16th century The Reformation, and lime as a preservativeReformácia a vápno ako konzervant

Gemer turned Lutheran in the sixteenth century and Ochtiná's parish went with it. The painted saints were whitewashed over — not destroyed, covered — because Lutheran worship put the sermon at the centre of the room and the images were held to draw attention away from it. Then poverty did what money could not: for three hundred years nobody in this valley had the funds to strip a church back and redecorate it, so the lime stayed where it had been put. When restorers began taking it off in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the fourteenth century was still underneath.Gemer sa v 16. storočí priklonil k evanjelickej viere a ochtinská fara s ním. Maľovaných svätcov zabielili — nezničili, prekryli —, lebo evanjelické bohoslužby postavili do stredu kázeň a obrazy podľa nich odvádzali pozornosť. Potom urobila chudoba to, čo peniaze nedokázali: tristo rokov nemal v tejto doline nikto na to, aby kostol obil a nanovo vyzdobil, a vápno zostalo tam, kde ho nahodili. Keď ho reštaurátori v 19. a 20. storočí začali snímať, štrnáste storočie bolo stále pod ním.