Kościół pw. Świętej Teresy od Jezusa i Świętego Jana od Krzyża, Kraków

The Church of Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross is a Baroque Carmelite convent church on Kopernika Street in Kraków’s Wesoła district. Founded by Chancellor Jan Szembek and completed in the seventeen twenties, it has a Greek-cross plan, a seventeenth-century marble column, and a main-altarpiece of Saint Teresa of Ávila.

The restrained façade and its portal belong to the Church of Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint John of the Cross, a Carmelite convent church on Kopernika Street in Wesoła. Built between seventeen twenty and seventeen thirty through the funding of Chancellor Jan Szembek, it was consecrated in seventeen thirty by his brother, Bishop Krzysztof Jan Szembek of Warmia. This is a Baroque church: Baroque architecture favors theatrical movement and rich visual effect.

Yet the building’s plan is unusually compact, laid out as a Greek cross with four equal arms. Notice the marble column in front of the church. It predates this building, having been erected in sixteen sixty-eight.

Inside, the main altar holds a painting of Saint Teresa of Ávila, given by Jan Szembek himself. In the later eighteenth century, Discalced Carmelite nuns moved here from the convent by Saint Martin’s Church. This convent also witnessed a grave nineteenth-century scandal.

Barbara Ubryk, a nun whose conduct had included prolonged confessions and sudden episodes of intense religious behavior, was sealed into a cell in eighteen forty-eight. She endured confinement in inhumane conditions for twenty-one years, until eighteen sixty-nine. The discovery provoked public outrage and anti-clerical unrest in Kraków.