St Demetrius Church, Złockie

The wooden church in Złockie does not look like a typical Lemko church. Instead of three towers in a row, it has a cross-shaped plan and a tall octagonal drum with a dome – a pattern foreign to the Lemko region but popular in Russia and the Balkans. Built of larch in 1867–1872, it is now a Roman Catholic church, yet its interior is still filled by a complete 19th-century iconostasis.

History: one church, two identities

A church probably stood here as early as the late 16th century. The present one was built by a builder named Kondracz in 1867–1872 and consecrated in 1873 to St Demetrius. Until 1950 it served a Greek Catholic parish. After the Lemkos, an ethnic group of the Carpathians, were deported in Operation Vistula, it became in 1951 the Roman Catholic Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is part of the Wooden Architecture Route in Małopolska.

What to see

• The cross-shaped building – of log construction, clad in horizontal boards, with a post-and-frame tower at the front. The tower, chancel and dome over the nave are topped with octagonal caps and blind lanterns.
• The iconostasis from the second half of the 19th century by Antoni and Michał Bogdański of Lviv – complete and typical of the western Lemko region.
• Figurative and ornamental wall paintings from the 1870s; the ceiling painting of the Ascension is probably by J. Bogdański, a pupil of Jan Matejko, Poland's great history painter.
• The painting "Christ at the Column" from the 18th century – older than the church itself – and a Baroque crucifix brought from the previous church.
• Icons of the Crucifixion (1875) by P. Gubalski and of Saints Cyril and Methodius (1870), plus three Rococo side altars.
• The Stations of the Cross from 1980, carved by folk sculptor Józef Kuczaj of Kąclowa.

Interesting facts

The poet Jerzy Harasymowicz mentioned the "Złockie icon" in his poem "In the November Forest", also known as a song. Most of the interior has kept the natural colour of the wood, which contrasts well with the gilding of the iconostasis. The post-war period added the high altar (1962), the font (1963) and the free-standing wooden bell tower (1957).

Surroundings

The church stands in the upper part of Złockie at about 530 m above sea level, in a clump of trees on a ridge between the valleys of the Złocki Potok and Szczawnik streams, in the southern part of the Jaworzyna range of the Sądecki Beskids. Next to it is a 19th-century Greek Catholic cemetery enclosed by a wall, surrounded by old lime trees – one of them, by the road, is a protected natural monument.

Tripto tip

This is a working parish church with no fixed visiting hours, so the interior is easiest to see around Mass. According to the parish website, Sunday Masses are at 7:00, 9:30, 11:00 and 16:00 (from November to April the last one is at 15:00), and on Saturday at 18:00. Check the current schedule on the parish website before you go. Allow 30–40 minutes for the church and cemetery; around Muszyna it is worth seeing other churches on the Wooden Architecture Route as well, including the one in Jastrzębik.