Legnica Cathedral

The Cathedral of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul in Legnica - a church located at Cathedral Square in the city of Legnica, Poland.

History and architecture

First mentioned in 1208, the present building was erected between 1333 and 1380. Among ist builders is the bricklayer Wiland, probably the son of a Wroclaw bricklayer of the same name, operating in the 13th century. A chapel was added in the fifteenth century, in the years 1892-1894 the church was converted into the neo-Gothic style. The western portal from 1338 to 1341 was decorated with a Gothic stone statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus. The northern portal shows the bowing of the Three Kings - a rare example of Gothic art. There is also a pentaptych from the fifteenth century with scenes depicting St. Anna Samotrzec, St. Hedwig and scenes of the Passion of Christ - the most valuable, but also the only, historical Gothic painting, located in the chapel on the northern side of the church. Inside there are numerous epitaphs, a Renaissance pulpit from the years 1586–1588, a Baroque altar, a bronze baptismal font in the shape of a 13th-century mass chalice, statues of apostles from the 14th century, a tombstone of the Prince of Brzeg and Legnica Louis II and his wife Elizabeth Brandenburg. In 1645 a captain-lieutenant of the imperial majesty Joachim Friedrich from the Prudnice family of Bilicer was buried in the cathedral.

On March 25, 1992 Pope John Paul II established the church as a cathedral with the bull Totus Tuus Poloniae Populus. The Pope visited the cathedral on June 2, 1997.

On April 10, 2011 in the vestibule of the main entrance to the temple a plaque commemorating the victims of the Polish catastrophe Tu-154 in Smolensk was unveiled. In addition to the list of victims, the plaque also features the following sentence: "The President was humiliated and scoffed at by others during his lifetime and after his death, but for numerous fellow countrymen he was the hope of rebuilding an independent and just Poland".

On November 5, 2014, Father Władysław Bochnak (1934-2014), a long-time priest of the cathedral parish, was buried in the crypt. On March 11, 2017, the first bishop of Legnica, Tadeusz Rybak, was buried there as well.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Cathedral of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul in Legnica" and modified on February 11, 2021 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.