
A sacred monument of the family. Unusual architectural sculpture of the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Nowa 21
the stylistic features of the gural representations, the shape
of the shields, and the type of helmet and border, it can
be concluded that the panel was created around the same
time as the rest of the church. This work was most likely
commissioned by a couple one generation younger than the
church’s founders – a woman from the Hocke family (on the
dista side Borsnitz) and her husband from the Redern fam-
ily. There is no information in known documents
about the
connections between the Rederns and the Hocke of Nowa at
that time, although sources indicate that earlier, in the 1360s,
1380s, and 1390s, there were contacts between these fami-
lies (Wernicke 1886, 452; Jurek 2000, 226, no. 1184, 261
,
no. 1418; 2004, 7, no. 19).
• The sacrament house
A wall-mounted sacrament house is located on the north
wall of the chancel (Fig. 8). In terms of form, it consists
of a niche with an architecturally shaped frame. It is 1.7 m
high, 0.6 m wide, and the depth of the niche itself is 0.25 m.
In the eld of the wimperg, originally supported by two
small columns, a relief head of Christ in a cruciform halo
is depicted, while on either side of the euron crowing the
whole are two shields with the Hocke family coat of arms.
The placement of heraldic depictions on an object used to
store the consecrated Host can be seen as the founders’ de-
sire to emphasize their role as guardians and defenders of
the church – after all, stone tabernacles secured with a grille
(as was originally the case here as well) were intended to
protect the Blessed Sacrament. Additionally, the duplica-
tion of the coat of arms, present both here and on the por-
tal leading to the sacristy, may have had a purely aesthetic
purpose, serving to maintain symmetry, or it may also have
been a sign of the participation of a larger number of repre-
sentatives of the Hocke family in the church’s foundation
– however, at this stage of research, this cannot be proven
3
.
The time of creation and the founders
of the decoration
In previous studies, the church in Nowa has been dated to
various periods – the 14
th
, 15
th
, and 16
th
centuries (e.g., Wer-
nicke 1886, 455; Adamska 2005, 138; Bartnik et al. 2005,
256). Any other period than the turn of the 14
th
and 15
th
cen turies and the rst half of the 15
th
century is contradict-
ed by an analysis of the building’s architecture, including
the sculptural details decorating it. The kruseler on the head
of the woman on the corbel in the northeast corner of the
chancel apse (Fig. 6f) takes the form of a semicircular roll
with several rows of frills owing down onto the shoulders,
present in Silesian art from at least the 1370s through the
1430s
4
. The combination of a mustache with a clean-shaven
3
I omit the portals on the south side of the church and on the sec-
ond oor of the tower, as well as the piscina in the sacristy, because they
lack sculptural decoration.
4
For example, on the seal of Duchess Agnes of Habsburg on a do-
cu ment from 1370 approving the sale of the estate in Jeżów Sudec ki (Do -
kument księżnej…, APWr, department Jelenia Góra) and on the tomb -
stone of Princess Elizabeth of Hohenzollern and her husband Louis II of
Legnica from ca. 1435 in the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul the Apostles
in Legnica (Czechowicz 2003, 128).
families (Gutkowska-Rychlewska 1968, 161, 162; Moskal
2008, 105). Adjacent to this depiction on the west side is
a second corbel depicting a monstrous bearded man, this
time irate, and opening his mouth with his hands and baring
his teeth. The last corbel probably depicts a woman wearing
a headscarf and a shawl on her head
2
. The keystone shows
the head of Christ in a cruciform halo.
The ideological program of the chancel vault is likely
not uniform, but all the gures can be linked to the image
of Christ on the boss. Given their attributes, age, and loca-
tion within the chancel vault – and thus closest to the altar
– the men holding a scroll and a book may be, respective-
ly, a prophet and an apostle – the former announcing the
coming of the Messiah, the latter attesting to His presence
(e.g., as an Evangelist). It is possible that their attributes
originally bore writings. In the context of the distinctly he-
raldic decoration of the rest of the church, it is possible that
the four gures, diering in age and headgear, symbolize
a cross-section of the knightly class subject to God. In turn,
the two monstrous bearded gures may be a reference to
the tamed and untamed forces of nature (analogous to the
so-called wild men, as Wiese 1927, 154, identied them;
see also Kopaliński 2012, 277, 278 on the symbolism of
giants, and Bernheimer 1952 on the motif of the wild man
in the Middle Ages), especially since the gure with the ag-
gressive facial expression was placed on the northern side,
often associated in the Middle Ages with threats and evil.
The rest of the church’s sculptural decoration
• The heraldic panel
Above the south entrance to the church is a heraldic
panel (Fig. 7), which has received only brief mention in
previous publications, where authors merely listed the
coats of arms depicted on it (sometimes incorrectly – see
Lutsch 1891, 572). It is 1.3 m high and 1 m wide. The pan-
el features a relief depicting the full heraldic achievement
of the Redern family coat of arms, complete with a crest,
a frog-mouth helmet, mantling, and anthropomorphic sup-
porters. The supporters hide one pair of hands in the man-
tling, while the other pair holds two smaller coats of arms
– Hocke on the right and Borsnitz on the left, facing each
other in a heraldic courtesy. Unlike those on the tympanum
of the outer western portal, the gures of the supporters are
fully clothed – wearing owing robes. The robe of the g-
ure on the right is additionally tied with a cord. Based on
2
Interpreting this bust as male seems less likely, though it cannot
be entirely ruled out. The headgear depicted here resembles a kettle hat,
a type of helmet that was particularly popular from the 13
th
to the 15
th
century (for more on this, see Gosk 2022). If this gure were to be iden-
tied as a knight, then the form with serrated edges surrounding his face
and neck would likely be mail, and the entire armor would resemble that
present in the Passion panels in the Grudziądz Polyptych. The male iden-
tication of the gure is also supported by the pairing of this sculpture
with what is likely a depiction of a young man in the southwest corner,
analogous to the evident pairs of a married woman and a maiden, a man
with a scroll and a man with a book, and an irate bearded man and a calm
bearded man on the remaining corbels. However, this thesis is contra-
dicted by the probable outline of a bosom, more clearly visible from the
bottom of the depiction, as well as the shape on the gure’s back, which
is unlikely to be a shield due to its too big curvature.