Eloquently about the dark predawn ... – Jan Witort’s “Krekenava Case”

Abstract

An article “Krekenava Case” (Sprawa krekenowska) originally published in the monthly magazine Przegląd powszechny (Zesz. 9. No. 51) in Lviv by Jan Michał Witort (b. in Pauslajys manor in 1853 – d. in Panevėžys in 1903) under the nickname of Jan Syracomla is translated from Polish into Lithuanian and published with explanations and commentaries. Witort’s article presents the story of getting a permission by the Russian imperial government to build a masonry Catholic church in Krekenava (Lithuania), which lasted for eight years. This publication by Witort is accompanied by an introductory article prepared by the translator. The introductory article presents the author of the publication, his “Krekenava Case”, the historical context of its emergence and its publicistic significance at the time it was published. The value of the article by Witort as a source of sacral architecture, political history as well as anthropological and cultural studies is presented. The introductory article and the original article by Witort together form a small study providing data about the development of Lithuanian sacral architecture in the second half of the 19th c., the hostile politics of the Tsarist Empire against the Catholic Church, operation of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Empire and the awakening of social activism in the Lithuanian countryside at the end of the 19th c.