Bernardine province of Lithuania: history and legacy

The entire history of the Bernardine Order (Order of Friars Minor, Franciscan Observants) was closely related to the development of the Lithuanian Catholic Church and the Lithuanian state. It was one of the most popular monastic orders in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which expanded the network of its convents up to the easternmost fringes of the state and even crossed its borders (today, the larger part of the convents are located in the territory of Belarus, and some are in the territories of Poland, Ukraine and Russia). The first convents established in Lithuania were part of the Province of Poland founded in 1467. In 1530, a separate province of Lithuania was established. It did not survive long, and the deteriorating Lithuanian convents became part of the Province of Poland in 1576. As the number of convents grew, in 1628 another separation from Poland took place, but this time an independent province was even more short-lived - in 1631, it was connected to the Provinces of Lithuania Minor and Rus’ (the latter was singled out into a separate province in 1637). There were attempts to establish independent maintenance of Lithuanian convents in the second half of the seventeenth century, but it was not until 1729 that the General Chapter of Milan approved the restoration of the independent province of Lithuania, which was ultimately implemented in 1731. The Province of Lithuania consisted of 31 convents (the number of Bernardine houses must have been much larger including residences, manor chapels and missions serviced by Bernardines). After the Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a large part of the convents found themselves in the territory of the Russian Empire. From 1783, these convents constituted a separate Belarusian Province of St. Stanislaus, which was in existence until the early nineteenth century. In 1801, all convents of the former lands of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were again connected into the general Bernardine Province of Lithuania that operated in the Russian Empire. The article presents an overview of the development of convents of the Lithuanian Bernardine Province of St. Casimir from the late fifteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. Referring to the map of the Bernardine Province of Lithuania compiled in the late eighteenth century, the author presents generalised information about the works of painting or sculpture in the convent churches, which are famous for their graces and reflect the nature of Bernardine cults, as well as information about the fate of architectural ensembles after the closure of the convents