In Poland the tradition of erecting wayside chapels and crosses dates back to the 11th century. The missionaries of the new religion removed pagan temples, cut down holy trees and desecrated holy rocks and springs. In a place from which pagan idolatry was banished, they would usually put up a cross. Over the centuries there grew up the custom of commemorating in a similar way important occasions in church and state, in the life o f sm i communities and even in the lives of individual persons. The setting up of wayside crosses and chapels became very popular in rh 17th century. The spread of that custom must be linked with the Counterreformation and the improvement of living standards in the country. In the 18th century the wayside cross and chapel acquired a status akin to that fa national symbol. That was the reason why the successive occupying powers supported measures to remove as many of those landmarks as possible. There is ample evidence to suggest that some vestiges of pre-Christian beliefs lingered on for decades and even centuries after Poland’s conversion Ancient traditions were absorbed by the new religion, often by deliberat Christianisation of the alien forms. A lot of primeval cultural elements have survivedin the legends and customs connected with chapels and crosses. We can distinguish three main types of intention which guide the founding of a cross or chapel: 1. it is treated as panacaeum against all kinds of evil, especially of the metaphysical variety, in other words an apotropeion which can avert any evil influence which threatens man and his home; 2. it is a memorial, a mark of remembrance which contains a message to posterity, which usually commemorates an important event (communal, political or occasionally personal), or, less frequently, it marks a place which is connected with the presence of a great man or a saint; 3. it may be an equivalent of an imploring or thanksgiving prayer, an expression of remorse and penitence, i.e. as a votive offering in the broad sense of the word. In the majority of cases the site of a chapel or cross depended on the intention of the founder and the function it was supposed to perform. Those that were sited at the outskirts of human habitations were to protect them from incursions of evil. Those that were set up near houses or on the graves of persons that died of a sudden death were to ensure that the souls of the dead would not be transformed into demons. Votive chapels were often the fruit of a vow made by the founder at a dramatic point of his life, a sign of thanksgiving for a saved life (his own or a family member’s), the birth of a long-awaited child, a recovery from crippling illness. Many chapels expressed simply their founders’ piety; in some cases, in villages where there was no church, they were used for liturgy. A customary way of commemorating a local saint was to build a chapel dedicated to his or her name. In the far south of Poland (Podkarpacie) the favoured recipients of such veneration were St John of Dukla, the Blessed Kinga, the Blessed Simon of Lipnica Murowana, St Swierad of Tropie on the Dunajec, and the national patron saint St Wojciech (Adalbert). Trades and professions would also found chapels to honour their patron saints, e.g. St Barbara (the miners), St Florian (the firemen), etc. The founder’s intentions are usually declared in the foundation tablet; they may also be preserved in the local tradition or legend.
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.