The Choir Screen in the Dominican Church of the Holy Trinity in Cracow: Form and Function

Abstract

The paper demonstrates how modern metric survey techniques and digital technologies can contribute to traditional methods of art-historical investigation. The original choir screen in the Dominican church in Cracow, spanning the width of the chancel arch, was built in the mid-13th century. An analysis of the laser scanning data of the existing church enabled a construction of a 3D model of the subsequent and larger choir screen, built in the second half of the 14th century, which extended across the nave and both aisles and encased the initial screen. A keystone decorated with a carved boss of unique iconography, interpreted as a symbol of St John the Evangelist, survives from the carved decoration of this screen. The 3D model of the choir screen helps to visualize the original location of particular altars, some tombs and surviving artworks within the screen porch. Its north bay housed the tomb of Hyacinth Odrowąż, the first Polish Dominican friar and future saint. In 1543 the north part of the screen’s loft was cut off with a grille and transformed into a chapel of St Hyacinth, accessible to lay people by stairs running from the north aisle. The most important part of the chapel was a shallow niche which accommodated a new tomb and an altar with Hyacinth’s relics. Construction from 1581 to 1583 of a new and more spacious chapel, located slightly higher than the old one, involved demolition of the choir screen.

KEYWORDS:

• mendicant orders
• Gothic architecture
• medieval liturgy
• sacred topography
• laser scanning
• digital reconstruction

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The present paper results from a research project funded by the Polish National Science Centre grant, award reference: 2014/15/B/HS2/03071, and is an amended and improved version of an article published in Polish as: Marcin Szyma, Anna Bojęś-Białasik, Jacek Czechowicz, Krzysztof J. Czyżewski and Marek Walczak, ‘Przegroda chórowa i lektorium w kościele Trójcy Świętej w Krakowie: rekonstrukcja—datowanie—użytkowanie’ [Chancel Screen in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Cracow. Reconstruction, Dating, Use], Biuletyn Historii Sztuki, 83.4 (2021), 783–841. The present authors express their gratitude to Prof. Caroline Bruzelius and the article’s anonymous reviewers for their help and inspirational remarks.

Notes

1 From the abundant literature on the choir screen only a handful of titles will be cited here: A. Vallance, Greater English Church Screens, Being Great Roods, Screenwork and Rood-Lofts in Cathedral, Monastic and Collegiate Churches (London 1947); E. Doberer, ‘Lettner’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 5 (Munich; Zurich 1991), cols 1914–15; M. Schmelzer, Der mittelalterliche Lettner im deutschsprachigen Raum. Typologie und Funktion (Petersberg bei Fulda 2004); E. Carrero Santamaria, ‘Centro y periferia en la ordenación de espacios litúrgicos: las estructuras corales’, Hortus Artium Medievalium, 14 (2008), 159–78; M. Untermann, Handbuch der mittelalterlichen Architektur (Darmstadt 2009), 62–64; M. B. Hall, ‘Another Look at the Rood Screen in the Italian Renaissance’, Sacred Architecture, 27 (2015), 11–19; H. Magirius, ‘Schranken und Lettner in der Kirchen der Mönche im Mittelalter’, in Werk und Rezeption. Architektur und ihre Ausstattung. Ernst Badstübner zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. T. Kunz and D. Schumann (Berlin 2011), 116–30; J. E. Jung, The Gothic Screen. Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (Cambridge, MA 2013); S. Bucklow, R. Marks and L. Wrapson, ed., The Art and Science of the Church Screen in Medieval Europe: Making, Meaning, Preserving (Woodbridge 2017); J. Allen, Transforming the Church Interior in Renaissance Florence (Cambridge 2022).

2 W. Schenkluhn, Architektur der Bettelorden. Die Baukunst der Dominikaner und Franziskaner in Europa (Darmstadt 2000), 81–83; C. Bruzelius, ‘The Architecture of the Mendicant Orders in the Middle Ages: An Overview of Recent Literature’, Perspectiva, 2 (2012), 365–86; eadem, Preaching, Building, and Burying: Friars in the Medieval City (New Haven 2014), 24, 57, 86–87, 98, 129, 171; J. Cannon, Religious Poverty, Visual Riches. Art in the Dominican Churches of Central Italy in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London 2013), 25–45; Hall, ‘Another Look’.

3 As Cannon, Religious Poverty, 25, has put it.

4 C. Bruzelius, ‘The Tramezzo of Sta. Chiara. Hypothesis and Proposals’, in Ingenita curiositas. Studi di storia medievale per Giovanni Vitolo. Tomo secondo, ed. B. Figliuolo, R. Di Meglio and A. Ambrosio (Battipaglia 2018), 951–64; C. Bruzelius, A. Giordano, L. Giles, L. Repola, E. De Feo, A. Basso and E. Castagna, ‘L’eco delle pietre: history, modeling, and GPR as tools in reconstructing the choir screen at Sta. Chiara in Naples’, Archeologia e Calcolatori, Supplemento, 10 (2018), 81–103; L. Giles, ‘Medieval Architecture and Technology: Using GPR to Reconstruct the Choir Screen at Santa Chiara in Naples’, Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture, 6/iv (2018), 123–60; C. Bruzelius and L. Repola, ‘Monuments and methods in the age of digital technology: a case study and its implications’, in Cultura in transito. Ricerca e tecnologie per il patrimonio culturale, ed. A. Bertini, I. Caruso, G. T. Colesanti and T. Vitolo (Rome; Bristol 2020), 15–24; F. Condorelli, G. Pescarmona and Y. Ricci, ‘Photogrammetry and Medieval Architecture. Using Black and White Analogic Photographs for Reconstructing the Foundations of the Lost Rood Screen at Santa Croce, Florence’, The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, XLVI-M-1-2021 (2021), 141–66.

5 Because of the language barrier, even scholars whose research focuses on mendicants in Central Europe are unfamiliar with the work on mendicant architecture carried out in Poland. See for example, L. Silberer, Klosterbaukunst der Konventualen Franziskaner vom 13. Jahrhundert bis zur Reformation (Petersberg 2016).

6 For the building history of the church and friary in general, see A. Markiewicz, M. Szyma and M. Walczak, ed., Sztuka w kręgu krakowskich dominikanów (Cracow 2013), and M. Szyma, Kościół i klasztor Dominikanów w Krakowie. Architektura zespołu klasztornego do lat dwudziestych XIV wieku (Cracow 2004); J. Adamski, ‘Die Beziehungen zwischen Maßwerk, Glasmalerei und Bauskulptur in der Dominikanerkirche in Krakau im ausgehenden 13. Jahrhundert’, in Im Rahmen bleiben. Glasmalerei in der Architektur des 13. Jahrhunderts, ed. U. Bednarz, L. Helten and G. Siebert (Berlin 2017), 178–86; D. Horzela, Cud światła, Witraże średniowieczne w Polsce (Cracow 2020), 132–37, 169.

7 J. Czechowicz, A. Bojęś-Białasik, M. Łyczak and M. Szyma, ‘Krakowski kościół Świętej Trójcy w średniowieczu. Fazy budowy w świetle najnowszych badań’, Rocznik Krakowski, 88 (2022), 275–308.

8 Because of the paucity of data, the reconstruction of the first two building phases is highly hypothetical.

9 A. Grzybkowski, ‘Das Problem der Langchöre in Bettelordens-Kirchen im östlichen Mitteleuropa des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Architectura. Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Baukunst, 13 (1983), 152–68.

10 P. Crossley, Gothic Architecture in the Reign of Kasimir the Great: Church Architecture in Lesser Poland, 1320–1380 (Cracow 1985); T. Węcławowicz, Gotyckie bazyliki Krakowa: ‘czyli można konstrukcję kościołów krakowskich XIV wieku uważać za cechę specjalną ostrołuku w Polsce?’ (Cracow 1993); A. Grzybkowski, Gotycka architektura murowana w Polsce (Warsaw 2014), 91–97, 116–20.

11 J. Jamroz, ‘Średniowieczna architektura dominikańska w Krakowie’, Rocznik Krakowski, 41 (1970), 5–28.

12 The screen in the Dominican church of Santa Sabina in Rome, dating from 1238 at the latest, had two passages: Cannon, Religious Poverty, 36. Other examples include, for instance, the choir screens at Gelnhausen, Meissen Cathedral, and the former Dominican church (Französische Kirche) in Bern.

13 G. G. Meersseman, ‘L’architecture dominicaine au XIIIe siècle: législation et pratique’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 16 (1946), 136–90; R. A. Sundt, ‘Mediocres domos et humiles habeant fratres nostri: Dominican Legislation on Architecture and Architectural Decoration in the 13th Century’, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 46 (1987), 394–407.

14 M. Szyma, ‘The Original Tomb of St Hyacinth in the Dominican Church in Cracow’, in Epigraphica & Sepulcralia V. Fórum epigrafických a sepulkrálních studií, ed. J. Roháček (Prague 2014), 203–18; J. Czechowicz, K. J. Czyżewski, M. Szyma and M. Walczak, ‘Grób i nagrobki świętego Jacka w dominikańskim kościele Świętej Trójcy w Krakowie do końca XVI wieku’, Rocznik Krakowski, 88 (2022), 159–65.

15 For Dominican choir screens as a site of veneration of the saints of this Order and candidates to the altar, see Cannon, Religious Poverty, 91–105; for recent research on the location of the tombs of Sts Dominic and Peter Martyr, see Bruzelius, Preaching, 23, 28–30, 69–77.

16 M. Walczak, ‘Between the Eternal City and Cracow. On the Origins of the Iconography of Saint Hyacinth of Poland OP (d. 1257)’, Artibus et Historiae, An Art Anthology, 78 (2018), 325–57.

17 Cannon, Religious Poverty.

18 Cannon, Religious Poverty.

19 M. Zdanek, ‘Kaplice i ołtarze dominikańskiego kościoła Świętej Trójcy w Krakowie do pocz. XVII w.’, in Sztuka w kręgu krakowskich Dominikanów, 109–25.

20 Jamroz, ‘Średniowieczna architektura’, considered the relics of the altars to be remnants of half-piers from the hall church. However, excavations carried out in the nave in 2018 demonstrated that there are no traces of any further remnants of the subsequent piers on the axis of the alleged north half-pier; they revealed, in turn, the foundations of the oldest church, whose layout differs from the arrangement of the bays in the hall church. While documenting the north ‘half-pier’, Jamroz presented its south face as its western one, ignoring the fact that the south face was partly hacked off, and a full moulding of the plinth has survived on the western side. This stonework resembles that on the plinth in the elevation of the hall church, although it is more elaborate and is datable to the first quarter of the 14th century. Records made by Jamroz can be verified thanks to an archival photograph of the excavations, published by J. Remer, ‘Kronika konserwatorska’, Rocznik Krakowski, 30 (1938), 239–64, at 255, fig. 8.

21 Z. Zalewski, ‘Święto Bożego Ciała w Polsce do wydania Rytuału Piotrkowskiego (1631)’, in Studia z Dziejów Liturgii w Polsce, I, ed. M. Rechowicz and W. Schenk (Lublin 1973), 97–159.

22 The floor of the church was also investigated using GPR in 2015 and 2017, but this did not reveal the presence of any subterranean masonry structures within the eastern bays of the nave. The examination was apparently rather superficial, however, as it did not reveal, for example, a large pit for central heating pipes from 1938 or the walls of the oldest church under the present nave, uncovered during excavations in 2018. This may have been caused by a thick layer of rubble buried under the floor and remaining there since the reconstruction after the 1850 fire, which results in a strong ‘noise’ in the GPR image, difficult to interpret. The present authors have been making attempts to carry out a detailed examination of the area using high-tech tools.

23 The chapel of the Annunciation, adjoining the choir on the south, was erected around 1440, after the choir screen had been built: Horzela, Cud światła, 169.

24 The stairs are currently inaccessible, but were surveyed (using traditional methods) in 2013: W. Niewalda and M. Goras, ‘Sprawozdanie z badań architektonicznych związanych z sondażowym wykopem archeologicznym w południowym ramieniu krużganka przy narożniku korpusu nawowego kościoła Świętej Trójcy’ (unpublished documentation of the survey, Cracow 2013; copies are held in the archives of the Conservator for Historic Monuments of the Lesser Poland Voivodship and in the Dominican friary in Cracow).

25 Thomas (Tomasz) from Wartenberg, currently Syców, a town in Lower Silesia.

26 ‘De inventione et bina translatione ossium Beati Iacincti’, ed. L. Ćwikliński, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, IV (Lviv 1884), 898.

27 The size of the hall church, completed in the first quarter of the 14th century, suggests that it may have housed a screen of a more elaborate structure than a simple dividing wall, more suitable for a church from the mid-13th century. Therefore, it cannot be ruled out that the Gothic porch screen, reconstructed here, was built on the site of a similar earlier structure, whose traces were obliterated by the subsequent remodelling of the hall church into a basilican one. The stone carvings flanking the church’s main west doorway may perhaps be remnants of this hypothetical screen. A suggestion that the current position of the stone carvings is not original (put forward by Szyma, Kościół i klasztor Dominikanów, 100, 101) was confirmed by excavations carried out in 2018: Czechowicz, Bojęś-Białasik, Łyczak and Szyma, ‘Krakowski kościół’, 296. The stone carvings in question may have originally formed two vertical supports of an unidentified structure; they were not part of a doorway. The stone reliefs at the top of the carvings originally were not integrated with them, either. The problem requires further investigation.

28 Schmelzer, Der mittelalterliche Lettner, 81–98; the (poorly researched) question of the presence of choir screens in what is now Poland has been recently discussed, with special attention to mendicant architecture, by P. Samól, ‘O średniowiecznej architekturze zakonów żebraczych w Chełmnie. Na marginesie tomu pierwszego “Księgi klasztorów ziemi chełmińskiej w średniowieczu”’, Zapiski Historyczne, 85 (2020), 141–59. See also J. S. Jamroz, ‘Kościół pofranciszkański w Zawichoście’, Biuletyn Historji Sztuki i Kultury, 10 (1948), 185–230, 357; O. Czerner, ‘Chór kapłański i lektorium kościoła NMP we Wrocławiu w XIV w., podstawy rekonstrukcji i związane z tym problemy’, Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki, 10 (1965), 181–205; idem, ‘Problemy związane z anastylozą lektorium w kościele Mariackim we Wrocławiu’, Zeszyty Naukowe Politechniki Wrocławskiej 174, Architektura 10 (Wrocław 1968); J. Szczepański, ‘Prezbiterium franciszkanów w Gdańsku i jego lektoria’, Kwartalnik Architektury i Urbanistyki, 38 (1993), 109–18; S. Pasiciel, Zespół klasztorny franciszkanów i klarysek w Gnieźnie (Gniezno 2005), 93–95; P. Samól, Architektura kościołów dominikańskich w średniowiecznych Prusach (Gdańsk 2022), 265–68.

29 A detailed description of the church and friary before the fire can be found in an inventory drawn up in 1822: Cracow, Archive of the Polish Dominican Province, K 41.

30 Zdanek, ‘Kaplice i ołtarze’; M. Szyma, ‘Where is the Burial Place of Filippo Buonaccorsi, Called Callimachus? From the Research on the Topography of the Dominican Church in Cracow’, in Epigraphica & Sepulcralia VII. Fórum epigrafických a sepulkralnych studií, ed. J. Roháček (Prague 2016), 59–78.

31 ‘Processionale Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum’, Archive of the Polish Dominican Province in Cracow, K XV 5, fols 98r–108v: ‘antiphone cantande in cena Domini ad abluendum altaria: de s. Trinitate; de Sancto Spiritu; de s. Dorothea; de Beata virgine; de s. Ioanne evangelista; de s. Katherina martyre; de Annunciatione dominica; de s. Clemente; de s. Maria Magdalena; de s. Thoma de Aquino; de s. Nicolao; de s. Dominico; de s. Ioanne Baptista; de s. Martino; de s. Bartholomeo; de s. Felice et A[da]ucto; de corona Domini nostri; de s. Katherina Senensi; de s. Adalberto; de s. Anna; de s. Vincencio [Ferrerio]; de conversione s. Pauli; de s. Stanislao; de s. Michaele; de s. Petro novo martyre; de s. Appolonia; de Corpore Christi; de Assumptione BVM; de tribus regibus; de omnibus sanctis; de s. Cruce; de s. Alexio; de s. Hedvig’'. The manuscript has been catalogued by Jakub Kubieniec, to whom we extend our thanks for his kindly drawing our attention to this source.

32 Architectural details, the most problematic elements of the reconstruction, were rendered in the form of semi-opaque shapes. This method, however, had to be used sparingly, in order to retain intelligibility of the model.

33 We do not know how the junction between the front wall of the screen loft and a window in the eastern bay of the north aisle looked. The location of both of these elements should not be questioned, as the window has survived to this day (it is blocked and largely inaccessible), and the location of the western wall of the screen can be determined in relation to the location and dimensions of a window allowing light into the northern bay of the porch.

34 Zdanek, ‘Kaplice i ołtarze’, 116–19.

35 Szyma, ‘The Original Tomb’, 214, 218.

36 In time, some of the lateral chapels were taken over by religious confraternities and craft guilds: K. J. Czyżewski, M. Szyma and M. Walczak, ‘From Kings to Shoemakers: Side Chapels of the Dominican Church in Cracow and their Patrons’, in Kunstpatronage in Mitteleuropa zwischen Privatstiftung und Staatskunst, ed. J. Adamski (Warsaw 2021), 57–86.

37 See Bruzelius, ‘The Architecture’, 370. Obviously, comparative material from Italy has to be treated with caution because of the typological differences between mendicant churches in Italy and in Central Europe.

38 Although the bird’s beak has not survived, it is very unlikely that the banderole would not have been connected to it.

39 M. Walczak, Rzeźba architektoniczna w Małopolsce za czasów Kazimierza Wielkiego (Cracow 2006); idem, ‘Power and History. Art as a Means of Legitimating a Ruler’s Authority in the Court Art of Fourteenth-Century Poland’, Umění, 62 (2014), 2–16.

40 Recently discussed by J. Kuthan and J. Royt, The Cathedral of St. Vitus at Prague Castle (Prague 2011), 176–89.

41 For instance, Evangelist symbols can be found on bosses in the choir screen chapels of the Dominican church in Berne (c. 1300–10; see Schmelzer, Der mittelalterliche Lettner, 86–90, 172, pls 4, 5, figs 63, 64). In the church of the Friars Preacher in Erfurt, the Evangelist symbols were used in the decoration of brackets on the screen, dating to the end of the 14th century. An eagle with a banderole and an ox with a book support the loft of the lateral parts of the west choir screen in Meissen Cathedral, added in the third building phase (in the 1390s: see H. Magirius, ‘Zur Funktion und Stil der dritten Lettnererweiterung aus den neunziger Jahren des 14. Jahrhunderts’, in Architektur und Skulptur des Meißner Domes im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert, ed. H. Magirius (Weimar 2001), 207, figs 294, 295).

42 Cracow, Archive of the Polish Dominican Province, K 41, fol. 8r.

43 A. Bues, ed., Die Aufzeichnungen des Dominikaners Martin Gruneweg (1562–ca. 1618) über seine Familie in Danzig, seine Handelsreisen in Osteuropa und sein Klosterleben in Polen, Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau Quellen und Studien, 19 (Wiesbaden 2008), 1195, 1264, 1718–19; W. Walanus, ‘Na marginesie edycji pamiętników Martina Grunewega’, Modus. Prace z historii sztuki, 10–11 (2011), 176–87. In the Dominican church in Lviv, as in Cracow, an altar administered by the confraternity of the Name of Jesus had stood on the south side of the chancel arch in the early modern period.

44 Szyma, ‘Where is the Burial Place’, 63–65.

45 In the 17th century the Dominicans donated the painting to the parish church in Jodłownik (a village which then belonged to the friary), hence it is known as the Annunciation from Jodłownik. The painting is now held in the collection of the Diocesan Museum in Tarnów; J. Kozłowski and K. Kuczman, ‘Włoska fundacja krakowskiego malarstwa cechowego. Epitafijny obraz Ainolfa Tedaldiego w Muzeum Diecezjalnym w Tarnowie’, Folia Historiae Artium, 20 (1984), 41–61, where, however, an incorrect location of Tedaldi’s burial, in the Three Magi Chapel, was given.

46 For the location of the burial, see Szyma, ‘Where is the Burial Place’, 59–78. The following recent publications on the slab are worthy of note: M. Janicki, ‘Datowanie płyty nagrobnej Filipa Kallimacha’, Studia Źródłoznawcze, 41 (2003), 19–43 (with an extensive summary in English); S. Hauschke, Die Grabdenkmäler der Nürnberger Vischer-Werkstatt (1453–1544) (Petersberg 2006), 229–34; idem, ‘Auftraggeber-Netzwerke und temporäre Werkgemeinschaften. Nürnberger Kunstwerke in Krakau zur Zeit des Veit Stoss’, in Wokół Wita Stwosza. Materiały z międzynarodowej konferencji naukowej w Muzeum Narodowym w Krakowie, 19–22 maja 2005, ed. D. Horzela and A. Organisty (Cracow 2006), 231–41; A. Madej-Anderson, Repräsentation in einer Bettelordenskirche. Die spätmittelalterlichen Bildtafeln der Dominikaner in Krakau (Ostfildern 2007), 124–25; I. Ciulisova, ‘Stoss, Callimachus and Florence’, Ars, 42 (2009), 34–46.

47 For recent studies of the problem see, e.g.: F. Schwartz, Il bel cimitero. Santa Maria Novella in Florenz 1279–1348: Grabmäler, Architektur und Gesellschaft (Berlin 2009); Cannon, Religious Poverty; Bruzelius, Preaching, Building; Hall, ‘Another Look’.

48 In the course of the church having been remodelled several times and the tomb of St Hyacinth opened, the position of the latter may have shifted slightly; it seems, however, that its general location had not changed until 1543; Szyma, ‘The Original Tomb’, 203–18.

49 A. Zajchowska and M. Zdanek, ‘Mirakula św. Jacka z lat 1488–1500. Edycja krytyczna’, Studia Źródłoznawcze, 46 (2009), 103, 104.

50 After the choir screen was dismantled, the painting was removed to the chapel of St Hyacinth. In 1648 the Dominicans donated it to the parish church in Odrowąż, then a town (now a village) in the landed estates of the family from which St Hyacinth originated. For more on the painting, see Walczak, ‘Between the Eternal City and Cracow’, 337–39.

51 K. J. Czyżewski, M. Szyma and M. Walczak, ‘Madonny Jackowe. Kultowe i artystyczne aspekty alabastrowych figur w Krakowie, Przemyślu i Lwowie’, Rocznik Krakowski, 85 (2019), 49–106; M. Walczak, ‘A Group of Statuettes in Alabaster from the Dominican Church in Cracow: A Contribution to the Research on Imported Artworks in Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages’, Artibus et Historiae, An Art Anthology, 84 (2021), 9–49.

52 A. Zajchowska, ‘Rozwój przedkanonizacyjnego kultu świętego Jacka’, in Święty Jacek Odrowąż studia i źródła. Skarby dominikańskie, ed. M. Zdanek (Cracow 2007), 11–28.

53 ‘De inventione et bina translatione’, 894–99.

54 The main part of the former chapel now functions as the so-called small or public sacristy. Originally there were two altars in the chapel, dedicated to the Assumption and the Three Magi, from which the full (dual) dedication of the chapel derived. During the reconstruction of the church after the 1850 fire, the western part of the chapel was closed off as an anteroom of the sacristy (see Figs 10, 12 and 13).

55 The second chapel of St Hyacinth was built above the western part of the chapel of the Three Magi and was much larger than the first but smaller than the present (third) chapel, which dates from the second and third decades of the 17th century: J. Czechowicz, K. J. Czyżewski, M. Szyma and M. Walczak, ‘Grób i nagrobki świętego Jacka w dominikańskim kościele Świętej Trójcy w Krakowie do końca XVI wieku’, Rocznik Krakowski, 88 (2022), 159–97.

56 ‘Novae capellae et altarium erectio’, ed. L. Ćwikliński, in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, IV (Lviv 1884), 900; S. Lubomlczyk, De vita miraculis et actis canonizationis Sancti Hyacinthi confessoris ordinis fratrvm praedicat. Libri qvatvor (Rome 1594), 257.

57 ‘De inventione et bina translatione’, 897.

58 Originally the chapel was made up of three bays with quadripartite vaults. The diagonal rib of the chapel’s western bay sprung from the corner between the circular staircase and the chancel wall. This removal of the rib’s springing point from the chapel’s western wall enabled construction of a new structure along this wall, 0.89 m thick, which—on the upper level of the choir screen—formed the back of the niche in which the chapel of St Hyacinth was housed.

59 K. R. Prokop, Polscy biskupi dominikańscy: słownik biograficzny (Cracow 2013), 153–58.

60 ‘De inventione et bina translatione’, 898.

61 R. Sulewska, ‘Płyta w Bochni—nieznane dzieło Padovana?’, Ikonotheka. Prace Instytutu Historii Sztuki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 9 (1995), 57–72; the author must be given due credit for having correctly identified the slab as a tombstone of St Hyacinth in the first chapel dedicated to him in the Dominican church in Cracow. A hypothetical reconstruction of the tomb proposed by her—as part of an altar, located above the altar table—is incompatible with the account of Thomas from Wartenberg, who makes a clear distinction between the altar and the tomb (see ‘De inventione et bina translatione’, 898). An attribution of the slab relief to Padovano was rejected by A. M. Schulz, Giammaria Mosca called Padovano: A Renaissance Sculptor in Italy and Poland (University Park 1998), 121. However, M. Fabiański, Sen w rzeźbie nagrobnej Bartłomieja Berrecciego (Cracow 2022), 235–37, 333, considered this attribution as plausible and offered a number of arguments in its favour.

62 See the data collected by Schmelzer, Der mittelalterliche Lettner.

63 J. Allen, ‘Choir stalls in Venice and Northern Italy: Furniture, Ritual and Space in the Renaissance Church Interior’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 2009).

64 However, choir screens in Cistercian churches fulfilled different functions to those in mendicant, parish or cathedral churches, and their forms were quite different too. For more on the removal of the choir screen by the Cracow Dominicans in the local context and across the Polish Dominican province, see Szyma et al., ‘Przegroda chórowa’, 831–32.