The Radziwiłł Mausoleum
in Nesvizh.
Research

Crypts under churches are a characteristic feature of old Christian Europe and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Benefactors and sponsors of churches desired that spaces should be created under the sanctuaries to bury and honour the dead. Such spaces or their traces can be found in almost every old church. However, there are also exceptional cases. The crypt of the Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh where members of the Radziwiłł family of the Nesvizh-Olyka line who practiced the Catholic faith, were buried, is a unique case. Some interesting facts about the crypt are as follows:

• it is noted for the number of burials – the remains of about 70 members of the Radziwiłł family (See: List) take their rest there. According to the number of the burials of the bodies of a single family, it is one of the largest crypts in Europe;
• together with the church, it is one of the oldest complexes of interment spaces (mausoleums) and memory places of a single family in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania built at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries; in the middle of the 18th century it underwent some reconstructions;
• its purpose – the burial site of the Radziwiłłs – has not changed since the end of the 16th century. The last body of a member of the Radziwiłł family was buried there in 2000. The age-old tradition is kept alive;
• its appearance has remained unchanged since the middle of the 18th; it is an authentic space that has conserved centuries and has preserved a great number of artefacts of the 16th – 20th centuries, which are of importance to understanding the traditions and the way the dead used to be buried;
• the remains of the personalities that played an important role in the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the entire region (Chancellors, Hetmans and Voivodes), as well as those of other prominent and colourful personalities, lie there.

Unfortunately, exclusiveness does not provide protection against threats – because of high humidity, fluctuations in temperature and other factors the condition of the crypt is deplorable today. The crypt is undergoing rapid and irreversible changes.

In 2016 and in 2017, the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture, together with the Faculty of History of Vilnius University (Lithuania) and partners from Belarus, organized joint expeditions to the crypt of the Radziwiłł family in the Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh. Historical, anthropological, heritage and other investigations were carried out. In the face of said threats these investigations4 become extremely significant. While carrying them out all that could disappear without trace was recorded and recommendations on how to preserve the crypt were given. Unfortunately, it is impossible to forecast or hasten upkeep works; everything depends on the intentions and possibilities of the current owners of the church.

The aim of the website is to present the investigations carried out in the crypt under the Corpus Christi Church in Nesvizh in 2016 and 2017. Also, the very phenomenon of burial crypts, the peculiarities and history of their investigations, trends in their conservation and the conditions under which they may be exhibited are discussed (on the basis of Lithuania’s example). Knowledge of history and other related subjects is summed up, new discoveries and hypothesises are presented, reports and documents of research are provided, problems of the relative field are highlighted and good practices are presented on the website. These issues are presented through the prism of the researcher and the cultural heritage conservationists. Hence, the website might be interesting to researchers (anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, art critics and others) and to cultural heritage professionals as a methodical tool for students, as well as to the general public interested in the past and scientific discoveries.

One will encounter two similar but not identical concepts on the website. The mausoleum shall mean a church or a chapel, one of the construction intentions of which was to revere the memory of the dead members of a specific family and to extol the values of the living (its space was marked with certain signs – the coat of arms of the family, records perpetuating its memory, works of art portraying its representatives and others) and engraved records or works of art representing members of the family etc.) in the basements of which a burial crypt for burying the bodies of the representatives of the family was built. The crypt is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building meant for burying the dead.

On the present website a sarcophagus is generally understood as metal sarcophagi, wooden coffins, protective wooden “boxes” created in 1905 (See more: Nesvizh. 1905 ) and their “combinations” (a sarcophagus containing a coffin, a “box” containing a sarcophagus or a coffin), as well as burials including the remains, burial items and the like contained in a sarcophagus or a coffin. The numbering of sarcophagi themselves is presented according to the data6¹[Gintaras Kazlauskas,et al.], Kunigaikščių Radvilų mauzoliejaus inventorizacija: [the manuscript; preserved at the Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture (Lithuania)], 1999. For more see Аудроне Вишняускене, “Мавзолей Радзивиллов в костеле Божьего Тела в Несвиже”, Прыватнаўласніцкія гарады Вялікага Княства Літоўскага: лёс праз стагоддзі, Мінск: А. М. Янушкевіч, 2014, p. 8–22. of the inventory of the crypt (See more: The 1999 Inventory) of the Corpus Christ Church in Nesvizh drawn up by the Department of Cultural Heritage (Lithuania) in 1999.

More about the project

Salvijus Kulevičius, Audronė Vyšniauskienė