Wooden Churches in Lithuania

The aim of the authors of this publication was to create a book that would offer impressive, but also unexpected and unusual images of Lithuania’s most beautiful wooden churches. In bypassing a scholarly study of heritage, or the traditionally accepted representative recording of only the most valuable works, the hope is that readers of this book will feel as if they are travelling Lithuania’s villages and towns as passers-by, free of preconceived notions, and by chance opening the heavy doors of a modest church building, to unexpectedly discover the beauty that lies within. One’s eye will hopefully be drawn to the rough-hewn timbers flecked with light, the old benches lining the naves, luxurious altars with their singular varieties of form and colour hovering in the depths beyond the presbytery, the thickets of carved flora and wooden acanthi flickering a dull gold, naively worshipful faces of the saints, the frozen smiles of plump-cheeked angels, the beam of light on the worn wooden floors. We trust that the images in this book will both please the eye, and allow the reader to behold the spirit of the past hovering inside each church, to hear the quiet of secluded places undisturbed by modern rhythms, to feel the eternal cycle of the liturgical year that has been quietly spinning for centuries.