Kalwaria Zebrzydowska jako wzór dla innych kalwarii na ziemiach polskich

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: A Model for Other Polish Calvaries

Summary: Ways of the Cross with the individual stations in the form of chapels distributed over a particular area are a religious phenomenon which has been present in the historical territories of Poland and Silesia for four centuries. In the course of these centuries there have been changes in their models of composition, the subject-matter of the chapels, the forms of worship practised on these Ways of the Cross, and the influence which they have had on the social and economic aspects of the places where they are situated. On the basis of dates of erection for the various chapels, their subject-matter and the landscape design and composition, the history of the Polish 'Calvaries' may be sud-divided into the following development stages: - the period from 1600 to 1795, - the period from 1796 to 1945, - the period from 1945 to the present time. Analysis of the idea behind the foundation of the Calvaries, the cult of the Passion of Christ, leads to the conclusion that basically this has not changed over the ages. In the periods from 1746-1945, and after 1945 new, secondary elements were added. The worship of Christ's Passion, the original idea, came to be associated with the sufferings of the Polish nation, which was prompted by the 123 years of foreign rule under the Partitions and, after 1945, by the mass social protest against the alien political system imposed on the country after the Second World War. The fundamental inspiration disseminating the Calvary idea throughout Poland came from Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and spread to influence most of the other similar institutions of public worship, except Kalwaria Ujazdowska, which drew its initial concept from the Calvary at Görlitz. In the subsequent years the main stimuli came from institutions set up in the 1600-1795 period, the Calvaries at Wejherowo (on the Baltic coast), and at Pakość on the River Noteć (Northern Poland, Fig.4), alongside Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, their pa-rent foundation. While in the initial period it was still possible to delineate the main paths and directions along which the idea spread, later on this turned out to be no longer viable, since successive founders did not refer specifically to any of the already existing models. It may thus be said that in the first two development periods the dissemination of the Calvary idea was hierarchical in nature. It was quite a different matter with the spread of the cultural aspects associated with the Calvary movement. The closer a Calvary was located to the focal point at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, the more of the individual features it adopted from the mother institution. Those furthest away received only the items of worship connected with the Way of Jesus. Other aspects, such as the additional chapels which were not strictly part of the Way of Jesus devotions, and the cult of Our Lady, were subject to local variations. Analysis of the transformations which occurred in the Calvaries in their various development stages shows that the main tendency was to reduce the number of stations, down to the basic minimum of 14, as in the standard Way of the Cross. Once the general 14-station Way of the Cross was established, the division into the Via Captivitatis (Way of the Captivity) and the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) itself became blurred already in the 1795-1945 period. In terms of architectural decoration the chapels came to be more and more uniform. Objects such as the gradus or stairways or 'Pilate's Town Halls' would be omitted. The chapel representing the Tomb of Christ would no longer be a more or less faithful reproduction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem (Fig. 5). Attempts to preserve the original spatial arrangements extant in Jerusalem were abandoned. The changes in the devotions were marked by the following characteristics: - the gradual disappearance of the elaborate devotions for the Way of Jesus as practised in the 17th - 18th centuries, in favour of an intermediate form in the 19th and early 20th centuries, with the fourteen Stations of the Cross and the survival of some of the constituent parts of the earlier system adapted to the fourteen-station system; - the gradual disappearance of the Way of Our Lady in the 19th-century Calvaries, in favour of the Way of the Rosary (Fig. 5). Analysis of the impact of the Calvaries in the successive periods shows that the peak of their influence came in the 17th and 18th centuries, and that the borders marking the range of this influence coincided with the borders of the influence of the culture of Western Europe and the Roman Catholic Church. While the influence of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska on the development of the other Polish Calvaries was initially very strong, with time its power as a model waned, until after the Second World War it disappeared altogether. However, the devotions, once introduced, have not changed over the centuries.

Peregrinus Cracoviensis, 1995, z.2, s. 143-162.

Instytut Geografii i Gospodarki Przestrzennej UJ

Pełny tekst (117 KB)