The Radziwiłł Mausoleum
in Nesvizh.
Research

In the 1850s, when speaking about the burials in the Vilnius Cathedral, Adam Honory Kirkor, a famous researcher of the history of Lithuania and a publicist, wrote the following: “Fire and time destroyed the monuments, and it did not occur to their contemporaries to renew them.”¹Jan Śliwin, Przechadzki po Wilnie i jego okolicach, Wilno: Drukarnia A. Marcinowskiego, 1856, p. 26. Today more and more attention is being paid to the crypts in churches and the secrets (the remains and burial items) they guard. Paraphrasing Kirkor, now we are trying to “revive” the legacy that was adversely affected by wars, vandals and robbers, i.e. we are making efforts to manage the crypts showing proper respect for the people buried therein and to adapt them to being visited, which is relevant to the general public today. However, first of all we encounter “technical” heritage preservation problems here: humidity, poorly equipped ventilation systems, etc. It is especially difficult to ensure proper conditions for the mummified remains²Rugilė Žostautaitė, Mumijos Lietuvoje: tyrimai, apsauga ir eksponavimas: [the master thesis; preserved at the Faculty of History of Vilnius University], 2016, p. 13-14, 39..

Another relevant and complicated issue is how to deal with the remains after they had been examined (See more: Lithuania. The remains). The most common practice is as follows: after their examination the remains are re-interred in the place where they had been discovered. It is within the competence of the owners and managers of the place to decide whether the place will become open to visitors. The decision is also influenced by the significance and reputation of the buried people. Unidentified and abundant remains are usually re-interred in a common grave or in one crypt. For example, such was the case with the remains discovered in the Church of St. Casimir in Vilnius – they were re-interred in the vaults beneath the high altar³Vytautas Daminaitis, Vilniuje, Šv. Kazimiero bažnyčios priekinio fasado ir surastuose rūsiuose vykdytų archeologinių tyrimų 1993 m. ataskaita: [the manuscript; preserved at the Library of Lithuanian Institute of History, f. 1, b. 2212].. The remains of prominent people are dealt with in a different way. Before the Second World War a special crypt for the royal remains was erected in the Vilnius Cathedral2⁴Vytautas Urbanavičius, Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės valdovų ir didikų panteonas Vilniuje, Vilnius: Nacionalinis muziejus Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės valdovų rūmai, 2018, p. 98-100.. They still lay at rest there. Today the vaults of the Vilnius Cathedral are a part of the well-ordered Vilnius Church Heritage Museum456. The Museum acquaints the visitors with the history of the sanctuary, the people who were greatly merited to the state and the Church buried there, burial traditions and archaeological findings discovered in the vaults⁵For more see “Požemiai”, Bažnytinio paveldo muziejus, [accessed 15.09.2018], [electronic], available at: www.bpmuziejus.lt/pozemiai.html..

In 2009, in commemorating the millennium of the name of Lithuania, the ceremony of re-interring the remains8 of the members of the Radziwiłł family discovered several years ago in Dubingiai was organised. The bones of the members of the noble Radziwiłł family were placed in a specially made sarcophagus. A solemn farewell ceremony was organized in the Radziwiłł Palace in Vilnius, and then the sarcophagus was taken to Dubingiai and placed in a specially built crypt10 in the territory of the former Evangelical Reformed Church. A memorial plaque was placed on the grave with the inscription resembling the 16th-17th century stylistics of epitaphs. This reburial ceremony sparked great interest⁶Albinas Kuncevičius, et al., Radvilų tėvonija Dubingiuose, Vilnius: Vilniaus dailės akademija, 2009, p. 131-135..

The case of the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Varniai is worth a separate mention. About 13 (?) Samogitian bishops are thought to have been buried in the Church. Unfortunately, only the demolished burials were discovered during the investigations therefore it was impossible to identify the bishops specified in historical sources. Only two identified bishops – Józef Arnulf Giedroyć (1754-1838; his heart is buried in the embedded tombstone in the wall of the Presbytery of the Church of St. Bartholomew in Giedraičiai) and Szymon Michał Giedroyć (1764-1844) were reburied in the newly erected Bishop crypt. It was decided to re-inter some of the remains separately in a specially built wall, in the hope that in the future, after more information has been collected and with the help of new technologies it would be possible to recognize the people of significance to history⁷Darius Kontrimas, “Žemaičių vyskupų kriptos tyrimai Varnių Šv. Apaštalų Petro ir Pauliaus bažnyčioje”, Archeologiniai tyrinėjimai Lietuvoje 2012 metais, Vilnius: Lietuvos archeologijos draugija, 2013, p. 325-334..

There are cases of opposite behavior that have nothing in common with the respect for the deceased. For example, in the Soviet period, the bodies of the deceased were used for the purpose of propaganda. They had to serve the purpose of “anti-religious agitation” in the “inquisition museum” established in the vaults of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius: all mummified remains discovered in the church were taken to one place and the entrance to the crypt was glazed. As a result, more than a hundred of them were totally damaged due to a change in microclimate⁸Dario Piombino-Mascali, et al., “The Lithuanian Mummy Project: A Historical Introduction”, Lietuvos archeologija, 2015, vol. 41, p. 131-142..

Another topic is a fate of the burial items (See more: Lithuania. Findings). One of the solutions is to leave the discovered burial items or to display them in situ. For this purpose displays of the crypt and the sarcophagi containing the remains and /or burial items discovered therein are mounted. The Evangelical Reformed Church in Kėdainiai1415 (partly), the Church of Lord’s Revelation to Blessed Virgin Mary in Kretinga1718 and the Church of the Holy Trinity in Liškiava202122 can serve as perfect examples. However, other ways are also possible. In 2002, the remains of the benefactor Jakub Nagurski (around 1734 – around 1796) with well-preserved burial items were discovered in the crypt of the Church of St. Jacob the Apostle in Kurtuvėnai242516 (beneath the high altar). The star of the Order of the While Eagle, a silk kontusz (an outer garment) with a kontusz sash, the “Oriental style” shoes were discovered. All these finds were restored at the Pranas Gudynas Centre for Restoration, Lithuanian Art Museum, and handed over to Šiauliai Aušros Museum. They are presently stored there. The burial items, which were not of interest to the museum, were placed into new wooden coffins together with the remains and bricked up in the niches of the crypt, while the crypt itself was put in order and adapted to being visited⁹Gražina M. Martinaitienė, Vytautė Lukšėnienė, “Kontušinės juostos iš Kurtuvėnų bažnyčios kriptų: restauravimas, tyrimai, identifikacija”, Lietuvos dailės muziejus, Metraštis VI, 2005, [accessed 01.09.2018], [electronic], available at: http://old.ldm.lt/Spauda/a_met_martinaitiene.htm; “Istorijos skyriaus rinkiniai”, Šiaulių Aušros muziejus, [accessed 15.09.2018], [electronic], available at: www.ausrosmuziejus.lt/Apie-muzieju/Muziejaus-rinkiniai/Istorijos-skyriaus-rinkiniai.. Kėdainiai Regional Museum stores the burial garment (zupan) of Janusz Radziwiłł (1612-1655) and other clothing accessories belonging to the 17th and 18th centuries and details of the coffins from the crypts in the Kėdainiai Evangelical Reformed Church. The crypt of this church and the sarcophagi therein are open to visitors.

The chapel-mausoleum of the Count Tyszkiewicz family in Kretinga2829, recently restored, is also open to the visitors. The exhibition, which presents the burial items of Sofia and Joseph Tyszkiewicz, is installed here¹⁰“Grafų Tiškevičių šeimos koplyčia-mauzoliejus”, Kretingos muziejus, 2019 03 29, [accessed 15.09.2019], [electronic], available at: www.kretingosmuziejus.lt/apie-mus/grafu-tiskeviciu-seimos-koplycia-mauzoliejus.. As Julius Kanarskas, the historian of Kretinga Museum, says: „The matter of the burial items – to place them back to sarcophagi or to hand over to the Museum – was under careful consideration. In this regard, we analyzed experiences of different museums and finally came to conclusion that the presentation would contribute to better understanding of life of the Kretinga Manor rulers.“¹¹Irena Šeškevičienė, „Į Kretingą sugrįžo grafų Tiškevičių relikvijos“, Pajūrio naujienos, 2018 12 11, [accessed 2019.09.15], [electronic], available at: www.pajurionaujienos.com/?act=exp&sid=17889.

In all cases, the most important principle is to properly prepare and timely decide on how to deal with the remains to be discovered. The case of Trakai Church of the Visitation of Blessed Virgin Mary illustrates how the desire to put the sanctuary in order in no time precluded taking proper care of the abundant burials unexpectedly discovered during archaeological investigations. Eventually the remains discovered were re-interred in the crypt built beneath the presbytery of the church. It is noteworthy that the students of Trakai Vytautas Magnus Gymnasium contributed31 to the reburials of the remains by decorating the cardboard boxes-small coffins into which the remains were placed. Their drawings symbolically reminded of ancient decorations of the coffins, which have not been preserved¹²Juozas Vercinkevičius, “Trakų bažnyčia: kas po žeme… ir kas danguje…”, Voruta, 10.01.2010, [accessed 15.09.2018], [electronic], available at: www.voruta.lt/traku-baznycia-kas-po-zeme-ir-kas-danguje..

There are also other forms of presenting the church crypts to the public333435. For example, on 16 September 2017, the Church Heritage Museum invited people to take a one-day unique opportunity to visit the Sapieha family crypt located in the Church of St. Michael in Vilnius¹³“Išskirtinė galimybė aplankyti Sapiegų šeimos kriptą ir trijų parodų uždarymo ekskursijos”, Bažnytinio paveldo muziejus, [accessed 15.09.2018], [electronic], available at: www.bpmuziejus.lt/lt/pagrindinis-meniu/renginiai.html,isskirtine-galimybe-aplankyti-sapiegu-seimos-kripta-ir-triju-parodu-uzdarymo-ekskursijos..

Justina Poškienė