Pomiędzy tradycją zakonu a tradycją rodu - treści ideowe fasady kościoła Benedyktynek pw. św. Katarzyny w Wilnie

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Vilnius; Benediktinių vienuolės; Moterų vienuolynai; Sibilė Pacaitė; Feliksas Jonas Pacas; Karavako kryžius; Dievo Apvaizda. Keywords: Vilnius; The Benedictines nuns; Female; Cloisters; Sybilla Pac; Feliks Jan Pac; Caravaca cross; The Divine Providence.Reikšminiai žodžiai: Pacai (Pacas family); Bažnyčios; Vienuolynai; Benediktinės; Dekoras; Churches; Benedictines; Cloisters; Decoration.

ENThe Benedictines, who had been brought to Vilnius between 1616 and 1618, formed a small and modest community. Thanks to the generous legacy of Feliks Jan Pac, in 1692 their situation changed as they could erect a brick church, which was then consecrated in 1703. The generosity of the Lithuanian chamberlain was not a coincidence; his two daughters, Sybilla and Anna, the only offspring he left, had joined the Benedictine Sisters in Vilnius. Sybilla (Magdalena) Pac, who became an abbess in 1704, was particularly important for the history of the monastery. Not only did she renew the community life, but she also became one of the most important personalities of the then Vilnius. After the fire in 1737 Sybilla Pac vigorously started rebuilding the monastery and the church, which was completed by her successor, Joanna Rejtan. The facade which was then erected after Johann Christoph Glaubitz’s design was adorned with stucco and metal decorations with a perfectly devised ideological programme which referred to the tradition of the order and to the one of the Pac family. The facade presented ideals connected with the Benedictine life, which placed them among the hints of having to fight at the level of spirit and body, incorporating among the military symbols also the need to fight the enemies of the Church and the state, and the typical for the Benedictine spirituality piety connected with the Caravaca cross and the Divine Providence. At the same time, it reminded of the Benedictine vocations comparing nuns to lilies.This comparison, due to the presence of the Gozdawa coat-of-arms (double lilie) and the common nickname of the Pac family in the 17th and 18th cc. “the Liliats”, could also apply to their lineage, including the abbess Sybilla and her services to the monastery. Exposing founders in such an emphatic way was not only the will to immortalise them, but was also, together with the entire architectural and artistic decor of the church, connected with the need to counterbalance the new and dynamically developing Visitation Monastery in Vilnius. At the same time, the nature of the facade decoration of the Church of St. Catherine is in line with other foundations of the Pac family: St Theresa’s Church and the St Peter and St Paul Church, and was the last significant artistic initiative of the family in thecapital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. [From the publication]