Churches

Wawel Cathedral and the grave of Saint Stanislaus

Wawel Cathedral is the seat of the Archbishop of Kraków and the third cathedral built on Wawel Hill. The present Gothic church was raised between 1320 and 1364 around the grave of Saint Stanislaus, and for four centuries the kings of Poland were crowned and buried in it.

Type: Cathedral
Dedication: Saint Stanislaus and Saint Wenceslaus
Rite: Roman
Diocese: Archdiocese of Kraków
Built: 14th century, third church on the site
Style: Gothic with Romanesque, Renaissance, and Baroque additions

Three churches on one hill

The first cathedral on Wawel Hill was probably built soon after the bishopric of Kraków was established in the year 1000. Too little of it survives to reconstruct its appearance, and it was gone by the end of the eleventh century. A second, Romanesque church followed under Duke Władysław Herman and was consecrated in 1142. It was a basilica of three aisles in limestone and sandstone, with crypts under galleries at each end and two square towers on the west front.

Fire damaged that church in 1305, and the bishops decided to replace it. The present cathedral went up in two campaigns, the chancel with its ambulatory from 1320 to 1346 and the nave from 1346 to 1364, under Bishops Nanker, Jan Grot and Bodzanta. It was consecrated on 28 March 1364. Saint Leonard's Crypt and the lower part of the south tower survive from the Romanesque building beneath and beside it, and chapels were added along the outer walls through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Stanislaus and Wenceslaus

The cathedral is dedicated to two martyrs. Wenceslaus, the duke of Bohemia killed at Stará Boleslav on 28 September in 929 or 935, depending on the chronicler, was its first patron. Stanislaus was bishop of Kraków from 1072 and was killed on 8 May 1079 while celebrating Mass at Skałka, on the orders of King Bolesław the Bold. The cathedral's own history says the reasons for the quarrel are unknown for lack of reliable sources, and that later accounts have the king striking the blow himself.

His body was moved to the cathedral around the turn of the twelfth century, and Pope Innocent IV canonised him at Assisi on 17 September 1253. His relics now lie in a silver coffin made in Gdańsk between 1669 and 1671, under a domed canopy of black and rose marble raised between 1626 and 1629 at the centre of the church. Poland keeps his feast on 8 May, while the current Roman calendar places it on 11 April. Every year a procession leaves the cathedral for Skałka on the Sunday after 8 May.

Coronations, chapels and the crypts

On 20 January 1320 Władysław the Short was crowned here beside the relics of Saint Stanislaus, breaking the older custom of coronations at Gniezno. From then until the coronation of August III in 1734, every Polish king but two was crowned at the high altar. Władysław the Short was also the first king buried in the church, and after the death of Casimir IV Jagiellon in 1492 kings began to be commemorated in separate chapels. The Sigismund Chapel, designed by Bartolomeo Berrecci for Sigismund I the Old and completed in 1533, has a gilded dome and carries the monuments of the king and his children Sigismund II Augustus and Anna Jagiellon. The cathedral notes that the royal bodies lie in the crypts below rather than in the chapel.

The same king commissioned the Sigismund Bell, cast in Kraków in 1520 by the Nuremberg founder Hans Behem and first rung on 13 July 1521. Its bronze body weighs 9,650 kilograms and twelve ringers are needed to swing it, which happens only on major feasts and national occasions. The crypts became a national burial place after the funerals of Prince Józef Poniatowski in 1817 and Tadeusz Kościuszko in 1818. Adam Mickiewicz was brought from Paris in 1890 and Juliusz Słowacki in 1927, and a crypt for Marshal Józef Piłsudski was arranged under the Tower of Silver Bells in 1936.

Karol Wojtyła and the cathedral today

Karol Wojtyła said his first Mass as a priest at the altar in Saint Leonard's Crypt on 2 November 1946, the day after his ordination, for his dead parents and brother. He was consecrated a bishop in the cathedral on 28 September 1958, the feast of Saint Wenceslaus, and installed as archbishop on 8 March 1964. He served as Archbishop of Kraków until his election as Pope John Paul II in 1978, and he restored the Skałka procession and founded the Cathedral Museum. He returned on every visit to Poland, and on 8 June 1979 said Mass at the grave of Saint Stanislaus for the nine hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom.

The cathedral remains the principal church of the Archdiocese of Kraków, where the archbishop presides at ordinations and the great feasts of the year. On Sundays Mass is said at the relics of Saint Jadwiga, in Latin at the relics of Saint Stanislaus, and at the coronation altar. Visitors buy a ticket for the royal tombs, the bell tower and the museum, and the building forms part of the Historic Centre of Kraków, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1978.

Sources

Wawel Cathedral — Wikipedia (technical facts)
Brief History of Wawel Cathedral — Wawel Royal Cathedral (the three churches, building campaigns and the consecration of 1364)
The Royal Cathedral — Wawel Royal Cathedral (coronations and royal burials)
St Stanislaus — Wawel Royal Cathedral (the martyrdom, canonisation and feast dates)
The Cathedral of Cracow Bishops — Wawel Royal Cathedral (Wenceslaus as first patron, the confession of St Stanislaus, ordinations)
The Cathedral of John Paul II — Wawel Royal Cathedral (Karol Wojtyła's first Mass, consecration and installation)
The Cathedral of National Poets and Heroes — Wawel Royal Cathedral (the crypts of Kościuszko, Poniatowski, Piłsudski and the poets)
The Royal Sigismund Bell — Wawel Royal Cathedral (founder, dates and weight)
Holy Mass — Wawel Archcathedral Parish (Sunday Masses and the feast calendar)