24/06/2026
ℹ We are currently celebrating Toruń Days. Today, June 24th, is the feast day of St. John the Baptist – the patron saint of Toruń and Florence.
St. John the Baptist's patronage of Toruń dates back to the city's founding in the 13th century and the construction of its first church – the parish church of St. John the Baptist. First, it was a church in today's Old Toruń, and from around 1236, the current Cathedral on Żeglarska Street and St. John Street in the Old Town, which is also the patron saint of St. John the Evangelist.
ℹ St. John the Baptist became the hero of, among other things, the so-called secret seal of Toruń. The oldest surviving documents bearing this seal date back to 1339.
The seal depicts a bearded Saint. John the Baptist, dressed in leather, stands between an oak and an elm (or maple) tree, bearing the inscription: Secretum Burgensium in Thorun (the secret seal of the citizens of Toruń).
ℹ This seal was used to authenticate Toruń city documents and international treaties, in which the city of Toruń acted as a witness or guarantor. Therefore, it could not be missing from the Second Peace of Toruń of 1466, which ended the Polish-Teutonic Thirteen Years' War and abolished the Teutonic state in its previous form.
ℹ Why was John the Baptist chosen, among many saints, as their patron saint by the ancient people of Toruń? Was it John's moral radicalism and uncompromising nature, which first caught the attention of King Herod Antipas, and later also the attention of the people of Toruń? Perhaps the defiance of Herod Antipas, the steadfastness, the courage, the martyr's death, the entire moral dimension of this story—all of this could have contributed to the choice of the city's patron saint: https://toruntour.pl/6036/patron-torunia
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