Four Rococo confessionals, standing in the side naves, were created after 1750 and were the last Cistercian foundation in the Basilica. The other four confessionals, built on the model of the other confessionals, were created in the 19th century, repeating their iconographic programme and ornaments. All of them are black and richly decorated with gold, shell and floral motifs and angel heads. What distinguishes them from each other is their shape – the form of Neo-Rococo copies is simpler and stiffer than their more casual and soft prototypes.
When it comes to iconography, the 19th century confessionals precisely copy the motifs of their Rococo originals – they are all crowned with emblems with reliefs, polychromed images coated with gold depicting a great sinner who converted and became a saint. These are, consecutively: Saint Peter with the keys to Paradise and a rooster on the column (the symbols of his holiness and sin – denial of Christ), kneeling King David (who seduced Bathsheba and killed her husband) with a harp on his knees (the symbol of his psalms), Mary Magdalene (a converted harlot who, purified by penance, lives a new, holy life) and Good Thief Dyzma (his conversion is symbolized by the relieving ropes which were used to tie him to the cross). The same allegories of repentance are placed on the door of the confessionals: the heart on the anvil, shaped by the hammer of a divine blacksmith, a millstone crushing the hardness of hearts, a boy (symbolising Jesus) sweeping sins in the form of snakes from the heart, and finally the boy casting sins out of the heart with the light of a lighthouse.
Six out of eight dangerously unstable confessionals are covered by the project “Cathedral Basilica in Pelplin – renovation and opening of a new exhibition area”. They are subject to successive conservation works that are expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2020.
