History

The first mention of the church dates back to 1295. Initially, it was only a chapel. Later (ca. 15th century, after the fire of the town in 1489), thanks to the effort of Starost Jan Bielik from Kornica, the body of the temple and chancel vaulting were made. According to some sources, the Koźle temple was modeled on the Wrocław’s St Mary on the Sand Church.

During the Reformation, the church was abandoned and partially destroyed. In the second half of the 16th century, when the city went under the Oppersdorf’s rule, the church was rebuilt (vaulting was made in the body and the construction of the west façade was inaugurated).

The church was damaged again during the Silesian Wars (1745). Its thorough renovation occurred more than a hundred years later (1858 and 1897-1899), and the works were intended to make the church assume the neo-Gothic style. In the 20th century, attempts were made to refurbish the interior and plaster the tower.

Description

St Sigismund Church was built in the centre of the old town of Koźle. It stands north of the market, on the square enclosed with Bończyka Street, Złotnicza Street, Planetorza Street and Pamięci Sybiraków Street.

Currently, the church is a three-nave, east-orientated structure with a chancel featuring a three-sided termination. On the north side of the chancel, there is a sacristy, and on the south side, the Chapel of Our Lady with a three-sided east façade. In the south-west corner of the church, there is an integrated tower and a cylindrical staircase turret.

The temple is built of brick, buttressed, with the façades exposing brickwork and with a plastered tower. The walls of the chancel are decorated with a frieze made of bricks laid diagonally, over it a sgraffito band. A similar plaster band is seen in the culmination of chapel walls. The west façade is a 3-axis form with a portal in the central axis. Above the entrance, there are window openings: one closed with a pointed arch, the other round arch. In the south axis, integrated between buttresses, there is a tower with the upper level separated by cornices, articulated by three semicircular arcades (the middle one with a window opening, the external ones with blind windows).

The chancel, chapel and sacristy are covered with gable roofs with a multi-pitched termination on the east; the aisles are covered with a double-pitched roof. A neo-Gothic ave-bell turret is seen between the chancel and nave. From the north and the south, the tower is topped with triangular gables with three sections of blind windows. The tower is covered with a gable roof with a ridge line perpendicular to the nave.

The chancel has cross-rib vaulting (in lierne termination). Its south wall has a semicircular bay for sedilium. In addition, one of the wall exhibits a late Gothic tabernacle decorated with fleurons and crockets, supported on a console and topped with an ogee arch. The nave and the slightly lower aisles are covered with cross-ribbed vaulting. In the west part of the church, there is a 17th-century choir resting on pointed-arch pillar arcades.

The church fittings come from different periods: the altar in the Chapel of Our Lady with a Gothic image of Our Lady of Koźle, organs of 1822, the main altar with the signature of “Albert Siegert Breslau, September 1936” and stained-glass windows in the chancel designed by Latazka from Berlin.

The monument is available to visitors.

Compiled by Aleksandra Ziółkowska, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Opole, 01-07-2015.

Bibliography

• Katalog zabytków sztuki w Polsce, t. VII: Województwo opolskie, z. 5: Powiat kozielski, red. T. Chrzanowski, M. Kornecki, Warszawa 1965, s. 22-24.
• Lutsch H., Verzeichnis der Kunstdenkmäler der Provinz Schlesien, t. 4: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Reg. Bezirks Oppeln, Breslau 1892, s. 284-286.
• Karta ewidencyjna zabytku architektury - kościół parafialny pw. św. Zygmunta w Kędzierzynie-Koźlu, oprac. J. Kowalewski, J. Prusiewicz, 1998, Arch. WUOZ w Opolu.