The text recalls the royal privilege issued and approved at the Vrashavsk parliament, which granted the Bernardine Fathers in Zhytomyr a site for a church and monastery. Originally, a wooden church was erected there (thanks to the starost Illyinsky), which burnt down in 1820, and a brick church was built in its place. A brief financial history of the monastery and church is also recalled, as well as the fact that, after the Bernardines resigned in 1845, the site was occupied by the Lucknow-Zytomyr Catholic seminary (Source: 'Tygodnik Illustrowany', Warsaw 1867, T:16, pp. 53-54, after: Digital Library of the University of Lodz).

A modernised reading of the text

Seminary (post-bernardine) church in Zhytomyr.

Royal privilege issued on 4 April 1711 at the instance of starosta Jan Kajetan Iliński and approved at the Warsaw Sejm in 1711, granted the Bernardine Fathers in Zhytomyr a plot of land for a church and monastery. The original wooden church and monastery, built in the suburbs at that time thanks to the efforts of the Minsk governor, perished in 1826, and a new brick church, with a fairly spacious monastery, was erected on the same site.

However, the construction of the church, which was carried out by contributions and alms, was very slow. Although the monastery had already been built by 1830, the church was completed and consecrated only on 1 November 1838; previously, services were held in a chapel in the refectory. In addition to a square in the town, which today is owned by the Luck and Zhytomyr Seminary, the Bernardines had a hayfield outside the town, a brickyard and a brewery in the Pniewo area.

The monastery's monetary funds were very meagre, because apart from the 5,000 zlotys used from bequests for the construction of the church, they consisted only of the sum of 25,000 zlotys, from which the annual percentage was only 1,250 zlotys. Other sources of income, such as rent of the monastery's houses and shops as well as the monastery's own contribution, amounted to around 10,000 zlotys per annum, but after deducting expenses for light and other needs of the church, as well as for the building, maintenance of the servants and the farm, there was little more than 2,000 zlotys left for the monks' clothing and food.

Apart from the Superior, there were about eight monks and as many nuns. The last superior was Father Julian Wołonczewski. After the Bernardines resigned at the beginning of 1845, the seminary, which by virtue of a decree of 12 November 1842 merged three separate seminaries: Lutsk, Ołyck and Zhytomyr, had from one year onwards alumni.