A view of Chełm from the second half of the 17th century

Abstract

The Chełm Cathedral has a single work of art surviving from the time when the temple served as a Uniate church and the centre of the Uniate diocese. The work in question is an an-tependium depicting the battle of Beresteczko (1648) and the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Chełm in a Polish tent on the battlefield. Over the battle scene there is a town. The silver antependium was made in Gdańsk (Danzig), in the workshop of the Jöde family, probably before 1687, i.e. the death of Jakób Susza, bishop of Chełm. Some Polish researchers, e.g. J. Kraszewski, E. Bańkowski and W. Tomkiewicz were of the opinion that the antepen-dium had been funded by King John Casimir. Russian historians, on the other hand, e.g. K. Samokvasov, A. Budilovich and G. Olkhovsky, thought that it had been funded by the Basilian order; Olkhovsky estimated that it had been made after 1765 but no confirmation for that can be found in historical sources. The Polish researchers Z. Gloger, K. Czernicki and S. Michalczuk quoted both versions. Unfortunately, none of them noticed that the oldest surviving mention about the antependium in the documents of the Uniate bishops of Chełm, now in the State Archives in Lublin, came from 1783 and indicated that the funder had been Bishop Jakób Susza. The town shown in the antependium was first identified with Beresteczko by K. Samokvasov and this interpretation has been accepted by other researchers. Yet it should be noted that the town, with its brick buildings, towers, fortifications and stone churches, is different from what is known of Beresteczko, which at that time was a small town and never had any brick fortifications. It is highly probable, then, that the town is in fact Chełm, which was under the protection of the afore-mentioned icon. This hypothesis is confirmed by the location of the town and its buildings. If this identification is correct, this is the oldest depiction of the former capital of the Duchy of Galicia-Volhynia and of the Chełm district. Despite its conventional nature, the picture gives some idea of buildings and temples that have not survived until today.