Kościół pw. Świętego Macieja, Wrocław

St Matthew’s Church is a brick Gothic church in Wrocław, built on a cross-shaped plan and originating as Duke Henry the Bearded’s court chapel in the early thirteenth century. Outside stands a 1723 sculpture of Saint John of Nepomuk, while the crypt holds the poet and theologian Angelus Silesius.

St Matthew’s Church is the brick Gothic church before you, dedicated to the Apostle Matthew. Gothic here means the medieval language of tall, pointed forms, made in brick rather than carved stone. Its ground plan is a cross: a single main nave meets projecting transept arms, with a tower completing the composition.

This began in the early thirteenth century not as an ordinary parish church, but as the court chapel of Duke Henry the Bearded. In 1253, Duke Henry’s widow Anna brought in the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star and gave them both the church and a monastery here. The building gradually acquired its cross-shaped layout, and its tower was finished in 1487 with a copper-covered spire.

Notice the grand sculpture outside the church: it is Saint John of Nepomuk, made in 1723 by Jan Jerzy Urbański. The church has endured hard reversals. Fire destroyed the roofs of both tower and nave during the fighting of 1945; then, in 1958, part of the north transept collapsed, taking a Renaissance pulpit from 1607 with it.

Reconstruction finally concluded in 1966. On the wall by the entrance, the memorial plaques recall Angelus Silesius, the mystic, theologian and poet who served here and is buried in the crypt.