The Sts. Apostles Peter and Paul Church is an Orthodox parish church located in Siemiatycze, belonging to the Siemiatycze Deanery of the Diocese of Warsaw and Bielsk of the Polish Orthodox Church. The first church in Siemiatycze was established in the 15th century and served as a parish church from the beginning. It officially became property of the Uniate Church immediately after the signing of the Union of Brest, effectively transitioning in 1614. A new wooden Uniate church in Siemiatycze was funded in the same century by Lew Sapieha. The temple became an important pilgrimage center on Trinity Sunday, originally its patronal feast. Over time, its significance in the town diminished, and the Uniate parish gradually became impoverished. In 1839, the Siemiatycze parish was compelled to return to Orthodox faith, following the decisions of the Synod of Polotsk. Although the 17th-century church was already in poor condition by then, a brick Orthodox temple was built in Siemiatycze only after the suppression of the January Uprising, largely funded by the Russian state. The building remained active until 1915 when the Orthodox inhabitants of the town went into exile. During the interwar period, the church was reopened and has been continuously active since. Inside the church, there is an iconostasis from 1908, along with Baroque icons of Saints Peter and Paul and St. Paraskeva. The church is situated on Powstania Styczniowego Street, on a hill overlooking the Muchawiec stream, a tributary of the Kamianka river. The churchyard, surrounded by a wall, also served as a cemetery (part of the historic tombstones have survived), where Orthodox clergy are currently buried.
History
First Orthodox church in Siemiatycze The Orthodox church in Siemiatycze existed in the first half of the 15th century and may have been founded by the owner of Siemiatycze, Olechno Kmita Sudymontowicz, along with his wife, Fedora. However, the founding document of Olechno Kmita Sudymontowicz from 1431 is considered by many scholars to be a forgery. According to Józef Maroszek, it was likely falsified in the 17th or 18th century, perhaps to convince the heiress of Siemiatycze, Anna Jabłonowska, of the legitimacy of the local clergyman's income. There is no doubt that the church existed in 1456 when Olechno's son, Michał Kmita, financed the renovation of the building and gifted meadows and arable land in Myszkowo to the local parish. In 1513, his daughter, Aleksandra Tęczyńska, confirmed the parish's rights to all previously granted endowments. Analyzing her record allows to conclude that, in addition to the parish church of the Holy Trinity (with side altars of Saints Peter and Paul and St. Paraskeva), there was also a chapel of St. Anne in Siemiatycze, which may have occupied the site of the current Catholic chapel dedicated to the same saint. According to Maroszek, it is possible that an original settlement was located near the church, from which the town of Siemiatycze was established in 1542. The existence of an Orthodox parish there is again confirmed in documents from 1592. The church served as the center of the "Russian" district, contrasting with the "Lack" district focused around the Catholic church founded in 1456. This situation, with two clearly distinct ethnically and confessionally parts of one town, was typical for the region.
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