Jesuit chapel in Duboja - a historic Baroque chapel from the second quarter of the 18th century, located in the former manorial park in the village of Duboja, in the Pinsk region of the Brest region of the Republic of Belarus. Originally a chapel at the residence of the Pinsk Jesuits, then a private manorial chapel. Currently unused.

History
In the first half of the 17th century, Duboja belonged to the Grand Chancellor of Lithuania, Prefect of Pinsk Albrecht Stanislaw Radziwill, founder of the Jesuit convent and church in Pinsk. Around 1638, Duboja also passed from his hands to the Jesuits, to be used as the summer residence of the convent and also as a mission station. A chapel was soon established here, first of St Andrew the Apostle, then of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

Neither the date of its erection nor the original form of the temple are known. The earliest information confirming its existence comes from 1685. At that time, a small chapel in good condition was recorded, stating that its erection had been started many years earlier, only to be abandoned later.

In 1773, with the dissolution of the Jesuit order, their property, including that of the Pinsk convent, was taken over by the National Education Commission. The fund estates, including Duboja, became the property of the Marshal of the Pinsk district, Józef Kurzeniecki (d. 1781), coat-of-arms Bogoria. They were soon taken over from his father and bought by Ignacy Kurzeniecki, a governor of the Pinsk district, castellan of Vitebsk, who turned Duboja into a Grand Duchy seat. He adapted the manor house he inherited from the Jesuits into a magnificent palace in the new classicist fashion, transformed the park and turned the existing baroque chapel into a private manorial chapel. The 1774 inventory described the chapel as being made of brick, shingled, founded on a brick crypt with an entrance from the porch. The chapel contained two altars - St Ignatius and St Andrew the Apostle - and modest furnishings, necessary for the liturgical service.

The chapel then passed to the parish of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pinsk, belonging to the diocese of Luck, and after its abolition by Catherine II in 1798, to the diocese of Minsk.

In the autumn of 1784, Duboja was visited by Stanislaw August during his journey to the Sejm in Grodno. The king spent a day and a half here, including 7 September, which was the 20th anniversary of his election. The anniversary was marked, among other things, by a solemn mass celebrated in the chapel by Father Arciszewski, a Franciscan from Drohiczyn Polesie, assisted by clergy of three rites.

Duboja belonged to the Kurzycki family for three generations. After their estate was sold, the chapel stood unused and neglected for some time. In the 1880s, Duboja was purchased by Karol Jan Szlenkier, a wealthy Warsaw entrepreneur, who attempted to restore the building. However, due to a protest from the local Orthodox clergyman, who claimed rights to the chapel, he abandoned this intention.

Between the two world wars, the chapel became a branch of Pinsk's parish church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the inter-war period, the chapel became a branch of the 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 worshippers assigned to the chapel was only about 200.

At that time, the Duboy branch was subordinate to a wooden manorial chapel dedicated to the Discovery of the Holy Cross, built in 1926 in nearby Zhitnovichi. It was built in 1926 in nearby Żytnowicze and belonged to the Rydzewski family (no longer in existence).

The chapel was renovated in the 1930s. At that time the covering of the body dome was replaced with shingles and the domed roof over the porch was removed, adding a triangular gable and covering it with a tent roof.

After the Second World War, the chapel was closed. Among other things, it was used as a warehouse, post office and room for a generator, and its interior was transformed. It is now disused, intended as a museum point at the local nature reserve, set up in the courtyard park. It is intended to commemorate, among others, people associated with the history of Duboia - Adam Narushevich and Athanasius Brzeski.

Architecture
The chapel is located in the park of the former Jesuit residence, then the seat of the Kurzeniecki family. It originally stood at the back of the manor house (which existed until 1944), on its south-eastern side, by a small pond that was part of the park's rich water system.

Oriental, brick, plastered, with a crypt under the body and a porch. The body and nave are set out as a regular hexagon, with a square sacristy annex to the east and a vestibule to the west. The façades are framed on the corners by smooth Tuscan pilasters in great order. The upper part of the walls has tall, segmental windows in wide plaster, raked frames. The porch, surmounted at the front by a triangular ogival gable, has on its axis an entrance opening in a portal closed with a semicircle, surrounded by a wide plaster band. Cabochons are superimposed on the brackets at the base of the arch archivolt and an Ionic volute is suspended above the key.

The interior of the body has a circular plan. The walls are divided by six Tuscan pilasters in the great order, topped by a beam, which forms the basis of a slim, blind dome without a tambour, opened at the top with a circular opening towards the lantern. The sacristy with a barrel vault with lunettes. The interior of the porch is topped with a circular, sunken pseudo-dome on pendentives, with deep recesses closed with sections in the side walls. Above the cupola of the body, a hexagonal wooden lantern with a pointed cupola. The porch and the sacristy annex are closed with tent roofs.

Artistic values of the building
The Dubois chapel is an extremely original building. In the architecture of the Republic, it is difficult to draw a direct analogy with the original planning solution of the chapel. It has a characteristic tripartite layout and an unusual projection of the body - an irregular hexagon described by a circle. The body of the building as a whole is made up of three clearly separated, differentiated segments, contrasting in size and form.

Both its designer and the exact time of construction remain unknown. The small, graceful central chapel does not date from the first period of the Jesuit institution, but was probably built between 1710 and the late 1730s. This is indicated by the range of architectural forms and proportions of the body, the shape of the dome, and the restrained design of the facade with modest ear-shaped frames of openings closed with sections. Given its links with the Pińsk institution of the Order, perhaps its construction should be linked in time with the work then being carried out on the college.

Due to the nature of its architecture, the chapel should be placed in the architectural trend continuing the works of the capital's architect Tylman of Gameren, not excluding the possibility that an unknown builder used Tylman's design. He probably came from the circle of Komaseks, builders operating in the first half of the 18th century mainly in the Crown and Ruthenian lands.

Neither the figural paintings of the dome's ceiling nor the illusionistic rococo decoration of the walls, which was probably created in the time of the Kurzycki family, have survived.

The building found favour with 19th-century artists, who visited the Kurzeniecki estate and later the Szlenkiers. In a series of lithographs illustrating the land of Minsk, 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, by Józef Pankiewicz, who spent his holidays here.