The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly known as the Poor Clares’ Church, is one of Bydgoszcz’s most distinctive landmarks. This single-nave Gothic-Renaissance church was built between 1582 and 1618.

The monastery churches in Bydgoszcz belonging to the Poor Clares, the Carmelites, and the Bernardines in accordance with the rules commonly in force during the Middle Ages, were located outside the city’s boundaries at that time, beyond the area bounded by the city walls and the Brda River with its tributaries: the Młynówka, as well as the castle and city moats.

It was not until the Jesuits, due to their special Counter-Reformation mission, that they built their church, monastery, and college in the very heart of Bydgoszcz’s market square (the Jesuit church was demolished by the German occupiers in 1940, and the rebuilt Jesuit college now houses the Bydgoszcz City Hall). In medieval Christian Europe, monasteries were the main intellectual centers. It was only later that the era of universities began. It was similar in Bydgoszcz. Long before secular universities were established, monasteries for men and women began operating and radiating culture—and not just religious culture. Within them, monks and nuns formed communities where they prayed, but also taught, engaged in scholarly and artistic work, held concerts, and even staged theatrical performances. Along the old Gdańsk Road, at the site where the Poor Clares’ church was later built, a wooden hospital church dedicated to the Holy Spirit was constructed in 1448. In 1522, it was decided to build a brick church in its place. Construction began in 1582 and was completed in 1590. Over the following years, until 1602, the church was furnished. In 1615, the church was handed over to the Poor Clares, presumably with the task of continuing the hospital mission, as the sisters ran such a hospital-shelter until the end of their presence at this location in the building that now houses the Museum at 4 Gdańska Street. The church was expanded to include a western wing, adapting the former Church of the Holy Spirit to the needs of the growing convent. An open choir for the sisters, facing the interior, was located in the added sacristy. In 1646, a priests’ chapel, funded by the mayor of Bydgoszcz, Wojciech Łochowski, was added to the south wall of the nave. The Baroque grille separating the chancel from the nave dates from 1651.

During the Partitions of the 19th and 20th centuries, when the church was not used for religious services, the grille was installed in the main gate of the Starofarny Cemetery, today Bydgoszcz’s oldest cemetery on Grunwaldzka Street. After the war, the grille was returned to the church, and a replica of the grille from the Poor Clares’ church was made for the cemetery gate, which was reconstructed in 1991. In the first half of the 17th century, a tower topped with a Baroque dome was added to the southwest corner of the church; every day, a bugle call composed by the Bydgoszcz composer Konrad Pałubicki resounds from it. The Poor Clares remained here until the monastery was dissolved by the Prussian king in 1835, after which the last sisters from Bydgoszcz were transferred to Gniezno.

The church also ceased to serve as a place of worship. The side altar was moved to Osielsko, and the main altar was transferred to Sypniewo, from where it was not returned until 1955. After the dissolution, the church was used for rather undignified purposes, including storage facilities, the City Scales, the Street and Latrine Cleaning Department, and finally a fire station with a stable. However, toward the end of the 19th century, the church was finally given a more dignified purpose, at least in part. It became the organizational nucleus of Bydgoszcz’s first museum. In 1888, the Historical Society of the Nadnotecki District organized a repository for collected and exhibited regional museum artifacts in the so-called “maiden’s choir,” also known as the “treasury.”

After Poland regained its independence, the church was restored to its sacred function, but no longer as a monastery church—rather, as a school church. At that time, in 1922, stonemason Jakub Job constructed the current Neo-Renaissance portal based on a design by Poznań architect Stefan Cybichowski. Inside, where the decor remains monastically restrained in its choice of elements, the most notable features are the polychrome coffered ceiling from the 17th–18th centuries, a painting of St. Stanisław Kostka by Leon. Wyczółkowski, a Mannerist alabaster bas-relief from 1595), and 17th- and 18th-century Baroque grilles.

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Church of the Poor Clares)

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