The parish church of St Michael the Archangel in Tartakiv - Roman Catholic church built between 1739 - ca. 1751 by the Brzeżany builder Jozef Vishnevsky.from the foundation of Franciszek Saleze Potocki, Kyiv voivode and owner of Tartakiv, expanded in 1897-1899 on the initiative of parish priest Michael Baron Lewartowski, with financial support from Zbigniew Lanckoroński.

History
Both the origins of the parish itself and of the Sawmill Church are unclear due to the lack of sources from that period and the confusing oral tradition on which previous authors have relied. The Tartakiv parish first belonged to the Chelm diocese; as a result of the First Partition of the Republic of Poland in 1772 it became part of Galicia; two decrees of Emperor Joseph in 1782 saw it briefly incorporated into the Przemyśl diocese; and from 20 October 1787 it belonged to the Bełsk decanate of the Lviv archdiocese, where it remained until the end of the Second World War.

The parish probably had a late medieval or early modern date, and existed in 1587, when it is mentioned in the sources. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries, the town was raided several times by the Tartars, which contributed to the decline and desolation of the parish, which was renewed in 1605 with a foundation from the then owners of the town, Katarzyna Trzcińska and her son Adam.

There is no news about the first church, probably wooden, which existed at the end of the 16th century. It is only known that it was burnt down by the Tartars together with the whole village. After the Trzcinski family renewed the foundation, a new wooden church was built with three altars. The temple was consecrated by the Bishop of Chelm, Jerzy Zamoyski, on 23 November 1603. This church was burnt down, together with the presbytery, during the invasion of the Tatars and Cossacks in the early 1740s, and the parish priest was murdered. For the next decade the parish remained vacant and lacked a church.

On 7 March 1660 the then parish priest of Tartaków, Fr Jan Sieprawski, doctor of philosophy and theology, rector of the Zamojska Academy, canon of the Zamojska collegiate church, concluded a contract with the carpenter Stanislaw Sałwiowski of Poryck to build a new wooden church in Tartaków. Construction probably lasted until the end of 1660, as the completed church was mentioned in the autumn of 1663. Sources from 1672 report three altars and numerous paintings hung on the walls. A new main altar was built before 1711, as the previous one was "plain and common painted".

During the warfare following the election of August II, the church in Tartakov was looted by Saxon troops, but in 1714 five altars were already recorded in the interior. It is known that new altarpieces were funded by: on the right-hand side, the altar of the Virgin Mary; on the right-hand side, the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is known that new altars were funded by Jan Wilkowski, governor of the Stanisław Potocki flags, on the right side of the altar of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and by an unknown Stefan Sokołowski, on the opposite side of the altar of the Guardian Angels. The pulpit was also new. At this time, numerous liturgical items (silver: monstrance, chalice, two crosses, votive offerings for the crucifix on the rainbow) were funded by the local nobility. In the following years, however, the church gradually fell into disrepair. Some liturgical items were stolen in 1736.

A new brick church, existing in a slightly altered form to this day, began to be built on 25 May 1739 with the own funds of Franciszek Saleze Potocki, Grand Crown Landlord, next to the old wooden church, on its southern side. The exact date of completion is not known, but it can be assumed that the church, at least in its shell, was finished in 1751, when Potocki commissioned a painting of the Virgin Mary for the altar from the painter Giuseppe Balzani. The church was completed and almost fully furnished in 1754 during the visitation of Bishop Walenty Wężyk of Chełm.

In 1763, the church was robbed by Jews, who broke down the doors to the treasury and carried away gold objects and even paintings from the altars. The losses were quickly replenished with new foundations. The church was then equipped with three new altars (the main altar of St Michael the Archangel and the side altars of the Crucifixion and Our Lady of the Rosary), a pulpit, eighteen pews, a wooden confessional under the choir and a new organ. Unfortunately, a year later the church was robbed again, this time of almost all liturgical equipment.

From 1765 onwards, the cult of the image of Our Lady of Tartakov developed rapidly and the church aspired to become a shrine. A special role was played here by the then promoter of the Rosary Brotherhood, Fr Augustyn Kostkiewicz (later parish priest), who organised numerous and lavish celebrations with the miraculous image, which attracted further foundations from the Potocki family and donations from the Tartakov townspeople, Sokal residents and pilgrims coming to the church. The Lviv curia finally recognised the Tartakov painting as miraculous by a decree issued in 1777.

. According to the description of 1777, there were five wooden altars in the church: the large one of St Michael the Archangel, the side ones of the Crucifixion, the one of the Annunciation, belonging to the Rosary Brotherhood, which contained the miraculous image of Our Lady of Tartakov and on the slider the image of the Immaculate Conception, then the fourth one of St Thaddeus the Apostle and the last one of St Tekla and the Martyrs. In 1779, Fr Augustine Kostkiewicz founded a new main altar and held a lavish celebration of the transfer of the miraculous painting to it from the side altar of the Rosary Brotherhood. When Father Augustyn Kostkiewicz, who had previously promoted the Rosary Confraternity, took over the presbytery in 1784, a period of intensive repairs and work began on the church and the parish buildings. In 1791, thanks to the efforts of Father Kostkiewicz, the cemetery fence was painted with representations of the miracles experienced through the intercession of the image of Our Lady of Tartakov, accompanied by verse inscriptions in Polish and Latin and quotations from the Holy Scriptures. The Church of St Michael the Archangel was consecrated on 6 June 1794 by Kajetan Ignacy Kicki, auxiliary bishop of Lviv.

As the number of worshippers grew, the church became too small, so in 1897-1899, on the initiative of the parish priest, Father Michał Baron Lewartowski, with the financial support of Zbigniew Lanckoroński, owner of Tartaków at that time, the church was extended by demolishing the original presbytery and adding two chapels serving as a pseudo-transept and a new presbytery. This gave the church the shape of a Latin cross. The construction was led by a builder from Brzeżany, Jozef Vishnevski. This extension entailed the destruction of the valuable 18th-century interior polychrome and was very badly assessed in the press of the time. The consecration of the enlarged church took place on 10 September 1899 and was celebrated by Bishop Jozef Weber, Lviv suffragan. The church was repaired again in the 1930s, including plastering the facade and repainting a copy of the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Tartakov on the façade.

After the 1951 correction of the borders of Poland and the USSR, Tartakivska became part of the USSR. A kolkhoz was set up in the village and the church was turned into a warehouse and adapted for storing grain in it (the nave was divided into two levels by a wooden structure). The kolkhoz was still storing grain in the former church in 1993. In 1991, the Roman Catholic parish of Tartakiv was re-registered and the community began efforts to return the temple, which was only handed over to it in 2003. On 15 May 2004, a copy of the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Tartakiv was brought from Lukavets. Since the reactivation of the parish, efforts have been made to secure and restore the ruined church. A new main altar was brought in through the efforts of the then administrator Fr Oleg Solomon. In 2013, the roofing over the entire church was replaced, and the reconstruction of the signature tower and the helmets of the facade towers began. By mid-2018, the entire façade was repaired and plastered, the tower helmets and the signature tower were completed, and the entire church was covered with a new red tin roof. These works unfortunately adversely affected the mass of the church, in particular the non-historic forms of the façade towers and the scaled-down, also non-historic, signature tower at the junction of the body and pesudotransept.

Architecture and decoration of the church
The church is situated in the centre of the village, on a slight hill. The temple is occidental (with the chancel facing west), built of brick, on the plan of a Latin cross. It is single-nave, with a three-bay body, with a wide pseudo-transept and a short, single-bay chancel closed with a trilateral aisle. On the sides of the chancel are the quadrilateral projection annexes of the vault and the sacristy. The divisions of the interior are carried out with Tuscan pilasters supporting the beam in the body, and pseudo-pillars in the chancel supporting parts of the cornice. The arms of the pseudo-transept without articulation. The nave is vaulted with a barrel vault with lunettes, on the garths which are an extension of the vertical divisions of the walls, the crossing of the pseudo-transept with a pseudo-dome, and its arms with a barrel vault, the chancel with polygons. The sacristy and the vault are covered by the so-called Klein ceiling. The façade of the church is two-towered, three-storey with a finial, with tiers of equal width and height, and three-axial. The central part of the façade is set back, with a recessed porch in the first storey of the towers. The divisions of the façade and the side elevations of the towers are common, by means of Tuscan pilasters supporting the beam. The divisions of the porch by pairs of Tuscan pilasters. The side elevations of the church, the closures of the transept arms and the presbytery with modest architectural divisions in the form of Tuscan pilasters supporting a moulded cornice with convex section. The roof over the body and transept is gabled, the roof over the presbytery is broken, the towers with helmets, all covered with sheet metal.

In 1788, on the initiative of Fr Kostkiewicz, the interior was polychromed in fresco. According to tradition dating back to the 19th century, the author of the new polychrome was the Lviv painter Stanislav Stroinski, who did not complete the work and delegated it to his assistant Tomasz Gertner. In 1889 the Lviv painter Theophil Kopystynskyi cleaned the frescoes, and following the expansion of the church the Lviv painter Julian Kruczkowski was the author of the 1904 polychrome of the newly built parts, repainting of the old paintings in the nave, and restoration of the earlier polychrome.

The painting decoration can be found throughout the nave (dated 1788), the chancel vault and the sacristy and treasury (dated 1904). On the vault, in the first bay from the east, there is a representation of the scene "Daniel in the cave of the lions fed by the Angel", in the second and third bays the scene "Defence of Tartakov against the Tartars through the intercession of St Michael the Archangel". The Doctors of the Church, St John Chrysostom, St Augustine, St Gregory and St Ambrose, are depicted on the sails of the vault. In the lunettes above the windows, scenes in rocaille cartouches with inscriptions. On the south side, 'The healing of the father by Tobias', further 'The first calling of Moses' and 'Jacob's dream'. On the north side, on the side of the rainbow arch, 'The Revelation of Joseph', further 'The opening of the tomb by the Angel', then 'The healing of the lame man at the pond'. On the wall behind the choir, a representation of Our Lady Queen of Heaven (Regina Angelorum), adored by a host of six angels. In the nave, on the south wall, 'The rescue of Lot from Sodom', opposite 'Joseph's dream ordering flight to Egypt', in the middle bay of the body on both sides illusionistically painted altar structures on the wall with a dynamic concave-convex form, placed in a painted niche closed with a conch. In the third bay, a representation of 'Hagar in the desert', opposite 'Release of St Peter from fetters by the Angel'.

The original church furnishings were destroyed when the church was converted into a kolkhoz warehouse. The memorial plaques of the Sawmill parish priests, Fr Augustyn Kostkiewicz (died 1 March 1803), Fr Jan Kuźmiecz (1793-1858) and the epitaph of the soldier Kajetan Szeliga Suffczyński (1807-1873), were also destroyed at that time.

Artistic issues
The Tartakiv church is the earliest known foundation of Franciszek Saleze Potocki, Kyiv voivode, known as the Little King of Rus, one of the richest magnates of his time, famous for living a life of splendour and allocating substantial sums to artistic foundations (including in Krystynopol, where he built himself a palace designed by the engineer architect Pierre Ricaud de Tirregaille). The parish church in Tartakovo remains the work of an anonymous architect or builder. Unfortunately, it is not characterised by any great artistic value, although the monumentality of the original mass of the church, achieved by the use of a two-tower façade, should be emphasised. Its distinctive attached towers with a deeply set-back central field are reminiscent of the architecture of wooden rather than brick churches. The extension of the church carried out by the Brzeżany builder Jozef Višniewski, probably according to his design, was not a successful project and disturbed the proportions of the architecture. The 18th-century frescos in the presbytery and sacristy, demolished before the new parts of the church were built, were also irretrievably lost at this time.

The most important and most valuable element of the Tartakov church decoration is the interior polychrome made in 1788. At present, the frescoes are badly damaged, with large parts of the painting missing, which fell off the wall along with the plaster. Their technical condition makes it difficult to resolve the question of authorship. Tradition links them to Stanisław Stroiński and Tomasz Gertner. It is possible that Stroiński prepared the designs and their execution was carried out by his renamed collaborator Tomasz Gertner. This would have been one of the late works by Stroiński, who was at the peak of his career in the 1850s-70s. Unique to Tartakov is the very rare iconographic programme of the paintings, which is based on the theme of angelic intercession. All the scenes painted inside were chosen from the Old and New Testaments to show angelic help in difficult situations. The content programme of the frescoes was developed by the then parish priest of Tartak, Father Augustyn Kostkiewicz. A manuscript chronicle has been preserved, in which he explains that during the Josephine reforms in Galicia, when the propagation of superstitious representations was forbidden (such as the paintings depicting miracles experienced through the miraculous image of Our Lady of Tartakov), he decided to decorate the interior with paintings depicting angels, referring to the church's name - St Michael the Archangel. The outstanding element of the paintings is the scene of the siege of Tartakov by Tatars and Cossacks and the heavenly intervention of St Michael the Archangel, warding off the enemies, depicted on two bays of the vault. The town depicted in the fresco can be unquestionably identified as Tartakov thanks to the depiction of the characteristic tower of the bazaar for which it was famous in the Old Polish period.