#abandoned object

Dudakovichi village; part one. Photos of the Church of the Intercession, which has long abandoned, due to which the settlement is famous to this day. Almost two hundred years ago, she was surrounded by rather turbulent events associated with the struggle for religious freedom.

Dudakovichi is an old place, first mentioned in 1506, when it was owned by Prince Ivan Duda, who probably founded this estate and from whose surname the name actually comes. The church, still standing on the hill, was built only in 1869. Even earlier, there was a Dominican monastery in its place, the exact date of its foundation is unknown. There is an assumption about the year 1643. The original monastery was made of wood, and it is very possible that it also had a parish school. In the early thirties of the XIX century the facility was among several dozen closed for contributing to the Polish uprising. It was supported by the Dominicans, because the authorities contributed to the expulsion of the monks from the village, and not so long ago they gave the church built to Orthodox believers.

Ogni oggetto abbandonato è un fotogramma di vita. Un frammento di gesto, un’eco d’uso, un’azione che è stata e non è piú.

Every abandoned object is a frame of life. A fragment of a gesture, an echo of use, an action that once was and is no more

Dudakovichi village; part two. The rector of the Dudakovichi Church noted that many peasants not only do not go to divine services, but also do not baptize newborn children and bury the dead in the cemetery without a priest. (In fact, the babies, apparently, were baptized secretly by the believers themselves; in the case of burials, prayers were read at the cemetery by them, and masses were celebrated for the deceased in the nearest parish church afterward.)

The story dragged on. The drastic measures taken against the residents did not bring almost any expected results. Someone even confidently concluded that «there is a hidden spirit of perseverance among the people». In the second half of the nineteenth century, the authorities decided to give the church the appearance of an Orthodox church in the Byzantine style in order to deprive the peasants of any hope that «this church can continue to convert to Latinism». In 1869, the new Dudakovichi Church was consecrated (that can still be seen today). Comically, however, it still did not work out to persuade the local peasants and gentry to a new faith. After 1905, here, as throughout the region, there is a transition to «Latinism». And even more than sixty years after the church was rededicated, it was written that «served in the old way».

In general, religious coercion in Dudakovichi caused only a cooling towards religion. It manifested itself, as you can see, in the fact that the Orthodox parish was never revived. Services in the church were discontinued at the beginning of the last century, then the building was used as a granary; the bell tower adjacent to the main entrance to the church was dismantled for farm material.