The history of the Przeczno parish
The gothic church in Przeczno and the forest-covered hill on which a knight stronghold functioned from the middle of the 13th until the end of the 15th century
The documented history of Przeczno dates back to the times of the Piast dynasty, when the inhabitants of the land adopted Christianity. The material witness to these times are the remains of a knight stronghold preserved till today. The name of the knight Albert Pach is known to us from a document dated 1251. In 1272 the stronghold was sacked by the Yotvingians and after its reconstruction it functioned until the 15th century.
The construction of the gothic church in Przeczno is connected with the establishment of the State of the Teutonic Order in the areas of the Land of Chełmno (Culmland) which was fully taken over by the Teutonic Knights in 1235. This date also appears on the wind vane crowning the roof of the tower of the church in Przeczno. The 13th and 14th centuries were the time of building a network of parish churches in our land. In contrast to the rest of Mazovia, a part of which was the Land of Chełmno before, the churches erected in the land of the State of the Teutonic Order were constructed of stone. The parish church in Przeczno was built around the year 1300. Dating back to the 14th century, the stone font and the stoup, as well as the stone floor in the vestibule of the church, the base of the first altar in the chancel and the still standing rafter framing of unique historical value, in addition to the stone walls of the temple, have been preserved to the present. In the Middle Ages, the church was dedicated to the mystery of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
During the Swedish invasion, which ended in 1660, the temple was robbed of the most valuable pieces of its equipment and decorations. After the war, completely new equipment was installed in the small rural church in Przeczno. The wooden frieze floor, the uniquely designed wooden painted ceiling, the box pew and the confessionals, the main altar in which the most valuable painting of the Crucifixion was placed and the two side altars all date back to the second half of the 17th century. The organ, which has been preserved to this day without any major modifications, was built around the year 1680.
Another tragedy that struck the parish was a cholera epidemic in 1737, which was survived by only one resident of Przeczno. He attributed his miraculous healing to the intervention of St. Rosalie, the care of whom local residents fall back on to this day, gathering at her shrine in the woods of Przeczno. As a result of the first partition of Poland in 1772, the Land of Chełmno fell under the Prussian rule. In 1776 the Przeczno parish was incorporated into the parish of Biskupice and the Gothic church became a filial church, thus entering a "sleeping" period in its history. There were no resources to conduct any serious renovation works. The thriving Brotherhood of the Transfiguration, which has been running continuously until today, took particular care of the church at the time. The activity of the Brotherhood is based on the statute approved in 1750 by Pope Benedict XIV, and the Brotherhood fair in honour of the Transfiguration has become a major celebration related to the church. This time of poverty of the church in Przeczno eventually turned out to be a blessed time since, owing to it, most of the historic equipment of the temple was preserved in its original form, with its most precious relic - the organ.