou, nie dočasnou osadou. O tom, kde tu hore mohla dedina vôbec stáť, nerozhodovala pôda, ale voda. Vápenec dážď prehltne: zmizne v závrte a ďaleko odtiaľ vyvrie ako prameň, a tak osadu na planine drží prameň, hlboká studňa alebo jazierko vyklepané do ílovitého miesta. Preto je na Silickej planine dedín tak málo a preto každá stojí presne tam, kde stojí, a nikde inde.