Funds of the Pinsk Franciscan Order Library Found. They Are in St. Petersburg

This autumn I had the opportunity to meet a descendant of Feliks Janiewicz (1762—1848) — a famous composer from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who emigrated to England and made a successful career there. Josie Dixon, his great-great-granddaughter, showed me a catalog with photographs of Janiewicz's belongings and told me about the popularization of his work.

In one of the photographs, I saw the imprint 'Pro Lithuania'. I tried to tell Josie about the Lithuanians (Litvins) and Belarusians, but the words seemed to fall on deaf ears: Feliks is a Polish composer.

This is an absolutely common situation. For example, relatives of the Litvin Napoleon Orda calmly handed over his belongings to the National Museum in Krakow. A similar fate befell the Tyszkiewicz collection from Lahoisk: artifacts were sent to Warsaw and donated to the Society for the Protection of Historical Monuments.

The collections of the Pinsk Franciscan monastery library did not remain in Belarus for a different reason. It's one thing when children hand over their parents' collection, and quite another when our valuables are simply exported illegally.

The library-archive at the Franciscan monastery in Pinsk is one of the oldest in Belarus. The first records of it date back to 1648, and the documents preserved there concerned the history of the Pinsk Principality and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 14th century. From 1925 to 1932, Bishop Zygmunt Łoziński was in charge of the library-archive.

What happened to the historical and cultural valuables in 1939—1941 is clarified by historian Raisa Zianіuk. From the published case "Correspondence on the Pinsk Seminary Library, February-May 1941," it follows that the library was transported to Moscow to the Central Anti-Religious Museum (CARM) without the sanction of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Belarus or the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR.

In 1940, Yulius Margolin worked on the systematization of the collections. He confirms that they were expecting a commission specifically from Minsk, not from Moscow.

"Pinsk was home to one of the rarest book depositories in Western Belarus. The local population didn't even suspect its existence… Within the walls of the Theological Seminary next to a late 15th-century Romanesque-Polish style church, surrounded by a massive strong wall, up to 50,000 ancient and new books had accumulated," wrote Margolin.

In 1941, the Anti-Religious Museum in Moscow responded to the Belarusian authorities:

"The C.A.M. (Central Anti-Religious Museum), according to the instructions of Comrade Yaroslavsky, will precisely fulfill its obligation and return all books important to Belarus."

But this did not happen. War soon began, and in 1947 the museum was disbanded.

It was not difficult to discover that the collections of the Anti-Religious Museum had been transferred to the State Museum of the History of Religion (SMHR, St. Petersburg).

The first indication that the Pinsk collections are stored there appeared in 2022 [publication by Russian researchers Elena Kravtsova and Yulia Rogova "Parchment Charters of the XVI—XVIII centuries from the archive of the Pinsk Franciscan monastery in the collection of the State Museum of the History of Religion"]. It then became known about 10 documents originating from Pinsk and located in the SMHR. Among them:

• documents of Jozafat Parysovich, thanks to whom the brick Pinsk Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built in 1730;
• a charter from Queen Bona from 1556 in Old Belarusian;
• two confirmation charters from King Władysław IV;
• a papal bull of Clement XI.

All that remained was to receive confirmation from the museum's management. I contacted the directorate as a researcher and a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) with a request to confirm the collection's existence and digitize it. It is understood that the return of such valuables should be handled by the state.

Throughout January, I received letters from the curator of the rare books collection. Indeed, a significant portion of the books and manuscripts from our Pinsk library is with them, but they are scattered across various collections and have not been designated as a separate collection (no one has ever worked on it!).

Only in the rare books department were 10 publications provisionally found, a list of which I received. Among them: "Sermons on Time and Saints" by Bertrand de La Tour (1501), "Thoughts on the Means of True Governance, against Niccolò Machiavelli" by Gentillet Innocent (1578), "Virgil Travestied" by Paul Scarron (1752).

Павялічыць

As I was informed, the numbers in other departments are significantly higher: in the manuscript department, over 50 items originate from Pinsk, and the scientific library has not yet determined the final count. The collections are open for research and partial on-site digitization.

Thus, as of today, we know where a significant part of the Pinsk Franciscan Library is located — our historical and cultural treasure, which, I hope, we will be able to return to Belarus at a favorable time.

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