Joniškio bažnyčios parapijos archyvas
LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Joniškio Švč. Mergelės Marijos Ėmimo į Dangų bažnyčia; Parapijos bažnyčios; Joniškio bažnyčios archyvas; Joniškis Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven; Parish churches; Archyve of Joniškis church.
ENThe article deals with a nineteenth-twentieth century parish archive extant in the Roman Catholic church of Joniškis, the boundaries of the parish, and church holdings as described in the visitation of 1820. Various nineteenth-century sources – visitations, registers of parishioners, and maps – provide information on the boundaries of Joniškis parish. The 1820 visitation of Joniškia parish lists 119 settlements. The 1924 parish inventory enumerates 105 settlements with 9525 Catholics (4564 men and 4961 women), 959 Jews, 927 atvian Lutherans, 207 Russians, and 72 Germans; the majority of parish residents spoke Lithuanian, 959 conversed in Jewish, 927 in Latvian, 207 spoke Russian, 72 German, and 52 Polish. The holdings of Joniškis church in the town, the folwark of Kalnelis and elsewhere have not yet attracted sufficient interest of the scholars. The stone hospital for the poor (the seventeenth century) and the old wooden house for old priests (Bažnyčios St. 1) are probably the oldest buildings of their types in Lithuania. The wooden classicist parish house (built in 1785) did not survive: it was demolished around 1980. The 1820 visitation gives a detailed description of the buildings of Joniškis church and its holdings (the parish house, the vicarage, the servants' house, the barn, stables, the cattle-shed) and supplements it with inventories of each building (furniture, cutlery, working tools), crops and food supplies, and animals. The parish archive of Joniškis church boasts not only of the oldest extant book of baptism in Lithuania from 1599–1561 but also of an abundant of other church registers. Almost all church registers up to 1940 from Joniškis church found their way to th Lithuanian State Historical Archives (Lietuvos valstybės istorijos archyvas, LVIA).Currently, it stores 105 books of birth, marriage, and death registers, pre-wedding interviews and wedding protocols, the register of correspondence sent between 1845 and 1875, and the book of banns. The church archive stores a valuable cartographical collection of the mid-nineteenth century – 1933 that encompasses the Samogitian diocese, the holdings of the area's estates, and the land plots of the town of Joniškis. Several draft designs of the buildings of Joniškis church have survived as well. It is worth noting that the archive of Joniškis church numbers only a small number of books of processes (only from 1809 to 1927, with intervals), and there are no documents on the buildings of religious orders, the primary school, and the hospital for the poor, and others. The books of processes are complemented by the documents that Adomas Jakštavičius, the parish priest of Joniškis church (1840–1861), received in 1846–1847, and in 1850, and the deanery journal of 1847–1856. [From the publication]
