Around the Chapel of St Valentine in the Church of St James in Toruń. Construction of the Chapel and Cemetery

Abstract

The chapel of St Valentine at the St James Church in Toruń, was the only one of the nine chapels to be investigated by archaeologists in 2015. It was built as the last in the southern ring of chapels, around the 1520s–30s. Prior to the construction of this chapel, two other had been previously built on either side of its future location. For these chapels, the original buttresses that surrounded the church to the south were extended. The construction of the St Valentine’s chapel began with the demolition of a corresponding section of the southern wall of the church. A new wall of the chapel was erected between the two already extended buttresses; it was settled on an arcade foundation and supported on axis by a new buttress. The new chapel was built using bricks from the demolition of the churches wall; those bricks were fired by the end of the 13th century. Underneath the chapel, a brick wall was uncovered, parallel to its new wall; it was possibly part of a medieval tomb. Around the chapel, a cemetery was functioning between the 14th and 19th centuries; two levels of graves were identified to proceed the construction of the chapel, and dating to the 2nd half of the 14th century and the early 15th century. Subsequent nine levels of burials were intered on the site from around the 2nd half of the 15th century to the 19th century inclusive. Coffins were rare at the cemetery at the beginning, becoming more frequent from the 18th century
onwards. Most of the burial pits were deprived of objects. Some of the deceased of the 17th–18th centuries were wearing flower crowns. A woman was buried with her engagement ring, while another was given a bunch of flowers. Coins found between the graves (14th and 16th centuries) got into the cemetery layers probably by accident; some found in the 18th century layer are a result of later digging activity. It is likely that there was a women’s quarters around the St Valentine’s chapel; one of the women was buried with her newborn baby. Among the artifacts found, apart from the rings, the most valuable item is a polychromed gilt gorget depicting crowned Our Lady of Częstochowa icon, from about the late 18th century. Devotional articles found their way to the graves quite rarely and, understandably, only in the modern Catholic period of the cemeteries’ use, mainly from the 18th to 19th centuries. It is unknown which period can be associated with the dedication of the chapel to St Valentine; presumably, the name was not given until after 1667, when the Catholics returned to the temple and from then on were again able to bury their dead in the cemetery at the church of St James. The lack of archaeological excavation inside does not allow comments on the furnishings and decoration.