Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/30

 THE ORIGINS OF CRACOW be mentioned is a fragment of a door-lintel, built into the wall, with a basilisk sculptured upon it in bas-relief.

One and the same mason's guild at Cracow, superintended by the Benedictines and acting in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, seems to have completed all the other Romanesque buildings, which fell into line, along Castle Street, with the original settlers' dwellings, built of wood. During this period, there were built: the old parish church of St. Andrew's, the church of the Holy Trinity, probably in the first City Square, and St. John's Church; besides, the foundation was laid for St. Giles's Church, then probably of wood; it owed its origin to Ladislaus Hermann's first wife. By his second wife, who had been married before to King Solomon of Hungary, and there had become used to the worship of St. Andrew, the cult of this Saint seems to have been introduced into Poland. In walking down Grodzka ulica (Castle Street), we see from afar two slender towers pointing heavenward: they belong to St. Andrew's Church, built by the Benedictine monks of Sieciechów (illustration 3). It was a court church of three naves, forming part of the gateway buildings of the Castle, and containing a princely dwelling in its interior; one great loft above the low side-aisle served for the prince's retinue and could hold some 150 persons. This gallery divides the side-walls into two stories; it extends also along the third wall between the two towers, where a hall, lit by one window, was constructed; this was entered by a door from the northern tower. The middle aisle was covered with a flat wooden ceiling. Later restorations have completely changed the interior of the church, only the front and the towers preserve the old Romanesque forms. The front is quite plain, built of ashlars arranged in layers; it is only varied by some thin pilaster-strips and a semicircular bowwindow. On this substructure are set the two octagonal towers; besides the staircase loopholes they have, in the upper story, a double window on each side, divided by a column with an impost jutting out on its top. The spires, of beautifully curved outlines, are of the seventeenth century. In 1320 the church