The Kamenets Cathedral complex, located in the heart of the historic city , is situated just off the north-west corner of the Market Square - the largest shopping square in Kamenets Podilsk until the 1870s. It is an enclave of peace and quiet, undisturbed by the bustle of conversations and footsteps of passers-by coming from the market square. The space around the church itself is an eye-catcher: it is surrounded by a historic stone wall, which once marked the boundaries of the church cemetery. A late Baroque Triumphal Gate, also called Stanislaw August's Gate - from the inscription commemorating the monarch's visit to Kamieniec in 1781 - leads to the church from the side of the square. Just behind them , at the level of the cathedral facade, was the Gothic gate - the original entrance to the cemetery grounds. After the new one was built on the market side, it lost its significance; its remains were demolished and the passage was finally removed in the 1990s. The western part of the plot is occupied by a small garden and the buildings of the bishop's house , which stretch all the way to Kuznetsov Street - picturesquely suspended over the edge of a ravine. They are separated from the church façade by a narrow street, once known as Jezuicka Street, now bearing the name Franciszkańska Street. The magnificent building of the former seminary , built - like the Triumphal Gate - on the initiative of Bishop Adam Stanisław Krasiński in 1780-1782, closes the southern border of the complex.

Surrounded by the aforementioned buildings, in the middle of the plot rises the Gothic cathedral with its Baroque façade and minaret, dedicated to the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The slender tower with its oriental origins is a reminder of the Turkish occupation of Kamenets between 1672 and 1699 , when the cathedral was converted into a mosque. Its preservation was guaranteed by the provisions of the Treaty of Carlowitz, concluded in 1699 between the Republic and the Ottoman Empire. Today, it is the only example in Europe of a Christian church with an Islamic minaret.

Kamieniec Cathedral , as the easternmost gothic temple in Latin Europe, co-created with the fortress the myth of the Christian bastion city - "the bulwark of Poland and the whole of Christianity". The buildings that make up the ensemble come from different eras and - like the cathedral itself - were subject to numerous architectural and functional transformations. The result of these transformations was an extraordinary complex - Podolia's "Little Wawel", which for centuries was the centre of religious life for Poles living in Kamieniec.

The first cathedral church was built after the Kamieniec bishopric was established in 1379 . The original church may have been built of wood or an adaptation of an older brick building. The organisation of the bishopric at that time was provisional, and the Catholic mission in Podolia was carried out exclusively by mendicant orders - the Franciscans and Dominicans. It was only after the incorporation of these lands into the Polish Crown that the actual organisation of the diocese took place , which enabled the construction or expansion of the cathedral.

The building consists of a three-nave basilica body and an elongated, polygonally closed presbytery, lit by tall, pointed windows arranged between buttresses. The marked stylistic and structural difference between the two parts indicates that they were built in different periods. Researchers, relying only on scarce archival sources and lacking the results of archaeological and probing investigations, have not been able to establish unequivocally which was erected first or when exactly this took place. One hypothesis was put forward by Olga Płamienicka, according to whom the corpus - showing numerous archaic features, including the predominance of Romanising forms over Gothic ones - was built first. These features include.These features include: a trapezoidal ground plan with an oblique façade line; three semi-circular inter-nave arcades carved into the wall (without pillars or columns), with varying spans (3.1 m; 4.2 m; 4 m); the lack of an axial connection between the arcades and the window openings; a non-uniform number of bays in the individual naves (main nave - 4, north nave - 5, south nave - 6); the uneven height of the side aisles; and above all the massiveness of the walls. The length of the body is 21.6 m, which corresponds to 20 fathoms-an Old Russian piston, equal to 1.08 m. The same unit of measurement was used for the demarcation of the Polish Market Square after the town was founded under the Magdeburg Law in 1374, so the corpus may have been built shortly after the bishopric was erected (1379), or possibly even earlier. Since the architectural structure of the corpus shows similarities to 14th-century Orthodox churches, e.g. the basing of the inter-nave arcades on sections of the wall or the cubic projection - it cannot be ruled out that the first church, later to be used as a Latin cathedral, was originally an Orthodox church .

It was not until the incorporation of Podolia, together with Kamieniec, into the Polish Kingdom in 1434 that the real conditions were created for the actual construction of the cathedral to begin. Between 1434 and 1453, a three-bay vaulted chancel, closed with five sides, was added to the body on the east side. The length of the choir was 21.3 m, which corresponded to 36 Cracow cubits (the unit of measurement then used in Kamieniec), equal to 0.59 m. This type of elongated choir, framed by buttresses and equipped with high, pointed windows, was popularised in Central and Eastern Europe by the Mendican orders, present in Podolia from as early as the 1440s. In the Archdiocese of Lviv, which included the Diocese of Kamenets, the first documented realisations of this type were the presbyteries of the Lviv temples of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (1360-1380) and the Franciscan Church of the Holy Cross (4th quarter of the 14th century). At the same time as the construction of the presbytery, a sacristy was built on the north side, consisting of three rooms. At the same time, the nave was vaulted and a tower porch was added to the west, reaching halfway up the gable, built in between the two buttresses dividing the façade. It served as a bell tower and in miniature repeated the forms of the cathedral campanile, which at the time served as a defensive tower. The appearance of the Gothic cathedral before the Baroque reconstruction of the façade is shown on a copperplate plan of Kamenets-Podilskyi, drawn up by Cyprian Tomaševich after 1672.

The next expansion of the church took place in the modern period, when several chapels were added to the body of the cathedral . The first chapels to be added were the Chapel of the Consolation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (also known as the Bishop's Chapel or the S這wiečiana Chapel) , located in the west bay of the south aisle, and the Chapel of St Peter , later transformed into the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament , located in the middle of the north aisle. Both were built during the reign of Bishop Leonard Słończewski in 1547-1563 . Architecturally, the latter chapel is particularly noteworthy, being crowned by a cupola set on a tambour with a lantern. Its form is reminiscent of the domed chapel type popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, initiated in Poland by the construction of the Zygmunt Chapel at Wawel Cathedral (1519-1531). Similar in form - domed but smaller - the Chapel of the Conversion of St Paul was erected around 1600 at the west portal, on the north side. After reconstruction in 1672-1699 , it served as the base for a Turkish minaret. In 1628, the largest of the chapels, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (also known as the Soviet, Council or Literary chapel ), founded by Jan Białobocki at the south elevation, was completed . In the second half of the 17th century, the chapel was given an elongated shape with a polygonal closure on the east, as a result of the merger of two parts previously separated by a wall. It occupies the remaining eastern bays of the south aisle, adjoining the western wall to the Chapel of the Consolation of Our Lady.

The greatest changes to the cathedral's architecture occurred after the Peace of Karlovice (1699) , which ended the 27-year occupation of Kamenets and Podolia by the Turks. Recovered by the Catholics , the cathedral, which had served under the Ottomans as a mosque for Sultan Mehmed IV, was thoroughly renovated and rededicated under the pontificate of Bishop Jan Chryzostom Gniński. This event is commemorated by two plaques bearing the date 1704, located under the music choir. A wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived trampling a crescent was then placed on the minaret. The minaret thus underwent a symbolic transformation - from an Islamic sign it became an emblem of Christian victory, towering over the city and patronising the whole Kamenets diocese. The cathedral was restored to its full splendour only by Stefan Rupniewski , Bishop of Kamenets from 1717 to 1721, and Mikolaj Dembowski , who held the office from 1743 to 1757. It was under the pontificate of the former that the wooden main altar in Baroque style, which has survived to this day, was built, with a Crucifixion group in the central arcade. The side arcades, separated from the central part of the altar by columns, were designed to serve a double function: as a decorative frame for pairs of sculptures - St Peter and St Paul, the patron saints of the cathedral, and St Adalbert and St Stanislaus the Bishop, the patron saints of the Republic - and as an architectural frame for the windows, which illuminate the interior of the church. Jerzy Kowalczyk identifies the designer of the altarpiece as the anonymous author of the façade of the pilgrimage church in Tynna in Podolia, consecrated in 1717 by Bishop Rupniewski. He justifies his attribution by the similarity of the setting of the arches above the side supports of the altarpiece to the doubled semicircular pediments used in the divisions of the first storey of the façade of the Tynna church.

During the pontificate of Bishop Mikolaj Dembowski, major restoration work on the cathedral was completed. The interior was then enriched with elements of furnishings that have survived to the present day: an oak pulpit, partly gilded, decorated with Rococo ornaments and sculptures depicting the four Evangelists, as well as confessionals and canonical stalls. The minaret was topped with a gilded statue of Immaculata, cast in Danzig from copper alloy in 1754. The walls of the side aisles were raised, and a broken shingled roof was put on over the body and presbytery. Only the dome with lantern over the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament was covered with sheet metal.

However, the most important memento of Bishop Dembowski remains the carved stone façade (plastered at the beginning of the 20th century) - a work attributed to Jan de Witte, one of the most prominent architects of the second half of the 18th century, active in the eastern provinces of the former Republic of Poland. The architect contributed to the reconstruction of most of the churches in Kamieniec, creating on the western side of the town an impressive sequence of seven church and monastery facades, stretching for nearly a kilometre. Foremost among these was the cathedral - centrally located, with a statue of the Virgin Mary glistening in the sun, visible from afar on a 37-metre high minaret. The façade, kept in great order, was divided by composite pilasters set on high plinths. Together with the beam, the triangular gable topped by a stone cross, the statues of the cathedral's patron saints, Sts Peter and Paul, and the flaming vases placed at the corners, it creates the form of an ancient pseudo-portico. Between the central pairs of buttresses is a portal, connected by a common frame to the high window above.

The foundation work of Bishop Mikolaj Dembowski in the cathedral is documented by the coat of arms Jelita, placed on the pulpit and the façade, as well as by inscriptions located at the base of the minaret and on the plaque above the main portal. They contain the dates of the foundation and were made after the bishop's death on the initiative of the chapter as an expression of gratitude for his services. In 1758, the canons of the chapter funded an epitaph for his heart, placed in an alabaster urn topped with a burning heart, to the right of the entrance to the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. Mikołaj Dembowski renovated this chapel at his own expense, financing, among other things, the construction of the portal, the finial of which is decorated with a Rococo cartouche with the Latin inscription "Ego Sum" ("I am"). This is the beginning of a quotation from the Gospel of St John (14,6), which reads in full: 'I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me". Quoting the full text of the quotation explains the meaning of its placement above the entrance to the chapel where the Eucharist - the Body of Christ - was kept. The placement of the epitaph with the Bishop's heart and bust on the wall next to the chapel, linked in composition with the confessional - the place of confession preceding the reception of the Eucharist - is in turn explained by the words of the Latin inscription engraved on the epitaph, informing that it is "a monument of perpetual gratitude and eternal love and respect". In Poland, the custom of burying the heart separately became widespread in the 17th century among the magnates and wealthy nobility. It was probably initiated by the burial of the heart of Władysław IV in 1648 in the Chapel of St Casimir at Vilnius Cathedral. Such burials, apart from their commemorative function, were an expression of the cult of the Sacred Heart and of love - both for people and for God. Therefore, the heart was also distinguished from other organs after death. The tradition of such a burial is continued in Kamenets Cathedral by the epitaph of Bishop Franciszek Mackiewicz (died 1842). The monument to his memory, in neo-Rococo style - like the earlier one - consists of the same elements: an urn containing his heart, a bust and a confessional. It was placed to the left of the entrance to the same chapel, thus symmetrically completing the foundation commemorating Bishop Dembowski (d. 1757).

The last major changes to the architecture of the cathedral took place before it was vacated on 14 November 1920 by Bishop Piotr Mańkowski - the last Ordinary of the briefly reactivated Kamieńsk diocese in 1919, which had been abolished on 5 June 1866 by Tsar Alexander II and merged with the Luzhno-Zytomyr diocese. Modernisation work was carried out in two stages: between 1853-1860 and 1912-1913. In the first stage, a neo-Gothic porch was added to the chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the second, the earlier stucco decorations were removed from the vaults, exposing the Gothic ribs in the chancel, and the walls - both interior and exterior - were plastered.

In 1922, the Bolshevik authorities robbed the cathedral's treasury of its most valuable items, and in 1930 turned it into a museum of religion and atheism. After 1978, the building was used as a concert hall , which - in contrast to the fate of many other churches in Kamenets Podolski - made it possible to preserve part of its valuable heritage. The church function was restored in 1990. A year later, with the rebirth of the Kamenets diocese, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul once again became a Roman Catholic cathedral.

The building's history

before 1434 - there was a wooden church or an adapted older brick building, corresponding to the present body of the temple
1434-1453 or 1483-1502 - the presbytery
O. Płamienicka assumes the period of the reign of Bishop Paul I Dominican (1434-1453) as the beginning of the temple's construction. T.M. Trajdos, on the other hand, in his work 'The Church...', dates the erection of the brick church to after 1483, attributing the start of construction to Bishop Maciej of Stara Łomża, and its completion to Bishop Piotr h. Powała (d. 1502). According to K. Iwanicki, the oldest part of the church is the three-nave body, dated 1502-1517, to which between 1646 and 1648 an elongated trilateral chancel with two vestries was added from the north. The authors of "Architektura Gothic..." indicate that the chancel and the western sacristy date from 1428-1430, while the body of the church was added in the middle of the 15th century and after 1483, during the reconstruction after the fire, its original hall layout was transformed into a pseudo-basilica. The cross-ribbed vault over the south aisle dates from this period; the vaults of the nave and north aisle are later, probably 16th century.
1547-1563 chapels of the Consolation of the Virgin Mary and the Blessed Sacrament
c .1600 - chapel of the Conversion of St Paul
1628 - chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
1970s. - minaret (based on the Chapel of the Conversion of St. Paul). Paul's conversion chapel)
1699-1704 - rededication of the cathedral, crowning of the minaret with a wooden statue of Immaculata
before 1721 - main altar
1754 - completion of the reconstruction of the facade in hewn stone according to the design of Jan de Witte
10 V 1756 - gilded statue of Immaculata placed on the minaret
after 1760 - episcopal sacristy
1816 - canonical sacristy with a staircase in a separate room (added on the east side to the east sacristy; The staircase replaced an inconvenient spiral staircase in the thickness of the wall); the staircase leads to the room on the first floor of the former chapter-house and archive, later used as a treasury and libraries
1853-1860 - neo-Gothic porch to the chapel of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary
1912-1913 - restoration of the cathedral under the patronage of the Society for the Care of Monuments of the Past conducted under the direction of architect Oskar Sosnowski