Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wojcieszów: A Gothic Parish Church and Marian Sanctuary
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Poland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page4 sections
History
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wojcieszów, Poland, is a Gothic Roman Catholic parish church completed in the early fourteenth century. It belongs to the Jelenia Góra East Deanery of the Diocese of Legnica, and its liturgical feast is celebrated on 15 August. The church was restored during the nineteenth century.
The church’s principal Marian devotion centers on the Wojcieszów Madonna, also known as the Beautiful Madonna of Wojcieszów. A Marian sanctuary is a church formally recognized as a center of devotion to the Virgin Mary, often because of a revered image or an established religious cult. On 17 March 2007, the diocesan bishop crowned the figure during the Fourth Sunday of Lent.
On 15 September 2008, Stefan Cichy, Bishop of Legnica, formally designated the church a local Marian sanctuary. The building is entered in the historic-monument register under registration number A/2536/578, with the entry dated 19 March 1959.
Remains
Church Building and Furnishings
The church is a masonry structure built of stone, with a single nave and one tower. Its chancel, the sanctuary area at the eastern end, has a rectangular plan and a cross vault without ribs, probably dating from the sixteenth century. The eighteenth-century main altar is Baroque, a style associated with dramatic composition and elaborate ornament. It contains a nineteenth-century painting of the Assumption, the Christian belief that Mary was taken into heavenly glory at the end of her earthly life. Behind the painting is a revered figure of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child, dated to 1490. The painting can be lowered mechanically to reveal the figure.
Several wooden sculptures survive inside the church. Sixteenth-century figures represent the Virgin Mary, Saint John of Nepomuk, and Saint John the Evangelist. Saint John of Nepomuk was a fourteenth-century Bohemian priest and martyr widely venerated in Central Europe. Saint John the Evangelist is traditionally identified as one of the Twelve Apostles. Three Gothic figures are also preserved: a Madonna dated to 1500 and two female saints made during the second decade of the sixteenth century.
Seidlitz Memorials and Tomb Slabs
Five full-length tomb monuments of the Seidlitz family, made in the early seventeenth century, remain on the church walls. Medieval stone tomb slabs are set into the chancel floor. Late Renaissance, meaning the later phase of Renaissance art before or overlapping with the emergence of Baroque, epitaphs are embedded in the southern exterior wall.
One exterior epitaph commemorates Kattariny von Seidlitz, who died in 1604. It includes two rows of family coats of arms, with Ratzkin, Hartitsch, Liebanau, and Sala above, and Beisatz, Wolfsdorfer, Doler, and Rechenberg below. Another commemorates Christoffa von Seidlitz, who died in 1609. Made of red marble, it depicts him kneeling and bears Seydlitz, Tschirnhaus, Üchtritz, and Zedlitz in the upper row of coats of arms, with Liebenthal, Mesenau, Metzrade, and Schellendorf in the lower row.
