DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.41589#0057
Tomasz W§dawowicz
Cracow
Fourteenth-Century Basilicas in Cracow. Rhinish
Inspirations in East-Central Europe1.
In the beginning of the fourteenth century can be observed a sudden and developed
change in the political, economic, and demographic aspects in East-Central European
countries such as Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. In Poland the most important
changes were evident in the richest, southern part of the country in the province of
Lesser Poland, especially in the capital Cracow. The new economic prosperity and
political stability allowed a rapid and sudden growth of the town. By the middle of the
century, outside Cracow’s defensive walls, along the main trade route were located new
towns: Casimiria and Clepardia, today just outer parts of the city. By the middle of the
fourteenth century the streets we walk on today were laid out and the huge churches
which still dominate the townscape began to be erected.
The new cathedral church on Wawel hill was begun in 1320 and dedicated some
forty years later, in 1364 (Fig. 53). Compared with the earlier modest mendicant
churches in Cracow the new cathedral was a temple wholly different from every point of
view. It is a three aisled basilica with a transept following the cistercian scheme of
Citeaux HI. The chancel is four bays long with a straight east end surrounded by
a rectangular ambulatory with chapels. The square crossing and the transept arms lead
to a short aisled nave of three bays. Tho two western towers were adopted from the
previous Romanesque cathedral.
The interior elevation faced with stone has no precedence in Lesser Poland. The
chancel elevations is divided into two storeys by a cornice. The lower storey consists of
profiled arcades with attached interior buttresses projecting into the side ambulatory
aisles. The upper storey, much taller, consists in each bay of three stepped lancets rising
the whole height from the cornice to the vaulting. The central lancet is divided more or
less in the middle of its height by a transom, above which there is a three-light traceried
window and bellow which there are three blind panels. The side lancest are also blind.
The bays are divided by vaulting shafts resting on wall brackets between arcades and
rising up along the wall straight into the vault without capitals.
For over forty years successive workshops repeated the two-storey elevation of the
chancel in the transept arms and in the nave. In the latter the main framework is the
same as in the eastern part but the clusters of vaulting shafts rise along the pillars
straight from the pavement and are broken just over the dividing cornice by the
baldachin niches.
Around the middle of the fourteenth century, when sabrica ecclesiae cathedralis still
continued its work, King Kazimir the Great founded two churches in Casimiria, south
55
Cracow
Fourteenth-Century Basilicas in Cracow. Rhinish
Inspirations in East-Central Europe1.
In the beginning of the fourteenth century can be observed a sudden and developed
change in the political, economic, and demographic aspects in East-Central European
countries such as Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. In Poland the most important
changes were evident in the richest, southern part of the country in the province of
Lesser Poland, especially in the capital Cracow. The new economic prosperity and
political stability allowed a rapid and sudden growth of the town. By the middle of the
century, outside Cracow’s defensive walls, along the main trade route were located new
towns: Casimiria and Clepardia, today just outer parts of the city. By the middle of the
fourteenth century the streets we walk on today were laid out and the huge churches
which still dominate the townscape began to be erected.
The new cathedral church on Wawel hill was begun in 1320 and dedicated some
forty years later, in 1364 (Fig. 53). Compared with the earlier modest mendicant
churches in Cracow the new cathedral was a temple wholly different from every point of
view. It is a three aisled basilica with a transept following the cistercian scheme of
Citeaux HI. The chancel is four bays long with a straight east end surrounded by
a rectangular ambulatory with chapels. The square crossing and the transept arms lead
to a short aisled nave of three bays. Tho two western towers were adopted from the
previous Romanesque cathedral.
The interior elevation faced with stone has no precedence in Lesser Poland. The
chancel elevations is divided into two storeys by a cornice. The lower storey consists of
profiled arcades with attached interior buttresses projecting into the side ambulatory
aisles. The upper storey, much taller, consists in each bay of three stepped lancets rising
the whole height from the cornice to the vaulting. The central lancet is divided more or
less in the middle of its height by a transom, above which there is a three-light traceried
window and bellow which there are three blind panels. The side lancest are also blind.
The bays are divided by vaulting shafts resting on wall brackets between arcades and
rising up along the wall straight into the vault without capitals.
For over forty years successive workshops repeated the two-storey elevation of the
chancel in the transept arms and in the nave. In the latter the main framework is the
same as in the eastern part but the clusters of vaulting shafts rise along the pillars
straight from the pavement and are broken just over the dividing cornice by the
baldachin niches.
Around the middle of the fourteenth century, when sabrica ecclesiae cathedralis still
continued its work, King Kazimir the Great founded two churches in Casimiria, south
55