Page:Cracow - Lepszy.djvu/96

 GOTHIC STYLE IN CRACOW ART To the church and its chapels thus erected, some later buildings are attached, such as, e.g., the vestry built in 1399.

Within this church monuments have been put up by citizens, which bear perpetual testimony to their exertions on behalf of art and civilization.

Bishop Ivo Odrowaz, who had consecrated St. Mary's Church, entered, during his stay at Rome, into close connections with St. Dominic, the founder of the well-known preaching order. To him accordingly he confided his two nephews, Hyacinth and Czeslaw, and these two, having assumed the habit of the new brotherhood, returned to Cracow in 1220 as the first Dominicans who entered the town. A few years later, in 1226, the old church of the Holy Trinity, sometime parish church to the city, was put at their disposal, and not long after that the Order began to build a convent house of its own and a large Gothic church, the largest next to St. Mary's, instead of the. old parish one. In the years 1286-1289 the choir, with a rectangular chevet, was built. Its beautiful arcade frieze, with pointed arches, bears witness to the original height of the choir. Down to the fifteenth century it was covered by a ceiling, but then the walls were heightened and overarched by a network vault, the ribs of which were supported by shafts. The body of the church—which was burnt down completely in 1850—was erected in 1321. The outline shows an oblong chancel, terminating at a right angle, and three naves. Both parts have pillars constructed on the Cracow principle, as described before. Of five chapels, three are to the north side, then follows the ascent to St. Hyacinth's Chapel and the cloister, with its remains of Romanesque style already mentioned, with a broad-arched cross vault, and with numerous monuments constituting a perfect Campo Santo of Cracow's citizens; this is surrounded by the convent buildings proper. In the convent house, besides a large refectory, there is an interesting hall with three octagonal pillars which support the cross vault, and other architectural relics.

Judging from the outward appearance of the walls, the church must originally have been lower. The two stair-like gables at