Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vilnius - Churches

Churches

The diocese possesses splendid churches and venerable sanctuaries. Of the former the largest and most beautiful are in Vilnius, although many, violently wrested from the Catholics, became Russian Orthodox churches. The cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Trinity, St. Stanislaus and St. Ladislaus, was erected in the place of a demolished pagan sanctuary in virtue of a Papal Bull of 12 March 1387. Burned down in 1399, it was rebuilt in the Gothic style in 1399 by Grand Duke Vytautas; again destroyed in 1531 and 1662, its restoration was begun in 1769 and finished in 1801. It contains splendid chapels, especially those of St. Casimir and of the Immaculate Conception.

Other important churches are those of the Holy Cross, allegedly founded in the fourteenth century on the spot where, according to the legend from the Bychowiec Chronicle, fourteen Franciscans were martyred by the pagans in 1366; the Church of Saint Martin, founded by Jogaila in 1380, built on the ruins of an ancient pagan temple; St. Anne, founded for the Germans by Anna, the consort of Vytautas, in 1392; St. John the Evangelist, founded in 1386 and enriched with privileges by Leo X; Corpus Domini, founded by the Archconfraternity of the Blessed Sacrament in 1573; and the Church of the Guardian Angels.

To these must be added the numerous churches of the religious order, which flourished in Lithuania, but of which few traces remain. The Dominicans, who in the fifteenth century had a church dedicated to the Holy Spirit, built in 1679–1688 another, which in 1844 was given up by them and transformed into a parish church. The Bernardines undertook at Vilnius, in 1469, the construction of a wooden church, rebuilt in stone in 1500; it was burnt down in 1794 and restored in 1900; this order was forced to leave the diocese in 1864. The Church of Saints Peter and Paul was given to the Lateran Canons in 1638; they abandoned it in 1864. St. Casimir, with the annexed Jesuit college, founded in 1604, was turned into an Orthodox church in 1832. St. Ignatius Loyola, founded by the Jesuits in 1622, became the club of the officials. The Carmelite Church of St. Teresa has a miraculous image of the Madonna. The Augustinians, Trinitarians, Brigittines, Carmelite Sisters, Piarists, Visitandines and others also had churches, to which must be added numerous chapels.

After the Insurrection of 1863, the diocese saw all its religious violently expelled. The monasteries were converted into barracks, the churches given to the Orthodox or the secular clergy, the libraries dispersed, the possessions of the religious confiscated. In 1910 there remained only one monastery of Benedictine Sisters (connected with the Church of St. Catherine at Vilnius) with six septuagenarian nuns, a Bernardine convent at Slonim with four septuagenarian nuns, a Franciscan monastery at Grodno with a single friar and in the same city a convent of Brigittine Sisters with two religious.

On October 28, 1925 the old bishopric was promoted as Metropolitan Archdiocese, with only two suffragans: Kaišiadorys and Panevėžys. In 1991–1992 the Polish parts of the old bishopric became separate dioceses, under the new Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Białystok.