The temple is an example of a successful implementation of a church building project in a provincial location erected in the so-called Vistula Gothic style owing to the engagement of three outstanding Kraków artists: Feliks Księżarski (design), Antoni Gramatyka (polychrome, paintings), and Jan Raszka (sculpture). Because of its location, the property also has significant landscape values.

History

The first reference to a parish in Pobiedr (today part of Paszkówka) comes from 1325. Around 1440 a second wooden church was built in the village. In 1882 the then owner of Pobiedr, Ludwika Wężykowa, funded a brick neo-Renaissance sepulchral chapel for her family. It was added to the nave of the church. Soon after, the temple was dismantled due to poor technical condition. In its place, on the initiative of the then parish priest, the Rev. Jurgowski, and with the financial support of Ludwika Wężykowa, a new brick temple was erected in the years 1882-1891 in the Vistula Gothic style, as designed by Feliks Księżarski. In 1887 the church was consecrated by the archbishop of Kraków, Cardinal Albin Dunajewski. Around 1891 neo-Gothic stone altars, a baptismal font and a pulpit were installed. The walls and vaults of the church were covered with Art Nouveau polychrome designed by Jan Matejko and made by his student Antoni Gramatyka. The polychrome was thoroughly renovated between 1953 and 1955 by painters and students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, under the guidance of Bronisław Dąbek. In 1891 the church cemetery was fenced.

Description 

The church is located in the north-east section of the village in the hamlet of Pobiedr. The temple sits on a land elevation, thus dominating the landscape. East of the church, there is the clergy house from 1881. The church is oriented, made of brick, and plastered. The walls are reinforced with buttresses. The one-nave temple was built on an elongated rectangular plan with the chancel closed with a three-sided apse. Inside the church, by the chancel, there is a sacristy. From the north, the sepulchral chapel of Leonard and Ludwika Wężyk was added (since 1919 dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary). It has a semicircular apse and is covered by a drum dome with a lantern. From the west, there is a porch enclosed by two semicircular “towers;” above it, there is a belfry topped with a slender spire dome. The façade of the temple is enlivened by an ogee portal with tracery enclosed in stepped frames. There is a clock face above the portal. The multi-sloped roofs of the church are covered with metal sheet. The ridge above the nave bears a polygonal ave bell turret. The nave and chancel are covered by cross-ribbed vaults with keystones. The choir gallery has an openwork tracery balustrade supported on two stone pillars. The church floors are paved with marble and stone slabs. The wooden, massive, single and double-leaf doors have decorative iron fittings. The window openings have the form of narrow, upright rectangles with pointed arches. The vaults and walls of the nave and chancel feature murals composed, among others, of floral and geometric motifs, religious images and symbols, as well as images of the apostles and a dozen other saints (including St Casimir, St Cunegund, St Adalbert). The Wężyk coat of arms can be seen above the entrance to the chapel. The chapel is decorated with a modest mural painting with floral and geometric motifs and images of saints; it was made in 1882 by an unknown artist. The main and side altars, the pulpit and the baptismal font were made of Pińczów stone around 1891. The temple boasts valuable historical items transferred from the previous church, including a statue of an apostle from the 14th century, a 16th-century painting of the Virgin Mary with Child, Baroque sculptures of St Anne and St Joachim and a stone baptismal font from the second half of the 17th century. The main altar is adorned with the 19th-century painting of Lord’s Transfiguration by Antoni Gramatyka. The black marble chapel altar from 1883 features a white marble bas-relief of Our Lady of the Rosary from 1912 made by the sculptor Jan Raszka. The church walls are dotted with numerous epitaph plaques of local parish priests and owners of the neighbouring villages.

The site is accessible to the general public. The interior of the church can be toured outside of the services upon prior telephone appointment with the parish.

Author of the note Tadeusz Śledzikowski, Regional Branch of the National Institute of Cultural Heritage in Kraków 28-10-2014

Bibliography

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