Legnickie Pole - Monastery and Church of St. Jadwiga

Legnickie Pole in Lower Silesia is the site of the battle where, after the previous defeat of the Lesser Poland knights at Chmielnik, the army of the Silesian Prince Henryk II of Silesia stood in the way of the Mongol northern army on 9 May 1241. Pious, reinforced by Johannites, Templars and crusader knights. The Silesian army was overwhelmingly defeated, Prince Henryk II was captured and subsequently executed, and a large part of the Silesian nobility bled to death with him on the battlefield.

The Mongols subsequently plundered the whole area of southern Poland so that it remained completely deserted for a long time.

According to legend, a chapel was built on the spot where Prince Henry II's mother, St Jadwiga, and his wife, Princess Anna, found Henryk's dead body. At the beginning of the 14th century, a Gothic stone church dedicated to the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary was built on the site of the chapel.

Not long afterwards, the Benedictines settled here, maintaining the cult of the true defenders of the Christian faith. The Benedictine monks came here from Bohemian Opatovice. The monastery was in the hands of the Benedictine order until 1535, when the monastery was confiscated by Duke Frederick II during the religious reformation. During the Thirty Years' War, the church was burnt down and the abbey plundered by Swedish troops.

In 1703, the Benedictines of the Břevnov-Broumov Monastery, led by Abbot Othmar Zinke, with the support of Emperor Leopold I of Habsburg, regained the property.

The abbot of Břevnov, Othmar Zinke, needed to build a large Catholic residence here, another Břevnov rectory, as a counterbalance to the Protestant Lehnice.

Between 1703 and 1708 the Benedictine order first repaired, expanded and used the old sanctuary after a fire. It is a single-nave building with a transept, a front tower and a large south atrium with an emporium on the first floor. However, he subsequently returned it to the Protestants and prepared the construction of a new sanctuary.

Abbot Zinke commissioned plans for the new church and monastery from the architect Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer. After a protracted opposition by Bishop Franz Ludwig, Palatine of Neuburg, Abbot Zinke laid the foundation stone on 15 June 1719, but the first building work of the new monastery according to the plans of Kilian Ignaz Dientzenhofer could only begin after the end of the dispute in 1723. The consecration ceremony was performed by Elias von Sommerfeld on 7 October 1731.

The new Benedictine monastery complex became one of the most beautiful Baroque buildings in Poland.

Between 1727 and 1731 the late Baroque building of the Church of St. Cross and St. Jadwiga was built. The church was consecrated in 1738.

After the First Silesian War, which Austria lost in 1742, the territory and the priory fell to Prussia, and so its administration was separated from the mother monastery in Broumov.

The monastery in Lehnice Pole was secularized in 1810.

After the secularization in 1810, the monastery was rebuilt in the Prussian spirit into a military cadet preparatory school (utilitarian modifications according to the plans of K.F. Schinkel between 1836 and 1841) and later, after a neo-Baroque modification between 1894 and 1898, it housed a nursing home. During the Second World War it was a prison camp and since 1961 it has been a social welfare institution.

The monastery has a symmetrical axial layout with the church on the central axis and the monastery buildings on its sides.

The church is a three-aisled double-towered basilica, with a wide nave on a plan on the width of the joined ellipses.

The nave is vaulted with Bohemian plaques without vaulting bands. The niched side chapels are shallow, framed by massive semi-columns with niches between narrower columns, with statues of saints.

The sculptures on the façade were made by the sculptor Karel Josef Hiernle.

The central ceiling fresco with the motifs of the Finding and Erection of the Holy Cross by St. Helena (centre) and episodes from the Old and New Testaments around the perimeter was painted by the Munich painter Cosmas Damian Asam, the stucco frame was executed by his brother Egid Quirin in 1733.

The main altarpiece The Finding of the Body of Henry the Pious by Saint Hedwig was painted by the Flemish painter Johan Franz de Backer in 1730.

The paintings on the four side altars were painted by Václav Vavřinec Reiner; on the columns at the sides of the altars stand 4 x 4 statues of the Holy Martyrs, Patriarchs and Apostles; of these, the statues of St Benedict, St Vojtěch and the Virgin Mary were carved by Jan Putzengruber, the other sculptural decoration on the side altars is by Karl Josef Hiernle.

The organ was made by the Silesian organ builder Adam Horatio Casparini, the sculptural decoration of the organ's prospectus was made by the sculptor Karel Josef Hiernle.

The church was restored between 1932 and 1935, followed by further renovations and repairs in 1966 and 1972. The last repairs were carried out in 1990.

Although the monastery was closed down, the church was and still is a place of pilgrimage, one of the main ones in Silesia, and St. Hedwig is its central patroness.

Since 1961, the former monastery complex has housed a social welfare institute.