Send Gift Baskets to Chelm, Poland

The first traces of settlement in the current Chełm date back to the minor 9th century. As a center of pagan worship, a fortified town (gord) was constructed in the following century. Its etymology is unclear, though most scholars attribute it to the Proto-Slavic word for flat hill. Chemesky’s center is situated atop a mountain called Gora Chemesky. There is also speculation that the name may be Celtic in origin. Kievan Rus’ conquered the town and surrounding Cherven towns, then inhabited by the Slavic tribe of Buzhans, in 981. According to local legend, the first stone castle there was built in 1001 by Vladimir the Great. Kyiv was captured by the Polish in 1018, and the region was returned to Poland until it fell back under Kievan’s control in 1031.

Following the Mongol destruction of Halych in 1240–1241, Danylo Romanovych of Halych granted the town a city charter in 1235 and relocated the capital of his domain to Halych in 1241–1272. Furthermore, Danylo constructed a new castle atop the hill in 1237, one of the few Ruthenian castles that survived Mongol attacks. He established an Orthodox eparchy (diocese) at the Basilica of the Birth of the Virgin Mary. Before the 14th century, the town was part of the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and then of the short-lived Princedom of Chełm and Belz (see Duchy of Belz). The region came under the control of Polish king Casimir III the Great after he won the Galicia–Volhynia Wars in 1366. With the relocation and grant of rights under the Magdeburg Law in 1392, the town gained significant internal autonomy and saw a flood of settlers from Poland and other Catholic countries.

A Latin Rite Catholic diocese of Chełm was established in 1359, but its seat was moved to Krasnystaw after 1480. The diocese was renamed Chem-Lublin in 1790, then suppressed in 1805, but was nominally restored and listed as a titular Latin bishopric by the Catholic Church in 2005.

The Orthodox diocese entered communion with the see of Rome in the late 16th century as the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Chełm–Bełz, maintaining its Byzantine Rite. Still, in 1867 it became part of the imperial Russian Orthodox Church, and today is the Archdiocese of Lublin and Chełm of the Polish Orthodox Church.