FF2G+F9 English Park, Mir, Belarus
Every guest of the castle is told legends about the local ghosts. Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky ordered a lake to be dug next to the castle, which required destroying a blooming garden planted by the previous tenant, Putyata. Cutting down trees in bloom is a sin and a bad omen. The peasants refused. But the garden was still destroyed, and a curse fell upon the picturesque pond created in its place. Every year the lake claims a new victim, and as many people must drown in it as there were blooming trees cut down. One of its first victims was the twelve-year-old princess Sonechka. She was buried in a beautiful chapel, but since the chapel was constantly flooded and robbed by thieves, Sonechka’s spirit appears as the White Lady in one of the castle towers. However, there are inconsistencies in different versions of this story. Often Sonechka is called the daughter of Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky, less often his granddaughter. But Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky had no daughters; his genealogy lists seven sons, and the Svyatopolk-Mirsky family had no relation to Mir Castle until the late 19th century.
However, one of Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky’s sons, Ivan, really did have a daughter named Sonechka who died at the age of 12. In the story by Russian writer Natalia Romodina, a visit to Mir Castle is described as follows: “The castle owners had recently ended their mourning: the young wife of the old prince’s second son, Varvara Mikhailovna, soon died, leaving an orphaned one-year-old daughter with a strange name, Kira. Everyone in the estate knew that Ivan had secretly married the beautiful Polish woman while in Warsaw, but the family did not recognize this marriage. Ivan was still too young for family life. The inconsolable widower, Ivan Nikolaevich, 25 years old, blamed his father for ordering the cutting down of the magnificent blooming apple orchard six years ago. According to legend, cutting down a blooming tree means destroying an innocent soul. Rumors circulated in the estate that Nikolai Ivanovich was visited by one of the long-deceased (not by natural death) inhabitants of Mir Castle, who predicted that every year there would be victims in the estate.”
Ivan Nikolaevich believed that Varvara Mikhailovna was one of those victims. But loudly declaring this to his father was considered “not proper” among the nobility, so Ivan Svyatopolk-Mirsky hissed through his teeth, glancing askance. I don’t know how much of this is the author’s imagination, but Ivan Svyatopolk-Mirsky really married early, secretly marrying in Warsaw a reader of an old princess, essentially a servant, the beautiful Barbara Rudova. Their daughter Kira lived a long life, dying in 1968, leaving descendants. Barbara died quickly in Warsaw after giving birth to her daughter, so it is unknown whether Ivan considered the Mir Castle curse responsible for her death. Especially since four years after Varvara’s death, he, a cavalry officer, married Nadezhda Vasilevna Engelhardt in Novocherkassk. She was apparently a relative of his maternal grandmother, Sofia Engelhardt. They lived in their estate near Zhytomyr and visited Mir as guests... It was there, in Zhytomyr, that they had five children, the eldest being Sonechka. She was born in 1901 and died in 1913. Her remains are indeed in the chapel of Mir Castle, which was built in 1910 by order of Sonechka’s grandmother, Cleopatra Mikhailovna.
The chapel-tomb project was designed by the St. Petersburg architect Robert Robertovich Marfeld, who never actually visited Mir. The sketch, dated 1901, was published in 1902 by Baranovsky in his “Architectural Encyclopedia of the Second Half of the 19th Century.” On August 24, 1902, the project was approved by the Construction Department of the Minsk Provincial Government. According to some researchers, Marfeld, who showed himself here as a bold artist-composer and stylist, wanted the building to resonate with the medieval Mir Castle, as indicated by its upward thrust, Gothic masonry, red brick color, and the texture and color of the stone used for the plinth cladding. According to art historians, the overarching idea was to create an “intrafamily symbol of noble origin and aristocracy” for the patrons, and as a result, the chapel reached the size of a small church.
Documents remain that testify that Sofia Svyatopolk-Mirskaya was buried in this chapel on May 3, 1913. Did the princess really drown in the lake by the walls of Mir Castle? But documents from the National Historical Archive of Belarus about her funeral indicate that the girl drowned in Bulgaria—probably the family was there on vacation. The coffin was brought to Zamirye station, where a requiem was held by priest Khlebtevich and deacon Zantsevich, then the funeral procession went to Mir, where the little deceased rested in the family crypt. By the way, Ivan and Nadezhda Engelhardt’s marriage broke up; they divorced in 1915, and Ivan moved to Mir.
The curse was also blamed for the death of Cleopatra Mikhailovna—she was laid to rest in the chapel she had built in 1910—and for Nikolai Svyatopolk-Mirsky himself, who died in 1898. Although at 65 years old at that time, his death was not considered premature. The remains of the man who cut down the apple orchard were also reburied in the chapel.
However, to find the source of the grim legend, one should delve further back in time, to the first owners and builders of the castle, the Ilyiniches. It is said that the powerful castle towers symbolize him and his four sons. I came across a strange version that the construction of the castle was insisted upon by the wife of the eldest son Yuri Ilyinich Ivan, the daughter of Prince Slutsky, Anna, who was allegedly loved by her father-in-law. That mythical Anna Slutskaya had princely ambitions, and for the Ilyinich family, of which she became a part, to claim princely status, a castle was needed. It seems the love for the daughter-in-law is a conjecture; Yuri Ilyinich himself dreamed of being a prince. Therefore, he invested all his resources in building the castle, including “10 thousand Hungarian red gold coins” entrusted to him by King Sigismund from the late treasurer Avram Ezafovich.
However, the matter of those ducats is very complicated—whether it was a loan or outright embezzlement... But it is definitely recorded in history that Yuri Ilyinich’s relations with his sons were very tense. At least, when he was dying, he bequeathed his property to “executors,” trusted persons. And the sons could only use the inheritance after paying off debts. The eldest son Ivan, whom Yuri allegedly loved, was deprived of the inheritance because “he caused great grief and trouble to his father.”
After Yuri’s death, the sons fought so fiercely over his wealth that... they forgot to bury their father. Among the nobility, long funerals were common; the deceased’s body was embalmed, and a long, lavish farewell was held... The great Hetman Radziwill Rybonka’s son, Pane Kohanku, was buried for a whole year, feeding and singing for an entire principality. But this case was different. The king had to intervene to make the heirs remember their filial duties.
The second son, Nikolai, died the year after his father. The castle became the property of the middle son, Stanislav. He owned the castle for four years and was then poisoned right at the festive table. Some sources say it was his wedding. The investigation was taken up by the eldest brother Ivan and the youngest, Schastny. They quickly found the culprit: the wife of a centurion named Novitskaya. Allegedly, she had previously been in the retinue of Ivan’s wife.
To make it believable, the unfortunate Novitskaya was accused of witchcraft. A confession was obtained: “Without any coercion, she herself confessed that she gave poison to Lord Stanislav by the instructions of some of her enemies while he was at their home.”
There is a pitiful story that Novitskaya was in love with Prince Stanislav, who became her lover... Or perhaps he raped her, and she took revenge. But the truth is probably more prosaic—money and the struggle for the property of “some enemies,” and perhaps not brothers of the fortunate castle owner?.. By the insistence of Ivan and Schastny, the Novogrudok tribunal sentenced the “witch” Novitskaya to be burned at the stake, which was extremely rare in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
By the way, after Novitskaya’s execution, Felix Schastny received the castle, and the king restored the inheritance rights to the eldest brother Ivan, who took other estates. Historian Andrey Yanushkevich, who studied this story, adds: “Having lost his wife, Novitsky demanded that the owner collect a head tax from Schastny Yuryevich Ilyinich, but Sigismund the Old completely acquitted him on October 28, 1533.”
Schastny, who concentrated all the family wealth in his hands, had a single son. He died childless, leaving Mir Castle to his cousin Radziwill Sirotka.
The ghost of the burned Novitskaya may wander the galleries of Mir Castle or, for example, fly as a white dove... And what about Sonechka Svyatopolk-Mirskaya? Well, imagination cannot be limited, and the walls of the ancient castle can hold many, many legends, tales, and... ghosts.
Sources:
Krasnoarmeyskaya St. 2, Mir 231000, Belarus
CFXJ+X4 World, Belarus
