"Ornat Kmity" ("Kmita's Chasuble").

This Article is taken from KRAKOW INFO

unless otherwise stated.

"Ornat Kmity"

("Kmita's Chasuble").

Illustration: KRAKOW INFO

The Wonder of Medieval Needlework.

"Kmita's Chasuble" in Krakow's Cathedral Museum.

Wawel Cathedral’s 500-year-old Chasuble ranks with the world’s top masterpieces of Gothic Needlework. Its relief-like three-dimensional scenes from the life of Saint Stanislav, Krakow’s 11th-Century Bishop-Martyr and Poland’s Patron Saint, embroidered with unbelievable precision and realism, match the best sculpture of the Late-15th-Century.

Naturalistic features of tiny heads and detailed faithfulness of depiction (complete with open wound on the Saint’s skull, where the Sword struck) are truly stunning. The Chasuble was donated in 1503, by Piotr Kmita, then Governor of Krakow Province, to Commemorate the 250th-Anniversary of Saint Stanislav’s Canonisation (the Donor’s Coat-of-Arms take up the bottom picture on the Chasuble). Now the amazing Robe, known as "Ornat Kmity" ("Kmita's Chasuble") is the pride of the Cathedral Museum on the Wawel Hill, displayed permanently alongside its other treasures of Church Art.

English: Wawel Cathedral, Poland.

Sigismund's Chapel (right, with a Gold Dome)

and Vasa Dynasty Chapel (to the left).

Polski: Kraków, katedra p.w. śś. Wacława i

Stanisława Biskupa, XI/XII, XIV, XIX.

Photo: 7 September 2013.

Source: Own work.

Author: Jar.ciurus.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The following Text is taken from Wikipedia - the free encyclopaedia.

The Royal Arch-Cathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus on the Wawel Hill (Polish:królewska bazylika archikatedralna śś. Stanisława i Wacława na Wawelu), also known as the Wawel Cathedral(Polish: katedra wawelska), is a Roman Catholic Church, located on Wawel Hill, in Kraków, Poland.

More than 900 years old, it is the Polish National Sanctuary and traditionally has served as the Coronation Site of Polish Monarchs, as well as the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Kraków.

Karol Wojtyla, who, in 1978, became Pope John Paul II, was Ordained to the Priesthood here on All Saints Day, 1 November 1946, and offered his first Mass as a Priest in the Crypt of the Cathedral on 2 November 1946 and was Ordained Kraków's Auxiliary Bishop on 28 September 1958. Both of these pre-Pontificate events were depicted in the first half of the 2005 U.S. TV Mini-Series, Pope John Paul II, in which Cary Elwes played the younger Wojtyla.

The current, Gothic Cathedral, is the third edifice on this site: the first was constructed and destroyed in the 11th-Century; the second one, constructed in the 12th-Century, was destroyed by a fire in 1305. The construction of the current one began in the 14th-Century, on the orders of Bishop Nanker.