Wojsławice 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 ...

Chełm County Chełm County () is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland, on the border with Ukraine. It was established on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms pas ...

Lublin Voivodeship Lublin Voivodeship ( ) is a Voivodeships of Poland, voivodeship (province) of Poland, located in the southeastern part of the country, with its capital being the city of Lublin. The region is named after its largest city and regional capital, Lu ...

, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the

gmina The gmina (Polish: , plural ''gminy'' ) is the basic unit of the administrative division of Poland, similar to a municipality. , there were 2,479 gminy throughout the country, encompassing over 43,000 villages. 940 gminy include cities and tow ...

(administrative district) called Gmina Wojsławice. It lies approximately south of

Chełm Chełm (; ; ) is a city in eastern Poland in the Lublin Voivodeship with 60,231 inhabitants as of December 2021. It is located to the south-east of Lublin, north of Zamość and south of Biała Podlaska, some from the border with Ukraine. The ...

and south-east of the regional capital

Lublin Lublin is List of cities and towns in Poland, the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the centre of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin i ...

. The village is a common setting of many literary works by Polish writer Andrzej Pilipiuk, in particular, related to his fictional character

Jakub Wędrowycz Jakub Wędrowycz is the protagonist of a number of short stories by Andrzej Pilipiuk, a Poland, Polish science fiction and fantasy writer. Wędrowycz is an antihero, an elderly alcoholic, moonshine producer, poacher, amateur exorcism, exorcist an ...

, who lives in the nearby village of Stary Majdan. Since 2006, an annual fandom convention dedicated to has been taking place in Wojsławice, and a 3-meter tall wooden statue of the character has been raised in 2013. There is an Orthodox Church of Our Lady of Kazan and Saint Elijah in the village, constructed in the

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

style between 1771 and 1774 as a Uniate church. It became an Orthodox parish church during the

Conversion of Chełm Eparchy The Conversion of Chełm Eparchy was the forced conversion of the Eparchy of Chełm–Belz that took place between January and May 1875. It was the last eparchy of the Ruthenian Uniate Church that remained on the territory of the Russian Empire f ...

. The Wojsławice parish remained active until the expulsion of the local Ukrainian Orthodox population in the 1940s, when it was closed due to a lack of worshippers. The abandoned church, used as a warehouse, gradually fell into ruin. It was only at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries that it was renovated, but the absence of an Orthodox community in the town means it is only opened for religious services occasionally. The church has no

iconostasis In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis () is a wall of icons and religious paintings, separating the nave from the sanctuary in a Church (building), church. ''Iconostasis'' also refers to a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere withi ...

, and the only preserved piece of its original furnishings is a historic

thurible A thurible (via Old French from -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ... from incense burner suspended from chains, in which incense">Medieval Latin ) i ...

References

Villages in Chełm County {{Chełm-geo-stub