St John's Church in Vilnius is mentioned in the text. Its history from the beginning of its construction, i.e. during the reign of Vladislovas Jogaila, is presented. Construction of the church began in 1386, and was completed during the reign of Vytautas in 1426. The church burned down in the 16th century, and a new church was built in its place by Jan of Domaniewo. The history of the Jesuits sent to Vilnius is also presented. (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1865, T:11, pp. 23-25., after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

St John's Church in Vilnius.

When descriptions of Vilnius churches have been printed in abundance over the past few years, the most majestic of them, both by the majesty of its architecture and by its historical memories, St John's Church, waited a long time for its history, and barely manages to emerge from the gloom of oblivion in this poor, hastily scribbled note.

Perhaps someone at a later date, by piecing together the history of all the churches of the old town, will compile a detailed account of the post-university church from the chronicler's folios scattered in the monastery archives; for this time we are doing what we can, sharing with the readers of Tygodnik Illustrowany a short extract from old Jesuit scripts, and from the oral histories of university veterans.

Simultaneously with the foundation of St. Stanislaus Cathedral in Vilnius by Wladyslaw Jagiello, the city's citizens received royal permission to erect a second Catholic church there as well, dedicated to St. John. Work began in 1386 and was completed in 1426, during the reign of Vytautas, when the government of the King and the private donations of the Lithuanian state soon endowed this pious foundation with a rich endowment.

The grounds touching the garden and cemetery, where the rectory and other houses were built, the garden and four houses in today's Swietojanska Street, and finally the manors of Murlevo, Kijoviškis and Rubno, with the forest and fields in Antokolė, comprised this generous royal gift; while two houses in Subočiai Street, with homesteads, yards and buildings, were bought from numerous private donations. Leonard Radiani, the first parish priest here, later exchanged all these far-flung manors from Vilnius with Governor Gasztold for closer ones.

It was during his reign that two preachers were appointed for the St. John's Church, one to teach in Polish and the other in Lithuanian; a long-established municipal school was attached to the church, with the right to choose teachers for it by Vilnius citizens, and, as we see today abroad, a fee for seats in church pews was established.

It is interesting to know what the income of the parish priest himself was at that time. If the school children carried the deceased to the church or cemetery without a priest, only 3 groschen were paid; if the vicar and the parson went, 6 groschen were paid for the poor man and 12 groschen for the rich man; if psalms were sung at the funeral both during the day and at night, 12 groschen were paid for the rich and the poor alike.12 gr.; if there was a magnificent funeral of a provincial magnate, where the catafalque was dressed in lamps and silk or cloth drapes, the proceeds were divided between the priests and the brotherhood. In the 16th century, the St. John's church burnt down and a new one was built in its place by the then parish priest, Jan of Domaniewo. In the second half of the 16th century, i.e. a century and a half after the church's foundation, the church entered its most glorious period.

The bold action of the Jesuits drove out from Italy and Germany the supporters of religious reform in large numbers to Poland, then known for its religious tolerance. A not inconsiderable number of them reached Lithuania, where, due to the great Protestant inclinations of the local magnates, they found a ready field of action. The Catholic Church, meanwhile, was almost defenceless here due to the lack of learned theologians. Only one larger cathedral school, whose pupils were called scholares arcenses, and another smaller one, later founded at St John's Church, with barely 22 pupils, were the only focal points for theological exercises.

It is true that Peter Roissius Maureus, then canon and archpriest of the Church of St John in Vilnius, had also founded a school of law and other higher sciences at the Cathedral, which could have developed bravely under the tutelage of this learned man, but a shortage of teachers and excessive austerity on the part of the Chapter prevented the priest's best intentions, and his establishment did not bear the expected fruit at all.

Then, on the advice of Cardinal Hosius and with the permission of King Sigismund Augustus, given at the Lublin Sejm, educated at the academy of Witenberg, in his young years he fulfilled the office of royal secretary to Sigismund Augustus; however, he soon changed his secular dress for a clerical one and was appointed canon and scholastic of Gniezno, and was already close to the bishop's pastorate.

However, the spirit of asceticism gripped him so strongly that, having renounced all ecclesiastical dignities, he became a Jesuit in Rome in 1567, together with Stanislaus Kostka, and from there, staying only temporarily in the Pułtusk monastery, he arrived together with the provincial Maggio in Vilnius, in order to assume the dignity of rector. This choice of the learned and aristocratically born Jesuit immediately set the new foundation of this order in Lithuania on a high note. When the college was established, a higher grammar school was added at once, which Warszewicki divided into 5 classes, namely lower: infamy, grammar and syntax; higher: poetics and rhetoric.

A separate professor was appointed for each class, the censors were to be chosen from among the students, and the management was entrusted to the rector. In addition to this secular school, a course in the clerical sciences, or Jesuit clergy, was instituted in each Jesuit house. These courses were: three years of philosophy and four years of theology. Despite the excellent programme, the scholarly establishment was not yet called an academy at that time. Having laid the foundation stone of higher school instruction, the Jesuits in turn had to concern themselves with the development of Catholic preaching, which was getting ready to fight the Protestants. Towards the end of 1570, Vilnius Calvinists, led by Wolan and Trzecieski, came to the college, challenging the priests to a dispute about the truth of the Catholic faith.

The Jesuits accepted the challenge, began arguing and won over the attackers. Soon afterwards, they themselves were already offering the dissenters a religious disputation by posting public notices on the doors of St John's church. The Calvinists came, the battle began and the Catholics were again victorious. In the midst of the work carried out by the Jesuits, the main condition for them was free access to the confessional and the pulpit, which they completely lacked due to not having a separate church.

Bishop Protasewicz began to insist on parish priest Roisius to give them the St. John's church. The offended priest not only resisted the bishop's demands vigorously, but also lodged an eloquent complaint with the king. However, it was to no avail: the Jesuits, protégés of the papal nuncio and Queen Anne, obtained a privilege from the king to take possession of the church, with the condition, however, that they would not otherwise take ownership of it than per cessum aut decessum of Archpriest Roissius. This privilege, dated 10 March 1571, for the churches of St John in Vilnius and the branch church in Radomin, is found in the church archives, written on parchment and stamped.

After the privilege came out, Roisius resigned from the rectory and received a prelature in the chapter, and the Jesuits occupied the church. The acquisition of this property, endowed with considerable funds, then the imminent death of Roissius, presented to the people by the Jesuits as God's punishment for their sinful resistance against them, and finally the defeat of the dissenters in the field of public discussion - all this extended the influence and power of the order immeasurably. On the one hand, the excellent exposition of the doctrines in an increasingly popular form, on the other, the speeches of such preachers as Warszewicki, Skarga and Wujek, and the greatly enhanced charm and splendour of the house of God by its complete renewal - soon gained the Jesuits general support.

Had it not been for the terrible plague disaster affecting the country and the city, this success would have been even greater. In 1571 the plague dispersed the townspeople, and with them the students and teachers of the Jesuit college. One Warszewicki, like a fork lost in the wilderness, remained in place. Hardly a year later the school was reopened. Sigismund Augustus (1572), who was leaving the world, bequeathed to it the castle library, valued at 10,000 red zlotys, which was later given to the Vilnius Academy.

In 1573, Piotr Skarga arrived here for permanent residence from Pultusk. It was he who, with the power of eloquent words, began to crumble the dissent already disintegrating in Lithuania, so that Radziwiłł Czarny and his brothers, the most ardent of the reformers, were the first to return to the bosom of the Catholic Church. In 1574, by order of Gregory XIII, Warszewicki travelled to Sweden to reconcile John III without Land, husband of Catherine Jagiellon, with the Catholic Church; he stayed there for a longer time, and on his return to Poland passed his rectorial authority to the venerable husband Wojtek of Węgrów and sailed again to Stockholm.

In 1578, Stefan Batory converted the Jesuit school into an academy. After Wójek, Skarga became its rector. It was at his request and through the intercession of the nuncio that in 1581 the Vilnius chapter relinquished the collegium of St. John's church and transferred all its management to the Jesuits. In 1582, Skarga founded the Confraternity of the Virgin Mary (Sodalis Marianus) and arranged the chapel in the Church of St John for this purpose; and in 1588, when there was a great famine in the country, he founded a new Confraternity of Mercy (Mons Pietatis) in the Corpus Christi Chapel, where a cash box was placed at the Saviour's feet for lending money to the poor without interest.

These similar establishments made the Jesuit Order increasingly popular in the country. Only the sudden death of Skarga (1612) eclipsed their horizon somewhat. From 1612 to 1636 - the history of the academic church hardly appears on the chronicle pages. It was only in 1636 that Ladislaus IV came with Sarbiewski to Vilnius and marked the day of 5 July for the Latin bard's doctoring ceremony at St John's Church.

This memorable ceremony was one of the most splendid here. The King and his sister Anna, assisted by the Nuncio, the Archbishop of Avignon, senators and a large royal retinue, took their seats on the throne; opposite the King and the court, the academic body examined Sarbiewski; only at certain intervals did music ring out from the choir or splendid orations fell from the pulpit.

When the exam was over, the theologians awarded the jubilarian his degree, the Nuncio confirmed it, the Provincial placed the poet's biretta on his temple, and the King presented him with a rich sapphire ring. The reign of Ladislaus IV was the last heyday of the Jesuit academy. People of talent and learning disappeared in turn, and with them King Stephen's famous institution gradually declined. To these internal causes must be added external, political ones. During the unfortunate reign of Jan Kazimierz, disasters fell one after another on the whole country and on Vilnius.

In 1655, as a result of warfare, the city was burnt down, the Jesuit college and its church were severely damaged by fire, and the order was chased away. Six years later, the destroyed buildings were rebuilt and the academy opened, but it was never recovered from its moral decline. Simultaneously with the collapse of dissident propaganda in Lithuania, the Jesuits also began to decline. Immensely enriched by the sacrifices of kings and lords during the reign of John III and the Saxon dynasty, they eventually sank into inert materialism and did not emerge from it until the end.

The year 1773 arrived, and a papal bull abolished their order throughout the Christian world, so the Vilnius academy was converted into a secular one called the Main School, and the famous ex-Jesuit Poczobut was appointed rector. Thanks to his efforts, on 11 October 1783, a centenary commemoration of the victory at Vienna was held at St John's Church, with the Dean Tomasz Zienkowicz celebrating Mass on the first day, and Bishop Massalski celebrating the triumphal service the following day, surrounded by a procession of numerous church dignitaries, magnates and noblemen. In 1799. Poczobut relinquished the rectorship to Strojnowski; in 1803 the academy was transformed into a university, and from the Education Commission came under the administration of the Ministry of Enlightenment. After 1831, St John's Church became one of the city's regular parish churches.

Such is the history of the ancient temple and the academy that was inseparable from it. Now, in turn, we come to see its architectural drawing and some of the church equipment and ornaments preserved from the past. The construction of this most extensive church in Vilnius, erected on the slope of a slight hill, touches the university courtyard with its front, the side of the vast St. John's Square, and the rear part of Zamkovaya Street. The lofty body of the church is clearly separated from the chapels attached to both sides, decorated on the outside with pilasters, capitals and ogival niches.

The windows of the building, twenty in number, are large and Gothic; the entrances, one grand from the courtyard and the other more modest from the square, are of pure Italian architecture and thus testify to the fact that they were rebuilt at a later date, when the wall surrounding the church on the right side was removed and the tower was built. The latter, one of the most magnificent in the country, is set slightly apart and connected to the church by a gate leading to the post-university buildings.

It is divided into five storeys, decorated in capitals, pilasters and florescences, the last of which, slightly narrower, is topped by a 17th century-style dome with round windows and four urns at the corners. The backdrop of the church walls, towers and ionic-painted in olive, the ornaments in architectural white. We enter the church itself. The interior consists of a nave supported by ten octagonal columns and five chapels with two statues of various St Johns on the flat sides of each column. The main decoration of the nave is the beautiful choir on one side, with its carved gallery and magnificent organ, and the sanctuary on the other, with ten grouped altars.

These altars are arranged in two rows. One row curves oval outside the wall itself and consists of seven altars, between which the central one depicts Christ on the cross (a white sculpture on a scarlet background); the other row, placed closer to the bars, has three altars: the central one, where the ciborium, with wonderfully beautiful columns, statues, and openwork sculptures, and two side altars, of Our Lady of the Scapular and St Joseph, courted by particularly fine paintings of St Luke and St John the Evangelist. The chapels in the Church of St John are arranged on the right: of the Virgin Mary; on the left: of the Consolation of the N. P. Mary, St Cecilia and Corpus Christi, or Oginskis.

The first two are of little significance; a few words can be said about the last three. In the chapel of the Consolation, where a service for schoolchildren is usually held, our attention is drawn to fine paintings of St Augustine and the miraculous Virgin Mary, both in silver robes. In the chapel of St Cecilia, where the bodies of the dead are brought in for removal, the entrance, decorated with marble columns and beautiful stuccowork, is strikingly tasteful, in addition to paintings of St Cecilia and the Holy Family.

In the Corpus Christi chapel, which is more tasteful than the others, almost everything is worthy of attention: both the gilded open-work doors, with the Oginskis' coat of arms at the headpiece, and the altar with the relics of St. Teofil, placed in a silver case. The altar with the relics of St. Theophilus placed in a silver coffin, and an intricately carved silver lamp in front of the altar, and a nice choir with an organ, and two portraits of the founders, and a marble slab in the floor, covering the worn out ashes of Voivode Oginsky. The recently departed Rev. Ireneusz Oginsky renovated the chapel a couple of years ago and embellished it considerably.