St. Margaret's chapel in Cracow

Abstract

St. Margaret’s Chapel in Zwierzyniec is one of the few wooden churches remaining in Cracow. It is characterised by an octagonal shape, rarely seen in church buildings. In spite of these facts there is no detailed historical monograph taking into consideration the circumstances of the chapel’s construction, its further history and the explanation of its function and ideological significance connected with it. At least since the end of the 16th century the chapel was a place of an active cult of St. Margaret, who lived at the turn of the 3rd and 4th century in Pisidian Antioch. Worshippers visiting on patron day of St. Margaret could obtain full pardon (granted by pope Innocent XIII, Benedict XIV, Pius VI). The chapel is the only example of a church under this patronage in the Little Poland region architecturally based upon the Montefiascone Cathedral, which had been the central place of St. Margaret’s cult since early Middle Ages. Montefiascone was known to Polish pilgrims as it lies next to the main traveling route from Poland to Rome and neighbours Bolsena, a town commonly known and visited by pilgrims since the 13th century, because of an Eucharistic miracle, which had taken place in 1263. It also lies by Via Francigena, one of the longest European pilgrim routes from Canterbury in England to the grave of St. Peter in Rome. Additionally, the monastic tradition connects the chapel with epidemic burials. The remaining visitation records of Cracow bishops prove that already at the end of the 16th century, the chapel stood in the centre of a cemetery. Its function of a cemetery chapel can be determined by reference to Instructiones fabricae et supellectilos ecclesiasticae of Charles Borromeo and his building initiatives, as well as other examples of central churches built at the cemeteries of Middle Europe in the 17th century, such as St. Archangel Gabriel’s Chapel at St. Sebastian’s Cemetery in Salzburg, founded by Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau. The chapel’s location on a hill above the town and on the route of Passion processions organised by The Brotherhood of the Passion makes it a counterpart of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher above Jerusalem. Presence of a building resembling the Holy Sepul-cher in sacral space would be natural and the cemetery chapel’s resemblance to the place of Christ’s Resurrection carries a self-evident and important message.