The Carthusian church and monastery in Bereza (Bereza, Bereza Kartuska, bel. Бяроза, Biaroza), built in the years 1648-1666, from the foundation of the Lithuanian sub-chancellor Kazimir Leon Sapieha.

The Bereza carthouse, the only one on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and one of only three established within the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was one of the richest monastic foundations of the country. Today, only fragments of the walls remain on the site of the former Hermitage, which was described as "rightly counted among the richest monasteries and the most famous Carthusian monasteries in the world". The grassy area, partially surrounded by a wall with an entrance gate and towers in the corners, is covered with brick walls of the former farm buildings. Overlooking the spacious square is the ruined bell tower, originally situated behind the monastery choir of the temple. Neither the church nor any of the fifteen hermitage cottages survived the turmoil of history, and less than half of the numerous buildings of the monastery farm remain in ruins.

History

The carthouse was the most important, largest and most generously endowed religious foundation of the Lithuanian sub-chancellor Kazimir Leon Sapieha (1609-1656), who in June 1648 brought to Bereza an Italian architect, probably the designer of the entire complex. In accordance with the founder's will, the crypts of the Carthusian church became the mausoleum of his family and the final resting place of several representatives of the Sapieha line of the Cherno-Rozhans. The connection of the Carthusian church to this family was highlighted in a spectacular way - on the top of the helmet of each corner tower, on the buildings and well, as well as above the entrance gate, there was a magnificent 'Fox' coat of arms, visible from afar.

Due to the political situation of the Republic at the time, the church and its buildings were surrounded by a fortified wall. They decided on a traditional fortification system with five powerful octagonal towers, with ramparts and a moat. Within the walls, in addition to the church and monastery buildings and numerous outbuildings, there was also a pond where the monks kept turtles (according to their strict rule, the Carthusians did not eat meat, but it happened that turtles and beavers, as aquatic animals, ended up on their tables).

The construction work on the Carthusian site stretched over several decades, and took a particularly long time on the longest, economic north wing, which housed the utility rooms. Evidence of the completion of the construction appears to be the annual date '1689', placed in the field of the semi-circular abutment of the gate leading into the courtyard of the monastery. One of the archival descriptions of the gate mentioned a 'whale's jaw hanging on iron hooks'. It is not known whether this was actually a fragment of a large marine mammal or another large animal, but in any case it probably acted as a kind of amulet to protect the inhabitants of the carthouse. This was not an isolated case; such curiosities occurred at the time in both monasteries and churches.

A real treasure trove of knowledge about the Beres Carthusia are the works of Georg Schwengel (1697-1766), Prior of the Monastery of Kartuzy in Pomerania and an outstanding historiographer of the order. Other important sources are two chronicles written on the occasion of the hermitage's centenary, i.e. in 1748, both of which were written by the Beresian professor, Father Francis Pasieka, and whose extensive excerpts were included by Schwengel in his own writings.

On the basis of the accounts of the visitors who, in accordance with the decree of the monastic authorities, visited the Lithuanian congregation from the 1750s onwards, an attempt can be made to reconstruct the rich appearance of the church and monastery. The church contained 13 woodcarving altars. In the side altar on the north side hung a large crucifix, famous for its miracles, listed on a stone plaque set into the pillar. The cult surrounding it even before Sapieha's foundation influenced the name of the "Holy Cross" Carthusian church and the church itself. The main field of the next side altar was decorated with "an Italian painting in a frame behind glass [...] depicting the bust of the N. Virgin Mary", also surrounded by special devotion. Virgin Mary". A 17th-century decorative element was the magnificent stalls "decorated with wood-carving and statues of saints", possibly modelled on those preserved to this day in the Pokartusk church in Kartuzy near Gdansk.

There were five crypts under the church. Members of the Sapieha house were buried in the central crypt on the south side, under the Chapel of St Bruno, on the walls of which were hung tin-painted portraits of the founders - Kazimierz Leon Sapieha and his wife Teodora née Tarnowska. It was probably their successful copies on canvas, which were on the wall of the presbytery, made in 1775 by Wincenty Charliński, a local Carthusian layman, "perfected in his art in Italy". Until the time of the suppression, the side altars were decorated with 12 paintings by his brush. There were many more paintings in the Carthusian monastery - apart from the altars, another 43 paintings hung on the walls of the church, while the chapter house and monastery corridors were decorated with more than 150 canvases, including several portraits of the Sapieha family.

In the Beres establishment one can find practically all components of the architecture required by the monastic statutes. The church and cloister with a cloister with a large well in the middle and a separate cemetery were located on the same axis, the rows of chapels enriched the body of the temple, two side altars were set up at the so-called gate, and the apsidially closed chapterhouse was also used as a chapel. A clock tower attached to the presbytery, several types of gardens and bastion walls with a moat conformed to the rule. There were, however, some deviations. One of these was certainly the abandonment of the small cloister (visible on the 1647 engraving). The ban on local women entering the church was also not observed. Despite the injunctions, no proper chapel was erected in the area and people of both sexes attended services held in the temple.

In spite of the natural affinity with the founding of many other contemplative congregations and the indicated inspiration of the churches of the Bohemian and Kashubian Carthusians, the Beresian ensemble cannot be considered a secondary realisation. What distinguished it from other Carthusian monasteries was a huge clock tower located behind the presbytery, which together with the octagonal porch marked the compositional axis of the whole complex and constituted its clear dominant feature.

The heyday of the Carthusian monastery, which lasted less than a century and a half, was followed by four decades of slow decline, culminating in the dissolution of the institution. After the third partition of the Republic of Poland, contacts with the monastic authorities ceased, the monastery lost its wealthy patrons, and the subsequent turmoil of history undermined not only the economic foundations of the institution, but reportedly also the moral condition of the monks themselves. Finally, the 'Domus Sanctae Crucis' was liquidated by a tsarist decree of 28 August 1831, which officially followed the monks' involvement in the November Uprising. It was then decided that the monastery church should become the parish centre of the Pruzhany deanery, while other Pokartusk buildings were placed at the disposal of the army. The last monks left Bereza in 1834, sent to the Benedictine Abbey in Horodyszcz near Pinsk.

The temple and the monks' former hermitages survived until the summer of 1866, when a decree was issued for their complete demolition. Work began with the monastery walls, and two years later the decommissioning of the church began. The copper sheet metal of the roof was taken to Grodno and covered the Alexander Nevsky Church, and the marble slabs from the interior were taken to the Basilian monastery in Żyrowice. The bricks were used to build a complex of barracks for the army, which was occupied by the Infantry Reserve Cadet School in the 1920s. On the basis of a decree of the President of the Republic of Poland of 17 June 1934, it was in these barracks that a place of detention was established, where people considered dangerous to state order were held. By September 1939, almost 10,000 prisoners were incarcerated there, which caused the name Bereza Kartuska to become widely associated with more than just the Kartuzian monastery.

Kartuzy today

In the 1980s and 1990s, excavations were carried out on the grounds of the monastery - Belarusian archaeologists found, among other things, numerous kitchen utensils, fragments of decorated ceramic tiles and glassware made in the manufactories of Antoni Tyzenhaus and the Radziwiłłs, now enriching the exhibition of the Bereza History and Landscape Museum. The entrance gate has recently been renovated, looking cursory against the background of deteriorating fragments of walls and walls.