Kamai

Kamai in Skaryna’s times

In the first half of the 15^th century, Kamai belonged to the family Pronskiya, Ryazan boyars from the Tsardom of Muscovy, who came to serve the Lithuanian Grand Duke Casimir Jagiellon. It is first mentioned as the property of Duke Hleb Pronski, who died in 1513 in a battle with the Tatars near Minsk. The Kamai was then owned by his son Syamyon (in Catholicism  known as Fryderyk), the Kiev voivode. In 1592, Tomash Rudamin acquired Kamai from the Trakai Castellan Alexandr Fryderykavich Pronskiy. The construction of a famous defensive church here is associated with this warlike family. Several of the most famous warriors of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania belonged to this family, as well as the Jesuit priest Yan Rudamin, who became famous for his missionary work in India and China.

Kamai from the 17^thcentury to this day

Church of Saint John the Baptist

The stone church was erected in 1606 by the Braclaw voivode Yan Rudomin-Dusyatsky, who became famous for his military achievements, participation in the war with Muscovy (1567) and  the campaign of King Stefan Batory against Polatsk (1579–81). The royal army was just moving through his estate. The voivode also cared about the expansion of his possessions; it was thanks to his economy that the Rudamin lands grew significantly. Poet Maciej Sarbiewski, also known as “Sarmatian Horace”, composed several poems about his feats. The voivode is buried in the Church of St. Francis and St. Bernard in Vilnius.

The Church of St. John the Baptist with two cylindrical towers and a system of loopholes is one of the latest representations of Gothic architecture in Western Europe. Along with the churches in Synkavichy and Malamazheykava, it belongs to a type of defensive temple that is rare in Belarus. It is similar to the Church of St. Stephen in Vilnius, erected at the same time (1612). The typology of these temples goes back to Romanesque and Gothic churches and castles in Northern France and the Netherlands. At the same time, similar castles were also built in Lithuania (Haytsyunishki, Heranyony). Such French-Dutch influences can be explained by the migration of architects and artists from these lands to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Traces of two towers near the altar indicate that the Church was originally four-towered.  It is possible that the thick walls of the Church and the loopholes of the towers fulfilled their function: the walls of the Church hide the cannonballs from the Swedish cannons from the times of the Great Northern war of the beginning of the 18th century.

The icon called Our Lady of Częstochowa brought from Krakow also proves the cultural ties between different lands. For centuries, the icon has been considered miraculous.

Among the values in the interior of the Church, one can also highlight the icon “Jesus Christ and the Orphan”, painted by the famous artist and rebel Alfred Edward Romer, who lived in the neighbouring Karalinaw. The life and customs of the inhabitants of Kamai lands were described by his daughter, Helena Romer, in the collection of short stories “Swoi ludzie”.

Opposite the church there is a stone cross, installed here according to the most generally accepted version in the 15^th–16^th centuries, and Francysk Skaryna could have seen it during his wanderings between Vilnius and Polatsk.

Priest and writer Kazimir Svayak (Kanstantsin Stapovich) began the service in the Kamai church. In 1915, he wrote in his diary about Kamai: “It’s sincere Belarus . It is difficult even to say otherwise. The church resembles a medieval fortress”.

In his struggle for the national revival and the expansion of the use of the Belarusian language in the Catholic church, Kazimir Svayak refers to the personality of Skaryna, where he emphasizes, first of all, his translation of the Bible into the language of the common people (“In the memory of Francysk Skaryna, a glorious doctor from Polatsk”, 1925)