Roman Catholic church and Benedictine monastery in Horodyshch (Belarusian: Гарадзішча), a village in the Brest region, Pinsk district, located 12 km north-east of Pinsk, on the left bank of the lake and the Yaselda river.

History

The Benedictines were brought to Horodyszcze in 1662 by Jan Karol Kopć, who had personally visited the first monastery of this congregation on Monte Cassino. Kopeć founded the original wooden buildings of the church and monastery, and generously endowed the convent (at the end of the 18th century, the monks owned 14 villages and 5 manors).

In 1774, under the abbot Stanisław Kieszkowski, after the wooden buildings had burned down, the monks erected a brick church at their own expense. A year later the church was consecrated by the suffragan bishop of Vilnius Feliks Towiański. The monastery was probably built a little later, during the reign of abbot Jozef Voinsky-Oraňský, who was also responsible for the interior polychrome. The inventory text of 1818, Napoleon Orda's view of 1873, and numerous photographs from the early 20th century and the inter-war period give an idea of the form of the church building, erected on the plan of a cross, with the chancel longer than the body and the arms of the transept, and the nave, body and choir of equal height. The entrance to the church was preceded by a wooden porch (no longer preserved between the wars), described as "in the Doric style". The interior was covered with an illusionist polychromy of classicist forms with late baroque elements, executed at least a few years after the church's consecration. Each of the five altars with a masonry mensa was decorated with an oil painting placed against a background of illusionistically painted architecture. The main altar (St Anne's) contained a composition depicting the scene 'The Teaching of the Virgin Mary by St Anne'. The other altars had the following invocations: the Blessed Virgin Mary (with a painting in silver gilt dress with seven stars), the Crucified Jesus (with a wooden figure of Christ on the cross), St Benedict (with a painting of the saint in silver dress) and St Scholastica (also with a painting corresponding to the invocation). The furnishings of the temple were completed by a classicist pulpit, existing until the First World War (the canopy survived until the Second World War), a baptismal font, four confessionals, pews and an organ placed in the music choir in the form of a wide arcade, part of the architecture of the temple.

The monastery, built on a rectangular plan, was connected to the chancel of the church through an annex containing the chapterhouse, communicating with both the choir and the monastery corridor. Little is known about its furnishings, although in addition to the usual everyday items, furniture, crockery, etc., the 1818 inventory lists, among other things, 6 paintings, 20 portraits and 6 mirrors, 74 oil paintings and engravings of various sizes in the corridors, as well as a cross with a figure of Christ and 2 clocks. A separate description of the objects in the refectory gives an idea of the scale of this room, where there were, among other things, 5 large tables, 7 copper candlesticks, a brass cabinet clock, a crucifix, and 17 paintings (including 12 portraits) hung on the walls. The book collection in 1848 was estimated at nearly 2,000 volumes.

There were other buildings on the monastery grounds: wooden buildings housing the parish school and craftsmen's dwellings and a two-storey granary, as well as brick buildings - a blacksmith's shop, a brewery, a distillery warehouse, two outbuildings with craftsmen's dwellings.

It seems unlikely that the church and monastery underwent any major transformations between 1818 and 1865, when the convent was liquidated, the monks removed to Pinsk and the movable property sold at auction or given to other institutions.

During World War I, the church in Horodyshchiv suffered damage - a German cannon shell damaged the side wall of the church, a piece of plaster with paintings in the south-west transept arm fell off on that occasion, and the pulpit was probably destroyed at that time.

Around 1923, the church was repaired under the direction of architect Kazimierz Przybyłowski and possibly with financial support from the state. In the inter-war period, two rooms in the former outbuilding housed the vicarage, while the rest of the building was occupied by nuns from the Congregation of the Ursuline Sisters of the Heart of Jesus Conceiving, who ran a kindergarten on the site. At that time, the church was under the special protection of Bishop Kazimierz Bukraba, who often visited Horodyszcze. At the end of the Second World War, the retreating German army considered the building a dangerous observation point for the approaching Red Army and on 9 July 1944, the church was blown up. Only a few pieces of equipment managed to be saved, as the Germans allowed the priest and parishioners to remove the movables.

The only thing that survived was the vicarage building (formerly the monastery annex), which was adapted for use as a psychiatric hospital. It is currently not in use and its interior is in a state of far-reaching devastation. On the lake side, remnants of the wall that once surrounded the entire establishment survive.

Architecture

The church is situated on the outskirts of the village, on the high shore of Lake Horodyskie, facing it with its façade, oriented to the summer east. It is built of brick, plastered, on the plan of a Latin cross with single-span arms and an elongated chancel, framed by rectangular annexes connected to it (in one of them a sacristy). Nave, chancel and transept of equal width and height; choir and transept arms closed straight. Single-nave interior, plastered with fresco decoration, choir supported by a brick arcade the width of the nave. The façades are framed by a beam with a prominent cornice which, passing to the front walls of the transept, chancel and façade, separates their lower part from the moulded gables. The façade is single-axis, single-storey with a high profiled gable, articulated by pairs of flat Tuscan pilasters in great order, doubled inwards on one side, set on high plinths. The tiled roofs are gabled over the nave, transept and chancel; the vestry and opposite annex have pent roofs; at the intersection of the cross arms is a tin-covered bell turret with a spherical cupola.

All the walls and the vaulting are covered with illusionistic Baroque-Classical painting decoration, probably executed in the 1780s (not earlier than 1779).

Artistic issues

A significant feature of the architecture of the church in Horodyszcze is its distinctiveness in relation to the sacral construction of the 2nd half of the 18th century in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Nor do the forms of the building resemble other Benedictine churches in the lands of the former Commonwealth. St Anne's Church was built around 1774-1775, but it is difficult to see it as either a late embodiment of the dynamic Vilnius Baroque or an early example of Classicism. The overall concept of the project boils down to the creation of a building on the plan of a Latin cross with straight closed arms, a short body and transept arms, an elongated presbytery and a façade articulated with pairs of large-order pilasters and almost identically shaped gable walls of the transept and choir. It seems that the origins of solutions of this kind should be sought in Lviv architecture of the second half of the 18th century. The plan of the building and the shape of the façade evoke associations with the single-nave churches with an elongated cruciform ground plan that were widespread in Crown Ruthenia. The most outstanding work of this kind is the parish church in Hodovitsa designed by Bernardin Meretyn (realised in 1751-1758), as well as other churches of the same architect (built after his death): Buczacz (1761-1763), Kolomyia (1762-1772), Lopatin (before 1772 - around 1782), Busk (after 1772).

Probably one of the arguments for saving the church in Horodyszcze from demolition at the beginning of the 20th century was the special value of the wall paintings covering its interior. The polychrome was attributed to Kazimir Antoshevsky - his authorship is indicated by a number of analogies to the known works of this painter in the Bernardine churches in Budslav, the Jesuit church in Luhaj, and the post-Jesuit church (cathedral) in Minsk. Antoshevsky was probably active in the Pinsk region in the 1880s, and it was then that he created the polychrome in question, as well as decorations of the post-Jesuit and Bernardine churches in Pinsk itself; he also worked at the Capuchins in Lyubieszov at that time. His polychrome work at the Benedictine monastery in Horodyszcze should be considered a model example of the style of this Minsk fresco painter, who combined late-Baroque solutions (modelled on the designs of Andrea Pozza or Paul Decker) with early-Classical ornamentation.

The most interesting among the few preserved movable relics from the church in Horodyszcz is the book of deceased abbots, fathers and brothers with portraits of the founder Jan Karol Kopec and 12 abbots. It deserves attention not only as a valuable document, but also as an example of a late Baroque manuscript with painted decoration. It is not known how and when the book found its way to the Benedictine Archives in Staniatki.