The Roman Catholic Church of the Finding of the Holy Cross in Žyrmuny (also: Żyrmony, Żermony, Szyrmuny, Širmuni, whit. Жырмуны), built in 1787-1788 according to the project of architect Jan Podczaszyński.

History

No further details are available about the first Zirmuni church, mentioned in sources in the mid-16th century. It is even likely that the church was taken over by Calvinists, since in 1563 Mikolaj Radziwill gave the buildings and land of the Zyrmuk altar in perpetuity to his servant Jan Zychniewicz. It is also possible that the Roman Catholic parish disappeared for some time, although there are no source accounts to support this. Indirect evidence, however, is the renewal of its endowment, carried out on 16 May 1624 by Jan Zawisza, Voivode of Vitebsk, and his wife Anastasia Tryziniana, who founded a new church. This temple was plundered by Moscow troops in 1660. In 1666, Fr Maciej Szarkiewicz built a new wooden church, which was consecrated on 4 November 1673 by Bishop Mikolaj Slupski, suffragan of Vilnius, under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John the Baptist. A description from 1700 informs us that the main altar had the form of a confession and housed the miraculous image of Our Lady of Loreto.

This church was soon replaced by another, also made of wood, which was given the name of the Finding of the Holy Cross. In 1739 it was described as newly built and unfinished. Before 1777, the church was consumed by fire, in which the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Loreto was burnt down. At the expense of the spouses of Stanisław Radziwiłł and Karolina Karolina Pociej, chamberlain of Lithuania, a provisional place of prayer was probably built as early as 1778, which served worshippers until 1788, when another church was erected, which still exists today. It was built between 1787 and 1788 with the foundation of Karolina Stanislava Radziwiłł of Pociej, Lithuanian chamberlain, and consecrated by parish priest Franciszek Wysocki under the invocation of the Discovery of the Holy Cross. According to a description from the end of the 18th century, the building was "the most beautiful as for the wood, windows, roof and all the decoration inside". The gable of the façade, framed at the time by two turrets, featured carved, locally gilded coats of arms of the Radziwill and Pociej families and a plaque with gilded metal letters: "To God Almighty MDCCLXXXVIII". In the presbytery stood three brick, columnar altars with paintings - in the main altar the Crucifixion, in the side altars the Resurrection and the Ascension; in the chapel of the Virgin Mary there was a fourth altar with two paintings: the Virgin Mary with Child and a tondo with a representation of St Barbara.

The bell tower standing next to the church was built in 1894 by the carpenter Matwiej Balin. The rectory in the manor style, erected through the efforts of the parishioners and the parish priest Fr Stefan Wierzbowski, was designed in 1928. F. Urbszys, and the carpentry work was carried out by Casimir Gavrylov of Vilnius.

Architecture

Among the quite numerous group of wooden neoclassical churches preserved in Lithuania and Belarus, the Žirmuň temple is one of the earliest and most successful. It is characterised by the harmonious design of its complex mass and the original disposition of its interior, whose space is organised by a brick Tuscan colonnade. Its incorporation into a wooden building should be seen as an expression of the consistency with which the builder of the church realised in wood the forms characteristic of masonry architecture. This statement applies both to the spatial structure and to the architectural decoration. The interior has been given the character of an emporium basilica with a transept. The pilastered façade is surrounded by a high beam with a prominent cornice and a wide frieze (originally probably triglyph-metopped), the triangular gables of the façade and the arms of the 'transept' were given the form of cornice pediments, and the flat, towerless façade is enlivened by a recessed portico with whitewashed brick columns. The cantilevered octagonal turret above the top of the façade is a secondary feature, not in keeping with the original concept, which saw the sculptural decoration of the tympanum as a complement to the imitation of architectural forms. In terms of style, the church belongs to the trend known as Classicism of the time of Stanislaus, although a certain massiveness of forms and the choice of the Tuscan order can be seen as features of the school of Wawrzyniec Gucewicz, representative of the more radical phase of this style era. Unlike other Classicist churches, whose façades are usually decorated with an overhanging portico, a recessed portico was used in Žyrmūnas, as in the wooden Baroque church in neighbouring Subotniki. This coincidence may be coincidental, but it is possible that the architect of the temple, Jan Podczaszyński, referred to the local tradition in this way. It is also worth noting the solution he applied in Butrymaniece, where the plasticity of the façade, topped with a triangular pediment inscribed in a stepped gable, is provided by a recessed risalit with a balcony above the door. Also in this church one can find a clear tendency to use forms typical of brick architecture, which he presented in such an interesting way in Żyrmuny. The design of the interior furnishings should also be attributed to Podczaszyński, as the stylistically homogeneous set of masonry altars in the presbytery and the chapel of the Virgin Mary, as well as the wooden pulpit, realised together with the construction of the church, are characteristic of his creative individuality. He probably also designed the classicist organ prospectus, a precursor to the commonly used and long-lived rococo forms, most probably made together with the instrument by the Vilnius organ-builder Pavel Zell (Cele, Szell).

Artistic issues

The Zyrmukh church was described in a brochure written by Rev. Florian Niemiera, published in 400 copies by the "Lidzka Land" publishing house, which appeared on 15 August 1939. [footnote: Florian Niewiero, "History of the parish church in Żyrmuny (1522-1624, 1788-1939)", Lida 1939]. The merit of this publication is the rich and skilful use of sources (found at the time in the parish archive and in the collection of the Vilnius Public and University Library), as well as their correct interpretation, from historical information to some findings of an artistic nature. Despite his meticulous collection of published references to Żyrmuny, the author overlooked the information about the church builder, Jan Podczaszyński, given in 1849 by Franciszek Sobieszczański [footnote: Franciszek M. Sobieszczański, "Wiadomości historyczne o sztukach pięknych w dawnej Polsce...", Warsaw 1849, vol. 2, p. 226]. It was not used until Stanisław Łoza [footnote: Stanisław Łoza, "Architekci i budowniczowie w Polsce", Warsaw 1954, p. 240], followed by all contemporary literature.

The work of Jan Podczaszyński (d. c. 1800), a pupil of Wawrzyniec Gucewicz, has so far not received a separate study. According to Sobieszczański's assessment, "he was not one of the most mediocre architects of his time, but on the contrary, he was excellently educated in drawing", but a short biographical note only mentions that as an architect for the Radziwiłłs, he lived in Żyrmuny, where he "erected a parish church of a very good structure". In addition to the Żyrmuny church and the Radziwiłł palace there, he also built a wooden church in Butrymańce (1799), and earlier (until 1787) led the construction of a brick church in Malatycze, designed by Wawrzyniec Gucewicz.