The article contains a description of Šiluva, a town in the district of Rosėnai, where there is a Marian shrine with a famous image of the Virgin Mary. The surroundings of the town and, in particular, the church itself are described. Also described is the history of the Zawiš and Kžgajl families, as well as the miracle in 1612 when the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared on a stone near the town, which resulted in a decree a decade later in Šiluva being returned to Catholics. (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1861, T:3, p. 24., after: Digital Library of the University of Lodz).

A modernised reading of the text

The church in Szydłów in Samogitia.

Šiluva is a parish town in the district of Rosėnai, Kaunas province, famous for its miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, which makes it what the Gate of Dawn is to Lithuania and what Czestochowa is to Poland. The brick church stands on a lofty hill and dominates the whole area. The town is surrounded by a dark fir forest, and this is what gave it the name Šiluva, because the Polish word for forest is called Szyłas in the Samogitian language.

In the days of idolatrous Samogitia, Šiluva was called Blida, after the word Kudla, meaning "wisdom god" in Lithuanian mythology, who, according to local documents, had a temple on the same spot where today's church stands. The original foundation of the church was in 1457. - The original foundation of the church dates back to 1457, when Peter Giedygold, the heir of Giejšov, had it built in honour of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary and his patron saints, St Peter and St Bartholomew, and bequeathed the village, consisting of ten settled cottages, and tithes from three farms to the parson.

After Giedgołd, Szydłów was given to Mikołaj Kieżgajle, whose only daughter, Barbara, given in marriage to Andrzej Zawisza, brought Szydłów and other estates into the Zawisza household before 1500. From then on, according to Niesiecki, the Zawisza family began to spell themselves Zawisza-Kieżgajle and adopted the Kieżgajle Łabędź coat of arms to their Rose coat of arms. The son of this Zawisza, Jan, inherited Szydłów from his father, and after Jan's death, his brother Melchior, the castellan of Vitebsk, became the owner of Szydłów. At that time, Calvinism began to spread in Samogitia. Melchior Zawisza also converted to Calvinism and, as the heir of Šiluva, built a church for his needs.

When the new denomination took over Samogitia to such an extent that only seven Catholic priests remained in the diocese, the Szydlovsk church collapsed and its funds were appropriated by the Calvinist church. Eighty years after this incident, namely in 1612, news spread of an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a stone behind the town. The miracle was the cause of a lawsuit between the Samogitian chapter and the Calvinists, which resulted in a tribunal decree in 1622 returning the property to the Catholics. From then on, the Calvinist congregation began to decline, and as a result of the constant rows and even bloody clashes between Calvinists and Catholics, culminating in the fatal wounding of Commandant Siernowski, the Calvinist vicar was forced to move to Kielm in 1728.

At the end of 1754, the church was annexed to the Kėdainiai congregation and destroyed to the ground. In the meantime, the miraculous image of the Mother of God of Šiluva became so famous that people flocked to it from everywhere and, bringing numerous gold and silver offerings, provided the funds to start the construction of the present church. The foundations of the church were laid in 1760 by the then parish priest and later bishop of Samogitia, Fr Jan Dominik Lopacinski, and the building was completed and consecrated in 1786 by his successor, Fr Tadeusz Bukaty, parish priest of Šiluva and bishop of Thessaloniki.

In the same year, the church of Šiluva was elevated to the degree of infulcation by bull Pius VI, and the miraculous painting was crowned with a crown consecrated in Rome. The ceremony was solemnly performed in the town square by Samogitian Bishop Stephan Gedrich, assisted by three bishops and the general Prefect of Samogitia, and in the presence of 30,000 devotees from Prussia, Lithuania and Samogitia. Today, the town of Šiluva belongs to the government; it has 80 wooden houses, half of which are settled by Jews, a well-maintained pharmacy, a brick infirmary, a tracery and several stalls.

The parish holds a week-long indulgenced feast on 8 September each year, during which usually several thousand people take holy communion, and a fair bringing in traders not only from the neighbouring towns, but also from Riga, Mitava, Kaunas, Vilnius and Dynaburg. The Szydlovsk parish has a population of 487 Catholics. At the end of the town is a wooden chapel, in the centre of which lies the stone on which, according to legend, the Virgin Mary appeared. An altar has been built on it to celebrate Mass, and a stone statue of the Virgin Mary has been erected over it instead of a painting.

Right next to the stone is an iron box in which the Catholics hid their church apparatus after the fall of the church. Buried in the ground, they lay there for 80 years, until the Catholics recovered their church and the appropriated funds from the Calvinists.