KAZIMIERZ-BISKUPI
A county village, located ca. 12 km north-west of Konin, by the road to Kleczew.
The Bernardine cloister was originally established in 1514; it was founded by Poznań Bishop Jan Lubrański and his brother Mikołaj, the then owner of what was a town. Soon after, the cloister rose to become the major centre of the cult of the Five Martyr Brethren in Poland, which was manifested in importation in 1536 of the Saints’ relics. The original wooden buildings were soon afterwards replaced with bricked ones: the temple was completed by 1518 and soon thereafter, construction of a cloister was finished as well. Destroyed during the Swedish wars, the church as well as the cloister was rebuilt in the latter half of 17th century. In a later period, the Way-of-the-Cross Gallery was added, as was a gate tower. In 1898, the tsarist authorities closed the cloister down. The Holy Family Missionaries, its today’s hosts, arrived in this place in 1921. The year 1939 saw establishment by the Germans of a camp for Polish clergy in the cloister’s premises. Today, the cloister is home to a Higher Theological Seminary (a section of the Department of Theology of the ‘Adam Mickiewicz’ University of Poznań). The site is also home to a small missionary museum.
The gothic church of St. John the Baptist and the Five Martyr Brethren is a single-nave structure with a somewhat narrower trilaterally-enclosed presbytery. Both the nave and the presbytery are covered with cross vaults. The outfit dates to 1970s. Of the earlier-date furnishings, surviving are, inter alia: a late-renaissance tombstone of Stanisław Russocki (d. 1605) and late-gothic sculptures of St. Hedwig and St. Nicholas (mid-16th c.), fixed by the curved screen. The southern wall features a box reliquary of the Five Martyr Brethren.
Erected upon a semicircular plan, the gothic cloister is adjacent to the church at the north, thus forming a tiny square-shaped garth. The sacristry and the former treasury have preserved the original gothic starry vaults. The ambulatory displays two late-gothic portals: a wooden and a stony one, of 1520 and 1508, respectively.
On paying a visit to the cloister, you are recommended to request at the cloister gate to be admitted to the Ethnographic Museum which gathers exhibits brought along by the Holy Family Missionaries.
