
6 Krystyna Sulkowska-Tuszyńska
on a quadrangular plan with a cut corner – while also being
a pillar of the supporting arch stretching over the sacristy
(Figs. 3B, 1A)
6
. To the north and south, the naves are
anked by shallow chapels nestled between buttresses. The
smallest and newest chapel, adjoining the western wall of
the nave, is located next to the main portal (Figs. 1A on the
right, 1B, 2B). Soaring over the entire complex and the
city, the massive tower, on the axis of the complex, was
built into the western bay of the nave. It is anked on the
north and south by two rooms that extend the side naves.
Here is the main portal of the church. Near the tower, on
the north side, is a Renaissance plastered porch with two
portals leading into the interior (Fig. 2B).
The history of St. James’s Church is crucial for consider-
ing the circumstances of architectural alterations. It was
founded by the Teutonic Knights rather than the townspeo-
ple, a fact that has been and continues to be a subject of de-
bate (Błażejewska 2013), in the mid-14
th
century, the
church, together with the hospital and school, was handed
over by the Teutonic Knights to the Cistercian nuns of Toruń
under the patronage of the Teutonic Knights (Błażejewska
2022, 86–98). Until the mid-16
th
century, Catholics prayed
in this church; from 1557, for 110 years, it was occupied by
Protestants. Since 1667, it has been Catholic again.
With the advent of the Reformation, already in the 1520s
and 1530s, new religious trends reached Toruń, leading to
the Lutheranization of the townspeople and the city in the
middle of the century (Cackowski et al. 1994)
7
. Protestants
took over St. James’s Church, removing many furnishings,
rearranging the interior and whitewashing the walls to cov-
er the polychromes. Over time, the side altars were likely
taken apart and perhaps the ooring was replaced
8
. The
abandoned monastery was converted into a warehouse and
granary. During the, so-called, Swedish Deluge, the church
suered shelling and robbery of the bells. Only in 1667
were the nuns allowed to return to the reclaimed church
and old monastery
9
. The Protestant city authorities distrust-
ed the monastic orders and were hostile towards Catholics,
so it became necessary to create a cloistered area near St.
James’s Church through construction of a corridor to en-
sure safe passage between the church and the monastery
for the nuns. In the 18
th
century, the chancel was surround-
ed by new monastery buildings
10
.
In 1833, the Prussian occupying authorities forced the
Cistercian-Benedictine nuns to abandon their church and
6
The nave and sacristy were surrounded by supporting arches ex -
tending from the main walls to the buttresses. As a result of the con struc-
tion of chapels and the raising of the roof, these arches were obscured.
The arch extending onto the sacristy’s turret is the only visible element
of this structure today.
7
The privilege of King Sigismund Augustus of December 12, 1558,
allowing the preaching of the Gospel according to the Augsburg De no-
mination (Cackowski et al. 1994).
8
This is merely a supposition. Inside, two fragments of such tiles
were found in two of the surveys.
9
At the same time, the nuns lost their convent on the Vistula
River, which was destroyed by the Swedes.
10
This is indicated by preserved iconographic sources – plans of
Toruń from the 18
th
century and the results of archaeological research at
the contact point with the old monastery building (Cicha 2010; Sul kow -
ska-Tuszyńska, Cicha, 2010).
convent, thus beginning the dissolution of the monastery.
Several years later (1837), the Prussian authorities informed
the parishioners of their intention to close down the ceme-
tery, prohibiting burials in there. To this day, St. James’s
Church serves as the parish for the former Nowe Miasto
Toruń and the surrounding neighborhoods (Sulkowska-
Tuszyńska 2022a, 330, 331).
Of the many publications, two are particularly important
for the archaeologist studying architecture. The rst were
the research of Mroczko (1980), who demonstrated that St.
James’s Church was not a homogenous structure, but was
rather modied during its construction. Based on the “ab-
normal” arrangement of the corner, doubled buttresses of
the chancel, she suggested that the original concept of the
church had already been altered during construction
(Fig. 2B, 3A). She assumed that the chancel was extended
by a single bay, added from the east, over which a pseudo-
polygonal vault was installed. Due to the homogeneity of
the chancel with brick facing (a Polish bond), Mroczko be-
lieved that the hypothesis of the chancel’s extension could
only be veried in the foundation section. In conclusion,
she assumeded that the construction of the chancel began
in the 4
th
quarter of the 13
th
century, and subsequent con-
struction phases lasted from 1309 to approximately 1349
(Mroczko 1980, 167, 168). The second researcher, Frey-
muth (1981)
11
, was also doubteful that the year 1309 could
be the starting point of construction work on the church
and rightly believed that this date could be connected with
the reconstruction of the chancel. He suggested also, that
the entire structure was built by at least two masters and
that older forms are found in the naves, so the chancel is
younger than the naves (!). He stated that the master of
1309 must have taken into account remnants of an older
building, which may have had a polygonally closed chan-
cel, converted to a square one after 1309. According to
Freymuth, the new chancel was built on old foundations
the length and width of the old choir (1981, 14, 28, 30,
56–66, 72, 73); ultimately, he concluded that by the begin-
ning of the 14
th
century, nothing remained of the original
chancel, but the naves had survived in their original form.
He believed that around 1253 (before the city foundation)
the construction of the rst church with a three-sided clo-
sure began, from 1309 a new chancel was built, and al-
ready in 1349 the construction of the rst of the side cha-
pels between the buttresses of the naves began (Freymuth
1981, 83, 98) (Fig. 2B).
Liliana Krantz-Domasłowska expressed the opposite
opinion, claiming that […] thepresbyteryhadthesame
formasithastodayfromtheverybeginning (Krantz-Do -
ma słow ska, Domasłowski 2001, 47). Jakub Adamski was
convinced of the perfect compositional uniformity of all the
presbytery elements (2010, 19), and Adam Soćko conclud-
ed that the dierent arrangement of the diagonal buttresses
11
Freymuth was associated with Toruń until the end of World War II.
He died in Goslar in 1953. Only a year after Mroczko’s publication did
his work on the stages of construction of St. James’s Church appear.
What is signicant here is that many of the conclusions reached by both
researchers, undoubtedly formed independently, are convergent, and that
several of them have been positively veried.