THE DOMINICAN FABRICA ECCLESIAE IN GIDLE IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHIVAL RECORDS. AN EXAMPLE OF ORGANIZING AND FINANCING THE BUILDING OF BRICK TEMPLES IN THE COMMONWEALTH IN THE 17TH CENTURY
The article discusses issues of building churches in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the modern era, a topic that has not been sufficiently investigated so far. The research is based on the rich archival records concerning the building of the Dominican church in Gidle and comparative data on the building of other churches in the 17th c. The church in Gidle is a good illustration of how such projects were carried out in the
Commonwealth at that time. The Dominicans prepared the building site and provided the supply of building materials. In 1617, two years after they settled in Gidle, they opened a brickyard and a year later a quarry.
The monastery, being the investor, made separate contracts with bricklayers, carpenters and other craftsmen. The number of craftsmen employed varied, depending on the current needs and the tempo of works. An analysis of expenditure indicates that on the average the building works involved a team of about twenty workers, including eight bricklayers. This relatively small number, probably connected with the church being far from urban centres, can explain why the building progressed rather slowly. The completion of the church, including the vaults and the roof, took 17 years (1632–1649/1650), which was above the average time of erecting a church of that size in the 17th c. The building process was uninterrupted but there might have been financial difficulties due to which completing the spires and decorating the interior were delayed. Such difficulties, however, were quite common in church building projects in the modern era, as their completion depended not so much on the technological potential as on the investor’s affluence. The time of completion was only partly determined by the size of the edifice and the grandeur of its interior decoration, although these made the costs higher. The Dominican church in Gidle, which is 55 metres long, with a 24-metre-wide nave and a 55-metre transept, counts as a large church. The accounts were made in florins (divided to 30 grosz), as was customary at that time, and settled weekly. For some time the bricklayers were paid for a particular length of wall built, which is reminiscent of a piecework system. The master supervising the works received a separate higher pay. The system of paying craftsmen and their wages followed the common practice of the time. The total cost of erecting the church recorded in the monastery books, 14 000 florins (zloties), is probably close to the real expenditure incurred for this project. It gives us an idea of the cost of building a large church in the middle of the 17th c. It has to be born in mind, however, that the record concerns only the cost of labour, leaving out building materials, which the monastery treated as its property. The project was financed from the monastery’s capital, supplemented with offerings from the congregation and bequests of nobility. In general, the building of churches and monasteries was also financed by land endowments, donations and guaranteed rents. One of the crucial factors that decided about the prolonged time of building as well as about the artistic form of the church was probably economy. The Dominican church in Gidle is a good example of the capabilities of seventeenth-century builders and of the flourishing of church-building in the Commonwealth at that time.
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