Pyhtää Church – 565 years as the heart of the parish

Pyhtää Church – 565 years as the heart of the parish

<p>Pyhtää Church, a mediaeval stone church dedicated to Henry, Bishop of Finland, was built in the 1460s. The church was built at the intersection of a route that ran through the area around the start of the Kymijoki river which is cut through by tributaries of the river. A list of appeals made by King Gustav Vasa’s secretary Jaakko Teitti in 1555–1556 includes a drawing of the area. The drawing shows bridges crossing the tributaries and one of the bridges has Pyhtää Church drawn next to it.</p>

<p>Nowadays, the parish village is no longer shown along the arterial roads even though, in the summertime, national road 7 directs a steady stream of visitors to the church. On a local scale, the church is an important meeting place for local residents – it is a place where they can engage in spiritual life and enjoy music and culture.</p>

Pyhtää Church can be found on a map drawing of the tributaries of the Kymijoki river which was made in 1555–1556.

The master builder responsible for the construction of the church is believed to be the so-called Pernaja master. In addition to Pyhtää Church, the master also built the Pernaja, Sipoo and Porvoo churches. The fences and rocky terrain around the church shown in the image indicate that, in the 1890s, the church was surrounded by pasture land. Photo: Christian Ganderup, Kymenlaakso Museum.

Independence Day service in 2023 in Pyhtää Church. Photo: Carl Svanfält, Pyhtää municipality.

Ceiling and wall paintings

<p>In the Middle Ages, the church was almost the only place where people could see pictures. Most people were also illiterate, so the basics of the Bible and the lives of the saints were learned from the paintings on the walls and ceiling of the church. The pictures were also used to teach people how to live the life of a good Christian, free of sin. The parish members were guided to the right path by the series of pictures depicting saints’ lives and the so-called moralising motifs. </p>

<p>Pyhtää Church has paintings from several different eras. The so-called primitive paintings are from the late 1400s. Paintings depicting persons date back to the 1510s. The art of the painter who decorated Pyhtää Church does not appear in any other church. It has been speculated that the painter of the paintings could have been Lasse Enevaldsson who lived in Pyhtää, and whose brother worked as a painter in Stockholm.</p>

The picture of the church hall is from the late 1890s, when the walls were still covered by white lime plaster. The ceiling paintings were revealed again in the early 1900s under the direction of architect Carl Frankenhauser. The plaster covering the original paintings on the walls was scraped away in the 1950s. Photo: Christian Ganderup, Kymenlaakso Museum.

The easternmost vault of the church’s nave houses the emblems of the evangelists. In addition to a vine pattern, the third vault has the face of Christ. The picture may have been an indulgence image, which meant that a prayer said in front of it reduced the worshipper’s discomfort in purgatory. Photo: Tiina Hakuli, Kymenlaakso Museum.

Church roof structures

<p>The wooden load-bearing roof structures of Pyhtää Church are original. They were built between 1460 and 1461. The wooden structures of the church were studied using building archaeological methods by an Aalto University research group in autumn 2022. The study revealed that almost 90% of the wood in the roof structures is pine and the rest is spruce. The trees needed for the structures were probably felled in Pyhtää because, in the Middle Ages, the area had a lot of tall and thick pine trees that were well-suited to such structures. An analysis of wood splinters taken from the wooden structures in the 1990s timed the church’s anchor logs to have been felled around 1460.</p>

The roof structures that have survived for more than half a millennium are an invisible part of the valuable building heritage of Pyhtää Church. The roof structures were built using the timber roof truss method developed in the Middle Ages. It remained the dominant roof structure for large buildings until the early 1900s. Photo: Panu Savolainen.

Mittens

<p>A knitting design competition was held in Pyhtää to celebrate the church’s 565th anniversary. The display case houses knitwear submitted to the competition.</p>

Communion vessels

<p>The old, silver communion vessels of Pyhtää Church are still in active use. The history of none of them is known, but it was often customary for wealthy families to donate items to their local church.</p>

<p>The church’s armoury was converted into a burial chapel for the influential Creutz family in the 1670s. At that time, Lorentz Creutz and Elsa Dúval donated an altarpiece to the church, as well as some items, including a gilded communion wine jug and a wafer box. On the cover of the box are the coats of arms of the Creutz and Duwall families and the year 1673. It was typical of the time that the wealthy bought their burial sites inside the church, in locations deemed to be the best and suitable for their status. The chapel was converted back into an armoury in the late 1700s, and a burial chapel for the Creutz family was built in the churchyard.</p>

<p>The larger of the two chalices in the display case carries the year 1804 and the initials HW and DVR. Based on the coats of arms, the initials belonged to Hans Willigman and Dorotea von Kahlden. They were married from 1650 to 1656. How the chalice ended up in Pyhtää Church and why the jug has the year 1804 on it is not known. </p>

<p>On the bottom of the baptismal font are the names Eva Insenstierna and Ewa Elisabet Danckward.</p>