Bieliczna Church: A Quiet Church in a Lost Lemko Village

Po polsku: Cerkiew św. Michała Archanioła w Bielicznej

What is left of a village when nobody lives there anymore? In Bieliczna, in the Beskid Niski mountains of Małopolska, the answer is the church of St Michael the Archangel among old trees at the foot of Lackowa. It is one of the most charming places in these hills, and it is not easy to reach.

The village was Lemko, and it no longer exists. The Lemkos are a highland people of the Carpathians. The church is hard to get to for ordinary visitors, but people who love the Beskid Niski treat it almost as a cult place, because of the landscape, the atmosphere and the history.

A note on the word: in Polish this kind of building is called a cerkiew. It is an Eastern-rite church, not a typical Roman Catholic one.

History

The church in Bieliczna was built as a Greek Catholic church, most probably around 1796. Greek Catholics follow the Eastern rite but are in union with Rome. At that time new rules for building religious buildings were introduced across the Austrian Empire. They asked for simple architecture and fewer decorations.

Bieliczna is a good example of this style. It is also one of the few masonry churches of this kind in the region.

The church was used for services less after 1928, when most people in Bieliczna converted to Orthodoxy. The new parish had to build a new chapel. After Akcja Wisła (Operation Vistula) the church fell further into decay. It was handed over to a Roman Catholic parish, but from then on it was used only occasionally and kept deteriorating.

A thorough renovation was started by Fr Mieczysław Czekaj, parish priest in Banica, after 1985.

Architecture

The church is built of stone and wood. Above the porch rises a tower with a belfry, topped with a helmet-shaped roof and a cross.

The nave is slightly wider than the porch. The chancel (the part with the altar) has the form of an apse with one round window.

The iconostasis, the screen of icons that normally separates the nave from the altar in an Eastern church, has not survived. Inside the chancel you will find only an altar with an icon of the church’s patron and an icon of the Mother of God.

Around the church grow mighty lime trees, at least 200 years old.

Good to know

The church is always open.

Bieliczna and its church are also the subject of a song, popular for example among Polish scouts (harcerze). It was written in the early 1980s and has been played and sung by Krzysztof Kleszcz. It begins with grass up to your waist, Lackowa standing in the clouds and forests full of raspberries and blueberries. It also describes the church hidden in a clump of trees „like in a green sheepskin coat”. And it ends with a wild strawberry by the road, sleeping peacefully, because no one will pick it: nobody lives in Bieliczna anymore.

I think those lines say a lot about the place. It is calm, green and a little sad.

More guides: Kraków & Małopolska in English.

Łukasz, Niezwykła Małopolska