Architecture of the Church of St. George the Martyr

The Church of St. George the Martyr has remained Gothic, despite all the reconstructions that took place after wars and especially fires. This late Gothic sanctuary is one of five contemporaneous monuments built between 1495 and 1510, which form an original legacy of Lithuanian national architecture. According to researchers D. Kaczmarzyk and Vladas Drėma, the architectural links between St. Anne’s and the Bernardine Church in Vilnius and the Church of St. George the Martyr in Kaunas are so clear and obvious in their artistic expression and identical motifs that it can be argued they were all created by the same architect—namely Michael Enkinger, the author of the Vilnius sanctuaries. Renowned for the originality of his work and highly valued by his contemporaries, architect Michael Enkinger continues to fascinate us today with his sacred buildings.

The Kaunas Bernardine Church is a monumental, elongated (hall length: 36.5 m, presbytery: 20.8 m), vertically proportioned building of rhythmic composition. Its facades are articulated by pointed-arch windows and slender, graceful multi-tiered buttresses. The latter are identical to the buttresses of the Vilnius Bernardine Church: they consist of four segments, narrowing upward, with each segment having an identical cross-sectional profile. Particularly distinctive are the presbytery buttresses, which, like columns, do not touch the wall at all (leaving almost no flat wall surface here) and support not the wall itself, but the arches above the windows and the roof cornice. The window frames of the presbytery and facades are non-uniform, constructed from several types of profiled bricks. On the eastern side, the presbytery terminates in a three-sided apse. In the middle of the western facade, there was once a main entrance—a ornate pointed-arch portal surrounded by a profiled frame.

This facade is crowned by a triangular, plastered pediment articulated with rectangular niches. It was likely built after the fire of 1668, as Tomas Makovskis’s early 17th-century engraving depicting the Kaunas panorama shows the church having a stepped pediment. A vivid description of this fire states that “due to the straw roof, the fire destroyed everything,” but also notes that after swiftly receiving special assistance, “the sanctuary was covered from above, including the ridge and the turret”.

On one page of this document, there is an image of a Baroque turret, carefully drawn with a pen and washed with diluted ink and yellowish watercolor. Today, the turret rising above the presbytery (choir) roof resembles the drawn one, but is not identical. Could there have been a second turret above the church roof?

The church is of a hall type—all three naves are covered by a single shared gabled roof, with only the distinctly lower presbytery separated, above which rises a picturesque Baroque turret. The church itself is constructed from dark red bricks using a Gothic brick bond (alternating stretchers and headers); overburnt black bricks were used sparingly for decoration, mostly arranged in diamond and cross patterns. The walls of the church are very thick: 1.3 m in the nave section and 1.0 m in the presbytery.

Inside, the space of the sanctuary is divided by four pairs of pillars into three naves, each composed of five bays covered with semicircular groin vaults (a bay being the space between supports). The tall pillars with a square cross-section were likely constructed after the fire of 1624. At that time, the present vaults—slightly lower than the old ones—were built, and the side nave walls and pillars were decorated with grand order pilasters (their capitals adorned with rue branches). The side naves are narrower than the central nave, whose width matches that of the much lower presbytery. Thus, the triumphal arch separating the presbytery from the rest of the interior space is an important element for the entire spatial structure of the sanctuary. Furthermore, the presbytery was designated for the monks’ choir.

One of the finest monuments of Lithuanian late Gothic architecture—the Church of St. George the Martyr—has not yet been restored. The preserved Gothic exterior as a whole is significantly marred by bricked-up windows, as well as later elements of a different nature, such as the rusticated northern portal. From the west side, where annexes adjoin it, it is enclosed by an unsightly wire fence.

Changes and Development of the Sanctuary Interior

The interior of the church consists of wall decoration and furnishings (altars, pulpit, etc.), and the overall expression of this interior is determined by its iconographic program. Information regarding the earliest Bernardine sanctuary interior dating back to Gothic times is very sparse. We know for certain that in 1508, the Altar of St. Anne already stood at the end of the north nave, its location remaining unchanged to this day. In 1580, this St. Anne’s Chapel (as the end portion of the side nave was often called back then) was restored and decorated with new paintings funded by Kaunas lawyer Usauskis and cohort commander Putvinskis. We learn little more about the appearance of this interior from the description of the 1603 fire: “…the fire destroyed everything except the sacristy and the presbytery, where the vaults and the high altar survived”. The Altar of the Holy Cross burned down during that fire, while the Crucifix itself survived—a event contemporaries considered a miracle. In the 16th century, three confessional booths were built into the masonry of the church’s southern wall, accessed by the Bernardine fathers from the inner monastery courtyard, making them invisible to penitents.

Gradually, the church and monastery were rebuilt through “the aid of pious benefactors and the labor of the friars, under the leadership of Guardian Bernardin Švabas”. However, we learn that there were twelve altars in the church at that time from the description of another fire in 1624. The fire is described very vividly: “…and later, as if a punishment from God, in the year of our Lord 1624 on the Friday after the Octave of Corpus Christi at noon, during the guardianship of the honorable Father Baltramiejus Žukas, sparks from a chimney raged so fiercely that they burned down the entire monastery and church. Most of the city was destroyed by this fire, and the church was so ruined that not only did the vaults collapse, but the columns were overturned from their foundations (…). May the Most High Lord avert similar events in the future from us (…). During this fire, all twelve altars were consumed by flames. Notably, the altars of St. Anne, the Transfiguration, the Holy Trinity, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as an elegant organ, perished”. Documents testify that numerous benefactors contributed generous donations to the rebuilding of the church, which proceeded slowly and stretched over a long period: for instance, Melchioras Rusvickis “granted a gift to rebuild the organ (…), and a silver-gilt chalice”. Among them, famous nobles are also mentioned, such as Mikalojus Veselovskis, Albertas Stanislovas Radvila, and Kristupas Zaviša.

Before the restoration work could be completed, another disaster struck the friars—the Russian army, having occupied Kaunas for the first time in its history on August 8, 1655, devastated their sanctuary. An important and informative document preserved in the Bernardine archives, written on August 5, 1668, draws a clear line in the development of the exterior and interior of the Church of St. George the Martyr. From this document, we learn that everything that had been rebuilt in the church after the destruction by the “vile and cruel Muscovites” (the choir, vaults on one side, four columns) was “destroyed, burned, and demolished by fire, but this happened not to us alone, for the monastery of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus was likewise ravaged”. The description of the fire that broke out on the Sunday morning of July 29, 1668, concludes: “All this occurred in the name of God for our even higher spiritual perfection, and was restored”. Thus, it is evident that the oldest interior furnishings, dating back to Gothic and Renaissance times, did not survive.

Restoration began with the renewal of the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin Mary between 1669 and 1679 for the miraculous painting of the Mother of God; it was located where the current entrance to the church on the northern facade stands (the entrance was installed in the mid-18th century). Around the same time, eight altars, a pulpit, and an organ loft with galleries were installed in the church (1668 – early 18th century). This surviving, though severely damaged, portion of High Baroque wooden furnishings forms the core of the current interior. Some of them are truly unique. First among these is the high altar dedicated to Mary of the rare, so-called Throne of Solomon type, installed in 1703 funded by Andrius Krišpinas, Voivode of Vitebsk. The carved elements of this black-painted altar were silvered, while all others were gilded. Only the retable of the Altar of St. Francis of Assisi, installed against the back wall on the southern side, was illusionistic (i.e., painted). The pulpit installed in 1680 is truly original: its hexagonal tribune, stair wall, and door were decorated with eleven paintings on wood, while the ornamental carving was concentrated on a pyramid-shaped openwork canopy topped with a statue of Jesus Christ, Savior of the World. One of the most distinctive interior features is the wooden galleries and turrets of the organ choir, installed in 1680 through funding by Guardian Benediktas Rondomanskis. Long, narrow ornamental bands of stylized grapevine from the organ turrets are suspended on pillars connected to the choir by two wooden galleries. The outer surface of these galleries is painted with stylish, softly colored floral bouquets reminiscent of Lithuanian chest painting. That delicate late 17th-century painting has remained untouched to this day.

From the 1730s to the 1770s, further work was undertaken in the church. Around 1739, two new wooden altars dedicated to Saints Rose of Lima and Didacus were installed (no longer surviving). Painters were particularly active during this period: for instance, funded by a pious lady named Kučinskienė (500 zlotys), paintings of the Stations of the Cross were rendered on the sanctuary walls. The date is also known: “Those Stations of the Cross were undoubtedly installed around 1741”. Furthermore, twenty-eight paintings depicting Bernardine holy martyrs and confessors were “very finely” painted on canvas. These portraits of Bernardines hung on the walls of the monks’ choir. In the 1760s, the Altars of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Holy Cross were installed at the junction of the presbytery and central nave (fragments of which survive).

Polychrome investigations of the church interior revealed High and Late Baroque wall paintings that ought to be exposed and restored; this is confirmed by the well-preserved, colorful depictions of the Apostles Peter and Paul painted on the pillars in the western part of the church. In addition, fragments of the painted coat of arms of the convent’s founder, Stanislovas Sandzivonis, survive on the southern wall of the presbytery; restoring them would not only commemorate his memory, but also create a tangible link between the past, present, and future. Although archival sources contain no data regarding the artists who worked here, there is reason to believe that they were Bernardine monks who maintained their workshop here for many years and decorated their own sanctuary.