Torun No. 1 / Thorn / Toruń

Noted and illustrated in Monika and Juliusz Raczkowscy's Kościół pw. św. Jana Chrzciciela i św. Jana Ewangelisty – chrzcielnica [https://heritage.torun.umk.pl/pl/galleries/51] [accessed 21 September 2023] as a roughly hemispherical baptismal font consisting of a bronze base raised on a limestone pedestal base, with a polychrome wooden cover of the 18th century; the casting technique is given as lost-wax; notes the anchorings on the upper rim of the basin as lion heads; it transcribes the inscription around the underbowl and declares it as meaningless [cf. Inscription field below]; this same source that the present base of stone was not present in the 1850s-1870s drawings by Dzieldziecki/Rastawi and Kolberg, where the base and plinth were different; it further notes that at the time the font was painted over to the point that Kolberg has to scrape the thick coating off to work on the inscription. An article about this font Gotycka chrzcielnica w Katedrze Świętojańskiej in TorunTour.pl [https://toruntour.pl/4777/gotycka-chrzcielnica-katedra-torun] [accessed 21 September 2023] gives interesting information on the font: that it was cast in bronze using the lost-wax technique probably by a bell-making workshop; that it has sparse decoration with an early-Gothic arcade; that the inscription around the underbowl consists of 65 characters preceded by an initial cross, and remains undeciphered to this day, but it mentions that the linguist Andrezj Kucharski did offer a translation into modern Polish: "Z diaboły w lewo, Iesus gospod chce zlewac ciebie wodą tą i żywot woda ta zdrowy podaje ludowi, co jednak nie znajduje uzasadnienia"; that most historians, however, agree that the inscription is just an ornamental decoration, perhaps with magical symbolism or Kabbalistic spells as often placed on bells. The article further includes a reproduction of the inscription from an original 1872 text by W. Kolberg [cf. ImagesArea] and notes that the font was moved to the present chapel in 1881 from its earlier location in the southeast area of the nave. The wooden cover decorated with a Baptism of Christ scene, adds the article, was made in 18th-century.