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St. Michael Cathedral in Łomża, Poland – late gothic church built in 1526.

History The first municipal church of Łomża was built on St. Laurence Hill in Stara Łomża village, about one kilometer from today’s Cathedral Church. In 1411, Prince Jan Mazowiecki founded a Church of the Holy Mary and the Apostles to commemorate the Polish victory in Battle of Grunwald in 1410 (the church no longer exists, replaced by the Capuchin Monastery). When the church began to collapse a hundred years later, Janusz and Stanisław, Dukes of Masovia, and their mother, Anne, started to build a new city church in Łomża, which remains to this day. The construction work was supervised by Andrzej Noskowski, Bishop of Płock, who consecrated the church in 1525. Another consecration, by the next Bishop of Płock, Andrzej Krzycki, took place in 1531. In 1550, the church was rebuilt. The ceiling in the presbitery is suspected to be older than the rest of the church: the presbitery was apparently built in the 15th century as a separate chapel for the Dukes of Masovia. The study of various historical sources has shown this hypothesis to be plausible. After being destroyed by the Swedish Deluge, the church was restored in 1691-1692. The interior design, created by Simone Giuseppe Bellotti, changed from Gothic to Baroque. The roof was lowered, the walls of the presbitery were raised and two new pinnacles were built: one on the side wall, and the other above the arch by the presbitery. In 1783 the church was consecrated again, but by 1819 it had fallen into disrepair and was closed down. In 1886, J. Hinz restored the ceilings. In the same year the vestry was built. In 1921 the building was listed. On 28th of October 1925, after the Diocese of Łomża was established, the municipal church was promoted to the rank of cathedral. In years 1932-1934 the cathedral was rebuilt by S. Cybichowski. He built a second floor and a matroneum by the back wall. He also made openings in the back wall and moved the tombstones from the presbitery and the Rosary Chapel to the nave. During World War II, the church sustained considerable damage and would have been demolished had it not been for the efforts of Stanisław Łukomski, the then-Bishop of Łomża. Rebuilt in 1952 and regothicised in 1953-1958 by W. Paszkowski, the church is an example of Masovian Gothic. Interior Design

The nave is vaulted and the aisles have diamond vaults, which are quite rare in Masovia. The interior contains many valuable artworks, the oldest dating back to the Gothic period. The most valuable monuments include: - the late Gothic tombstone of Jan Wojsławski, clergyman and chancellor. The tombstone was originally part of the church floor.

- the Renaissance monument of Elżbieta and Andrzej Modliszowski, dating from 1589, created in the style of Santi Gucci; previously situated in the Chapel of the Holy Mary - two splendid renaissance tombstones; one of Mikołaj Torszyński (Starost of Łomża, died in 1575), made from sandstone; and the marble tombstone of Nikodem Kosakowski (Starost of Łomża, died in 1611), restored by Count Stanisław Kosakowski in 1859 - a 16th-century painting of Our Lady of Łomża, crowned by Pope John Paul II on 4th of June 1991; situated in the chapel next to the presbytery - the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, painted by Wojciech Gerson in 1900. On the outside of the church there is a stone resembling a mask, probably a symbol of pagan beliefs. Similar masks are also built into the walls of churches in Pralnica and Pułtusk. In 2005, during the renovation of the presbitery, the builders came across a crypt under the floor. Archeological research conducted by Maciej Czarnecki showed that there are ten crypts, two of them containing burials of clergymen (one of the bodies probably belongs to the builder of the cathedral from the sixteenth century). There were also many burials outside the crypts. By mid-December 2005, the archeologists had found some 70 skeletons under the presbytery.

Last updated: 2015-12-16