Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
Świętobrość - kościół pw. Przemienienia Pańskiego, photo Katarzyna Węglicka, 2018
Licencja: CC BY-SA 4.0, Źródło: Instytut Polonika, Warunki licencji
Fotografia przedstawiająca Holy Transfiguration Church
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ID: POL-002237-P

Holy Transfiguration Church

ID: POL-002237-P

Holy Transfiguration Church

"The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland and Other Slavonic Countries" writes about Svyatobrošėnai as a church village, called a town, lying on the Niewiaža River in Kaunas County. The village owes its name to the Brasta river, which in Lithuanian means a ford that used to be near a pagan sacred grove that supposedly existed in the area.

The wooden Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord (a branch of the Opitolokai parish), built in 1744, towers over the deep valley of the Nevėžis River. Local legend has it that a sacred fire burned at the site of the temple before the Baptism of Lithuania, and the pagan gods were worshipped in the pagan shrine. It is a fact that the church was founded by Ignacy Zawisza, the owner of the nearby estate of Zawiszyn. In 1880, a man named Janowski added a brick side wing to the church. The older part is wooden. A tower rises above the entrance, and the tin roof is crowned by four crosses: two tower over the two brick annexes, and two beautifully decorated ones rise above the old, wooden part of the church. The church is illuminated by tall, arched windows. A high staircase leads up to the church.

A wooden, quadrilateral, two-storey bell tower from 1873 has been preserved next to it. The two old bells were taken away in an unknown direction by the Russians in 1915.

Inside, a 19th-century painting of St Barbara and a copy of the image of Our Lady of the Dawn Gate have been preserved, as well as an 18th-century zinc vessel for holy water. The side chapel has an entrance to the crypt covered by a wooden lattice. In the brick-lined vaults are visible, embedded in the wall, plaques attesting to the burials of local landlords.

In this church on 18 October 1911. (according to the Julian calendar), the priest Julius Narkiewicz baptised the future poet. Although in his poem "Where the Sun Rises and Where it Sets" he had earlier written that he was baptised in the parish in Opitoleky, it turned out that he was baptised in a branch church, and only the certificate was issued in the parish church. As a young boy, Czesław Miłosz attended services in Svatobrudok, located near his family estate in Šetejniec.

By the Brasta river there is also the old presbytery building, unused for many years, as well as the small building of the new one, now also empty. By the old one stands a sunken entourage, an old well and a bench. The new one housed the village school in Soviet times. It was later restored to its former function. The last parish priest lived here until 2006.

Next to the temple is the old cemetery. On a high escarpment, surrounded by an iron fence, in the shadow of an oak tree, the poet's grandfather Zygmunt Kunat is buried. There is also a tombstone in the form of an obelisk of Szymon Syruć (1809-1870), the son of Michał and Józefa of the Drucki-Sokoliński dukes, the owner of Szetejń and nearby Syrutyszki, who was Czesław Miłosz's great-grandfather. Also buried there was his first wife, Eufrosyna, née hr Kossakowska (1815-1845), who died at a young age. The tombstone is engraved:

"Husband to the besty wife Eufrozyna z hr hrabiów Kossakowskich Szymonowey Skiruciowey".

Miłosz remembered how, as a child, he used to walk about three kilometres from Szetejń to the church in Swietobrość on public holidays. The old road along the Nevėžis in the days of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a trade route leading from Riga to Kaunas and on towards Königsberg, lined with roadside inns and taverns.

Below the cemetery is the grave of the insurgents of 1863. Here rests the soldiers of the combined forces of Pavel Staniewicz, Medard Kończy and Father Antoni Mackiewicz, who died in the battle of Daniliškės near Svatobostis in October 1863. The commander Pavel Stanievich was killed here. Eleven soldiers were wounded and eight taken prisoner, while twenty-five were killed. On the banks of the Brasta, in the church cemetery, 70 insurgents lie buried. On the insurgents' grave stands a concrete monument (replacing an earlier wooden one) from 1938, erected thanks to the efforts of Father Vincentas Švambarys, on which the following words are engraved in Lithuanian:

"To the slain insurgents of 1863 - glory to the vanquished".

A cross is placed on the monument and four monumental oak trees stand nearby. Most likely, the Tsarist authorities did not allow the slain to be buried in the cemetery that existed nearby. However, years later, when the cemetery encompassed a larger area, the memorial was placed within it.

An important element of the landscape of Svatobrots is the old oak trees growing on the slope, which are probably a remnant of the sacred grove. These trees were held in great reverence in Lithuania, and Czesław Miłosz himself mentioned that these ancient oaks were his favourite trees.

In his novel entitled "The Issa Valley", the Nobel laureate named Svyatobroostė Gina, which is associated with the village of Ginejty near Štiaonė, and near Kaunas, the river Gynia flows through the village of Pagynė. After all, Svyatobroostė and its surroundings are the poet's "land of childhood".

Time of origin:
1744
Bibliography:
  • Jędrzejewski Tomasz, „Strony rodzinne Czesława Miłosza. 7 spacerów”, Warszawa 2011, s. 104-132.
Supplementary bibliography:

Kaluszko J., "Śladami Miłosza. W dolinie Niewiaży", Gazeta.pl Turystyka, https://archive.is/01KMT [accessed 10.08.2024].

"Czesław Miłosz's homeland", https://www.kedainiutvic.lt/turystyka/pl/ciekawostki/ojczyzna-czeslawa-milosza [accessed: 10.08.2024].

Publikacja:
11.10.2024
Ostatnia aktualizacja:
21.10.2024
Author:
Katarzyna Węglicka
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