The history of the Jesuit chapel in Duboja

In the first half of the 17th century, Duboja belonged to Albrecht Stanisław Radziwiłł, Grand Chancellor of Lithuania and Starost of Pinsk, the founder of the Jesuit convent and church in Pinsk. Around 1638, Duboja was also transferred from him to the Jesuits, to serve as the convent’s summer residence and, at the same time, a missionary station. A chapel was soon established here, initially dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, and later to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Neither the date of construction nor the original form of the local church is known. The earliest record confirming its existence dates from 1685. At that time, a small chapel in good condition was noted, with the record also stating that its construction had begun many years earlier, only to be subsequently abandoned.

In 1773, following the dissolution of the Jesuit Order, its estates – including those belonging to the Pinsk convent – were taken over by the Commission of National Education. The estate’s holdings, including Duboja, came into the possession of Józef Kurzeniecki of the Bogoria coat of arms (d. 1781), Marshal of the Pinsk County. Ignacy Kurzeniecki, deputy starost of Pińsk and castellan of Vitebsk, soon inherited them from his father and purchased them; he transformed Duboja into a stately residence. He converted the manor house, inherited from the Jesuits, into a stately palace in the new Classical style, redesigned the park, and the existing Baroque chapel on the site became a private manor chapel. In the inventory of 1774, the chapel was described as a brick-built structure, roofed with shingles, set upon a brick crypt, to which an entrance led from the porch. The chapel contained two altars – one dedicated to St Ignatius and the other to St Andrew the Apostle – as well as modest furnishings necessary for liturgical services.

The chapel then passed to the parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pinsk, belonging to the Diocese of Lutsk, and following its abolition by Catherine II in 1798 – to the Diocese of Minsk.

In the autumn of 1784, Stanisław August visited Duboja whilst travelling to the Sejm in Grodno. The King spent a day and a half here, including 7 September, which marked the twentieth anniversary of his election. The anniversary was marked, amongst other things, by a solemn Mass celebrated in the chapel by Father Arciszewski, a Franciscan from Drohiczyn in Polesie, assisted by clergy from three rites.

Duboja belonged to the Kurzeniecki family for three generations. After the sale of their estate, the chapel stood disused and neglected for some time. In the 1880s, Duboja was purchased by Karol Jan Szlenkier, a wealthy Warsaw businessman, who attempted to restore the building. However, due to protests from a local Orthodox clergyman, who laid claim to the chapel, he abandoned this plan.

In the interwar period, the chapel was granted the status of a branch of the Pinsk parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which from 1925 served as the cathedral of the newly established Diocese of Pinsk. In the 1930s, the number of parishioners assigned to the chapel was only around 200.

At that time, the Dubojska branch also included a wooden manor chapel dedicated to the Finding of the Holy Cross, built in 1926 in nearby Żytnowicze and belonging to the Rydzewski family (which no longer exists. In the 1930s, the chapel was renovated. At that time, the shingle roofing of the nave’s dome was replaced with sheet metal, and the domed roof over the porch was removed; the porch was simultaneously raised to form a triangular gable and covered with a hipped roof.

After the Second World War, the chapel was closed. It served, amongst other things, as a storeroom, a post office and a room for a generator, and its interior was altered. It is currently disused and is earmarked to become a museum exhibition space within the local nature reserve, situated within the manor park. It is intended to commemorate, amongst others, figures associated with the history of Duboi – Adam Naruszewicz and Atanazy Brzeski.

Architecture

The chapel is situated within the grounds of the park of the former Jesuit residence, which later became the seat of the Kurzeniecki family. It originally stood at the rear of the manor house (which existed until 1944), on its south-eastern side, overlooking a small pond that formed part of the park’s extensive water system.

It is oriented along the axis, built of brick, plastered, with a crypt beneath the nave and a porch. The main nave is laid out on a regular hexagonal plan, adjoined to the east by a square sacristy annexe and to the west by a similarly shaped vestibule. The façades are framed at the corners by smooth Tuscan pilasters in the grand order. The upper section of the walls features tall, segmentally arched windows set within wide, plastered, ear-shaped frames. The porch, crowned at the front by a triangular gable with a cornice, has an entrance opening on its axis within a semicircular portal, encircled by a wide plaster band. Cabochons are set into the corbels at the base of the arch’s archivolt, and an Ionic volute is suspended above the keystone.

The interior of the nave is circular in plan. The walls are divided by six Tuscan pilasters in the grand order, crowned by an entablature which forms the base of a slender, blind dome without a drum, open at the top through a circular opening leading to the lantern. The sacristy has a barrel vault with lunettes. The interior of the porch is crowned by a circular, recessed pseudo-dome resting on pendentives; the side walls feature deep niches with segmental arches. Above the dome of the nave stands a hexagonal wooden lantern for the bell, topped with a pyramidal spire. The porch and the sacristy annex are covered by hipped roofs.

Artistic value of the building

The chapel in Duboi is an exceptionally original structure. In the architecture of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it is difficult to draw a direct parallel with the chapel’s original layout. It has a distinctive tripartite arrangement and an unusual floor plan for the main body – a regular hexagon inscribed in a circle. The structure as a whole is composed of three clearly distinct, varied segments, contrasting with one another in size and form.

Both its architect and the exact date of its construction remain unknown. The small, elegant central chapel does not date from the early period of the Jesuit establishment’s operation, but was most likely erected between 1710 and the late 1730s. This is indicated by the range of architectural forms and the proportions of the structure, the shape of the dome, and the restrained design of the façade with its modest, ear-shaped frames around the partially closed openings. Given its links with the Order’s establishment in Pinsk, its construction may well be linked in time to the work being carried out on the college at that time.

Given the nature of its architecture, the chapel should be placed within an architectural tradition continuing the works of the capital’s architect Tylman van Gameren, without ruling out the possibility that an unknown builder may have used Tylman’s own design. He probably came from the circle of the Komask family, builders active in the first half of the 18th century, primarily in the Crown Lands and the Ruthenian territories.

The figural paintings on the dome’s interior surface and the illusionist Rococo wall decoration, which was probably created during the Kurzeniecki family’s time, have not survived.

The building was admired by 19th-century artists who visited the estate of the Kurzeniecki family and, later, the Szlenkier family. In a series of lithographs illustrating the Minsk region, a view of the manor house with the chapel in the background was depicted by Napoleon Orda (dated 1856–1870). Several landscape compositions depicting the park and the chapel date from 1896–1897 and were painted by Józef Pankiewicz, who spent his holidays here.