Transfiguration Church, Navahrudak: A Roman Catholic Parish Church in Belarus
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.9
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Belarus
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page14 sections
History
Transfiguration Church, Navahrudak, is a Roman Catholic parish church in Belarus, traditionally attributed to Grand Duke Vytautas, the grand duke of Lithuania, who founded it in 1395 at the foot of the eastern side of Castle Hill. The church was established on the site of a former pagan sanctuary and was initially dedicated to All Saints. Its present form reflects an extensive early-eighteenth-century rebuilding in the Baroque, or regional Sarmatian Baroque, tradition.
Medieval foundation and royal association
The church became associated with the Jagiellonian dynasty through the marriage held there in 1422 between Władysław II Jagiełło, the Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke, and Sophia of Halshany. Sophia became the progenitor of the Jagiellonian dynasty. A memorial plaque commemorating the marriage was installed in the 1920s, and a commemorative stone and larch were later placed beside the church for the 600th anniversary of Sophia’s birth.
Rebuilding and parish life
The church was extensively rebuilt between 1712 and 1740. Local masons Jakub Boksza, Jerzy Urłowski, Andrzej Szarecki, and Jerzy Stepkowski constructed the new masonry building. Maciej Ancuta, coadjutor to the bishop of Vilnius, consecrated the cornerstone on 14 July 1714. The building was consecrated under the title of Corpus Christi in 1723, although work continued until 1740. Bishop Antoni Żółkowski reconsecrated it to the Transfiguration of the Lord in 1776.
The church received further changes during the late eighteenth century. It was roofed with tiles from 1770 to 1783, then covered with shingles again during restoration in 1792. In 1790, parish priest Chiałkowski built a masonry presbytery on the right side of the then Kowalska Street. This building later became part of the convent complex of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. The parish also maintained chapels in nearby settlements and operated a school and hospital in the early nineteenth century.
On 12 February 1799, Adam Mickiewicz, a major nineteenth-century Polish-language poet, was baptized in the church. A small marble plaque commemorating the baptism was placed to the left of the entrance in the 1920s. Another memorial, commissioned in 1643 by Navahrudak castellan Jan Rudamina-Dusiacki, commemorates his brother Jerzy and eight companions who died in the Battle of Khotyn in 1621.
War, neglect, and restoration
During Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia, French troops used the church as a food store. Religious services resumed after the war, but the building had suffered serious deterioration. An inventory from 1823 described damaged shingles, peeling plaster, a weakening wall structure, and a painting by Franciszek Smuglewicz damaged by moisture.
In 1857, the Russian authorities reduced the church to the status of a subsidiary church, leaving it without regular care. It was later closed after the suppression of the January Uprising in 1864, a failed Polish and Lithuanian insurrection against Russian rule. The building approached ruin. Permission to rebuild was obtained in 1906, but restoration began only in 1921.
Restoration in 1921 to 1923 was carried out through the efforts of Prince Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł and the architect Bayle, with government assistance also recorded. Bishop Zygmunt Łoziński reconsecrated the restored church on All Saints’ Day, 1 November 1922. The parish was officially revived in 1929, when the church was placed under the care of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Father Fabian Abrantowicz served there from 1921 to 1922, and in 1922 the church became the pro-cathedral, a temporary or provisional cathedral, of the Diocese of Minsk.
The Navahrudak martyrs
During the German occupation in the Second World War, the Nazareth Sisters organized clandestine lessons in Polish language and history for Polish children at their parents’ request. On 1 August 1943, the Gestapo, the secret state police of Nazi Germany, executed eleven sisters. The group included Sister Adela Mardosiewicz, also known as Maria Stella, who had asked the German authorities to release imprisoned inhabitants and Father Zenkevich, offering herself in their place. The other sisters were Jadwiga Karolina Żak, Anna Kokołowicz, Józefa Chrobot, Helena Czepka, Eleonora Aniela Jóźwik, Julia Rapiej, Eugenia Mackiewicz, Paulina Borowik, Leokadia Matuszewska, and Weronika Narmontowicz.
The murdered sisters were buried beside the church until 1991, when their relics were placed inside the building. The Catholic Church beatified them in 2000, and the church has been a sanctuary of the Blessed Martyrs of Navahrudak since 29 July 2018.
Soviet closure and renewed religious use
Soviet authorities closed the church again in 1948 and converted it into a warehouse despite local resistance. Furnishings were destroyed, sold, stolen, or removed to a museum in Minsk. The building was later used for a furniture shop and for collecting scrap metal and waste paper. The furniture warehouse closed in 1976, after which the church stood abandoned.
The church reopened in 1984, and religious services resumed in 1992. Renovation was completed in 1998. Sister Małgorzata Banaś continued to care for the church for twenty-three years while living in a room beside the sacristy. Facade and conservation work followed from 2010 to 2013, including treatment of the memorial plaque to Jerzy Rudamina-Dusiacki and his companions. The church is a protected historical and cultural monument of Belarus and remains active.
Remains
The present church combines two faceted Gothic chapels from an earlier building with the brick nave, apse, facade, and towers created during the Baroque rebuilding. It is a single-nave basilica, a longitudinal church form, with a semicircular apse, the rounded termination behind the main altar, and a two-towered main facade. The older chapels were incorporated into the structure rather than replaced, giving the building an asymmetrical composition.
Gothic chapels and the Baroque structure
Earlier Gothic chapels
The two surviving Gothic chapels date from the early seventeenth century, while the earlier church to which they belonged dated from the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Their altar ends are polygonal and face in different directions. Each was dedicated to a different saint. The chapels retain Gothic star-shaped rib vaults, which are vaults supported by intersecting structural ribs, as well as colored stained glass. Their pointed windows remain visible from outside and distinguish the older elements from the later fabric.
Nave, apse, and facade
The main nave has a barrel vault with lunettes, curved sections formed where smaller vaults intersect a larger one. A choir with organs occupies the space above the narthex, the entrance or vestibule area. A sacristy, a room for vestments and liturgical equipment, adjoins the north side of the apse. Three crypts lie beneath the church: one beneath the presbytery, the area around the main altar reserved for the clergy, and two beneath the chapels.
The main facade and its towers were set away from the axis of the prayer hall so that the older chapels would not be visible from the entrance. A cornice divides the facade into a tall lower section and a triangular attic gable positioned between quadrangular towers. The towers have low pyramidal roofs, while the windows and niches end in semicircular arches. An historical inventory described a shingle roof, a brick floor, two large cellars, seven windows in the main body, two in the chapels, and a sacristy with one window to the left of the high altar.
Chapels and memorials
Chapel of Corpus Christi
The Chapel of Corpus Christi, formerly associated with the Virgin Mary, was founded by parish priest Marcin Gradowski on 23 January 1618 and enlarged through later donations. It originally held a venerated image of Our Lady of the Snows surrounded by numerous votive offerings. That image is now in the Chapel of the Guardian Angel. The chapel is also associated with an altar bearing an image of Saint Michael the Archangel. In the nineteenth century, it was recorded under the title of Corpus Christi and contained an image of the Last Supper.
A black-marble and sandstone memorial plaque commissioned by Jan Rudamina-Dusiacki in 1643 is embedded in the chapel’s north wall. Measuring 275 by 150 centimetres, it commemorates Jerzy Rudamina-Dusiacki and eight companions killed in the Battle of Khotyn in 1621.
Chapel of the Guardian Angel
The Chapel of the Guardian Angel was founded by parish priest Józef Panikwicki. In 1849 it was described as a recently consecrated Chapel of Saint Anthony, while its Guardian Angel altar had been funded by Miss Przesławska. The chapel contains the sarcophagus holding the relics of the eleven Blessed Nazareth Sisters and the venerated image of Our Lady of Navahrudak, preserved in a Catholic version associated with reported miracles.
The memorial plaque to the 1422 marriage of Władysław Jagiełło and Sophia of Halshany is embedded in the chapel’s exterior wall. Beside the church, a commemorative stone marks the former burial place of the eleven sisters.
Altar paintings and surviving furnishings
The high altar now contains a 1939 painting by the artist Bołtuć, copied from Raphael’s celebrated Vatican image. It replaced the Transfiguration painting made by Franciszek Smuglewicz in the 1780s. That earlier work was damaged by moisture, badly reassembled, and eventually destroyed. The left side altar is dedicated to Saint Joseph and the right side altar to Saint Teresa.
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