Description
The church stands in the center of the village, in a square formed at the intersection of several roads. It is believed that the church’s history began in 1600,when Jonas Samsonas Podbereskis, the clerk of the Breslauja Land Court who owned the Smalvos estate, designated an empty plot of land here for the construction of a church. However, it was most likely only after the foundation charter dated January 6, 1609, that a small church was built in Smalvos, consecrated under the titles of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. Hanging in the bell tower of the Smalvos Church and still ringing today is an old brass bell cast in 1780 by the renowned Vilnius bell founder Antanas Apanavičius, featuring a bas-relief of St. George, inscribed with the name and surname of the Smalvų parish priest Petras Žvaginas and the master’s favorite Latin motto: IN OMNIA TERRAM EXIVIT SONVS EORVM (lit. “His name resounds throughout all lands”). The church in Smalvos suffered severe damage during the war of 1812, but, having been partially reconstructed, it stood until the mid-19th century, when, in 1857, a new church was built under the patronage of Countess Pliaterienė and consecrated under the titles of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. Based on old inventory records, we know that there was a cemetery next to the church, and within it—a brick chapel with a crypt where the remains of the founders rested. At the very end of the 19th century, the Podbereskis lost their ancestral estate—the Smalvų Manor— and when Jonas Podbereskis died in 1920, he bequeathed his entire estate (including the nearby Jurgenava Manor) to the Smalvų Church in his will. At the beginning of the 20th century, the church’s interior was decorated in the folk Baroque style, dominated by floral motifs. The high altar is made of pine and is quite heavily gilded. The painting of Our Lady of the Rosary was created by Kazimieras Gorackis. The exterior is distinguished by the folk-style carved moldings surrounding the windows and doors, as well as a two-story open porch with a gabled roof, added in 1982.
