Reca

History

Pagan tomb-mounds excavated in an around Reca confirm the presence of Magyar mounted border guards from the 10th century. In historical records the village was first mentioned in 1256, and was part of the dominion of Matthias Csák, the magnate of Trencsén. Documents confirm that before Csak, during the reign of the early Árpád kings, the settlement was inhabited by castle warriors () and controlled by the Count of Pozsony. The castle warriors of Reca developed into landowning lower nobility and Reca was a characteristic curial village of Pozsony County until the mid-20th century. During the Counter-Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries, Reca (or Réthe, as it was then known) became the shelter of Bohemian and Moravian Protestants after the Battle of the White Mountain, because the Reca gentry was not subject to Catholic Habsburg religious laws. An estimated five-sixths of the Bohemian nobility went into exile soon after the Battle of White Mountain, and their properties were confiscated. This period has left a Unity of the Brethren Chapel in the village, containing pieces of rare ecclesiastical plate. After the city of Skalica, Reca was one of the most significant locations in Royal Hungary for Czech exiles, with approximately 30 families settling there in the 17th century. In 1878 Reca briefly became known as Nemes Réte, in line with some other curial villages (e.g. Nemes Dedina. It also adopted a peculiar coat of arms consisting of the Royal arms of Hungary). The 1892 Directory of Hungarian Merchants (which covers roughly 10-15% of the working populace of the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary) lists the heads of families in Reca engaged in trade. It mainly covers Jewish families living in Reca as craftsmen and shopkeepers, and heads of gentry families engaged…