Lumen 2018

the Piarist church was proclaimed Patroness of Warsaw, and her icon would often be brought to the city walls in a procession and placed above the Nowomiejska Gate as if to prevent an epidemic from en- tering the city. 231 After the fall of Kosciuszko’s uprising in 1794, General Suvorov turned the shrine of Our Lady of Grace on Dluga Street into a Russ- ian Orthodox field church and quartered some of his troops in the buildings belonging to the Piarist Fathers. At that time, the famous May processions in honor of Our Lady of Grace, so beautifully de- picted in Canaletto’s paintings, came to an end. Instead, processions to bless the water on the day of “the Baptism of the Lord” (Rus. “Kreszczenije Gospodinije”) would be organized to the Vistula River. After the November uprising (1830), General Paskevich made a decision, with the Tsar’s approval, to remodel the church on Dluga Street into a Russian Orthodox cathedral. The cathedral was consecrated on July 30, 1837. From that day, the five domes of the Russian Orthodox church glistened in the sun above the for- mer shrine of Our Lady of Grace. In those days, the following song could be heard in the streets of Warsaw: “Poczekajcie no kopulki, Przyjda jeszcze z Francji pulki, My nie chcemy obcej wiary, Wroci nasza i pijary.” [Just you wait, you little domes, The regiments from France will come one day, We do not want a foreign faith, Our faith and the Piarists shall return.] But although the faith did return later, 232 the Piarist Fathers did not return to this church again. In 1834, the Tsarist authorities turned the post-Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Swietojanska Street over to the Piarists. At that time, the church served as a warehouse to store wool. It was to this place that the miraculous icon was moved. There was no altar, 135 At the Piarist Fathers