History
The Franciscan friary was founded in Namysłów in the fourth quarter of the 13th century, likely in 1284 or 1285. It is first recorded in 1285, when indulgence was granted to the monasteries of the Wrocław Custody, including the Namysłów friary. Later that same year, it was admitted to the Franciscan province of Saxony, which was in conflict with the authorities of the Polish-Bohemia province. The Franciscan minister for Bohemia and Poland complained to his Saxon counterpart that his confreres in the Wrocław Custody had to endure humiliation from both lay and clergy. He also unsuccessfully petitioned for the dissolution of the monasteries in Żagań and Namysłów.
The Franciscans of Namysłów initially lived outside the city (“apud nostram civitatem”). It was not until 1321 that the Prince of Oleśnica, Konrad, granted the Franciscans of Namysłów a plot of land in the town, near the castle and the town walls, in exchange for an old plot he needed because of the nearby princely malthouse. Soon after within the town walls, construction began of a brick monastery church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the eastern wing of the claustrum. The church itself was built in three stages, beginning with the chancel, built in the second quarter of the 14th century. Then, in the mid-14th century, a two-aisle nave was built, although, likely due to financial problems, the aisled basilica was abandoned in favor of a two-aisle arrangement during construction. It wasn’t until around 1420 that the nave was rebuilt into a late Gothic aisled pseudo-basilica. The buildings of the claustrum (western wing and cloister) were likely completed at that time. The first repair work had to be carried out as early as 1497, when the church tower collapsed.
At the beginning of the 16th century, due to the progressing Reformation, the monastic life in Namysłów declined. Even the reform of 1523 did not help, when the Bernardines were brought in to replace the Conventual Franciscans. From 1536, after being taken over by the Protestants, the friary served as a hospital and warehouse. It was not until the counter-reformation, in 1654, that it was reclaimed and handed over to the temporary management of delegated Franciscans. For a long time, friary stood abandoned until, under the decree of 1667, the church and monastery buildings were handed over to the Minorites from Nysa. During the survey in 1666, it was found that the church was in poor condition, which is why around 1675 renovation works were carried out, combined with baroque changes. However, already in 1682 the church was destroyed by fire, after which a year later further repairs were needed. The next fire damaged the building in 1783.
In 1810, as a result of the secularization of the friary, the church was closed. It was turned into a military warehouse, which destroyed part of the tracery in windows. Thirteen years later, the town authorities bought church and turned it into a granary. At that time, some of the windows were bricked up, the equipment was sold or transferred to other churches. Only in 1982, at the request of the parish priest of St. Peter and Paul, the Ministry of Culture and Art gave the historic church for perpetual use. Renovation work began then.
Architecture
The friary was founded in the western part of the medieval town, in close proximity to the defensive walls, which ran on the north and north-west sides, connecting further with the fortifications of the castle. From the south, the friary was adjacent to one of the main town roads, running east towards the market square and further to the Kraków Gate. On the other side of that street there could have been buildings of the Poor Clares, which were supposed to be connected to the friary church. On the west and south-west side, in front of the friary, a square with the church and hospital of Holy Spirit and St. George and the Wrocław Gate was located.
The friary consisted of a church constituting the southern part of the complex, and claustrum buildings added to it from the north, where they surrounded the inner garth with three wings. The oldest wing from the mid-fourteenth century was the eastern part, added perpendicularly to the chancel. Then, the northern wing was erected, and in the first half of the 15th century, the cloisters and the western wing were built, the facade of which was erected on the line of the wall of the facade of the nave of the church. The main wing of the friary at the end of the Middle Ages was the eastern one, containing, among others, on the ground floor from the south: sacristy, refectory, kitchen, pantry and a small room. One of the interiors of the ground floor of the northern wing was a vaulted chapel. In the west wing, on the ground floor, there was originally a Gothic vaulted room, probably with the function of a chapter house. There were also supposed to be cells accessible from the passage, presumably located on the first floor.
The church initially consisted of a rectangular, two-aisle, four-bay nave measuring 22.3 x 15.7 meters, resulting from a reduction in the original plans, which had been intended to create a slightly wider central nave with two side aisles. Only after the reconstruction in the first half of the 15th century and the construction of a new northern wall from the foundations did the structure take on the form of a three-bay, aisled pseudo-basilica measuring approximately 22.3 x 19 meters. On the eastern side, the nave was connected to the oldest part of the church, the chancel from the second quarter of the 14th century. It consisted of three rectangular bays and a polygonal closure. It measured 20 x 8.5 meters, was approximately the width of the central nave, and was approximately 13 meters high. In addition, in the 15th century, a slender, quadrangular tower was added at the junction of the south aisle and chancel, built on the site of an older 14th-century annex.
The nave and chancel were surrounded externally with stepped buttresses and a plinth, and covered with gable roofs. The windows were regularly set between the buttresses, with pointed arches, two-light and three-light, and filled with tracery featuring trefoil and quatrefoil motifs. In the 15th century, four tall windows were inserted in the south wall of the side aisle. The largest of all was placed on the west axis of the nave, while the lower ones were pierced high in the north wall of the north aisle and east wall of the south aisle. The older west window of the south aisle was converted into a blende in the 15th century. The chancel was lit by eight 14th-century windows, including one, unusually on the north side in the western bay. Above the chancel windows, a double tooth frieze was made. The entrance portals were located on the south side in the first and third bays, the latter of which was bricked up in the 15th century. Another portal was located on the west side of the central nave, and the others connected the north aisle with the cloister, the chancel with the sacristy, and the chancel with the cloister. From the south, the chancel connected to the tower.
Inside the nave was originally divided into two aisles by three quadrangular pillars, and after the late Gothic reconstruction, two pairs of pillars in the form of elongated octagons with pilaster strips on the north and south sides. The nave was connected to the chancel by a pointed, moulded rood arcade, but on the ground floor, the chancel was separated from the nave by a rood screen, which formed the boundary between the parts of the church accessible to lay people and those accessible exclusively to monks. The rood screen was approximately 3 meters high and its width was equal to the distance between the half-pillars of the chancel arcade. In the chancel, an arcade opened the upper floor of the eastern wing of the claustrum, above the sacristy on the north side. On the ground floor, two niches with semicircular heads were created in the southern and southeast walls: a smaller one approximately 1 meter high and a larger one starting from the floor. The smaller one housed the sacramentary, the larger one perhaps a sedilia.
The interior of the chancel was covered by a cross-rib vault, set in supports formed during the construction of the walls. The ribs in the chancel had a trapezoidal cross-section with concaves on the sides and were connected by circular sandstone bosses, made without any sculptural art. The ribs descended to about half the height of the walls, where they were reduced to sandstone corbels with straight edges. The adjacent wall arches were topped with moulded bricks or were embedded into the walls at the corners. In addition to the chancel, the aisles were also vaulted in the 15th century. Asymmetrical triple-support vaults were likely installed, as the pillars were located between the axes of the windows and buttresses. The ribs in the aisles descended in clusters and individually (at the corners) onto pilaster strips. The vault of the central nave is uncertain, although it may have been covered with a stellar vault, following the example of the local parish church.
The color scheme of the chancel walls originally consisted of a two-tone pattern composed of red brick stretchers and headers ranging in color from gray to dark steel. The arches of the openings and the vaults were covered with plaster, while the corbels remained in the natural color of the sandstone during the Middle Ages. Probably after the fire, the chancel walls and vault ribs were painted red, and then the joints were highlighted in white, not always in their natural pattern. Tracery and window sills were also painted red. The interior of the nave was plastered in the 15th century, except for the edges of the pillars, the arches of the inter-nave arcades, and probably the pilaster strips. The white-painted plaster was thin, allowing the texture of the bricks to show through. The edges of individual elements were painted red, and the joints were accentuated in white. A similar design was created for the chancel façades in the late Gothic period, where the walls were plastered and whitewashed, leaving the edges in red-painted bricks with white joints. The ribs were painted red.
Current state
The former monastery church, now dedicated to St. Francis of Alcantara, has largely retained its Gothic form to this day from the outside, while the claustrum was extensively rebuilt in the early modern era and then partially demolished. Unfortunately, the nave’s form was transformed by the loss of the western gable and the altered roof form. Some of the windows were also altered, and most of the tracery is lost (remnants of the original tracery are visible in the bricked-up southern window of the nave’s western bay, while the chancel windows retain concrete tracery). The vaults of the nave and the eastern end of the chancel have not survived. Currently, only the interior of the chancel retains Gothic character, where the original niches and portal openings remain exposed. On the exterior, the frieze and plinth framing the church walls are original.
bibliography:
Architektura gotycka w Polsce, red. M.Arszyński, T.Mroczko, Warszawa 1995.
Atlas historyczny miast polskich. Tom IV Śląsk, red. R.Czaja, M.Młynarska-Kaletynowa, R.Eysmontt, zeszyt 11 Namysłów, Wrocław 2015.
Jędrusik M., Lasota C., Badania gotyckiej architektury Namysłowa. Kościół minorytów, „Architectus”, 1-2 (13-14), 2003.
Pilch J., Leksykon zabytków architektury Górnego Śląska, Warszawa 2008.