St. Adalbert’s Church

The Baroque church of St. Adalbert on the east side of Dolní Square replaced in the second half of the 17th century the original Gothic church. The oldest reference to St. Adalbert’s church dates back to 1429, but it is likely that the church was founded some time before 1350 as a branch church of the Assumption of Virgin Mary parish and it belonged to the Teutonic Order. There is little information available regarding its appearance and furnishings. We know a little more about its history during reformation in the 16the century, when the church was referred to as St. George’s Church. The church, which was designated for the Czech residents, was served by a Lutheran priest. At the beginning of the 17th century anti-reformation Catholics had the church closed down, but it was forcibly reopened by the Protestants. After the Protestant rebels had been suppressed in 1607, their position in Opava was weak, but they had the church returned two years later by Rudolf II’s Letter of Majesty granting religious tolerance.

However, the non-Catholics did not enjoy their religious freedom for long. After the first part of the Thirty Years’ War and the Bohemian Revolt in 1620, Opava was also affected by recatholizing restrictions enforced by Karl I, Prince of Liechtenstein. The Protestant priests were expelled and Jesuits were summoned to run St. George’s Church. Not long after they built a Jesuit Grammar School and College. The Jesuits finally got the church from the hands of a Teutonic Grand Master in 1655, an act which was confirmed by the following Grand Master 22 years later. The Jesuits with their new rector Tobias Gebler then tore down the no longer fitting Gothic church and in the years 1675–1681 built a new Baroque church and monastery.

Master builders and possibly also authors of the design were Italian brothers Mikuláš and Jakub Brasch. Inspired by a Roman church Il Gesú, the new church has one nave with three pairs of through chapels on the side and ended with a rectangular presbytery. There is a tower north of presbytery and a sacristy south of presbytery. The facade has graded avant-corps, it is horizontally segmented by solid ledgers and vertically segmented by pillars with Corinthian capitals that extend into the triangle gable.  In the tympanum above the portal with pillars there are initials of the Jesuit motto Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam (For the greater glory of God) with a sculpture of three Jesuit martyrs who died in Japan. Above a window on the second floor there is the coat of arms of Liechtensteins, the supporters of the Society of Jesus as well as the church itself. In six niches in the façade there are Baroque sculptures of important Jesuit saints, e.g. the founder of the order Ignatius of Loyola with a book in his hand.

In front of the church in Dolní Square there used to be a Marian column constructed at the same time as the old church. Fifty years later the column was damaged and in 1869 it was replaced by a new one, albeit with some original features. On a three-sided pedestal there is a sculpture of Virgin Mary Immaculate standing on a half-moon and globe twined with a snake, a symbol of inherited sin.

In the years 1725–1750 the church was newly decorated. The Baroque painter F. Ř. I. Eckstein painted the ceiling of the nave with scenes of St. George legend. When the church was bombed at the end of World War II, the paintings were irrevocably damaged, only the frescos in the side chapels have been preserved. The impressive two-storey main altar devoted to St. George with a painting of St. Adalbert was also destroyed. The main altar as well as all the other altars, scultpures, and the pulpit were made by the sculptor J. G. Lehner.

When the church was reconstructed after the war and paintings of contemporary Silesian artists were installed in the 1990s, a new main altar painted by F. I. Leicher was brought from the Capuchin monastery in Fulnek. The church, whose name changed to St. Adalbert’s Church in 1945, underwent a major reconstruction in 1995 with the intent to return the church to its original form.