History
The Dominicans arrived in the area of the Chełmno around the 1230s, settling first in Starogród. The decision of the foundation was probably made at the chapter in Kwidzyn in 1236, in which the Dominican provincial Jacek Odrowąż and the papal legate William of Modena participated. After the town of Chełmno was founded, they moved there and, together with the emerging urban development, began to build a friary with an oratory, and then the church of St. Peter and Paul. As early as 1244, they were supposed to receive a brickyard for 35 years, but the relevant document was issued a little later, around 1294. The Dominicans arrived in Chełmno at the earliest in the 1250s, and perhaps even around 1270, when the town was already divided into plots and the construction of defensive walls was already underway, in which they had to participate and which they were obliged to maintain.
In the fourth quarter of the 13th century, the brothers built a small oratory, which was then gradually expanded into a larger monastery church, in which it took over the role of the chancel. At the end of the 13th century and at the beginning of the 14th century, the Dominicans carried out construction work on the nave. These activities may have been related to the sale of the fortified tower they had built, transferred in 1307 to the city council, probably in order to obtain the necessary funds. At the same time, the brothers assured the councilors that they would not create passages in the defensive wall adjacent to the friary, which could have been a safeguard for the townspeople in the face of the expected or ongoing reconstruction of the church or activities related to the expansion of the claustrum.
At the beginning of the second quarter of the 14th century, the original monastery church was no longer sufficient for the needs of the Dominicans. The work carried out at that time on the Franciscan church and parish church in Chełmno may have also had an impact on the expansion plans. The rebuilding of the chancel began around 1330, while work on the church was completed with the installation of the truss above the nave, built of wood cut down at the turn of 1335 and 1336. In the third quarter of the 14th century, after making new portals from the friary to the church, the Dominicans decided to expand the nave again, initially in the form of an asymmetrical two-aisle hall with six bays, completed around 1400 as an asymmetrical nave with two aisles. A cloistered cloister must have been built before 1406-1416, because documents at that time record a call to a fight “in ambitu”. In the fifteenth century, the intensive construction works of the Dominican friary ceased due to the Polish-Teutonic wars, the change in the economic situation of the town and the slow decline of its importance in relation to other great Prussian cities.
During the Middle Ages, the Dominican priors from Chełmno were engaged by the papacy in various diplomatic missions. In 1335 and 1344 they took part in meetings in Elbląg, and in 1370 and 1450 the chapter of the Polish province was held in the Chełmno monastery. At the beginning of the Polish-Teutonic Thirteen Years’ War, the Dominicans from Chełmno spoke out against the Teutonic Knights, encouraged to fight against the mercenary troops of Bernard Zinnenberg. For this reason, after the first defeats, 18 monks had to flee for fear of revenge, and after the war the brothers were in a disadvantageous situation, because Zinnenberg held power over the town until his death in 1470 (the town came under Polish rule only in 1479).
In the 16th century, due to the incoming Reformation ideas, monastic discipline collapsed. At the chapter in Sieradz in 1517, it was decided to reform the Chełmno monastery, and in 1519 a provincial chapter was held in Chełmno, which would indicate the still high position of the local monks. At the end of the 17th century, an important event in the history of the monastery was the reconstruction of the nave of the church. The walls of the central nave were then raised, and a Baroque vault was built on six massive pillars. This changed the existing hall layout of the church into a basilica one. The porch and sacristy, as well as some of the monastery buildings, were also built at that time. In 1720, there was a roof fire, which may have resulted in the need for a new interior design in the mid-18th century.
In 1829, the Prussian authorities closed the Dominican friary and the church furnishings were transferred to other Catholic churches. A year later, the monastery buildings adjacent to the church burned down and were then slighted. In 1840, the new owner, the Evangelical commune, adapted the former Dominican church to its needs. In 1872, a neo-Gothic porch was added, and in 1882 and 1892 repair and modernization works were carried out. The church remained in the hands of the Evangelicals until 1945, when, after over a hundred years, it again became a Catholic building.
Architecture
The Dominican friary was located in the north-eastern corner of the medieval town. It was situated by the defensive wall, from which it was separated by a strip of free space on the extension of the town underwall street, with two half towers on the section of the fortifications around the monastery. The space of the friary together with the gardens was extensive, almost twice as large as that obtained by the Franciscans of Chełmno, which compensated for its peripheral location and significant slope of the terrain. It was separated from the residential buildings of the town by two streets, the western of which connected with the Water Gate. The church occupied the southern, highest part of the irregular plot, while on its northern side there were cloister buildings, and on the eastern side orchards and gardens.
The Dominican oratory from the fourth quarter of the 13th century was a small, three-bay building on a rectangular plan, built of bricks in the monk bond. Its external walls were supported by buttresses, on the western side perpendicular to the longitudinal walls. The pointed entrance to the oratory was located in the first eastern bay from the north. It was 2.7 meters wide and was covered with a segmental arch made of chamfered bricks. The external stepped jamb of the portal as made of moulded and glazed bricks in black and yellow, so it must have had a decorative form and was probably the main entrance to the temple. Around 1300, a low nave was added to the oratory, not much wider than the chancel. Its northern wall was articulated from the inside with niches with segmental heads, but due to the adjacent monastery buildings, it probably had no windows in this section. In the first quarter of the 14th century, the nave was extended westwards, with the northern wall in the new part articulated with four shallow, pointed blind windows, while the niches were omitted, perhaps because of the desire to create an additional entrance to the church.
In the second quarter of the 14th century, the eastern wall of the chancel was dismantled, it was extended eastwards by another bay, and then closed polygonally. In the new part in the southern wall, a pointed recess for the sedilla and a sacramentarium recess opposite were placed. Above the chancel cross-rib vault was installed on suspended wall-shafts, and above the eastern bay sixpartite vault. Above the chancel arch, a gable with six plastered blendes was erected. This indicated that the nave at the time of the chancel construction was low enough that the roof slopes above it did not obscure the gable. The interior of the chancel not only acquired a monumental form, but also departed from the initially propagated simplicity. Shortly afterwards, around the mid-14th century, in connection with the expansion of the monastery on the northern side of the church, three new, similar portals were made in the northern wall (two in the chancel, one in the eastern part of the nave), and for unknown reasons the older portal of the former oratory was bricked up.
In the third quarter of the 14th century, the nave was widened towards the south and slightly extended towards the west. The new western wall was probably built of the desire to erect a stylistically uniform façade. It was certainly planned from the beginning to build a blende above the entrance, not a window. In the same construction phase, the northern wall was also raised by about 2.7 meters, with five niches from the inside, assuming that there would be no windows in it. It seems, therefore, that initially it was intended for the new nave to have five bays, but during the works, perhaps due to the replacement of the master mason, the concept was changed and the southern wall was completed with six windows. While the western bay obtained a length corresponding to the five-bay division, the extreme eastern bay was created much shorter, so that six bays could fit in the southern aisle.
As a result of the reconstruction in the third quarter of the 14th century, the church consisted of an elongated chancel and a nave in the form of a two-aisle hall or a two-aisle pseudobasilica, popular among the northern German mendicants, although the aisles were not identical – the northern one was probably twice as wide as the southern one. The interior could have been divided into six bays by pillars and arcades, with a vault at most above the narrow southern aisle. The wide main aisle was probably not yet vaulted. The ceiling, or wooden barrel, was built in it at a height of 15.1 meters, and the roof itself was almost as high, the ridge of which in the period of high Gothic was at the same height as the ridge of the roof above the chancel. The roof was two-pitched and for the first years it was not covered from the west by a gable, but probably by a wooden screen. Under the screen, at the end of the western wall, there was a plastered frieze with engraved and painted geometric decoration in the form of interpenetrating circles.
After the reconstruction from the end of the 14th century, when a third, very narrow northern aisle was added, the nave reached 54.5 metres in internal length and 19.3 metres in width. Due to the fact that it stood on the edge of the Vistula embankment, it received solid foundations and walls, the thickness of which in the chancel was 1.5 meters. The location also meant that a new entrance was created for the congregation, located in the third bay of the southern wall, counting from the west. The greatest architectural ornament of the nave was the beautiful, thirteen-axis western gable, which was 31 meters high and 19 meters wide (it is asymmetrical in relation to the chancel, which is clearly visible when looking from the altar steps towards the entrance). Its fine and dense vertical divisions were not broken by horizontal band friezes. The individual fields were divided by angular pinnacles, between which were pointed blendes. In addition, a small eastern gable of the nave was built, added to the southern buttress of the chancel arch, and a low porch was built on the western side.
The elongated chancel of the church received three bays and a half octagonal closure. It was 22.9 meters long, 8.7 meters wide and 19.2 meters high. It was the first soaring interior in the Chełmno Land. The slim-proportioned choir was then a completely new phenomenon in the Gothic architecture of the Chełmno Land, starting a new stage, characterized by the constant increase in the height of the buildings. From the outside, the chancel was reinforced with buttresses. Its interior, once available only to monks, was topped with a cross-rib vault and a stellar vault in one bay. They were supported on carved corbels with shafts hanging on the walls. The wall shafts were created in two versions: the older one in the form of circular overhanging rollers on conical corbels with a spiral, floral and tracery decoration, and the younger one, where the shafts were arranged in bundles, five-fold, placed on corbels with a mermaid and a lion motif, and with tracery decorations. Different forms of the wall shafts and their suspension at different heights indicate that in the first phase, the vault was made in the first bay from the west and in the eastern closure. In the second phase, it was intended to install stellar vaults, but they were implemented in only one bay.
The buildings of the friary claustrum were attached to the northern wall of the nave of the church, where three wings surrounded a rectangular garth. This courtyard was surrounded on four sides by 14th-century cloisters, which must have been built after the nave of the church was built. Probably the oldest part of the claustrum was the eastern range with an annex containing the sacristy added to the chancel of the church. It was two-storey, probably with a dormitory room upstairs and a chapter house on the ground floor. Outside the strict claustrum and in front of the town walls situated in the north, there were additional economic buildings of the Dominicans (granaries, coach house, stables and gardens).
Current state
The original hall form of the church has not survived to modern times due to early modern rebuilding. Unfortunately, the interior was transformed in Baroque style, and the western facade was preceded by a neo-Gothic porch. Fortunately, it does not spoil the character of the building, because its gable is a smaller repetition of the impressive main Gothic gable. When entering the church through porch, it is worth paying attention to the ogival Gothic portal made of moulded brick. The chancel has also been preserved in a condition close to its original state, one of the first in the Baltic lowland in which the tendency to build squat and low structures was overcome. In the nave, frescoes from the end of the 14th century were discovered and unveiled in 1969, depicting the Massacre of the Innocents, apostles, saints (in pointed niches) and Golgotha. It is also worth paying attention to the medieval ceramic floors. The buildings of the medieval claustrum adjacent to the church were completely demolished. In the chancel only a bricked-up portal has been preserved, which once connected the church with the eastern wing, and on the external facades on the northern side, traces from the western wing are visible.
bibliography:
Architektura gotycka w Polsce, red. T. Mroczko, M. Arszyński, Warszawa 1995.
Chrzanowski T., Kornecki M., Chełmno, Warszawa 1991.
Mroczko T., Architektura gotycka na ziemi chełmińskiej, Warszawa 1980.
Oliński P., Raczkowska-Jakubek M., Raczkowski J., Księga klasztorów ziemi chełmińskiej w średniowieczu. Tom 1, Chełmno, Toruń 2019.
Samól P., Architektura kościoła podominikańskiego pw. św. św. Piotra i Pawła w Chełmnie w świetle badań z lat 2010–2013 [w:] Średniowieczna architektura sakralna w Polsce w świetle najnowszych badań, red. T.Janiak, D.Stryniak, Gniezno 2014.
Samól P., Architektura kościołów dominikańskich, Gdańsk 2022.
Samól P., Klasztor dominikanów przy kościele śś. Piotra i Pawła w Chełmnie. Stan zachowania na początku XIX wieku i zagospodarowanie terenu po jego rozbiórce, “Tabularium Historiae”, t. VII/2020.
Samól P., O średniowiecznej architekturze zakonów żebraczych w Chełmnie, “Zapiski Historyczne”, t.85, zeszyt 3, 2020.