The text mentions the church of St Raphael and its history linked to both the land writer of the Vilnius province, Michał Koszczyc, and Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł, who was to contribute to the endowment of this church. The more recent, 19th century history of the church is also described, as well as its interior, which 'presents nothing worthy of note' (Source: 'Tygodnik Illustrowany', Warsaw 1863, T:8, pp. 415-416., after: Digital Library of the University of Lodz).

A modernised reading of the text

St. Raphael's Church and the statue of the Saviour in Snipiszki.

In one of the most aesthetically pleasing places stands, without doubt, the Church of St Raphael in Vilnius, in the suburb called Snipiški, from Snip or Snipis, to whom Vytautas gave this part of land as a reward for his services. Having run out of the modest but numerous throng of houses and factories of the Snipiški suburb, he suddenly stood on a hill, as if surprised by the wonderful landscape of Vilnius, which unfolded majestically at his feet, and the graceful two towers of the church were gravely reflected in the mirror of the waters of the Vilnia River.

This temple would perhaps seem mediocre in any other place, it would disappear if it were placed between the walls; but the delightful locality, the extensive view, spreading out at its feet, makes it possible, without exaggeration, with Gołębiowski pijaar, the translator of Starowolski's "Poland", to call it a "magnificent church" (Opis Królestwa Polskiego, 102 pp.). However, it is not so much magnificent as graceful. From almost all sides of the city one can see its two towers, drawn against the azure background of the sky.

The view of them, peculiarly in the light of the setting sun, is enchanting. The past of this temple still smells of yesterday's time, it is so young in comparison with other churches of Vilnius, it is so poor in historical memories that an archaeologist avoids its thresholds, and we, searching in the history of Vilnius, could only find the following facts. In 1703, Michal Koszczyc (mistakenly Košice in Kraszewski's book), a provincial governor of the Vilnius province, a pious and prosperous man, built this church for the Jesuits under the invocation of St. Raphael the Archangel, provided it with funds and, finally, dying in 1709, added a new bequest.

Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł, Voivode of Troki and Hetman Polny of Lithuania, and Kazimierz Paweł Sapieha, Voivode of Vilnius, contributed a great deal to its endowment. Several decades later, the Jesuits moved from St Raphael's to their college in Polotsk, and the constitution of 1774 in Warsaw gave the church and the Snipiski monastery, together with all the buildings belonging to it, to the Piarists of Vilnius, to establish a novitiate and educate religious youth there. At that time, however, the church was not a parish church.

It was not until 1791 that the citizens of Snipis, cut off from the parish church by the river, which was a great inconvenience in winter and autumn, petitioned Prince Bishop Massalsky, who in the same year erected it as a parish church. Eight years later (1799), the Piarists resigned from the monastery and church, relinquishing their rights to all external and internal buildings to the government. For a considerable time, the church belonged to the government administration, and services were held there by diocesan priests. The church, although clean and tidy, is neither architecturally nor ecclesiastically remarkable.

Of the paintings, only one is of great value. It is a work by the famous Szymon Czechowicz, depicting the archangel Raphael as he ascends towards heaven, in the presence of the grieving Tobias and his entire family. Its colouring is exquisite, the drawing, with Flemish correctness, contains the grace and life of the Italian school. The faces of Tobias and his son beam with mute admiration and holy intuition, and the mouth of the prince of angels seems to conclude those words so wonderfully expressed by our Stefan Witwicki:

"Peace to you.
"One of the seven you see,
"Who stand before the Lord.
"Tobias! when thou sawest thy child
"Thou sawest thyself snatched away
"And offeredest grief to God;
"When orphans with the poor
"Thou didst greet at thy threshold;
"When thou didst forsake feasts,
"To give the dead to the earth;
"For thou hast neither the cunning counsels,
"Nor the ungodly delights
"From the way that was commanded
"From the law, did not dissuade:
"Then I myself thy prayers
"I bore in the mercy of the Lord,
"As now thankfulness I bear.".

In general, this painting would have found an honourable place in any European gallery. We mentioned above the pillar with the figure of the Saviour bearing the cross. It is inseparable from the Church of St Raphael, indeed it is its soul, if I may say so. So let me introduce you to it, reader. Imagine you have arrived in the town of Gediminas and the Jagiellonians on a glorious May evening.

You went out into the city to get some fresh air, to see the old buildings and the wonderful surroundings of the castle, to look at the Neris river "with its golden bottom and blue face". Having passed the magnificent cathedral, having trodden the ground on which the buildings of the "lower castle" once stood, having passed the beautiful Karabanovich's tenement, which spreads freely on the ruins of the unlamented palace of Queen Barbary, you notice nearby, just below the church of St. Raphael, and opposite the green bridge, a beautiful hill, bathing in the rays of the setting sun.

On it, a brick pillar is whitewashed, with a small gazebo inside, in which a statue of the Saviour is visible, wearing a red robe, crown of thorns, bending under the weight of a huge cross. This is the crushing statue we have mentioned. Let us approach it. No Lithuanian man would cross the rails surrounding this hill without taking off his cap, and no Lithuanian woman would climb it without piously bowing her knees. Many people even go around the statue on their knees several times; others are content with fervent prayers, which they recite already kneeling by the benches recently erected, already standing in various places on the hill.

From all sides fervent prayers flow here, from all sides imploring eyes rise, a tear of repentance or love rolls down. And, enlivened by the sight of Him who died on the Cross for us, everyone leaves here full of inner consolation, full of the conviction that the way to Heaven leads through the Cross... Strange! These laughs and conversations, so common in all churches (not even in Vilnius), are almost unheard of here. The city lions avoid this hill, and the lionesses seem to visit it when they feel that a blow is about to strike them, or when they see the first wrinkle on their foreheads... For there is no more appropriate place for prayer! The floor is green turf, the vault is infinite, immense, in a word, a magnificent sky, where clouds hang on the rays or myriads of stars, headed by the moon, are visible.

Instead of paintings and architectural ornaments, the brush of nature and art has unfolded a mighty, immense landscape of almost the entire castle, its temples, its mountains, its greening trees, its gardens, its surroundings. Just underneath, the blue, silvery ribbon of the Neris mirrors, whose gentle murmur, blended with the rustle of the coastal trees, the distant bustle of the city and the song of the nightingale, creates an exquisite concert, at which all singing and church music would pale. This is the temple in which the patriarchs and prophets once prayed.

Add to this the charm of memories dear to every Vilnius resident and devout Catholic, and you will admit, kind reader, that Vilnius can rightly boast of its hill. What are these memories? Before the Union (as evidenced by the manuscript invented by the learned Narbula), there was a small wooden castle, or rather a bastion, standing on this hill, defending the enemy's passage across a bridge that rose less than a hundred paces from there. A deep ditch surrounded it, and as it lay at the crossroads between the Wilkomierski and Swieciany (now Calvary) routes, a Christian hand raised a cross on this castle.

During the wars of the seventeenth century, the castle was destroyed and fell, never to rise again. Then one of the citizens of Snipisk built a pillar in the place of the cross which had fallen down due to old age, and on it he placed a statue of St. John of Nepomuk, which, however, was destroyed after some time. At that time, the walls of the St. Raphael's church collapsed, and the Jesuits at first only lifted the pillar from the rubble, and then erected a larger one in its place, with an arbour-like covering and a cross on top.

There was no statue in it for several years. It was not until 1719 that an unknown woodcarver was commissioned to carve a statue of St John of Nepomuk from wood. The wood-carver arrived some time later and said that the statue was ready and could be placed in its proper place, as long as the agreed payment, i.e. eight thalers, was credited to him. Father Ptak, the superior of the St. Raphael domicile, sends Brother Stanislaw to see the statue. What was the latter's amazement when, instead of Saint John, he found a statue of the Lord Jesus of Nazareth carrying the cross up the mountain of His passion.

The woodcarver was summoned to the college to justify himself. - Why didn't you carve the statue as you were instructed? - asked Father Bird. - Reverend Rector," said the woodcarver respectfully, "ten years ago in the diocese of Polesie 700 skulls were counted, besides a great number of other human bones which, having been placed in several coffins, I was commissioned to prepare a statue of St. John of Nepomuk, but unforeseen circumstances forced me to leave Vilnius for a year to Grodno.

Then your predecessor reminded me several times to finish the commissioned statue, but a terrible disaster struck our city, the air carried away thousands of victims, it was impossible to think about the work. And I, too, was about to flee as quickly as possible with my wife and children from the house and the city, when Christ the Lord appeared to me, I do not know and I cannot say whether in a dream or awake, and spoke to me in these words:

"John, make quickly a statue of this block of wood, but such, and not another, as thou seest me here. Neither thee nor thy house shall be afflicted by any plague, if thou obey me. Remember!".

- And so it came to pass: I began to work beside the Saviour bearing the cross, and no one in my house complained. Today, when the fear of pestilence has ceased, I beg you, reverend Fathers, to accept this statue and place it in the arbour on a pole. The Jesuit Fathers, however, wanted Saint John of Nepomuk but did not agree to accept the statue of Lord Jesus. In the meantime, an old priest of the same congregation supposedly had a revelation in a dream, thanks to which the statue was accepted, but in the meantime it was placed in the repository of church things, always thinking of Saint John. Thus a year passed.

And then the friar Anthony Rychlor, while tidying about in this repository, heard a voice as if coming from the mouth of a man: "How long will you imprison me in this cave?". It was impossible to resist any longer. In 1720, on 9 May, under the leadership of Father Hyacinth Ptak, assisted by the entire congregation of members of the Vilnius Society of St. John of God and a large gathering of the pious, the statue of Lord Jesus was placed on a pillar. In 1818 the hill took a completely different form. In 1818, the hill took on a completely different form, as it was dug in around itself, boarded up with stones and fenced off with rails.

"With the first bending of a hoe sunk in the ground," says Mr Kirkor in "Przechadzki".

- "Instead of sand or clay, human bones spilled out, and upon closer examination it turned out that the whole hill was composed of human remains." And so, after a service held by the late Waclaw Zilinski, at that time still prelate ruling the Vilnius diocese, 700 skulls were counted, in addition to a number of other human bones, which, having been placed in several huge coffins, were solemnly escorted to the St. Raphael's cemetery, where they were also buried.

The history of Vilnius does not tell us the time when so many people were buried in this barrow, nor the reason why this place was chosen as a cemetery. However, it is most likely that the bodies of the dead were buried here during the terrible air that raged in Vilnius in 1709 and 1710; this seems to be supported by the painting of a wretched brush, placed on the outer wall of St. Peter's Church, exposing the terrible effects of the plague that took 30 380 victims from Vilnius.

Its background is black and flaming, in the midst of which rises a hill covered with naked and emaciated figures, some of whom are dying, others have already given up the ghost and are used as pasture for hungry dogs. The hill bears an uncanny resemblance to Snipis, and a folk tale indeed confirms this supposition. Such are the mementos attached to this hill. People visit it in large numbers, regardless of the season, cold or rain, and it is not uncommon to see a beggar covered in rags, or a widow abandoned from the world and people, throwing her orphan penny into a moneybox chained to a post. Occasionally you will see praying people here, with an eye raised, entering or leaving.