Opitołoki is a small town situated on the left bank of the Nevėžis River, a short distance (5 km) from Kėdainiai. The village was mentioned in the Teutonic Knights' chronicle of Hermann von Wartberge in 1371. From the 1680s to the 1840s, the estate belonged to the Shukšť family, later it was taken over by the Zawiškis, and later the estate was in the hands of the Karpi family, the Tyszkiewicz family and the Zabiełłos. The parish church of St Peter and Paul and the former palace of the Zabiełłos family have been preserved in the village.

The church is a three-nave building on a rectangular plan, with a single four-storey tower covered with a decorative cupola, in which there is an entrance portal and two deep niches located on both sides of the third storey.

Inside the church there is an altar of St Francis with sculptures of St Peter and St Paul from the 3rd quarter of the 18th century. In the Church of St. George in Kėdainiai, there are two Baroque statues, of St. Casimir and St. Stanislaus Kostka, which come from the temple in Opitoľa.

History of the church

According to historian Vaida Kamuntavičienė, the brick church was probably built before 1692, when Opitočky was taken over by Antoni Petr Šukšta. In 1635, on the initiative of the Samogitian judge, Ejragol cacique (supervisor of serfs) and royal secretary, Kaunas registrar Piotr Szukszta, construction of a brick church began on the site of an earlier wooden church. The construction was completed at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. Inventories from 1674-1677 attest to unfinished construction work, and in 1716, the church was already finished and covered with a tin roof. In 1716, the inventory lists the church's name for the first time - St Apostles Peter and Paul and St Bartholomew.

At the end of the 17th century, the royal burgomaster Casimir Zawisza and his wife Krystyna Mleczkówna, a Samogitian starostess, founded the main altar and the family tombs under the chapel, where they were both buried (the tin coffins, slightly damaged, have been preserved in the church vaults to this day). The temple was incorporated into the deanery based in Wiłkomierz of the Vilnius diocese.

In his will, Shukszta bequeathed to the Jesuits the small estate of Javgiele and the so-called right of supplication (the right to fill a church office by virtue of a privilege belonging to a person holding a particular office, such as a bishop), which caused numerous conflicts in the following years. In 1741 the Shuksts sold the Opitolotsk estate together with this supper right to the Karpies, which led to a misunderstanding between the new owners and the monks. After the dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773, Yavgiels fell into the hands of the Burba family, and it was the Burbas who started to compete for the right of supplication of the Opitolok church; also the Tyszkiewicz family, who later ruled Opitolok, could not come to an agreement with the Burbas. The rivalry over the dignity of the Opitolok parish priest lasted until the middle of the 19th century, but personal disputes were not the only trouble for the Opitolok church. In the first decades of the 19th century, twelve and a half w³ókas of land belonged to the parish. The material situation worsened after a decree of the Tsar in 1843, by which church property was restricted. The church's property was partially confiscated, and the local priests successfully convinced the Russians that the land there was infertile, the Niewiaża river threatened to flood and, thanks to these assurances, most of the land remained under the church's administration. Contrary to widespread claims, the land there was fertile. The parish was not large, reports of visitations in the 19th century mention 2-3 thousand worshippers, among whom Poles outnumbered Lithuanians, so services were held in both languages - Polish and Lithuanian. In 1851, permission was granted to add a tower.

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a parish school in Opitoloka. We do not know when it was established. It is known that there were ten pupils in 1782. The parish and its inhabitants were quite poor and perhaps that is why after 1810 no reports mention the school anymore. In 1753 the local parish priest, Franciszek Frąckiewicz, founded a small hospital, which welcomed the sick for more than 100 years.

Renovations

The temple was repaired several times. Repairs were carried out between 1749 and 1751. The church inventory of 1784 shows that external masonry work and roof patching were carried out on the church. Presumably the repairs proved insufficient, as the 1796 inventory states that the church requires another urgent repair.

In 1828, a visitation indicated that the church had been renovated by the priest Casimir Walentynowicz. The work took many years, as 1314 roubles had already been allocated for it in 1806. The cellars were repaired, the roof was covered, the roof structures were replaced, and the stairs to the tower were repaired. The church was also modernised in 1897 and 1903, when the roof was covered and the interior repainted, while in 1916 the foundations were reinforced and the church organ was repaired. Around 1960, the tower, which had been damaged during the Second World War, was repaired, the roof was replaced, the façade was renewed, and in 1972 the external plastering was improved, and two years later the roof was repaired, which was repaired again in 1988, its wooden structure was replaced, and a new floor was laid in the sacristy. In September 2019, the cellars and staircase were examined.

Next to the church is the parish cemetery, where the remains of priests of Polish origin are buried. On a small slope situated behind the temple stands the Zabel family tomb. There are also the graves of local residents.

Czesław Miłosz and Opitołoki

In the poem "On trumpets and on zither" from the volume "City without a name", Miłosz wrote: "Commons sunken to the axes, names for no one but me: Ginejty, Jaswojnie, Opitołoki".

In this church, once the parish of the Miłosz family, on 14 July 1909. (according to the Julian calendar) at 7 p.m., the parents of the later Nobel Prize winner for Literature - Aleksander Miłosz and Weronika Kunat - got married. The original sacramental act has been preserved to this day. Aleksander Burhardt, a friend of the bridegroom, recalled that the wedding was performed by the local parish priest, a half-Lithuanian who did not speak Polish very well.

In the poetry volume Where the Sun Rises and Whence it Sets, published by the Literary Institute in 1974 in Paris, containing poems written between 1962 and 1974, Miłosz recalled: "I was baptised, renounced the devil in the Opitołoki parish of the Kiejdan district". This was not true, which, when writing these words, the poet did not yet know. Czesław Miłosz's baptismal certificate, written in Russian, came from Opitolok, as Miłosz found out towards the end of his life, and he was baptised in the branch church of the Opitolok parish in Svoboda.

It is worth mentioning that the surrounding manor houses were sometimes located at a considerable distance from the Opitolok church, which is why the parish had branch churches in Uzhvalki (beginning of the 17th century), Łanczanów (1870s) and Swietobrość (1744). At present, services are held in the church once a week, on Sunday morning. The parish priest comes from Kėdainiai, where he lives, as there is currently no vicarage in Opitoľky, although there once was.