Belarusian Culture Researcher Guy De Picarda Died in London :: Charter'97 :: News

On Saturday in London a researcher of Belarusian history and culture Guy De Picarda died in London. A graduate of Oxford university and Sorbonne university, Picarda studied works of Belarusian composers, life and works of Francis Skaryna, worked on the history of Bible translations into Belarusian, on problems of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania history. The Charter’97 press-center grieves over the death of this wonderful man and offers condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Guy De Picarda.

Guy De Picarda was engaged in search of ancient Belarusian chants and their publishing. He published “Belarusian Church Songbook. Saint Liturgy”, “Belarusian Spiritual Songbook”, an educational book “Church music in Belarus. 989-1995”, created a corpus of Belarusian hymns “Golden Belarus”, and a guide about F. Skaryna Belarusian library in London. His works were published on pages of religious and conventional editions (“Bozhym Shlyakham”, “The Journal of Byelorussian Studies” and others).

“He was of English-French origin, and he had become close to us, Belarusians,” told Fr. Alyaksandr Nadsan, Apostolic Visitator for Belarusian Byzantine Catholics living outside Belarus. “When he was a student in Oxford, he looked for church music in London, and got interested not only in church music, but by Belarusian culture and history in general, in everything concerning Belarus. Since then he lived by this interest. He was a lawyer by trade, but most of all he was interested in music and in Belarus most of all.

He has done a lot: English-Belarusian Scientific Society, a magazine on Belarusian studies, special courses of lectures on Belarusian studies that had been taking place for almost 30 years, and his participation in international conferences where he brought up Belarusian topics.

For the last 18 years Guy lived in our Belarusian centre here, in London. It’s a loss of a very close person for me. It is too early to understand everything he had done for Belarus. But he had done a lot, and his work was really heartfelt and self-sacrificing”.