Wooden Churches in the Countryside

06/25/2012 09:30

In the summer of 1995, I decided to take a month or so and go walking around the Beskid Niski and Bieszczady regions. To this day, I look at it as perhaps one of the best times of my life. My old girlfriend Kim and I hiked trails and back roads all over southeastern Poland, staying mainly at little houses called schroniskos, and meeting very down-to-earth people along the way. We picked mushrooms, ate berries, made tea from mint leaves, and wandered many miles each day. In the end, we were both a little depressed that we had to go back to the city for the beginning of the academic year.

Throughout these travels, one of our most pleasant surprises was the great amount of old wooden churches that we found in small villages. These structures are often three hundred years old or more and have certainly seen their share of history, including numerous devastating wars. Many of them survived, and many have been rebuilt or restored. Because of the once very large Lemko, Hutsul and Bojko populations, the churches were usually Greek Catholic (“Russian” Catholic, as they say in the Coal Region; Byzantine Catholic; Uniate) or Orthodox, with hand-painted iconography and striking iconostases (the large walls of saints’ paintings that separate the altar area from the congregation). Although these churches survive, many have a tragic history attached to them with regard to their interiors. After the government dispersed the Lemko population after WWII, the churches became fair game for thieves, who robbed the insides of many religious buildings. A large amount of icons and other sacred items found their way onto the black market, ending up for sale in galleries and shops. Fortunately, in at least certain cases, some of the icons did fall into the right hands, and have ultimately been returned to the Church.

When we travel to Lemkovina, I hope that we will be able to visit a few of these old churches and maybe even get to go inside. They are decidedly ornate, however, each of them also has a sense of humility, dignity and reverence that reflects the peasant hands that built and adorned them.