Binarowa – Church of St. Michael the Archangel.

Fun fact – Mystical Winepress.

The painting showing Christ in the Winepress is of medieval origin and is a Eucharistic image. Christ is standing in a winepress, where He himself becomes the grapes pressed by the cross and by God the Father, or by angels at His command – such a version can be found among Gothic paintings in the cloisters of the Church of St. Francis in Kraków.

The late medieval iconography made a return in the era of Counter-Reformation, when the Eucharistic content in sacred art became popular in Roman-Catholic art.

This type of depiction would usually be decorated with the inscription torcular calcavi solus (“I have trodden the winepress alone”), which is a passage from the biblical Book of Isaiah (Isaiah 63: 3).

Meanwhile, the Binarowa version of the Mystical Winepress is more modest in its composition (it shows Christ alone in the winepress, pressed by a cross and a screw), but richer in inscriptions; the press includes several more verses from Isaiah (Isaiah 53: 4, 5, 6, 10a, and 63: 2), as well as a verse from the Book of Revelation: Indutus est pallio tincto sanguine (“He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood”, Revelation 19:13).

Fun fact – Miron Białoszewski’s poem.

One of the most famous poems of Miron Białoszewski from the volume “Obroty Rzeczy” (“Changing Things”) (published in 1956) includes “Stara pieśń na Binnarową” (“The Old Song for Binnarowa”). The poet expressed his admiration for the old art preserved in the village church by using archaic language tricks, which can be seen in the title itself stylised as Kochanowski’s epigrams, such as “Na lipę” (“On Linden”) and the double “n” in the name of the village, which was probably supposed to give it a more “old Polish” character.

The poem itself repeatedly paraphrases fragments of the medieval song “Bogurodzica” (“Mother Of God”), such as “The Virgin Mother of God, the golden Gothic Mary”, “with your Son, the Lord, all of Jerusalem…” and finally: “Adam – you divine servant, Eve – of the same lineage, […] Kyrie eleison!”). The following strophes of the poem repeat the references to dust, ash and cobwebs, with this poetic image perhaps being a result of Białoszewski’s visit to Binarowa before the renovation of the church, which took place in 1953-1956.

Fun fact – Death in the culture of the 17th century.

Even though a lot of people associate the motives of Danse Macabre with the culture of the late Middle Ages, it should be mentioned that the subject of the fragility of human life and the inevitability of death would often appear in Early-Modern literature and art, especially in the era of Counter-Reformation.
In 1621, a Polish translation of the work of the Jesuit Robert Bellarmine, entitled “The Art of Dying Well”, was published in Krakow and the author of the scene at the church in Binarowa could have known this publication. Binarowa’s representations of death as a skeleton with a scythe and Sudden Death with an arrow have their own literary patterns or references, since the motif of death and the transience of life was quite present in Polish Baroque literature. We can find numerous examples in the 2nd half of the 17th century; such as Jakub Teodor Trembecki’s poem (1643-1719 / 20) “Zegar bojaźni bożej” (“Clock of God’s Fear”), with a verse: “The clock is ticking, / your time is running out / Feel for yourself, the death bow hits you in the heart”, or “The clock is ticking, death is cutting down the tree of life / Woe betide you if virtue does not redeem you.” Although Trembecki was a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism; in 1675, he wrote down over 1,000 Polish and Latin poems and wrote “Wirydarz poetycki”, the most important historical anthology of 17th-century poetry. It included works such as “Śmierć nikim nie brakuje” (“Death misses nobody”) (“Death is common to everyone / It does not respect freedom, titles or dignity. / The poor will not find a shelter, / The rich will not pay, the soldier will not defend himself” and “Death touches both the sumptuous palace / And the rickety hut.”).

In the early 1670s, Klemens Bolesławiusz (c. 1625-1689) published his poem “Przeraźliwe echo trąby ostatecznej” (“A Dreadful Echo of the Ultimate Trumpet”) containing a poetic image of death with a scythe without regard to social position and the possessions of its victims (“Once born into this world, / we race one another / to death, until the end of our short lives. […] We become one with the soil / and like flowers, we are cut by the scythe of death / not losing its grip on anyone. / It is allowed in a sumptuous palace, / and a poor rickety hut: / it will find you everywhere.”). Such images were, of course, present in earlier poetry as well; artists creating images emphasizing the transience of life in the first half of the 17th century may have been inspired by the poetry of Hieronim Morsztyn (1581-1625). For example, the poem “Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas” (“Oh, nothing lasts in this treacherous world, / All things that exist die, death is the end to everything, / Time is fickle, / which adds to a great worry. / Night and day follow each other quickly and then death comes”). A description of the “image of death” in one of the poems by Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński (1550-1581) is an even earlier example: “All things that were once born, / All things that walk on the ground, / swim in the sea / or fly in the sky; / Just like a reaper / cutting weeds / It touches everyone / and offers no explanation / for the terrible deeds.”

Fun fact – remains of the Altar of Four Holy Virgins.

The structure of the altarpiece called the Altar of Four Holy Virgins was formed in the 14th century; in the 3rd quarter of that century such altarpieces were very popular in Silesia and, by the end of the century, they became popular in other areas as well. This type of altar would have a representation of the Virgin Mary in the middle, with four smaller figures of holy virgins on the sides. They were usually early Christian martyrs: in most cases St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Barbara, St. Margaret and St. Dorothy.

All of the women were depicted as young girls with their hair loose (a symbol of maidenhood) and wearing crowns (in the case of Mary, the crown referred to her royal dignity, and in the case of the other saints, they were crowns of martyrdom). The bas-reliefs of this type from the Binarowa altar (from the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries) can now be found in one of the local side altars.

Fun fact: discoveries made during renovation.

In June 2010, the structure of the Binarowa church suffered some serious damage as a result of flooding. In order to stabilize it, it was necessary to tear off the flooring and remove nearly one metre of soil, which revealed 15th-century burials and 14th-century ceramic pottery (therefore, dating back earlier than the current church).

In addition, the renovation works revealed a few 7th-century coins and a box under the altar, (it contained human remains as well as a broken glass and a chicken bone, which were possibly the remains of works carried out in the church in the 19th century).