Kościół pw. Świętego Kazimierza Królewicza (ul. Reformacka)
Churches of Kraków
Church (Roman Catholic), Stare Miasto district. A listed monument (heritage register). Run by: Zakon Reformatorów.
History
The Church of St Casimir the Prince on Reformacka Street belongs to the monastery of the Reformati, a branch of the Franciscans. The order reached Poland in 1622, and three years later the friars settled in Kraków in the Garbary suburb. Their first church, completed in 1640, was built thanks to the generosity of Zuzanna Amendówna. The same benefactress left the Reformati, in her will of 1644, a painting of the Madonna famed for its miracles; it still hangs in one of the side altars. The building, however, did not survive the Swedish Deluge and burnt down.
The friars moved to their present site in 1658, into a small manor house given to them by Stanisław Warszycki, Castellan of Kraków. In 1666 the auxiliary bishop Mikołaj Oborski blessed the foundation stone of the new church, and in 1672 he also consecrated the finished Baroque church. Franciszek Szembek was the main benefactor of both the church and the monastery. Since 2001 the church has had the status of the Shrine of St Casimir.
The façade is topped by three shallow niches with Baroque reliefs of Saints Casimir the Prince, Anthony and Peter of Alcantara. Inside are late Baroque altars from 1745-1748, and in keeping with the Reformati rule, a crucifix is always placed in the high altar. The image of the patron in the first side altar on the left was most likely painted in 1660-1670; it is attributed to the Gdańsk artist Daniel Schultz. The vault was decorated in 1904 by Aleksander Mroczkowski. On the monastery wall hangs a bell for the dying, which used to be rung when someone's loved one was departing this world, and a black marble plaque below it records that it was funded in 1750.
Beneath the church are crypts where the dead were buried from 1672 onwards. Around a thousand people were laid to rest there, both friars and lay people, and about sixty coffins survive to this day. The order received the land on the other side of Reformacka Street in 1735 and laid out a cemetery there. Today it holds chapels of the Stations of the Cross, with paintings of the Passion by Michał Stachowicz from 1814-1816.
Did you know?
The bodies buried in the crypts have not been mummified, yet they are preserved in very good condition - this is put down to the special microclimate of the underground chambers. Among them is a Napoleonic soldier resting in full uniform.