Church of St. Adalbert and Benedictine monastery
Minsk, Belarus
Church of St. Adalbert and Benedictine monastery (Belarusian, Kaściol Śviatoha Vojciecha i kliaštar bieniedykcinak) was a Roman Catholic monastic complex in Minsk originally belonging to the Benedictine order, founded in the first half of the 17th century. It was taken from the order after the January Uprising, and transferred to Orthodox nuns in 1871. The monastery was demolished in the 1930s, and the former church was destroyed in 1964. Only the foundations of the church remain. Currently, the General Prosecutor's Office of Belarus is located on this site.
The church was located on Zborowa Street. It was situated on a small hilly square near the old Calvary, next to the site where a half-destroyed Calvinist church from the late 16th century stood in the mid-17th century. According to the city's 1790 plan, the church's main facade faced northwest. The Benedictine convent was mentioned in four foundation documents (from 1630, 1631, 1632, and 4 May 1633) by Father Wojciech Sielawa, a Vilnius canon, and parson of Dravėniai and Nyasvizh. The foundation was confirmed by King Władysław IV Vasa on 14 July 1633. In 1632, Wojciech Sielawa bought two houses on Zborowa Street and handed them over to the Benedictine nuns, who had come to Minsk from Nyasvizh. He commissioned a wooden church to be built on the site, which was completed in 1633. The church was dedicated to St. Adalbert, bishop and martyr. In the late 1640s, thanks to the foundation (20, 000 Polish zlotys) of Krzysztof Chodkiewicz and his wife Zofia, a brick church was erected. The first project was by Andreas Kromer, who committed to building the church within three years, but failed to do so due to the outbreak of the Russo-Polish War (1654–1667). During the conflict, the wooden monastery buildings were burned, and the unfinished brick church was plundered. Thanks to the efforts of Abbess Katarzyna Scholastyka Świrska, the construction of a small brick monastery began in the 1670s to replace the destroyed wooden one. In 1682, the entire monastery complex was reconstructed and expanded, made possible by new foundations and the enlargeme
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