History

The idea of building a hermitage with a chapel is said to have emerged during Brother Albert’s first stay in Zakopane. He came to visit to his friend from Munich and Warsaw, Stanisław Witkiewicz (1851-1915), a painter and art critic, who was in Zakopane for rehabilitation. Hermitage of St Brother Albert with the Chapel of the Holly Cross was erected by the Congregation of Albertine Brothers in the years 1895-1898. The construction started on 29 January 1895. The early monastery was a simple barrack. The chapel was built soon after. It was consecrated on 25 August of the same year on the feast of St Louis, patron saint of the Third Order of St Francis. It was also the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the congregation. The solemn consecration was performed by the Rev. Kazimierz Kaszelewski. In the garden in front of the chapel, a shrine was built in the form of a grotto in 1899. Inside, there is a well in a recess, above it a sandstone slab with a gorget of Our Lady of Częstochowa and a prayer. In 1901 a small house was erected in which Brother Albert lived after the hermitage had been taken over by nuns. The construction was supervised directly by St Brother Albert, according to Stanisław Witkiewicz’s original drawings. The land for the hermitage, monastery, and chapel was donated by Count Władysław Zamoyski, the then owner of Zakopane. In 1902, the Albertine Brothers built a new monastery (or rather hermitage) for themselves and transferred the old one to the Albertine Sisters. During a storm on 6 May 1968, the hermitage survived, although the surrounding old spruce forest was levelled. The complex is located in the Tatra Mountains, by the road leading to the Kalatówki glade. A mountain glade in the Western Tatras is located at an altitude of 1160-1250 m a.s.l., on a lateral moraine, in the western part of the Bystra Valley, at the mouth of the Suchy Źleb area.

Description

The monastery built in the Zakopane style is a one-storey building, set on a rectangular plan on a high stone foundation. It has a shingled, half-gable roof. It is a wooden log construction. The Chapel of the Holy Cross adjoins the monastery building. Set on a plan similar to a square, its front façade has three axes: on the symmetry axis, there is a double door, the main entrance to the chapel; to the left, there is a door leading to a locutory and, to the right, to the sacristy. The gable has two windows topped with a semicircular arch and a simple cross. In the central part of the roof, there is a quadrilateral ave bell turret with a tent roof crowned with a metal cross. In front of the chapel and to its west side, there is a wooden gallery with a simple board balustrade, set on a stone foundation. Up to the height of 2 m, the log frame is vertically boarded. The interior of the chapel is bisected by a balustrade separating the slightly elevated chancel. Further, a modest wooden altar raised by two steps in relation to the flooring. A gilded tabernacle with the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa in the centre. A cross is attached to it at the top of the reredos. The chancel wall has three windows opening the interior of the chapel to the sisters’ gallery.

In 1970 the St Brother Albert’s Hut with his cell were made available to visitors. The hut has a permanent exhibition dedicated to the saint. Adam Hilary Chmielowski, commonly known as St Brother Albert (1845-1916), was a social activist and a valued painter. He fought in the 1863 January Uprising where he had lost his leg and had been taken prisoner. Released after his family’s intercession, he studied painting in Paris, Warsaw, and Munich. After several years of artistic activity, he joint the Jesuit Order as a novice in 1880, but then he changed his mind. Later, he joined the Third Order of St Francis in 1888. He took his monastic vows and set up a Congregation of Albertine Brothers (and in 1891 of Albertine Sisters), whose mission was to assist the poor (especially the homeless). The Albertines (the Congregation of the Brothers of the Third Order of St Francis of Assisi Servants of the Poor) were (and still are) a lay congregation. They were approved as congregation in 1928 the archbishop of Kraków. Brother Albert, and then his spiritual disciples and brothers, ran municipal “warm houses,” orphanages, establishments for seniors and the disabled. He organised aid and benefits for the unemployed and the sick. He raised funds for charity mainly through his artistic work. He sold his paintings (the most famous of them are Ecce Homo and The Garden of Love). He was regarded as a saintly individual already by his contemporaries. Beatified in 1983, he was canonised in 1989 by Pope John Paul II (his memorial is on 17 June). His relics are kept in the Ecce Homo Church (the saint’s invocation) in Prądnik Czerwony, Kraków, next to the Albertine Sisters’ main house.

The site is accessible all year round.

Author of the note Olga Dyba, 20/08/2014 

Bibliography

• Swat T., Zabytkowe kościoły Tatr, Podhala, Orawy, Spisza. Warszawa 1997.
• Miejsca święte Rzeczypospolitej. Leksykon (ed. Jackowski A.). Kraków 1998.
• Faron A., Pustelnia Świętego Brata Alberta na Kalatówkach. Stulecie pobytu sióstr albertynek w pustelni (1902-2002). Kraków 2002.
• Pinkwart M., Zakopane przewodnik historyczny. Bielsko-Biała 2003.
• Śledzikowski T., Polska zabytki drewniane. Kraków 2004.