Biała , also known as Biała Szlachecka ("aristocratic Biała") is a

village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

in the administrative district of Gmina Rząśnia, within

Pajęczno County __NOTOC__ Pajęczno County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Łódź Voivodeship, central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. ...

Łódź Voivodeship Łódź Voivodeship ( ) is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship (province) of Poland. The province is named after its capital and largest city, Łódź, pronounced . Łódź Voivodeship is bordered by six other voivodeships: Masovian Voivodeship ...

, in central Poland. It lies approximately south of Rząśnia, north-east of

Pajęczno Pajęczno is a town in Poland, in Łódź Voivodeship, about north of Częstochowa. It is the capital of Pajęczno County. Its population is 6,651 (2020). It is located in the Sieradz Land. History First mentioned in historical sources from 1 ...

, and south-west of the regional capital

Łódź Łódź is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located south-west of Warsaw. Łódź has a population of 655,279, making it the country's List of cities and towns in Polan ...

. The village is composed of several hamlets, including Biała Peciaki, Biała Ameryka, Biała Działy.

Monuments

The village has a wooden parish church dating from the second half of the sixteenth century, dedicated to

Saint John the Baptist John the Baptist ( – ) was a Jewish preacher active in the area of the Jordan River in the early first century AD. He is also known as Saint John the Forerunner in Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy, John the Immerser in some Baptist ...

. This church was initially located in Wola Grzymalina, a now-extant neighboring village. However, due to the extension of the coal mine around Belchatow, the largest

open cut Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ro ...

coal mine in Poland, the church was transported to its current location in 1981–1982. It had been inscribed in the national register of historic monuments of Poland in 1967. Restoration works were performed both on the interior walls, which still display an original mural painting of the "

danse macabre The ''Danse Macabre'' (; ), also called the Dance of Death, is an artistic genre of allegory from the Late Middle Ages on the universality of death. The ''Danse Macabre'' consists of the dead, or a personification of death, summoning represen ...

", as well as on the wooden altar. Remnants of a fortified house, dating from the fifteenth/sixteenth century, can be found on the land of the current elementary school.

Notable residents

Marcin Bielski, Polish chronicler and poet of the sixteenth century, considered the "father of Polish prose", was born in Biała to an aristocratic family with land holdings here, hence his surname. His birth-house was depicted by Napoleon Orda in his ''Album widoków historycznych Polski'' (Album of Polish Historical Landscapes) as drawing number 28.

References

External links

# http://zamki.res.pl/bialaszl.htm # http://www.tutajbylem.pl/miejsce/622/Biala_Szlachecka.html Villages in Pajęczno County {{Pajęczno-geo-stub