Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej (Jan 2016)
Srebra z ewangelickiego kościoła pw. św. Jerzego w Toruniu w świetle inwentarzy z lat 1580-1817
Abstract
SILVER VESSELS FROM THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH OF ST GEORGE IN TORUŃ IN THE LIGHT OF INVENTORIES FROM THE YEARS 1580–1817 The article concerns silver liturgical vessels founded by parishioners in the modern period for St George’ church situated in the suburbs of Toruń (Thorn). The beginnings of the temple go back to a hospital chapel (probably established in the 13th c.); then it was a parish church serving the inhabitants of the suburb north of the city walls, mostly speakers of the Polish lan-guage. As the ideas of the Reformation spread in the city, it was turned into an Evangelical parish church, Polish still being the predominant language. St George’s cemetery nearby became a necropolis of the Protestant inhabitants of the Old Town and the church was a customary place for funeral services. The church was dismantled in 1811; after that the Evangelical commune gathered in other places, until a new church was built in the years 1904–1907 in Mokre, than already a city quarter. After 1945 the church was taken over by the Catholic Church. Throughout the modern period St George’s parish regularly acquired liturgical vessels and altar accessories made of tin, brass or silver, as well as ornamental paraments, founded by the parishioners. The article discusses silver vessels, as those had the highest value. Information on them comes from the parish account books, in which inventories were also recorded. The earliest inventory comes from 1580, when the church was probably still furnished with vessels that had belonged to the Catholic parish, most of them made of brass or tin, with only two silver chalices. In the following centuries the parish acquired many silver items; most numerous were chalices but there were also ciboria, patens, communion jugs, candlesticks, etc.The foundations often had a commemorative function, connected with the sepulchral function of the church, and the donors came from the circle of affluent burghers, including prosperous merchants (eight records, including widows and an apprentice), members of the intellectual elite (e.g. lawyer Andreas Zernecke, book-seller and alderman Johann Friedrich Hauenstein, preacher and high-school teacher Gottfried Weiss, physician Anton Gundlich) and rich artisans (e.g. a goldsmith, a cordovan-maker and a needle-maker’s widow). Thanks to the publications by pastor Reinhold Heuer (1907) and Eugen von Czihak (1908) it is known that almost all the silver vessels listed in the last surviving inventory from 1757 had been used in the parish until those authors’ times. Unfortunately, most of them disappeared from the church, probably during WW II. When Catholics took over the church in Mokre in 1945 the only remaining modern-period vessels were: a gilded chalice (made by Johann Christian Bröll-mann), a gilded paten (by Jacob Hermann) and two patens (by Stephan Petersen); all of them are now exhibited in the Regional Museum in Toruń.
