1514 ir 1563 m. Polocko bernardinų konvento kankinių istorija: istoriografinis ir ikonografinis aspektas

ENIt is known that in 1498 the rights of a Magdeburg city were granted to Polotsk and in the same year Lithuanian Grand Duke Aleksandras Jogailaitis invited the monks of the Bernardine Order to come to Polotsk and assigned a place for building their monastery. He confirmed this decision by granting a privilege to the Bernardines. By a directive of Lithuania’s Grand Duke himself, part of the treasures of the Vilnius Bernardine Convent were handed over to the newly established Bernardine convent. The Blessed Wladyslaw of Gielniow admitted the newly established Bernardine convent into the Province of Poland. Most likely all the monks came from the Vilnius convent. The Bernardines, adhering to the decisions of the Council of Florence and the privileges bestowed on them by the Holy See, had great success among the Orthodox believers. Because at that time in the Polotsk lands there lived not only Orthodox, but also many not baptized, the Bernardine monks in a very brief time baptized several thousand people. As the princes of Moscow gained ever more power, frequent attacks on the territories ruled by the GDL began. The army of the Muscovites would also reach the city of Polotsk. Namely during one of these attacks in 1514 the monastery guardian Father Bonaventure from Lithuania was killed. This could have been during the second war with Moscow Prince Vasily III , when the Ruthenian army invaded Polotsk and attacked the monastery, however, being led by the later in the battle fallen guardian Bonaventure, the monks defended bravely. The article provides extracts in the original language of the earliest known commemorations of the guardian Bonaventure. Although Bonaventure from Lithuania is mentioned as a martyr in the provided fragments of the publications, however, the author of this article was unable to find additional information about the circumstances of the martyrdom in the old yearbooks and chronicles.Up to now the author of this article does not know a single picture of the guardian Bonaventure who died as a martyr in 1514. It may be that there were such pictures in the churches of the Bernardine convent, however, due to the much more numerous expressions of the cult of the same name teacher of the church St. Bonaventure pictures could be mixed up. The Bernardine convent in Polotsk operated until 1563 when the Muscovite army led by Ivan the Terrible after a brief siege took over the city on February 15. As martyrs perished the guardians Paulius, Vaclovas, Adomas, Martynas and Dominykas. Various yearbooks, chronicles and books of “Martyrs” write about this; however the names of the five martyrs of Polotsk are mentioned only from 1653. From the former five works of the cycle of the Martyrs of Polotsk that were in the interiors of the St. Francis of Assisi and St. Bernardino of Siena churches as well as the Bernardine monastery in Vilnius at this time are known only three Molbert style paintings, created by an unknown painter of the middle of the 17th century, perhaps a Bernardine monk. There maybe also more pictures of the former Martyrs of Polotsk cycle surviving but not identified until the present in the churches in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine and the funds of various museums. The absence of entries or the manner of the depiction of the similar martyrdom of Bernardine martyrs makes more difficult the recognition of such pictures. [From the publication]