Kościół św. Wawrzyńca w Kazimierzu – kilka uwag o genezie, funkcjonowaniu, lokalizacji i likwidacji świątyni

Abstract

THE CHURCH OF ST. LAWRENCE IN KAZIMIERZ – SOME REMARKS ON THE ORIGINS, FUNCTIONING, LOCATION AND LIQUIDATION OF THE CHURCH

The subject of this article is the Church of St. Lawrence. The now-defunct church was originally located in the village of Bawół near Kraków, incorporated into the new town after the chartering of Kazimierz. Scholarly hypotheses on the origins of this church are presented: it could have been a knight’s foundation, an element of the chartering of Bawół, or a church of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre. It is known that before 1335 it functioned as the Bawół parish church. However, as a result of the chartering of Kazimierz and the construction of Corpus Christi parish church, St. Lawrence’s became a subsidiary church. Deprived of parish rights and located on the periphery of the Christian part of Kazimierz, it lost its importance and was often referred to as a “chapel”. Thanks to the surviving inspection reports, the few views of Kazimierz and cartographic sources, it has been possible to establish rudimentary information about the architecture and furnishings of the church. Until the end of the 18th century there was a cemetery next to the church, intended mostly for the poor, as both historical evidence and parish records show. According to church and cartographic sources, the church was demolished around 1788 as a result of the policy of Primate Michał Jerzy Poniatowski. By feeding two cartographic sources (the Kołłątaj Plan and the Senate Plan) into GIS (Geographic Information System) software, the church and cemetery were positioned within the contemporary topography of Krakow.