Historical outline

"Mogilnica" (formerly "Mogielnica"), in which the object in question is located, is today called "New Mogilnica" and is located in the valley of the Gnienie Rudka stream, about 12 kilometres south-west of Trembowel and about 9 kilometres west of Janov Trembowel. Between 1964 and 1991, the village was called "Trudowe". It is worth noting that the area has been administratively divided into a new and an old part. Next to the village in question with St. Joseph's Church, there is also a unit named "Mogilnica Stara", where one can find the brick Church of the Holy Trinity, existing since the 15th century.

Mogilnica was first mentioned in the 15th century, although the oldest historical traces found within the village date back to the 3rd millennium BC. (remains of a settlement of the Tripoli culture) and a large cemetery from the 11th-13th centuries AD.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the village had a strategic military function. It was on its territory that groups of troops setting out against Moldavians, Tatars, Turks and Cossacks were organised. Interestingly, until 1559 Mogilnica (together with Romanówka and Chmielówka) was a non-city starosty, and in 1712-1753 it was listed as a town. The leaseholders and owners of the estate include Mikołaj Wieniawski, Józef Skrzetuski, Michał Skrzetuski, and from 1776 Maciej Starzeński came into possession of the estate. The estate remained in his family until the Second World War!

As Michał Kurzej writes in his study on the site and the village, Mogilnica grew in the 19th century. It was one of the largest villages in Galicia. Not only prosperous, but also decently built up. The village had trembowel red sandstone quarries, a distillery, mills and three inns. In the Starzeński manor house there was a large Polish-French book collection with numerous old prints.

The origins of the parish in the village are not entirely clear. It is said that the establishment of a pastoral institution was planned already in the second decade of the 19th century. It was not until 1851 that a chaplaincy was established in the village. At that time, efforts to build a fully-fledged church building began. Until this plan was finalised, the community used the hospitality of the church in nearby Romanovka. Most probably in 1887 or 1888 the village lived to see its own independent parish. On the other hand, the church in Mogilnica, which was built mainly from Józef Starzeński's foundation, was established in 1867, although it was not consecrated until 25 August 1890.

During the First World War the church suffered damage, and in addition the authorities confiscated the bells. Some of them were able to be recovered, and after the fighting stopped the building was renovated by Father Stanislaw Nowacki. At that time, the building was plastered, but also the roofing was changed from shingle to sheet metal.

There were also three public chapels in the pastoral unit: in Kulczyce, Stara Brykula and Mateuszówka.

At the end of the Second World War, during increasing attacks by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the priests in office at the parish: parish priest Leon Bolesławski and vicar Władysław Klaka, moved to Trembowla. Soon after, the Ukrainians devastated the outbuildings and demolished the rectory. Father Klaka was murdered on his way to Lviv. Father Boleslawski, who had been commuting to Mogielnica until August 1944, decided to leave the parish after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, when the Ukrainians murdered the rest of the Poles living there, taking with him some of the liturgical equipment and the metrical books (from 1812 onwards) and then left for the west. The final fate of the remaining equipment left in the church remains unknown.

Architecture

The building is situated on a hillside. It was built of rubble stone and plastered over time. The church is laid out in the shape of a Latin cross. The longitudinal arm of the church consists of a two-span nave and a single-span chancel, which faces south. The transverse arm is a transept with single-span arms. Between the altar area and the left arm of the transept is a sacristy with a rectangular ground plan. The front bay of the nave contains the ground-floor porch and the music choir, which is accessible via a staircase located in one of the rooms distributed along the sides. The second room is a storage room.

The façade sits on a plinth and is capped from above by a wide belt beam that runs around the entire building. The articulation of the nave and transept walls is carried out with Tuscan pilasters.

The façade is tri-axial, single-storey, with a gable consisting of a field framed by wide lisens, with shafts decorated with panels supporting sections of moulded cornice. Between them is a semicircular abutment. A rectangular panel, semicircularly closed, and a circular window above it, is incorporated into the field. Above the lisens, stone vases are arranged. The whole is crowned by a pedestal with a cross.

On the axis of the main entrance there is an opening in the frame topped with a cornice. The side aisles contain niches with stone statues of St Peter and St Paul. Above are circular panels.

There is a gable roof over the nave and a similar roof over the altar area, which changes to a multi-pitched roof over the close. Above the transept arms, the roof is similar, but with additional slopes on the sides. The turret for the signature tower was placed above the junction of the nave and transept.

The articulation of the internal walls was carried out with wide pilasters with capitals in the form of sections of profiled cornice. The vaults used in most of the modules are lunette-column vaulting (nave, arms of the transept, on the wurtzes), lunette-column vaulting passing into lunette vaulting (chancel), cross vaulting (church cross and porch) and lunette vaulting in the porch.

The windows in most of the building are rectangular, closed with a semicircle, and set in pairs in the front walls of the transept arms. There is a circular window in the chancel. The entrance openings are rectangular. The music choir was supported on the wall separating the porch.

The most important elements related to the furnishings, decoration and surroundings of the building include, or belonged to:

• The rich painted decoration of the interior, dating from the second half of the 19th century;
• The wooden main altar with the painting of the Holy Family and the figures of St. Stanislaus and St. Adalbert;
• Side altar with a painting of the Immaculate Virgin Mary and a painting of St Stanislaus Kostka;
• A stone-built bell tower, consisting of two storeys;
• Bell tower (to the north-west of the church) of stone, plastered, composed of two storeys: a lower three-arched one-arched one on a pedestal, surmounted by a cornice and an upper one-arched one, surmounted by a triangular abutment;
• Stone sculptures on pedestals dating to the second half of the 19th century, including the Virgin and Child, Saint Joseph, Saint John of Nepomuk;
• The church cemetery with the tomb of the Starzeński family made of red sandstone.

In his study of the building, Michał Kurzej draws attention to the neo-Baroque style costume of the church, both in terms of architecture and interior painting decoration. At the same time, he stresses that it is a rather early exemplification of this type of aesthetics in the Galician region, although the church in nearby Wiśniowczyk, which was built at a similar time, bears significant similarities to the building in question.

Today, the building is in a very poor condition. Significant losses of plaster are the least of the problems. What draws attention to the building is, above all, the damaged roofs and the cracked walls.

Name: Parish Church of St. Joseph in Mogilnice

Current name: Former Parish Church of St. Joseph in Nový Mogilnica

Division: architecture

Location: Ukraine, district: Ternopil, locality: Novaya Mogilnitsa

Author: Unknown

Date of construction: 1867 Consecration: 1890.

Technical data: Object made of stone, plastered