Historical outline

The village is situated in the midst of forests, 8 kilometres west of Kopyczyniec and 8 north of Chortkov. Historical sources do not provide much information about Majdan. An additional vector hindering research is the fact that settlements of the same name occur frequently. In other words, "Majdan" is and was quite a lot in the borderlands. As for the present case, it is known for certain that in the 18th and 19th centuries the village belonged to an estate complex, the central settlements of which were Hadynkowce and Byczkowce. The owners of this complex were the Potocki family, the Cieleccy family of the Zaręba coat of arms, and from the second decade of the 19th century an unknown Jastrzębski, Count Józef Starzeński, and later Karol Spendakowski, among others. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the estate became fragmented. As Rafał Quirini-Popławski writes in his study of the property, its individual parts belonged to Leontyna Nawrocka, Parnas Betti, Dawid Buchsbaum, and later to Salomon Horowitz. In the interwar period, Beniamin Buks and an unknown member of the Buschbaum family are mentioned among the owners of the estate.

Initially, Majdan was under the authority of the parish in Chortkiv. In 1924, the idea of creating an expatriate parish on the site came up. This was all the more so as the village already had its own religious building. It was built with funds from the Dominicans of Chortkiv and contributions. Initially it functioned as a public chapel, but by the end of the 1920s it was able to be fitted out (including a bell from Schwabe's workshop) to serve as an independent church. A parish was established in 1929, and the unit also included Tudor. It is noteworthy that there was also a school and (from 1912) a day care centre in the village since 1905.

The years 1943-1945 were extremely tragic for the inhabitants and the church in Majdan. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army murdered 243 people, not to mention deliberately destroying and setting fire to farms. The most brutal act of terror was the attack on the church, during which some 90 people were killed. The Ukrainians fired at the building and, after forcing the door to the sacristy, threw several grenades inside the church. After these events, the Polish population left the village. First they went to Kopyczyniec or Czortkow, and then left for the west.

In the early 1960s, the Soviets adapted the building into a kolkhoz grain warehouse. The furnishings (including the main altar) were taken away and burnt under the forest. Since 1964, however, the church has stood abandoned and fallen into disrepair.

Architecture

The building is located in the central part of the village. It is a single-space building with a rectangular ground plan. A rectangular sacristy is attached to the north. The church is oriented. This means that the altar faces towards the symbolic east, where Jerusalem is implicitly located.

The articulation of the external walls was carried out by means of lisens. They enclose the corners and mark the bays division. They support the profiled cornice that encircles the entire structure. The façade is single-axis. It is topped off with a low triangular gable framed by low pedestal pinnacles. The whole is topped with an analogous pinnacle with a metal cross. In the field of the gable there is a rectangular window closed with a semicircle, flanked by niches of identical shape.

The body of the church is covered with a gable roof and the sacristy with a triple-pitched roof. Both are covered with sheet metal. The turret for the signature tower is square in plan with a pyramidal roof and topped with a knop and cross.

The interior of the building is three-bay. It is covered with a wooden pseudo-cross vault. The vaulting of the east bay, in turn, is finished with three lunettes. The windows in the side walls are rectangular, closed with a pointed arch and embayed on both sides. There is a circular window in the east wall and a rectangular window in the vestry. The music choir is wooden, plastered and supported by square columns between which three arcades span. The floor is laid with stone flooring.

Rafał Quirini-Popławski assesses the church in Majdan as a "modest" building, not free of errors and, in addition, lacking in stylistic features. Probably the greatest strength of the building was its furnishings, of which very little has survived to the present day. The former church is now in very poor condition.

Name: Holy Family Parish Church in Majdan

Current name: Same as above.

Section: Architecture

Location: Ukraine, region: Ternopil, town: Maidan

Author: Unknown

Date of construction: 1902 r.

Technical data: Brick object, plastered