Church of St. Andrew and the Bernardine Monastery - a monument of history and architecture in Lviv (Ukraine), located on Cathedral Square, 1-3). Now the monastery buildings belong to the Lviv State Historical Archive, and the church building belongs to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
Location: Soborna Square, 1
The main building of the Bernardine monastery occupies a
triangular area, the base of which was the city rampart
between the Galician Gates and the Royal Bastion, and the
top was a powerful bastion called Bernardine. The monastery
was an independent fortified point, surrounded by a moat and
rampart, which were linked to the ring of city walls.
The wooden structures of the 15th century monastery,
which had repeatedly burned down and been restored, were
replaced by stone ones during the 17th-18th centuries. In
the years 1600-1630, the church of St. Andrew was built, at
the same time, a building of cells was erected next to it.
The monastery was surrounded by powerful stone walls with
loopholes and a tower with Glinyansky gates. Outbuildings
adjoin them - a smithy, a stable and others. A bell tower
was attached to the defensive wall.
On the square in
front of the church there is a decorative column, on which
there used to be a statue of St. John from Dukla - the
patron saint of Lviv, to the south of the church - a rotunda
over a well. The monument was repeatedly restored, the last
work was carried out in 1960-1970. This is one of the best
Lviv ensembles of the 17th-18th centuries, combining the
features of Renaissance architecture with Mannerism coming
to replace it.
Under the walls of the monastery on
the side of Valovaya Street, in the 2000s, the so-called
"Bernardengarden" - the garden of the Bernardines - arose.
In it, and on the territory of the street, the "Museum of
Ideas" and other organizations hold creative events. The
most famous events are the summer "Kinolev" and the
winter-spring-autumn "Lviv - the capital of crafts". The
"Museum of Ideas" itself has settled in part of the cellars
of the monastery, where it now holds various exhibitions and
presentations.
On December 27, 2007, in the premises
of one of the cells, frescoes were found approximately from
the end of the 17th - beginning of the 18th centuries.
According to experts, the frescoes have iconographic and
historical value. The cell itself is the only known cell
with paintings in Western Ukraine. In January 2008,
preparatory work began to restore the fresco. Provide for
several stages of work-clearing, restoration, conservation
and then as much as exhibiting the mural.
In 2012, an
international competition for projects for the
reconstruction of the monastery courtyard was held. The jury
received 160 projects. The project of the Hungarian
architects Peter Sabo, Eva Deri-Papp, András Gazdag, Tamas
Karacsony won the victory. For 3 weeks, the projects were
exhibited at Rynok Square, 10.
Archive
1784 The
Austrian authorities founded in the cells of the monastery
"an archive of the Grodsky and Zemstvo acts of the city of
Lvov." The archive contains documents from the period of the
Galicia-Volyn principality, funds of central institutions
and organizations of the Old Polish period (XIV-XVII
centuries), Austro-Hungarian (1772-1918) and Russian
(1914-1915) domination in Galicia, the Ukrainian People's
Republic and the West Ukrainian People's Republic
(1917-1918), Poland of the interwar period (1918-1939), as
well as small groups of documents from the Soviet period
(1939-1941) and the German occupation (1941-1944).
The oldest documents of the archive are represented by a
collection of parchment letters from 1176-1800 years. Among
these parchment documents are interstate agreements (in
particular, the Union of Brest of 1596), papal bulls, royal
privileges, princes, governors and elders, which were
granted to cities, villages, churches, churches,
monasteries, synagogues and workshops, as well as other
transactions . The collection also contains letters relating
to France, Italy, Moldova, Wallachia, Germany, Hungary and
other states - a total of thirteen languages.
The
modern Central State Historical Archive in Lviv is one of
the largest archives in Central and Eastern Europe and the
largest in Ukraine
The Bernardine church began to be erected in 1600, mostly
finished by 1620, but the finishing work continued until 1630. The
chronicles call the monk B. Avelida the author of the plan, and the
builders are Paul the Roman and Ambrosius the Blessed. A. Bemer from
Wroclaw completed the construction. He erected a tower adjoining the
northeast corner of the building and completed the facades. The
church was built of hewn stone in the form of a three-aisled
basilica with an elongated choir with a faceted apse. The lower tier
of the facade is designed in the traditions of the Renaissance. The
division of the main facade clearly reveals the three-nave
composition of the temple. In the same strict clear forms inherent
in the creative style of P. Roman, the side walls and apse are
sustained. The complicated shield-pediment of the main facade, close
to the German-Flemish version of Mannerism, sharply discords with
them. The interior decoration, created in the 18th century, is
distinguished by decorative forms. Wall paintings were made by B.
Mazurkevich with assistants V. Bortnitsky, P. Volyansky and N.
Sorochinsky in 1738-1740. Carved benches (1640-1641) by Paul's
chisel from Bydgoszcz have not been preserved, but at the beginning
of the 20th century. made an exact copy.
The floor of the
temple was first made of hewn stone, and in 1738 it was covered with
marble. Metal doors are made in the best traditions of the 17th
century by Ukrainian blacksmiths. The church has an organ with 1700
pipes and 32 registers, which was created in the 18th century by the
master Kasparini from the Lusatian Germans.
The Church of St.
Andrew enjoyed great respect among the gentry. Military campaigns
always began with a divine service in the temple with the
consecration of weapons. So it was, for example, in 1604, when False
Dmitry I began a campaign against Moscow from Lvov. Before this
campaign, False Dmitry married Marina Mnishek in the temple (still
in the old half-timbered church).
The bell tower, located
along the church, was erected in 1734, but the modesty and
simplicity of this two-story, square building with a hipped canopy
make it related to Renaissance architecture. For a long time, a bell
hung on the bell tower, cast in Lviv in 1588. In 1917, it was
transferred to the John III Museum, which saved it from being melted
down for the military needs of Austria-Hungary in the First World
War.
It was used to observe the area (somehow the sentry from
the tower was the first to see the enemy army and warned the
townspeople. In memory, the clock was set so that the next hour beat
off by 5 minutes rather than other city clocks).
The first
divine service took place in 1611 - on December 13 (or November 30
(the date of that time) 1609) on the day of St. Andrew. This is how
the temple got its name.
On the facade you can see the
statues of the saints of the Bernardine Order, and in the niches of
the second tier - sculptural images of the Mother of God and the
apostles Peter and Andrew.
During the restoration work of
1976-1977, the completely open wall of the monastery was also
restored, along with the Glinyanskaya tower and the gate from
Mytnaya Square. "Cultural layers" raised the city higher and during
the restoration it was necessary to dig out the wall, because the
lower layer of large gray stones was in the ground. A canal was made
along the wall, imitating a fortress moat, which sometimes fills
with water in summer. At the same time, the gates to the Glinyansky
towers, which had been laid down since the middle of the 17th
century, were opened. Now one of the branches of the underground
passage under Mytnaya Square leads to them.
In the 1960s,
under the defensive wall of the former monastery, not far from the
Glinyanskaya Gate, there was a clock made of flowers, showing quite
accurately, as to its specific structure. In the early 2010s, on the
outer side of the defensive walls of the monastery, a new "flower"
clock was installed, which still functions.
The cells were
erected simultaneously with the church close to its northern wall.
The building is brick, plastered, complex in plan, with a square
courtyard, three and partly four-story. The wings are reinforced
with buttresses. The internal layout is corridor, the ceilings are
vaulted, cross. In December 2007, in the building of the cells, a
wall painting of approximately the turn of the 17th-18th centuries
was found - the only cell painting on the territory of Ukraine.
Bell tower of the Bernardine church, 1733-1734 attached to the
old defensive wall from the south of the church.
Rotunda
Krinitsa was built in 1620 and is located to the right of the main
entrance to the church, or to the south of the building as a whole,
in the back of the courtyard. Several legends and legends are
associated with this spring.
The rotunda above the well,
erected in 1761, is made in the form of an open arched gazebo topped
with a dome with a sculpture. The painting on the theme of the
miracles of St. John of Dukla has been preserved in the dome. The
attraction itself was restored in the 1970s.
Column
At the
end of the 17th century, in honor of Jan from Dukla and in memory of
saving Lviv from the siege by the troops of B. Khmelnytsky, a wooden
column was erected.
In 1736, with the help of a donation from
Crown Prince Michal Jozef Rzewuski, a stone column was built, which
has survived to this day. The column was made by Thomas Hutter or
Fabian Fesinger. Also, some researchers claimed that it was made
according to the project of Mikhail Severin Zhevuskiy.
Previously, on the column was a sculpture of St. John, who was
kneeling with his hands folded in prayer. Since the sculpture went
missing after 1944, a decorative vase now tops the column.
In
the temple itself there is now a chapel with a tombstone (it was
carved in 1608) of St. John of Dukla, and in the aisle there is his
icon, which appeared here “from the high religious feeling of
Countess Sophia Fredro” - the mother of Metropolitan Andrey
Sheptytsky.
Illuminations
Since 2008, the elements of the
church facade and the side wall began to be illuminated with
multi-colored light - red, blue, white, yellow and green, which
alternately changed. For several days, the entire facade, including
sculptures of saints on the first level, the Mother of God and the
apostles Peter and Andrew on the second, as well as the central
stained-glass window, shone, but "statically". Some time later, the
well and the rotunda, the bell tower and the tower were illuminated.
Epitaphs, commemorative tables, quotes, tomb
On the wall of
the temple, a relief is carved with a warrior kneeling and praying.
Under the image is an inscription in Latin: “Here lies the noble
Stanislav Vizhitsky, cornet of Kiev, Tabor headman, colonel of the
holy royal majesty, when a brave warrior, now stench and worms.
Lived 66 years. The year of God 1680 departed on the 5th day of the
month of June.
In the interior (on the walls of the
presbytery) of the church, several images with stories of miraculous
healings thanks to the prayerful conversion of St. John (Ivan) from
Dukla have been preserved. Each of them is commented in Latin:
"The daughter of the bright lady Balabanova, Starostina of
Terebovelskaya, having drowned in the river and stopped breathing,
swam up and came to life with the power of prayer. 1551";
"Agnesa, the wife of a Lviv citizen, the famous Matej Stemberk, is
freed from epilepsy";
"The son of a citizen of Belz, Matia
Spunoff Georgy, who became numb due to a fever, returns to health
and the gift of speech";
"Gabriel, son of the noble Wolfgang
Bernard Wohlbornette, recovered within two years. 1505";
"The
widow Anna, a woman from Lvov, due to illness having an excessive
jaw and a clouded eye, is healed. 1506."
Quotes of
theologians (they are held in the hands of angels):
“Whoever
atones for sins by repentance will find the eternal lot of angelic
happiness. St. Augustine in the Monologues;
"But since the Lord
is patient, let us repent of this and tearfully ask for His
forgiveness. Book of Judith 8.14";
"Bring forth fruits worthy of
repentance. The Gospel of Luke 3.8";
“Let the severity of
retribution not scare you away from repentance, because the more
sins, the more mercy will be [on you]. St. Bernard";
“So repent
and turn to be blotted out. Acts of the Apostles 3:19";
"Praise
and praise, repeat, for the gates are locked with the thinnest bolts
and indestructible locks. Not a single enemy enters, not a single
friend leaves. St. Bernard."
There are commemorative tables to
Stanislav Pilat, the Polish poet Cornel Weisky.
They were
buried: Stanislav Vizhitsky son of Stanislav, grandfather of
Nikolai, cornet of Kiev, there was his magnificent gravestone, Jan
Frederik Sapieha.
During the years 1650-1945, the complex was located, varying in
different languages, on Bernardinskaya Square.
From the place where
St. John of Dukla was buried in 1484, a spring gushed within a year. It
was regarded as a miracle, St. Jan was reburied, and a well was dug in
the place of the source.
On September 8, 1604, at the burial place of
St. John of Dukla (the patron saint of Lviv and the patron of the
military gentry), private princely and magnate troops consecrated sabers
in spring water, which captured Moscow on June 20, 1605.
During
construction at the beginning of the XVII century. the old temple was
not demolished, but a new one was built over it, as if erecting a tent.
The old church was dismantled only after the construction was completed.
In 1641, an unusual event took place in Lvov - a criminal court accused
the monk Albert Virozemsky of blasphemy, who, having made a deal with
the devil, gave him his soul along with his body. The court case file
said it was "the most shameful human act in the history of the city." It
all started with the fact that Virozemsky, intending to become a monk,
stole a seal from the abbot of the monastery and forged a document that
he was supposedly a priest of the order and could give marriage,
confess, take communion and baptize children. The fake clergyman began
to travel around the villages around Lvov, direct services and, of
course, earn money for himself. When the fraudster was exposed, he
immediately fled from the monastery, but the Bernardine monks managed to
capture him and put him in the monastery dungeon. The Lavnichsky Court
was to sentence him to death. Albert's desire to live was so strong that
he decided to conclude a cirograph, that is, a contract with the devil
to sell his soul. The contract was written on the wall of the prison
cell in blood: “I sign with my blood and succumb to the power of Prince
Lucifer. In return for this I ask for twenty years of life, after which
he has the right to take me with soul and body. According to this
contract, I renounce God and the Mother of God and I surrender myself
under the power of all the devils, I undertake to serve them and glorify
them, and they must give me everything that I need. I ask you to release
me from prison that very night. I sign this contract with Weglik, who
will carry me out of prison. " Subsequently, on one from court hearings,
Virozemsky described in detail this mysterious Veglik, an unclean
intermediary, who looked like a young attractive guy and came to him
simply through the wall of the cell. the court found Albert Virozemsky
guilty of forgery and blasphemy. the sinner's hopes for the devil were
in vain.
According to one of the legends of 1648, during the siege of
Lviv by the troops of Bogdan Khmelnytsky, a group of Rusyns conspired to
open the gates of the city to the hetman. The monks learned about it.
The conspirators were invited to dinner at the monastery. During the
feast, they began to be called into the yard one by one. There they led
to the well and offered to look into it. When a man stooped, he was
beaten on the head with an ax and thrown into a well (later it was said
that he was littered with corpses to the very top). Those who were still
sitting at the table became suspicious. They went out into the courtyard
and witnessed a terrible massacre. There was no way out, I had to flee -
through the city walls to the camp of the Cossacks. In general, the
legend is very doubtful, especially considering that the well was
considered sacred.
During the siege of the city by the troops of
Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648, St. John of Dukla, with his appearance in
the sky, saved the city from being captured by the Cossacks.
The
archive exhibits the so-called "Dracula's letter", written in blood.
The clock on the tower was always five minutes fast. This was done in
memory of the monk, who saw the Turks from the tower, who were sneaking
up to the city and were already almost under the walls. Not having time
to run and warn someone, the monk moved the clock forward to the time
the city gates were closed. Thus the city was saved.
During World War
II, during the years 1943-1944, a large group of Jews hid in the sewer
tunnels under the church. The remains of their household items were
found in the early 2000s during renovations.