Orthodox Church in Hlybokaye, Belarus
The Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin () is an Orthodox cathedral in the city of Hlybokaye, Vitebsk Region, Belarus (originally the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary of the Carmelite Order). It is located in the historical center of the town on the 17th of September Square. It is the first monument and the most complete expression of the Vilnian Baroque school in Belarus, reflecting "important stages in the development of the artistic principles of the Belarusian Baroque". According to the researcher V. A. Chanturia, this cathedral is a rather peculiar type of religious architecture, because even in Europe temples with four towers of the Baroque period were very rare. Before the reconstruction in the 1730s, it was the only Sarmatian Baroque monument with a transept.
History.
Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
This architectural monument was built of brick in 1639-1654 as the Church of Dormition of the Mother of God in the monastery of the Catholic Discalced Carmelites by Prior Tyszkiewicz. The church was built thanks to the charity of the owner of the part of Hlybokaye, Mstsislaw Voivodeship and headman of Dysna Jozef Lvovich Korsak, who first personally supervised the construction and was buried in the crypt of the church. Later, when it was rebuilt into a church, the ashes, wrapped in a red cloak, were removed and thrown away, picked up two days later by a local resident and reburied. According to his will of 1643, Korsak also donated seven draught horses for hauling materials for the construction of the church. Subsequently, the Carmelites began to pay the Korsaks, both in money and grain, and took over the responsibility of maintaining the priests and the clergy house. Regardless of the lack of historical evidence, researchers say that there were several rebuildings and additions to the church, as indicated by some parts of the building bearing features of architectural solutions of different periods.
In 1735 the church was rebuilt according to the plan of the architect J. K. Glaubitz: in particular, the main façade of the building was changed (the towers were altered and ornamental order decorations were added). It is believed that it was the reconstruction of 1735 that brought to the temple the features typical of the Vilna Baroque school: new tiered towers of the main façade with elongated proportions (decreasing towards the top, such towers acquired special slenderness, steepness and height), orientating not on the façade view, but on the perception of the contours as a complex silhouette among low buildings; the complexity of the main façade by erecting a gable between the towers and enriching it with decoration (to create an impression of richness and confusion through the interweaving of details); girdling the façade with belts of profiles and connecting them with multi-link fusions of pilasters and columns; increased tension of the rhythmic structure of the elements. After the reconstruction the church was consecrated again on July 16, 1735 by the Vilna suffragan Matej (Jerzy) Antsuta. In 1735, a three-bay, two-story brick gate ("brama") in the late Baroque style was built in front of the church on the same axis as the church and a three-story rectangular residential building was added to the northwest side of the apse. From the building, which had a closed composition with an inner courtyard (one wing of the square was the church), only the later rebuilt eastern wing survived; the other two wings were demolished in 1892 due to decay. The monastery itself also housed an elementary school and an aristocratic prison for 12 poor students, a library with 3,000 books, a collection of paintings and engravings, a music chapel, a hospital, a pharmacy, various household and storage buildings, as well as a physics room with 130 different instruments, an extensive garden, and large "planters" with various fish. In the Carmelite church there was a huge organ (12 stops, placed on the choir loft); the order also maintained 40 musicians who played both inside the church and on the balcony above the front doors (on feast days). The peasants were not allowed to enter this church and were directed to the Church of the Trinity in Faro.
There is also an assumption about the construction in the 17th century, even before the church was built, of wide underground passages and rooms with mighty walls and vaults, which, according to the legend, extended not only to the Trinity Church, but even to Berezvechya (3 km).
Russian Empire.
In July 1812, during his stay in Hlybokaye, Napoleon made the Carmelite monastery his residence (more precisely, the three cells of the upper floor of the dwelling house); when leaving it, the emperor is said to have regretted that he could not take the monastery church itself with him to Paris, because he would not be ashamed to place it next to Notre-Dame of Paris. In 1831, after the November Uprising, the buildings of the monastery housed a commission of the military court under the chairmanship of M. N. Muravyov. The crypts in the dungeons of the cathedral and the monastery, where the Carmelites had stored the rebels' arsenal during the uprising, were turned into cells for prisoners, and the main underground corridor itself was divided by a massive grate.
This is how the church is described in the only surviving inventory from 1862:
The church and monastery... founded by Józef Korsak... was built in the shape of a cross. Completed in the year 1735 July 3 and consecrated Jerzy Antsuta, Vilna suffragan... today the church and monastery in a state of disrepair, in need of major repairs...its length is 72, width 32 arşın, has 4 towers — 2 of the façades brick, in one of them non-working clock and 3 bells weighing 196 poods, behind 2 wooden towers ...windows 32, altars 7, an organ for 12 voices ...the church is tiled.In 1865, the Carmelite monastery was closed (its buildings were transferred to the Chamber of State Property). Soon the church was made available to the Orthodox Church, and the monastery itself, with its lands, was allocated for the maintenance of the church. Soon after 1863, the authorities allocated 27 thousand roubles in silver for the reconstruction of the former church. In the autumn of 1867, Orthodox services began, but they were not permanent. In 1872-1878 the reconstruction of the church took place. The changes concerned mainly the interior decoration of the church, the exterior appearance was affected only by the painting of the walls and domes, "in which the charming beauty of watercolor painting was replaced by whitewash on water, with a gray tint". Inside, instead of the Roman altar was installed Orthodox iconostasis with its accessories; from the interior decoration of the precious chandelier, huge candlesticks at the local icons and majestic seven candlesticks on the holy table, which were acquired by the efforts of the local parish and which "its massiveness, size, high quality material and artistic finishing serve as a luxurious decoration of the temple, making up for the unsuccessfully changed original its dignity". Among other things, the organ, side altars and confessionals were removed (royal doors were installed in their place) and the church property was looted. In 1875, the Orthodox Church became active. Then, on September 3, 1878, the rededication of the rebuilt church to the Orthodox Church of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin took place, presided over by the Kovno Bishop, His Grace Vladimir (Nikolsky). In the celebrations connected with this consecration took part 16 priests, 2 deacons and more than 5 thousand pilgrims, and a procession with the antimins and relics took place from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Deepika. The monastery building was given to the city police, and the library of three thousand books was given to the Vilna Antiquities Museum (the archives ended up in St. Petersburg), along with a collection of paintings and geographical maps, a physics cabinet; the rest was looted. As late as the 1930s, a white marble slab with the inscription "Roku 1782. Grzesznik prosi o jednę: Zdrowaś Marya" ("1782. The sinner asks one thing: Virgin Mary, rejoice...").
When the church was rebuilt after 1863, a wooden tholobate and dome in the neo-Gothic style was erected over the church's crossing structure to lower the very high roof structure in 1885.
According to the data of 1892 the church belonged to the Hlybokaya Eparchy. It had enough equipment for the services. Already in 1872 for the repair and maintenance of the church was allocated 94 tithes of land with a dwelling house and outbuildings (in 1892 — income of 150 rubles per year), an orchard (income of 105 rubles per year), a watermill (income of 75 rubles per year) and the former two-storey stone Carmelite house (the place of accommodation of the priesthood), part of which was leased to the post office (150 rubles) and pharmacy (50 rubles). Also brought income and renting the former Carmelite wooden house (26 rubles 50 kopecks). In 1892 there were 2 priests and 2 readers for the church, whose salary amounted to 992 rubles and an additional 21 rubles 18 kopecks. Other land was 111 tithes, of which 5 dessiatinas were homestead land, 37 —  arable land, 28 — hayfield, and 33 dessiatinas were "under the forest and lake". In total to the parish of the temple belonged 2 tributary and 2 cemetery churches, poor on utensils and are in a dilapidated state, 683 yards with the number of parishioners in 2752 men and 2665 women.
Poland and the Soviet Union.
According to one source, the church building was returned to the Catholics in 1921. It was rebuilt in 1932. According to another source, the process of return of the property to the Carmelites was in progress since 1927. Attempts to return the church to the Catholics were unsuccessful. In the surviving buildings of the monastery there was the Hlybokaye Starostwo.
During the World War II the dungeons of the cathedral were used by Rodionov's collaborators as a prison for their prisoners. The church building was partially damaged during the war: in 1944 the wooden drum with the dome and the upper levels of the towers were burned, many icons, the altar and the church archives were damaged. Unlike the church itself, which was covered with iron roofing, the towers were rebuilt, but in a reduced form. After the war, the monastery buildings were used as an oil factory, later as a zonal archive, and the dungeons of the church itself were used as a warehouse of the Hlybokaye canning factory.
In the "List of churches, monasteries and worship spaces in the Hlybokaye region", which was included in the state registry in 1945, the church was again mentioned as the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin. It had only one building in use; no contract for the right of use was signed by the believers. There was also no auditing commission for the church, nor was there an ecclesiastical committee for the administration of church buildings.
In 1970, Archbishop Antonij (Melnikov) of Minsk and Belarusia, accompanied by Hegumen Valentine, associate professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, and B. A. Burakov, dean of the Vitebsk district, held a service in the church of Hlybokaye on September 10-13 (probably the evening of September 12 and the morning of the next day). In addition to decorations, the church was decorated with carpets. According to the local authorities, the attendance at the service was massive: the number of believers in the church ranged from 5 thousand (Burakov's data) to 700 people (Dean Ivanov); the choir sang. There were 15 regular priests and 1 extraordinary priest, the priest of the Hlybokaye church I. I. Frantskevich. He and the spiritual adviser of the Lastovichi Old Believers' Church S. D. Fedorov. Dean Ivanov reported to Antonij about the presence of the latter at the service and presented to the Archbishop the priest Frantskevich. The priest of the Chashniki church N. F. Kublitsky was also presented to the Archbishop Antonij. According to N.F. Vysotskaya in 1983 the church was illuminated and bars were installed, but there was no alarm system and telephone network. In the same year 1983 on the north side of the altar in the temple was created a warm church, namely the side chapel in honor of St. Seraphim of Sarov with the area of