All Saints Church in Łaziska: A Historic Wooden Gothic Parish Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of Bohemia
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page17 sections
History
All Saints Church in Łaziska is a historic Roman Catholic parish church in Poland, in the town of Łaziska in the Silesian Voivodeship. Built as a wooden Gothic church in 1466 or 1467, it is one of the oldest surviving wooden churches in Silesia and Poland. The church belongs to the All Saints Parish, the Gorzyce deanery, an ecclesiastical district grouping several parishes, and the Katowice Archdiocese.
Medieval origins and early evidence
Dendrochronology, the dating of wooden timbers through their annual growth rings, established that the oak foundation timbers beneath the presbytery and the fir timbers of the nave are original to the church and date from 1466 or 1467. This finding overturned the long-standing belief that the building had been erected in the second half of the sixteenth century, particularly in 1579. That earlier interpretation rested on an inscription on a beam by the southern entrance, which names Tomasz Andreas Hlop s Pisarzowiz and gives the date 1579.
The first written mention of Łaziska dates from 1520. The church itself appears in visitation records from 1652 and 1679. A tower was added in 1507, creating a distinct new phase in the building’s development. The discovery of a clearly legible painted date, 1560, in the interior wall paintings provided further evidence for important sixteenth-century work at the church, although it does not replace the earlier construction date established for the surviving timber.
Alterations from the eighteenth century
The tower was repaired and rebuilt in 1748. During that work, a bell stage and a Baroque roof were added. The church also received furnishings and interior elements during the eighteenth century, including its late Baroque main altar, pulpit, and baptismal font.
In 1870, the earlier wooden sacristy was replaced with a masonry structure. The nave was probably enlarged at the same time by incorporating the lower part of the tower. These changes altered the relationship between the medieval building and its later additions while leaving the principal wooden structure in use.
War and the development of the parish
During the Second World War, German authorities confiscated the church bells on 27 March 1942. The bells were not sent to the Hamburg collection point. The smaller bell, made in the late fifteenth century, is now in the Church of the Holy Cross at Rednitzhembach-Plöckendorf near Nuremberg. The larger bell, cast in the first half of the sixteenth century, is now in the Church of Saint Hedwig at Ganderkesee in Lower Saxony. A small historic bell from the Hamburg Bell Cemetery has hung in the tower since 1948. Local residents and organizations have sought the return of the confiscated bells.
All Saints Church originally served as a filial church of the parish in Godów. A filial church is a dependent church served by a parent parish rather than an independent parish church. Independent parish pastoral work began in Łaziska in 1969. The church joined the newly established Gorzyce Silesian deanery in 1970, and the All Saints Parish was formally established on 29 January 1978.
Conservation and heritage status
Postwar work included repairs to the roof and wall boarding in 1968. The sixteenth-century wall paintings were conserved during wall repairs between 1998 and 2000, after their discovery during the repair process. Structural strengthening in 1998 and 1999 did not destroy the historic roof truss, but the use of steel, plastic sheeting, assembly foam, and other modern materials, together with poor workmanship and incomplete finishing, substantially disrupted its historic character. Further roof repairs took place in 2010.
The church is entered in the regional heritage register under numbers A/732/66 and A/347/11, with the A/732/66 entry dated 5 August 1966. It is also part of the Silesian Voivodeship Wooden Architecture Route and represents Polish wooden Gothic architecture.
Remains
The church is an oriented, single-nave timber building made with log construction. Its nearly square nave leads to a narrower rectangular presbytery, the part reserved for the clergy and altar, which ends in a three-sided apse. A masonry sacristy stands on the north side of the presbytery, while a square wooden tower occupies the western end of the nave. The walls, tower, and roofs are protected by boards or shingles, giving the surviving building a coherent wooden exterior despite its later alterations.
Exterior layout and structures
Nave and presbytery
The nave and presbytery share a single-ridge gabled roof, with the end over the presbytery hipped. Open roofed galleries, known as soboty, surround the nave and presbytery on the north, east, and south. These covered walkways are supported by wooden posts and have lean-to roofs. The main entrance passes through an open porch aligned with the tower, while a second entrance is reached through a porch on the south.
Tower and roof features
The square tower is built with post construction, and its walls taper inward as they rise. Its projecting bell stage is clad in boards and is crowned by a Baroque onion-shaped cupola covered with shingles. A small ridge turret rises where the nave and presbytery meet. It has a lantern and a similar onion dome. The rectangular masonry sacristy adjoins the presbytery on the north.
Interior structure and furnishings
Ceilings and music gallery
The presbytery has a false barrel vault. In the nave, a trapezoidal coffered ceiling changes into sloping planes along its sides. An octagonal central post supports the roof structure. The western part of the nave contains a music gallery resting on six posts. Its solid wooden balustrade is paired with an organ made in 1792 and reconstructed in 1863 by the Karl Kuttler firm of Opava.
Altars and liturgical furnishings
The eighteenth-century main altar is a late Baroque work that incorporates older elements. Its sixteenth-century triptych wings contain carved figures of Saints Barbara, Dorothy, Catherine, and Margaret, while an early-sixteenth-century statue of the Virgin and Child forms another historic element. Two Neo-Gothic side altars from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are dedicated to Saint Barbara and Saint Anthony of Padua.
The eighteenth-century pulpit has a canopy carved with biblical scenes. A wooden chalice-shaped baptismal font from the same century carries sculptures of the Baptism of Christ and Saint John the Baptist. Two stone holy-water stoups stand beside the southern entrance.
Painted decoration
Nave paintings
The nave contains wall paintings dated 1560. Their scenes from the Old and New Testaments include Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Annunciation, the Visitation of Saint Elizabeth, and the Adoration of the Three Kings. The paintings also show secular figures interpreted as possible donors, including a woman and a man who may be Jan II Planknar, then owner of Łaziska, and his wife Magdalena Komorowska. Other figures include a man with a sword, a girl, a young man, and a man with a staff.
Beside the possible donor figures, the date 1560 appears with a painted representation of a building that may depict an earlier church at Łaziska. The identities of the figures and the building remain uncertain.
Presbytery paintings
The lower part of the presbytery decoration shows angels holding curtains. Above them are scenes from the Passion of Christ, including the Flagellation, Crucifixion, Deposition from the Cross, Entombment, Ecce Homo, and Resurrection. Figures of Saint Barbara and Saint Nicholas are also included.
Later ceiling decoration
The ceiling polychrome, a painted decorative scheme using multiple colors, was created in 1948 by the Rybnik painters Ryszard Węglorz and Alojzy Chromik. It combines vegetal and figurative motifs, including representations of saints.
Surviving wartime detail
A glazed opening in the northern wall of the nave preserves damage caused by an artillery shell that entered the church during the Second World War but failed to explode. An Eye of Providence is painted on the glazing. This Christian symbol represents an eye associated with divine observation and providence.
