scholarly journals Uniate Sacral Architecture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: A Synthesis of Confessional Architecture

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Žygimantas Buržinskas

Summary The architectural legacy of the Unitarians in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania has received little attention from researchers to this day. This article presents an architectural synthesis of the Uniate and Order of Basilians that reflected the old succession of Orthodox architectural heritage, but at the same time was increasingly influenced by the architectural traditions formed in Catholic churches. This article presents the tendencies of the development of Uniate architecture, paying attention to the brick and wooden sacral buildings belonging to the Uniate and Order of Basilians in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The early Uniate sacral examples reflected the still striking features of the synthesis, which were particularly marked in the formation of the Greek cross plan and apses in the different axes of the building. All this marked the architectural influences of Ukraine, Moldova and other areas of Central and South-Eastern Europe, which were also clearly visible in Orthodox architecture. Wooden Uniate architecture, as in the case of masonry buildings, had distinctly inherited features of Orthodox architecture, and in the late period, as early as the 18th century, there was a tendency to adopt the principles of Catholic church architecture, which resulted in complete convergence of most Uniate buildings with examples of Catholic church buildings. Vilnius Baroque School, formed in the late Baroque era, formed general tendencies in the construction of Uniate and Catholic sacral buildings, among which the clearer divisions of the larger structural and artistic principles are no longer noticeable in the second half of 18th century. The article also presents the image of baroque St. Nicholas Church, the only Uniate parish church in Vilnius city, which was lost after the reconstruction in the second half of the 19th century.

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Žygimantas Buržinskas ◽  
Vytautas Levandauskas

SummaryThis article presents the heritage of the Dominican Order, which underwent the biggest transformation and destruction in Lithuania during the occupation by tsarist Russia. After the uprisings against the tsarist Russian government in the region in 1831 and 1863–1864, a Russification policy began, primarily targeted against the Catholic Church organization. The Dominican Order, which renewed its activities and had been purposefully operating in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since the beginning of the 16th century, was liquidated during the occupation by tsarist Russia. This article studies the original appearances of Aukštadvaris, Kaunas, Merkinė and Paparčiai monasteries, which were most affected by reconstruction and demolition works during the Russian occupation, and reconstructions of their original appearance are presented. The architectural expression of all the monasteries in question suffered the most after the uprising in 1863–1864. In Aukštadvaris and Kaunas old convent churches were reconstructed into Orthodox churches by changing their old architecture, destroying individual elements of the building volume and decoration. Russian-Neo-Byzantine style promoted in the Russian Empire emerged in this context. The buildings of Merkinė and Paparčiai monasteries were completely demolished. Based on the iconographic material, especially the drawings and plans of the buildings made before the reconstruction or demolition works as well as visitations of the monasteries and material of other historical sources, the visualizations of the Aukštadvaris, Kaunas and Merkinė monastery complexes were prepared using modern means.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Meielisa Chrisylla

As a place of holy worship, a Catholic Church should posses a sacred interior and exterior expression. Modernization has caused a good deal of this sacred expression of the Catholic Church to fade. As Catholic Church is a place of worship that supports all liturgical activities, semiotic theory are used to analyze and decipher its architecture to preserve sacredness. The research methodology that was employed was qualitative methods using Peirce’s semiotic principles and their implementation in Church architecture. The principle was then used to analyze two case studies in every detail of their draw up. The area of planning encompassed: (1) Scope of the surrounding environment; (2) Scope of the site; (3) Scope of the form. This analysis employed semiotic principles that were elaborated with Catholic Church principles to create a guideline in the architectural planning of a Catholic Church. The purpose of this research is to find the most dominant sacral expression between Santo Petrus Church and the Santa Perawan Maria Tujuh Kedukaan Church by means of the symbols attached to the architectural elements between these two Catholic Churches.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-64
Author(s):  
Nadezhda Morozova

The initial history of the formation of the main Old Believer centers on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a whole) has been fairly well discovered. However, the relationship of representatives of other Christian denominations of the Polish-Lithuanian state with the Old Believers is still described very fragmentarily. Usually in the scientific literature the royal secretary Piotr Michał Polttiew and a certain “bishop Antsuta” who had visited the Old Believers in the Vetka region are mentioned. At the same time, it has not yet been taken into account that representatives of the Catholic and Greek Catholic churches of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth visited the Vetka’s Old Believers for missionary purposes. One of these “guests” was the Jesuit Jan Aloisy Kulesha, who tried to preach Uniate religion among the Old Believers of the Rechitsa district and described one of his visits in the treatise Wiara Prawosławna (Vilno, 1704). The purpose of this work is to introduce into scientific circulation previously unknown materials about the interest of the Jesuits of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the person of Jan Aloysius Kulesha to the Old Believers who settled in the Rechitsa district of the Minsk Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and also to compare the information of Kulesha with the data of other “inspectors”.


2015 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 65-83
Author(s):  
Zofia Sawaniewska-Mochowa

"The Domestic Notes" by Bishop Maciej Wołonczewski (Motiejus Valančius) as a contribution to the knowledge of the social and linguistic situation on the territory of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the rule of the tsarsThe article introduces the interesting, albeit controversial, figure of Maciej Wołonczewski (Motiejus Valančius), an important member of the nineteenth-century clergy, and his Polish-language legacy. The bishop of Samogitia’s "Domestic Notes" document persecutions of the Catholic Church in Lithuania after the November and January Uprisings at the hands of Russian Tzarist authorities, and reflect the state of Polish language and its social functions in this historical period.Valančius’ manuscripts, published in the volume edited by the historians Aldona Prašmantaitė and Jan Jurkiewicz [Motiejus Valančius, Namų užrašai (The Domestic Notes), Vilnius: Baltos Lankos, 2003], were subjected to the far-reaching standardization of spelling, thus they are not a reliable source for a linguistic research. A linguist, who would make the effort of describing the Polish language of the author, should therefore locate and take advantage the original sources, dispersed in various archives in Vilnius. "Домашние записки" епископа Матвея Волончевского. К вопросу о социальной и языковой обстановке на территории бывшего Великого княжества Литовского во время царского правленияСтатья приближает интересную, но спорную, личность священника XIX-го века и его письменное наследие на польском языке. Заметки епископа Матвея Волончевского документируют репрессии, применяемые царским правительством по отношению к Католической церкви в Литве после восстаний против царской власти, и – одновременно – отражают состояние тогдашнего польского языка и его общественные функции. Изданные в научной разработке историков: Альдоны Прашмантайте и Яна Юркевича рукописи Волончевского [Motiejus Valančius, Namų užrašai (Домашние заметки), Vilnius: Baltos lankos, 2003] сильно кодифицированы и не могут быть достоверным источником лингвистических исследований. Лингвист, который захочет изучить польский язык жемайтского автора, будет вынужден работать с подлинниками, разбросанными по разным вильнюсским архивным фондам.


2018 ◽  
pp. 153-191
Author(s):  
Krzysztof R. Prokop

Until 1798 Warsaw remained in the diocese of Poznań despite taking over from Cracow numerous functions of a capital city in the 17th and 18th centuries (nominally it never became the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth). During this time two seminaries ran by the Missionaries of St. Vincent de Paul functioned in Warsaw: Seminarium Internum and Seminarium Externum. They were founded in 1675-1676 and educated – especially the latter one – a large group of clergy who later held prominent positions in the structures of the Catholic Church on Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian soil. Among the seminary’s graduates were 66 future bishops (only eight of them underwent formation in Seminarium Internum), who were to minister as ordinaries or suffragans in a majority of dioceses then existing within the borders of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (and also on the territory of historical Greater Poland).                Both of the above mentioned theological institutes located in Warsaw continued to function for some decades after the collapse of the pre-partition Polish-Lithuanian state (by then already within the Warsaw diocese and from 1818 in the Warsaw archdiocese). Their existence came to an end in 1864 as a result of repressions by Russian administration after the collapse of the January Uprising. In this second period of the seminaries’ operation the number of alumni who later filled episcopal offices was markedly lower, the last one being the future Gniezno-Poznań metropolitan and cardinal, Mieczysław Ledóchowski, whose name stands out illustriously in the history of the Church in Greater Poland. 


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Lilia Kowkiel ◽  
Arvydas Pacevičius ◽  
Iwona Pietrzkiewicz

Historians and publishers of historical sources have a lot of problems with the texts written in different languages and alphabets, which were created at different times, in the multilingual areas inhabited by many nations following different religions. The historians of book culture have the same problems with texts of inventories and catalogues of books, which are the primary source of knowledge about the content of libraries. At present it’s also important the historical texts to be published in the digital form. This article is a part of the discussion on this very important subject.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 219-236
Author(s):  
Andrey Yu. Dvornichenko

The abundant Russian historiography of the medieval history of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuanian-Russian State) has become in the last decades the centre of the discussions and is often subject to groundless criticism. This historiography was not very lucky in the Soviet period of the 20th century either, as it was severely criticized from the Marxist-Leninist position. When discussing Russian historiography the author of this article is consciously committed to the Russian positions. There are no reasons to consider this historiography branch either Byelorussian or Ukrainian one, as that was really Russian historiography, - the phenomenon that formed under the favorable specific conditions of Russian Empire before the beginning of the 20th century. The said phenomenon can be studied in different ways: according to the existing then main trends and schools or according to their affiliation with specific universities of Russian Empire. But according to the author of this article the best way to study the issue is in accordance with the main concepts of history. And then the pre-revolutionary historiography appears as an integral scientific paradigm that turns out to be the most divaricate branch of the Lithuanian studies of the time. It created, in its turn, the most vivid and objective historical picture that can still serve as the basis for the studies of Lithuanian-Russian state.


Author(s):  
Valdas Rakutis

The article analyses ordinary life of the Armed Forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the period between the beginning of the rule by the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania Stanisław August Poniatowski, and until the reforms by the Four-Year Sejm (1788–1792). In the period of interest it was a small (up to 4,000 soldiers), independent army, made up from national contractors, mostly cavalry detachments, the main unit being a flag of 30–100 soldiers, and the so-called foreign contractors (cavalry, infantry and artillery), the main unit being a company of 60–100 soldiers. In 1775–1777, division by contractors’ ethnicity was replaced with the territorial divisions. The main changes took place in the national cavalry, where two equally sized brigades of hussars and petyhorcy were created, whereas majority of foreign contractors were reorganized into infantry. Peace-time armed forces was an important factor for the Lithuanian public, the ruling elite and the local communities. Army was not a tool for use in large international politics, it was more of a current order preserving instrument. Army supply system was based on the independent economic unit, governed by the unit commander. Attempts by the Lithuanian Military Commission to impose greater control gave insignificant results, although the reforms of 1775–1775 were able to strengthen control of the treasury and procedures, making relationships more visible and transparent, and the actual composition of the armed forces was very close to the theoretical provisions. The economic weakness of the nation after the First Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and lack of correlation between recovery of the treasury and army financing put bridles on the army, preventing it from development and change. In spite of all 1764–1788 reforms, the Lithuanian armed forces remained a stagnating institution, where routine and established traditions dominated over novelty and change. Keywords: Armed Forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, ordinary army life, rule of Stanisław Poniatowski, Military Commission, Military Department of the Permanent Council.


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