07/07/2019
St. Margaret's chapel is one of the few wooden churches remaining in Cracow. It is characterised by an octogonal shape, rarely seen in church buildings.
Since the end of the 16th century the chapel was a place of active cult of St. Margaret, who lived at the turned of the 3rd and 4rd century inn Pisdian Antioch. Worshipppers 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. Montefiscone 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 12 th century because of the Eucharistic miracle, which had taken place in 1263, It also lies by Via Francigena, one of the longest European pilgrim routs from Canterbury in England too 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 cementary. Its function of a cemetery chapel can be determined be reference to Insrtuctiones fabricae et suellectillos ecclesiasticae of Charles Borromeo and his building initavities, as well as exmaples of central churches built at the cementeries of the Middle Europe in the 17 th century, such as St. Archangel Gabriel's Chapel at St. Sebastian's Cementery in Salzburg, founded by
Archbishop Wolf Dietrich von Raitenau.
The chapel's location on a hill above the town and on the route of Pasion 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 Sepulcher in sacral space would be natural and the cementery chapel's resemblance to the place of Christ's Resurrection carries a self-evident and important message.
more: http://naszaprzeszlosc.pl/biblioteka-cyfrowa.html