Description of the attraction
The Carthusian monastery in Bereza is the only Carthusian monastery located on the territory of the former USSR. The Carthusian (Carthusian) order was founded in France in 1084. It was one of the most warlike and ascetic orders of medieval Europe. The Carthusians despised luxury, but respected knowledge and science, helped the poor and the sick, and also knew a lot about defensive structures. Their monasteries were excellent fortresses.
In 1646, the Cartesian monks who lived near Gdansk wrote a letter to the son of the famous Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Leo Sapieha Leo Casimir Leo, in which they told about their order and asked for permission to settle in his domain. Kazimir Lev Sapega was not inferior to his father in his Christian zeal, he continued his father's work and became the founder, builder, and trustee of many Catholic monasteries. He liked the idea of founding the Carthusian monastery. Having asked the permission of Bishop Andrei Gemblitsky, he invited the monks to one of his possessions in the village of Bereza.
The Italian architect Jean Baptiste Gisleni was invited to build the monastery, under whose leadership a monastery was built in 1648-1689, which was destined to become fateful in the history of states.
The monastery was located inside the impregnable walls and included fraternal living quarters of monks, a temple, a library, a refectory, a hospital, a pharmacy, outbuildings, as well as a garden and a reservoir. It was a truly fortified city, capable of withstanding the most grueling siege. After the completion of the construction of the monastery, the city received the double name Bereza-Kartuzskaya.
In 1706, a meeting of two monarchs took place in the Carthusian monastery: the Russian Tsar Peter I and the Polish King Augustus II, which had fateful consequences for the course of the Northern War.
The monastery was attacked many times by enemies, sometimes the enemy was too strong to be held back by the monastery walls. Each raid was accompanied by the destruction of the monastery, but it was rebuilt again. The monastery suffered greatly from the war with Napoleon in 1812. After the third partition of the Commonwealth, when the Russian authorities began to oppress Catholics, the monastery began to decline, and in 1831 it was closed. Some of the buildings were handed over to the military, some were dismantled and sold for construction material. In 1915, the remaining buildings of the monastery and the church burned down. Only the ruins of the once mighty medieval monastery-fortress have survived to this day.
