Vul. Teatralna, 13 – St. Peter and Paul Church (former Jesuit Church)

The Jesuit order was founded by Ignatius (Ignacio) of Loyola, a Spaniard, in Paris in 1534 as the Society of Jesus and was affirmed by Pope Paul III in 1540. The Society spread rapidly not only in the Christian world, but also to India (1542), Japan (1549), China (1563) etc.

Jesuits were invited to Lviv by Jan Solikowski, the Roman Catholic bishop of Lviv, in 1584. The first wooden church was built at the expense of Sofia Hanzlowa, a Lviv citizen, in 1590, on a plot near the western side of the town defensive walls where the Jesuit wicket was made, not far from the Holy Cross church belonging to the Franciscan monastery. Having collected a rather large amount of money, the Jesuits started to think of constructing a stone church. In 1603 the king, Zygmunt III, granted them a large plot in the town’s Jewish quarter, including the Golden Rose synagogue. Due to the Jewish community’s opposition, however, they had to look for another plot which was finally allotted by the Roman Catholic chapter of Lviv. It was a free plot where the building of Mikołaj Mielecki, the voivode of Podolia, had been burnt. The plot was situated close to the ground where the little wooden church founded by Hanzlowa stood. In 1610 the corner stone was solemnly laid and consecrated by Jan Zamojski, the Roman Catholic bishop of Lviv. The construction of the church was started and managed till 1614 by Sebastian Lamchius, a Jesuit father. It is not known whether he was only the manager of construction or the project was drawn by him as well. The church architecture is designed upon the pattern of the Il Gesù church in Rome which was built by architects Giacomo Barozzi da Vigniola and Giacomo della Porta in 1570 and became the pattern for the churches of the Jesuit order. The Il Gesù church type is first of all expressed in the main façade composition. Different masters, including those for the interior works, were immediately engaged by the Lviv Jesuits’ construction company. Iwan Molenda, a carver, Maciej Klymkowicz, a painter, and Maciej Krajczyński, an organ builder, worked there as early as 1612-1613. However, the construction could not go without problems caused by some legal collisions which had to do with the ownership of a part of the ground claimed by Mikołaj Adamowicz, a Lviv cobbler. From 1615 till 1618 the works were suspended. In 1618-1621, after the construction was resumed, it was managed by Br. Giacomo Briano from Modena, a Jesuit architect. He was assisted by Br. Albert Ragonius. The huge building of the church required huge amounts of money that were collected from donors. In 1624 the first side chapel of St. Benedict was consecrated, and the work was suspended again. The construction was resumed in 1626 and made more active in 1629 when the Jesuits received huge funds from Elżbieta Sieniawska, the wife of the Grand Marshal of the Crown, Prokop Sieniawski. In 1630 the church was completed and consecrated by Jan Andrzej Pruchnicki, the archbishop of Lviv. In 1630 the vault was decorated with stucco carvings and paintings by Maciej Klimkowicz. In 1644 an organ made at the expense of a man named Grochowski was consecrated.

In 1702 a belfry tower was built over the southern sacristy under a project drawn up by Marcin Godny; it became the tallest tower in Lviv (c. 100 m) and was provided with a clock in 1754. In the 1720s-1730s the gravestones of Elżbieta Sieniawska (Gostomska), Jan Jabłonowski, Jan Stanisław Jabłonowski and Jan Wincenty Jabłonowski, who had been wardens of the Jesuit college construction, were placed in the church.

In the eighteenth century the church architecture was changed twice, in 1734 and 1773. In 1734 the church was burnt down; it was then renovated at the expense of Elżbieta Szczuczyna (Potocka). In 1740 the main nave was painted by Franz Gregor Ignaz Eckstein, a native of Brno; after his death the side naves and chapels were painted by his son Sebastian Eckstein. In 1741 the St. Benedict chapel was built at the expense of Maria Dzieduszycka, a magnate, while the Dzieduszycki family chapel was arranged in the oldest chapel of the same saint, which had been the first to be consecrated. In 1744-1747 a big altar was made by Sebastian Fesinger; two side altars were made in 1754 and 1759. In 1742-1744 the stalli (seats) and confessionals of SS. Jerome and Mary the Egyptian were carved by carver Jan (Johann) Beckert and gilded and painted by painter Piławecki.

After the Jesuit order was suppressed by Pope Clemens XIV in 1773, the church was adapted to serve as the garrison church of the Austrian army military command, its architecture being slightly changed. The Dzieduszycki chapel was abolished at that time. The belfry tower was dismantled in 1830, after the town hall tower collapsed in 1828.

Pope Pius VII restored the Society of Jesus in 1814, and Jesuits came back to Lviv in 1820. An icon of St. Philomena for a side altar was painted by Frederick Rinn in 1837. Portraits of the Jesuit church founders, including those of Elżbieta Sieniawska, Ferdinand d’Este, and bishops F. Pisztek and D. Solikowski, were painted by Marcin Jabłoński, a painter, in the 1840s. As a remembrance of a renovation made in the church, a table with the following inscription: “D.O.M. Haec aedes sacra inchoata 1610 dedicata 1630 restaurata 1842” was placed on the southern wall near the main façade. Icons of SS. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier for two side altars were painted by Alojzy Reichan, a painter, in 1843. A new ambo made at the expense of countess Honorata Borzęcka in the Moravian town of Blansko was placed in the church in 1844. When Lviv was bombarded by general Hammerstein in 1848, two shots fell on the church damaging the roof and the narthex. After the 1848 Spring of Nations the Jesuits were banished from the church again, and again they came back four years later. Some repairs were carried out in the church in 1879-1891. In 1894, when the church façade was renovated, four figures of Jesuit saints, those of SS. Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Stanislaus Kostka and Andrew Bobola, carved of sandstone by Feliks Pawliński, were placed in the lower tier niches. In 1892 St. Benedict chapel was renovated, with a new altar and stained glass windows produced by Tiroler glasmalerei und Mosaic Ansalt enterprise located in Innsbruck. In 1905 the icon of Our Lady of Consolation, placed in a chapel in the southern nave, was crowned by Józef Bilczewski, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lviv. On this occasion it was fenced off with a forged grating under a project drawn up at Lviv Polytechnic; the work was managed by carver Antoni Popiel. At the same time a new antependium for the crowned icon altar was made by Piotr Wójtowicz. In 1906 the floor was laid anew with marble slabs of two colours which had been brought from Hungary. The St. Benedict chapel was renovated under the management of professor D. Kryczkowski and architect A. Teodorowicz in 1909. The church was damaged during the Polish-Ukrainian war in November of 1918; in particular, the vault in the nave in front of the altar and the roof were broken through. Repairs were carried out and a new floor was made in the 1920s. Again the church was damaged during the Second World War in 1944 when a bomb broke through the roof and the vault over the very altar. The Jesuits left Lviv on 4 June 1946, taking away some of the most valuable things from the church, in particular, the crowned icon of Our Lady. After the war damages, the church was covered with a temporary roof. In 1959 the roof was restored due to renovation works managed by architect Ihor Starosolsky. The flèche, which had been lost, was reconstructed at that time too. The church was for some time used as a storehouse; in the 1970s it was turned over to the Lviv V. Stefanyk Scientific Library of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine to serve as a book depository of the exchange funds. In the late 1990s archaeological excavations were carried out in the crypts under the central nave; the basement premises under the southern nave of the church were restored, and the Ravlyk gallery was arranged there.

According to a resolution of the Lviv City Council adopted on 15 July 2010, the church was transferred to the possession of the curia of the Lviv archeparchy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Construction history (briefly)