Early Lithuanian Literature (Senoji Lietuvos literatūra) is a biannual peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. This academic periodical has been edited by the Department of Early Literature of the Institute since 1992.
The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore / Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas
Copyright (c) 2025 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Liucija Citavičiūtė, Pirmoji lietuvių kalba parašyta istorijos knyga: Kristupas Danielius Hasenšteinas Nusidavimai švento kariavimo. Studija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2024, 107 p., iliustr. ISBN 978-609-425-401-7 Kotryna Rekašiūtė, Masonai kultūriniame Prūsijos Lietuvos ir Klaipėdos krašto gyvenime (XVIII a. – XX a. pirma pusė), Vilnius: Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių biblioteka Axel Ernst Walter, Prūsijos Orfėjas. Poeto Simono Dacho savivoka ir kultūrinė recepcija, iš vokiečių kalbos vertė Kristina Sprindžiūnaitė, Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla, 2025, 395 p. ISBN 978-609-481-260-6 Prūsijos atmintis ir kultūros paveldas: Mokslo straipsnių rinkinys. Skiriamas Prūsijos kunigaikštystės 500 metų sukakčiai, sudarė Domas Kaunas ir Silva Pocytė, parengė Ona Aleknavičienė, Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla, 2025, 160 p. ISBN 978-609-481-264-4 Ona Aleknavičienė, Vilma Zubaitienė (par.), Pilypo Ruigio žodynas Littauisch–Deutsches und Deutsch–Littauisches Lexicon, 1747, t. 1: Faksimilė, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2024, 660 p. ISBN 978-609-07-1133-0 (1 tomas), ISBN 978-609-07-1132-3 (bendras) Vilma Zubaitienė, Pilypo Ruigio žodynas Littauisch–Deutsches und Deutsch– Littauisches Lexicon, 1747, t. 1: Mokslo studija ir kritinis žodyno leidimas, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2024, 1200 p. ISBN 978-609-07-1136-1 (2 tomas), ISBN 978-609-07-1132-3 (bendras) Ona Aleknavičienė, Pilypo Ruigio žodynas Littauisch–Deutsches und Deutsch– Littauisches Lexicon, 1747, t. 3: Mokslo studija ir morfologiškai anotuotas lietuviškų žodžių indeksas, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2024, 960 p. ISBN 978-609-07-1138-5 (3 tomas), ISBN 978-609-07-1132-3 (bendras) Jokūbas Benetas, Andriejus Grinkevičius, Viešpaties dešinės galybė, (Collectanea litterarum Lituaniae, t. 3), iš lotynų kalbos vertė Sigitas Narbutas, [Vilnius]: Lietuvos mokslų akademijos Vrublevskių biblioteka, [2024], 94 p., iliustr., faks., portr. ISBN 978-9986-498-85-8, ISSN 2424-4996
Каталог молдавских и валашских церковнославянских рукописей в собрании Овчинникова
<p lang="lt-LT" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Александр Дмитриевич Паскаль, Каталог славянских рукописных книг молдавского и валашского происхождения в фондах отдела рукописей РГБ, вып. 1: Собрание П. А. Овчинникова, Москва: Пашков дом, 2024 = Aleksandr Dmitrievich Pascal, Catalogue of Slavic manuscripts of Moldavian and Wallachian origin in the collections of Manuscript Department of the RSL, issue 1: Collection of P. A. Ovchinnikov, Moscow: Pashkov dom, 2024, 359 p.
Pre-Mongol Exegetical Hymnography. Part 2: Two Canons for Christmas (Publication of a Source)
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This is a publication of two exegetical canons for Christmas from a pre-Mongol set of original (untranslated) exegetical canons (dated approximately 1170–1180) for ten ecclesiastic feast days of the Menaion and Triodion cycles. This set originated in Kievan Rus’ and was widely distributed in East Slavonic manuscript tradition. It was also known in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where an exegetical canon for Easter was even translated into the Ruthenian language (I published it in Slavistica Vilnensis, vol. 65(1)). Based on a combination of linguistic, content-related, and intertextual features, this anonymous set of exegetical canons has been attributed to the Jerusalem monk Afanasii (who did indeed live in the Holy Land for some time), known as the author of his ‘Epistle to Panko about the Wood of the Holy Cross’ and the commentator on the ‘Epistle by Kliment Smoliatich [Metropolitan of Kiev from 1147 to 1155 – S. T.] to the Smolensk presbyter Foma’. Despite its widespread use in the manuscript tradition, the set has not been studied and remains virtually unknown to scholars. This publication is based on one of the very few manuscript copies containing the maximum number of texts from this cycle (ten out of twelve): Exegetical Psalter with additions from the early seventeenth century (Novosibirsk, State Public Scientific and Technical Library of Russia, collection of Mikhail Nikolaevich Tikhomirov, No. 41, f. 67–186v).
Lithuanian Editions of Daniel Gottlieb Settegast’s Books on Bees as a Case of Cultural Transfer
Daniel Gottlieb Settegast (1741–1813), a graduate of the University of Königsberg who came from the territory that is now Poland, worked as a teacher at the school in Prökuls (Lith. Priekulė) from 1763 until his death. At the end of the eighteenth century, he compiled and published three versions of a beekeeping textbook: two in German and one in Lithuanian. These were books intended for popular education. In the mid-nineteenth century, Simonas Daukantas adapted Settegast’s textbook for the residents of Lithuania Major, also for the purpose of public education. Applying the methodology of cultural transfer, this article examines these two Lithuanian editions of Settegast’s book on bees as examples of the adaptation of the ideas of popular enlightenment (German: Volksaufklärung) to different cultural contexts. Settegast was involved in the popular enlightenment movement that gained popularity in Prussia in the second half of the eighteenth century: while working as a teacher in Prökuls, he joined the East Prussian Society for Physics and Economics, which was dedicated to promoting public education. With its support, he wrote and published Bienencatechismus (The Bee Catechism, Königsberg, 1795), a highly popular book about bees in German. Three years later, a slightly revised second German edition of Settegast’s book was published under the title Das Wahre und Nützliche in der Bienen-Zucht (Reliable and Useful Beekeeping Tips, Königsberg, 1798). Another three years later, a Lithuanian version of the book on bees, prepared by Settegast himself – Naudingos Bicʒû Knygeles (Useful Books on Bees, Königsberg, 1801) – was published. It was based on the first German edition of 1795. Having prepared the Lithuanian version of his book, Settegast acted as an agent for conveying the ideas of popular enlightenment to the community of Lithuanian peasants in Prussia. The content of the presentation and the format of the material were tailored to the standards set by the educational books of the popular enlightenment movement. The most significant transformation Settegast undertook was linguistic in nature, that is, the rewriting of the book in clear and vivid Lithuanian that was easily understood by the peasants. Both the German and Lithuanian editions sought to combat the superstitions that permeated the peasant mindset, encouraged critical thinking (common sense), fostered personal responsibility, and explained the principles of sound farming. The main body of the book provides general information about bees, their physiology, the organisation of life in a hive, practical advice on beekeeping, hive construction, honey harvesting, and honey use. Two illustrations created by the author himself are glued in the book. With a few minor proofreading corrections, this edition of Settegast’s book was reprinted in Königsberg in 1820. Nearly thirty years later, in 1848, Simonas Daukantas republished the book under the title Naudinga bĩttiû knygelė (A Useful Bee Book) in St Petersburg. Daukantas transformed the text: he adapted the orthography and language to the written tradition of Lithuania Major, thereby adapting Settegast’s book to the cultural context of Lithuania Major. Also, he adapted Settegast’s book to the changing cultural climate of the nineteenth century. Daukantas achieved this by writing a preface that captured the spirit of Romanticism. Like Daukantas’s historical works, the preface asserts a close connection between the forests that ensured the region’s prosperity in ancient times and the freedom of the people: with the destruction of one, the other was lost as well. Bees, the free creatures of thriving forests, became a metaphor for freedom in Daukantas’s preface: with the disappearance of the forests, the beekeeping skills that had been an integral part of the indigenous culture of the free Lithuanians (Samogitians) also became obsolete. Lithuanians were forced to learn about modern, cultured beekeeping from foreigners. Daukantas’s preface imparted a new meaning to Settegast’s book on bees, which had set out with modest goals of people’s enlightenment: it became not only a source of practical knowledge, but also a manifestation of longing for freedom of an oppressed nation.
The Palemon Myth in Samogitia: The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century to the Early Twentieth Century
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">According to the myth of the Roman origin of the Lithuanians recorded in sixteenth-century Lithuanian chronicles, it was Samogitia where Palemon arrived first, and ‘Lithuania started to expand from the Samogitians’. The myth was further developed and originally interpreted by Maciej Stryjkowski (Kronika Polska, Litewska, Żmodźka y wszystkiey Rusi, 1582) and Wojciech Wijuk-Kojałowicz (Historia Litvana, 1650). The reprint of Stryjkowski’s Kronika (1766), the appearance of Franciszek Paprocki’s compendium (first edition in 1760, later editions in 1763, 1771, and 1775), and the former Jesuit Mikołaj Wieliczko, who was the parish priest of Seredžius from 1774 to 1779, should possibly be linked to the emergence of the toponym ‘Palemono kalnas’ (Palemon Hill) in Seredžius (first mentioned in 1779, in the inventory of the Seredžius church). During the first half of the nineteenth century, we see a veritable renaissance of the Palemon myth in Samogitia: <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">(1) the proponents of the myth were the ‘literati’ Dionizy Paszkiewicz (Dionizas Poška), Ludwik Jucewicz, Sylwester Walenowicz (Silvestras Valiūnas), Samogitian Bishop Józef Arnulf Giedroyć, and others <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">(2) a significant number of the Samogitian elite of the time were members of the ‘Palemon’ Masonic Lodge <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">(3) Michał Zaleski, a landowner from Veliuona, erects a monument to Palemon; <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">(4) the Samogitian nobility trace their ancestry back to the mythical founder of Lithuania and Samogitia (cf. the Gimbutas family tree based on various texts from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century) <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">(5) in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, Palemon continued to ‘live on’ in calendars and became a character in fabricated ‘folklore’. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">It must be noted that the nineteenth century was dominated not by the theory of purely Roman origin, but by Herulian, Herulian-Roman, and Scandinavian theories of the origin of the Lithuanians and Samogitians. Some authors propose combinations of these versions. Accordingly, Palemon could have been a Herulian, a Roman, a Scandinavian, or even an autochthon. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The facts presented point to an intense reception of the Palemon myth, which should be explained by the increased dissemination of historical knowledge in the society of that time and the relatively strong regional identity of Samogitia.
Piarists in Lithuania. An Endeavour to Capture the Essence
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">As an independent administrative unit, the Piarist Province of Lithuania operated from 1736. Despite the formal division into separate provinces, the Piarists of Lithuania and Poland maintained good mutual relations. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Order of the Pious Schools was financially and materially supported by the families of the nobility, the gentry, townspeople, and the secular clergy. Educational and religious endowments and individual bequests enhanced the prestige of each patron, donor, and their families, while the Piarists ensured the proper use of the funds entrusted to them and increased the endowment’s assets. This consideration ensured that the colleges were equipped with libraries and teaching materials. In Lithuania, the Piarists used their own set of regulations (Methodus docendi, 1762), which governed the organisation of schools and the curriculum. They also followed the general principles of the Calasanzian Constitutions, which guaranteed autonomy to each province in choosing its educational model. Piarist schools in Lithuania put into practice a vision of Christian education, which they enriched with civic ideals. At the same time, they aimed at ensuring that education was modern, so considerable attention was paid to the natural and experimental sciences and practical skills. The superiors made sure that the young members of the order were properly prepared for their future educational and teaching responsibilities: the Piarists studied at their own colleges (professoria) and also pursued studies abroad. Educational institutions were staffed by qualified teachers. Some of the monks were not only distinguished teachers but also renowned scholars, writers, and translators who left behind a scientific and literary legacy that often went beyond the needs of the school as such. The texts they published reflected the ideals of the intellectual movement of the Age of Enlightenment. In addition, the Piarists served as preachers at Vilnius Cathedral and at the Tribunal.
The Lithuanian Language and Political Self-Awareness of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: Evidence from Eighteenth-Century Texts
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article examines texts in Lithuanian published in the eighteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the perspective of political consciousness, taking into account their political and cultural contexts. At the same time, the study considers Jurgis Lebedys’s hypothesis that throughout the eighteenth century, the tradition of caring for the Lithuanian language remained alive in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and that there is a connection between the programme for the Lithuanisation of the state of Lithuania proposed by Mikalojus Daukša in the sixteenth century and the Samogitian and Lithuanian national movements that emerged in the early nineteenth century. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">In the eighteenth century, the culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was influenced by the historical narrative of Maciej Stryjkowski and Albertas Kojalavičius, which depicted Lithuania as a Lithuanian-speaking Republic of Lithuania founded by the Lithuanian people, ruled by sovereigns of Lithuanian descent, and belonging to the Lithuanian nobility. Throughout the eighteenth century, popular seventeenth-century Lithuanian religious books, such as hymnals, prayer books, and collections of Gospel passages, were continuously reprinted in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The original Lithuanian hymns and prayers in those books affirmed the connection between the Lithuanian-speaking community and the state of Lithuania; they united Lithuanians of different estates, who were protected by St Casimir, into a single nation and linked them to their homeland: ‘the land of Lithuania’, ‘the land of Lithuania and Samogitia’, ‘the Duchy of Samogitia’, ‘the Duchy of Lithuania and Samogitia’, and ‘the country of the Poles, Lithuanians, and Samogitians’. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The connection between the Lithuanian language and the state is emphasised even more strongly in the new Lithuanian books and publications on Lithuanian studies that appeared in the eighteenth century. The 1737 Lithuanian grammar Universitas Lingvarum Litvaniae declares the Lithuanian language as the language of Lithuania and asserts that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has a ‘main dialect’, and that this dialect has well-defined ‘grammatical rules’ that enable the description of ‘the entirety of the languages of Lithuania’. The anonymous author and the publisher, the printing house of Vilnius Academy, dedicated this entirety of languages to the descendants of Palemon, the legendary Lithuanian ancestor. The grammar book declares that not only Lithuanian nobles and gentry, but all young studying Lithuanians, as well as all readers of that book and all inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania who speak the Lithuanian language are the ‘diligent neo-Palemons’. We can therefore rightly regard the author of the grammar as a conscious successor to Daukša’s political programme. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The publication of new books in Lithuanian and on Lithuanian studies in the early eighteenth century coincided with a surge of Lithuanian patriotism in the public life of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was precisely at that time that the term ‘Republic of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’ (Rzeczpospolita W. X. Lit.), a term describing the political nation of the Grand Duchy and the nobility, began to be used emphatically in official state documents and in sejmiks, and the idea of the Republic of Lithuania, along with the affirmation of Lithuania’s political independence, was once again brought to the attention of the public. In books, lectures, and exercise books published by Vilnius Academy, Lithuania is increasingly referred to as ‘Palemonia’, ‘the Land of Palemon’, ‘the world of Palemon’ (Palaemonia, Palaemonius orbis, Palemoński świat), Lithuanians as ‘the people of Palemon’ (Palaemonia gens), and Vilnius University as ‘Palemon’s Academy’. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">In the mid-eighteenth century, the printing house of Vilnius University began publishing a textbook of the Lithuanian language, which was continuously reprinted in ever-growing print runs. Over the decades, the textbook and the rising number of old and new religious books in Lithuanian cultivated the Lithuanian-reading part of the public of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. During the Age of Enlightenment, this segment of people, together with the even larger part of Lithuanian speakers, was neither ignored nor silenced. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Lithuanian intellectuals of the late eighteenth century turned their attention to ploughmen and peasants and elevated their role in the life of the nation. Their efforts to integrate the peasants into the political nation were accompanied by the efforts to ‘Lithuanise’ the Grand Duchy and revive the ‘peasant language’. As evidenced by the increasingly frequent use of ‘the Lithuanian Nation’ (Naród Litewski) in state documents and other texts, as well as the emphasis on the sovereignty of the state of Lithuania and its nation, these aspirations are also linked to the resurgence of Lithuanian patriotism during the twilight of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. While the Four-Year Sejm of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was still in session, the Constitution of 3 May 1791 and several laws passed by the Sejm were translated into Lithuanian. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">A turning point in the public life of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania occurred during the uprising of 1794: the urban and peasant estate entered the political arena, and the government began to use the Lithuanian language alongside Polish as the language of communication with its citizens. Based in Vilnius, the leadership of the country’s rebels – the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Nation – addressed all residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania with an appeal that was not only in Polish but also in Lithuanian – Aciszaukimas. The term ‘the Republic of Lithuania’, which was used in the first half of the eighteenth century, was replaced by ‘the Lithuanian Nation’, but the idea of the sovereign society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained fundamental: it permeated all the texts of the uprising that were printed in Vilnius. At the time, the government published Tadeusz Kościuszko’s ‘Proclamation’, various orders, a sermon by Mykolas Pranciškus Karpavičius (Michał Franciszek Karpowicz), a professor at Vilnius University, explaining the purpose of the uprising, and the text of the oath addressed to all residents of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Lithuanian. Lithuanian rebel war songs were being composed. The idea of a political nation of free and equal people was being promoted in Lithuanian. After the collapse of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian, the connection between the Lithuanian language and the Lithuanian nation, as asserted in eighteenth-century Lithuanian texts, was noted and highlighted by the country’s intellectuals at the beginning of the nineteenth century: Pranciškus Ksaveras Bogušas (Franciszek Ksawery Bohusz), Simonas Stanevičius, and Simonas Daukantas.
On the Romanisation of the Vilniusites, or What Cicero Is Doing in the Municipal Statutes of 1620
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article seeks to answer the question of why two maxims by Cicero were included at the beginning of the municipal statutes of Vilnius of 1620 and what they meant for the self-image of the Vilniusites. It is proposed that these quotations are not merely an aesthetic embellishment but also a manifestation of humanistic and civic values. Their emergence is linked to the figure of Augustinus Rotundus, the vogt of Vilnius. It is likely that Rotundus, who was a prominent Lithuanian humanist, an expert in Roman law, and an admirer of Cicero’s works, was also the author of the first edition (1551) of the municipal statutes. This article examines the reception of Cicero in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rotundus’s studies at European universities, his literary and legal activities, and his contribution to the formation of the Lithuanians’ Roman political and cultural identity. It is shown that Rotundus’s Ciceronian humanism manifested itself through his advocacy of freedom, the rule of law, civic responsibility, the significance of history, and the importance of education. Emphasis is also placed on the role of the vogt of Vilnius in establishing the Jesuit College of Vilnius, which became the most important centre for the dissemination of Latin culture and Cicero’s literary legacy in Lithuania. The article concludes that Cicero’s maxims in the municipal statutes attest to the Romanisation of the urban elite of Vilnius, their desire to identify with the humanistic values of the republic, and, possibly, their wish to honour Rotundus as the shaper of their city’s legal and cultural identity.
Vilnius and Kraków in Early Latin Poetry of Lithuania and in the History of St Casimir’s Cult: Parallels and Contrasts
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This article aims to draw attention to early literary (poetic) texts dedicated to St Casimir, which were written both before the official approval of his cult in 1602 and immediately after. Most of them were composed and printed in Vilnius. In some of these texts, certain parallels between Vilnius and Kraków are highlighted, while at times, the contrast between the two cities is emphasised. In the article, this motif is discussed and interpreted within the broader context of the historical ties between Vilnius and Kraków, the history of Casimir’s canonisation, and of humanistic literature in general. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article is structured in three parts. The first, introductory, section discusses the historical connection between the two capitals, Vilnius and Kraków, which sooner or later was bound to emerge as a poetic theme. This happened even before the Union of Lublin, and perhaps the earliest example of this is a 1514 poem by Jacobus Piso. The fascinating intertwining of sixteenth-century interests of Kraków and Vilnius in the history of St Casimir’s canonisation and the succession of bishops are also explored. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The second part examines the literary topos of the competition of the cities – certamen urbium – within the humanistic tradition of poetic creation. Its variations were also used by authors who worked in Lithuania (e.g., Petrus Roysius). This motif was also exploited in the earliest occasional works of the Jesuit academic milieu (Threnodiae, a collection of elegies on the death of Albertas Radvila, Vilnius, 1593). All of this brought this motif to the fore in neo-Latin poetry of Lithuania in the second half of the sixteenth century, even establishing a certain local literary tradition around it. It became the basis for using the motif of certamen urbium in occasional works dedicated to St Casimir, both in the earliest pre-canonisation works and those that flourished after his cult was officially recognised by the Church. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">All this is discussed in the third part of the article, in which three poetic examples are analysed in greater depth in relation to the aspect selected. The first example is the poem ‘Divi Casimiri ad Serenissimum Regem Stephanum Oratio’ by Adam Comlewicz, which appeared at the end of the 1579 collection Gratulationes, dedicated to the arrival of Stephen Báthory in Vilnius; in this poem, St Casimir descends from heaven and addresses the ruler. The connection between St Casimir and Vilnius is emphasised repeatedly in another poetry collection, Theatridium Poeticum Sanctissimo et Castissimo poetae D. Casimiro, which was published on the occasion of the canonisation celebrations in Vilnius (10–12 May 1604) and formed an autonomous section within the larger publication Theatrum S. Casimiri. In the middle of the collection, there is the poem ‘The Dispute Between the Two Cities Is Settled’ (Lis geminae componitur urbis) by Simonas Ugnievskis (Simon Ugniewski), which poetically immortalises the dispute between Kraków and Vilnius over a saint – a dispute that Vilnius wins by a decision of Rome. The third example is the short poem Epos de S. Casimiro Iagellonide, published in the same year of 1604 under the name of Jan Kraykowski, a student at the Vilnius Academy. In one of its episodes, the author mentions both St Hyacinth and St Casimir: the former as the pride of Kraków, the latter as the pride of Vilnius, linking their canonisation to the reign of Sigismund Vasa. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The study suggests that in the early literary depictions of St Casimir, Vilnius played a special role as a place of eternal rest and a centre of worship. The poetic texts reflected the need of Lithuanian society for ‘one’s own’ saint – an aspect that is sometimes emphasised through contrast with Kraków and its saints. The facts from the prehistory of the canonisation reveal the historical basis for the literary parallels, contrasts, and a certain degree of rivalry between Vilnius and Kraków. This is an important feature of the early cult and conception of a local saint (indiges), one that should be noted when examining the later development of the cult in Lithuania and Poland, and, after 1621, throughout the world. A focus on the variants of certamen urbium as a common literary motif in literature dedicated to or dealing with St Casimir and its origins reveals the evolution of this motif and the early establishment of related variants in neo-Latin poetry in Lithuania (especially composed in the Jesuit academic milieu). To a certain extent, this article is a sequel to the article ‘Between the Cathedrals of Vilnius and Cracow: Some Historical Details in the Background of the Early Cult of St Casimir (Second and Third Decades of the Sixteenth <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Century)’, which appeared in <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">S<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">e<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">n<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">o<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">j<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">i<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">L<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">i<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">e<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">t<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">u<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">v<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">o<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">s<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;"> <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">l<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">i<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">t<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">e<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">r<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">a<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">t<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">ū<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">r<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">a<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, 2023, vol. 55.
Studies into the Literary Canon Prompted by a Zeal for Unmasking
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">Viktorija Šeina, Aistė Kučinskienė, <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Mokyklinis lietuvių literatūros kanonas. Šimtmečio raidos rekonstrukcija<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">: Monografija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2024, 614 p., ISBN 978-609-425-399-7
Pre-Mongol Exegetical Hymnography. Part 1: The Canon for the Feast of the Cross (Publication of a Source)
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">This is a publication of an exegetical canon for the Feast of the Cross from a pre-Mongol set of original (untranslated) exegetical canons (dated approximately 1170–1180) for ten ecclesiastic feast days of the Menaion and Triodion cycles. This set originated in Kievan Rus’ and was widely distributed in East Slavonic manuscript tradition. It was also known in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where the exegetical canon for Easter was even translated into the Ruthenian language (the author of this article published it in 2020). Based on a combination of linguistic, content-related, and intertextual features, this anonymous set of exegetical canons has been attributed to the Jerusalem monk Afanasii (who did indeed live in the Holy Land for some time), known as the author of his ‘Epistle to Panko about the Wood of the Holy Cross’ and the commentator on the ‘Epistle by Kliment Smoliatich [Metropolitan of Kiev from 1147 to 1155 – S. T.] to the Smolensk Presbyter Foma’. Despite its widespread use in the manuscript tradition, the set has not been studied and remains virtually unknown to scholars. This publication is based on one of the very few manuscript copies containing the maximum number of texts from this cycle (ten out of twelve): Exegetical Psalter with additions from the early seventeenth century (Novosibirsk, State Public Scientific and Technical Library of Russia, collection of Mikhail Nikolaevich Tikhomirov, No. 41, f. 67–186v.).
The Querelle des Femmes in Sixteenth-Seventeenth-Century Philosophy: Ideas of Platonism and Aristotelianism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Europe
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article examines the reception of Plato and Aristotle’s philosophy in shaping attitudes towards women in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Europe in the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries. It examines how various philosophical treatises, dialogues, and Aristotle’s commentaries influenced intellectual discourse beyond their cultural origins, thus creating a basis for a philosophical understanding of the role of women in the family and society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article juxtaposes the views of Platonists and Aristotelians on women. Platonism, especially in Renaissance court culture, offered a more progressive perspective. Through such works as Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (1528) and Łukasz Górnicki’s Dworzanin polski (1566; The Polish Courtier), the article highlights the differences between Western European and Polish-Lithuanian court societies. Although constrained by certain patriarchal norms, Castiglione’s lady-in-waiting actively participated in public life by engaging in refined conversation, musical activities, and dance. Górnicki’s adaptation, which was shaped by conservative Polish and Lithuanian culture, basically confined women to private domestic roles, but still required them to be as refined as male courtiers. Unlike the Italian courts, where ladies-in-waiting were integrated into cultural and intellectual life, Polish and Lithuanian aristocracy saw women primarily as wives and mothers responsible for managing the household and moral virtue. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">On the other hand, during the Renaissance and Baroque periods Aristotle’s philosophy was invoked to confirm and substantiate the attitudes towards women prevailing at the time and was therefore popular throughout Europe, especially in more conservative cultural spaces such as universities and colleges. Such thinkers as Bartholomäus Keckermann (c. 1572–1609) and Aaron Alexander Olizarowski (Olizarovius, 1610–1659) argued for male dominance, justifying it by natural hierarchy and theological reasoning. A man’s duty is to legally protect his wife, advise her, and look after her, but he does not have unlimited authority (potestas) over her. Extrapolating from Aristotle’s Politics (1260a 11), commentators argued that women had to be more or less subordinate to men because they were less intelligent and lacked willpower by nature. Various passages in Nicomachean Ethics that discuss imperfect virtue allow the passive qualities and virtues traditionally attributed to women (shyness, chastity, modesty, humility, and the like) to be considered less valuable than ‘heroic’ masculine virtues. Aristotle’s idea that women are weaker in every respect due to their nature allowed the medical theory of bodily fluids to be used as proof of their imperfection, claiming that due to the warm and moist state of their bodies they are not inclined towards wisdom and patience. Women’s weak nature raised the question of whether they were capable of achieving virtue at all, whether they were moral beings, and whether they should have personal freedom or depend on their guardian, the man. The answers to these questions varied, ranging from the extremely conservative view that women, who are capable of practicing only imperfect virtues, must fully obey their father, husband, or other male guardian, to the somewhat more optimistic yet still conservative belief that women, as moral beings, must practice virtue in a feminine (i.e., traditionally passive) way, and men must not control them but rather take care of and provide for them.
Jean de La Gessée’s Henrias: Literary Features and Sources of Imitation
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The second part of a two-article series continues with the analysis of Henrias, a collection of Latin occasional poems written by a poet of the Valois court who wrote under the pseudonym of Jean de La Gessée, during the election of Henry Valois in 1573. The collection is analysed in terms of literary form, theme, and ideas. The article describes the main motifs and images used to convey the political narrative and propaganda message and to create an ‘epic’ image of Henry Valois, the future ruler of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and reveals the sources of literary influence and imitation. The connections between this collection and La Gessée’s other works are indicated, including those that were likely written by the same author under other pseudonyms. One such work is the epic poem Élection du sérénissime duc d’Anjou, roy de Poulongne [...] published by Paul de Vollant in 1573. The similarities between the text of this poem and Henrias, the circumstances of its publication, and other aspects would allow this poem to be attributed to La Gessée (i.e., the court poet Louis d’Amboise, who used both these pseudonyms; we have examined this identification of the author in previous articles, and it remains the subject of further and more detailed research). <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">La Gessée’s panegyric ‘epic’ works La Rochelleide and Henrias, published in French and Latin in 1573, belong to the wave of epic-style works that arose in French literature in the 1570s inspired by Ronsard’s Franciade and are also inspired by important events of the time (religious wars, the election of Henry Valois). This is the poetry of ‘current events’ and ‘news’, about recent developments and Henry Valois, the ‘hero of the present’. In the context of neo-Latin Renaissance literature, Henrias continues the tradition of epic panegyrics dedicated to rulers and nobles. The choice of the genre, poetic forms, and their composition was influenced by the neo-Latin panegyrics, epic poems, and epithalamia of various countries from the late fifteenth century to the first decades of the sixteenth century (among which connections with Giovanni Michele Nagonio’s panegyric poems can be discerned) and the trends of common-European neo-Latin poetry of the mid-sixteenth century. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The main part of Henrias consists of an epic panegyric, which has the traditional rhetorical structure of an encomium: a solemn introduction, a description of the family of Henry, Duke of Anjou, and its deeds, a characterisation of his person, his achievements, and a discussion of his ‘virtues’ (the latter is presented as ‘advice to the young ruler’). In terms of the genre, structure, style, and lexicon, it followed the panegyrics of Claudian, a Late Antiquity poet. Based on existing studies of Claudian’s reception in Renaissance literature and on our analysis of the text, it can be argued that Panegyric is a particularly striking (perhaps one of the most striking) example of Claudian’s reception and imitation in sixteenth-century epic and panegyric poetry. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Rich in Claudian’s quotations, the text of the panegyric reveals the implied projection of its dedicatee and subject, Henry Valois, onto the figure of Stilicho, the hero of Claudian’s panegyrics, a general and politician who attained power through his ‘virtue’ (virtute) (an analogy: Henry Valois is elected from among his peers because of his ‘virtue’). Stilicho’s Vandal origins are also significant for this projection. According to a medieval theory of the origin of the Polish nation, the Vandals are considered to be the ancestors of the Poles. Despite the fact that historians had been sceptical of this theory since the mid-sixteenth century, it continued to live on in the literary tradition. In literary works, Stilicho was often included in the lists of rulers of Poland and Lithuania, i.e., he was a locus communis of (pseudo)historical narratives in the cultural space of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, in this panegyric Henry Valois can be regarded as the ruler of Stilicho’s homeland. The article also examines how traditional topoi borrowed from Renaissance literature were used in Henrias to convey the political ideology of the 1573 election and the French court (the images of the embassy to Achilles on Skyros, the images of the ‘golden age’, and the reign of Astraea, the goddess of justice, the vision of Pax Valesiana created on the model of ancient Rome, which also encompasses the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ruled by Henry Valois ‘to the distant sea’, the myth of French origin from the Trojans, and so on). <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Textual analysis of Henrias shows that the author imitates the works of such authors of Classical and Late Antiquity as Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Cicero, Claudian, Lactantius, to a lesser extent Juvenal, Catullus, Tibullus, Lucretius, Lucan, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Statius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and several others, or draws on them in other respects. In quantitative terms, the majority of borrowings came from Claudian’s works, fewer from Virgil, Ovid, and Horace, and even fewer from other authors. Henrias shows traces of influence and/or vocabulary from Renaissance authors Ugolino Verino, Jacopo Sannazaro, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus. Stylistically close to the poet were also various neo-Latin authors from different countries, such as Matteo Andronico, Iacobus Bonus Racusaeus, and Paulus Crosnensis (their influence is evident both in Henrias and in La Gessée’s other works in Latin). He was clearly influenced by the works of the Latin poets of the Pléiade (similarities with Étienne Jodelle’s occasional poetry). Without a doubt, La Gessée was familiar with and had access to the works of Polish and foreign chroniclers and cosmographers who wrote about Poland and Lithuania, and he was also interested in the works of poets from these lands. Text analysis shows that he read and used the poem Bellum Prutenum (1516; The Prussian War) by Joannes Vislicensis and probably Georg Sabin’s Poemata (1558), a poetry collection in Latin. The article compares the description of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Henrias (which was one of the first descriptions of Poland-Lithuania in French literature) with the text of Joannes Vislicensis’s poem.
The Relationship of Slavisms and Hybrids in Konstantinas Sirvydas’s Dictionarium trium linguarum (1642) and Promptuarium dictionum Polonicarum, Latinarum et Lituanicarum (1620)
<p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The article examines the borrowed lexical elements in Konstantinas Sirvydas’s Promptuarium dictionum Polonicarum, Latinarum et Lituanicarum of 1620 (hereinafter SPr) and the dictionary Dictionarium trium linguarum of 1642 (hereinafter SD). A total of 955 unique Slavisms and hybrids with Slavic roots were selected from SPr and SD, of which 571 words were recorded in SPr and 703 in SD. Among the 703 words attested in SD, 185 Slavisms and hybrids are not only absent from SPr but also lack any common root words in it. These particular loanwords are the focus of this study. The aim was to determine their relationship with SPr and to explore possible reasons why certain Slavisms and hybrids were not used in the earlier dictionary but were recorded in the later one. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Among the common Slavisms and hybrids used in SD but not found in the SPr, there is a group of words that are not found in SPr due to the fact that the only surviving copy of the Promptuarium is defective, i.e., some pages are missing; today, it is not possible to check the translation of some of the words and to make comparisons with SD (e.g., Pol. bęben / Lith. būbnas SD 9 / Lith. ? SPr). This group represents 22.7 per cent of the words under investigation. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">The remaining headwords, for which Slavisms or hybrids were used in translations in SD, can be compared with the corresponding entries in SPr. One group (4.3 per cent) consists of cases where corresponding headwords are present in SPr but are provided without a Lithuanian translation, e.g., Pol. kołacz / Lith. karvojus SD 111 // Pol. kołacz / Lith. – SPr 59. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">A significant number of Slavisms and hybrids found only in SD (59.5 per cent) are absent from the earlier source due to differences in the lexical registers of the dictionaries of 1620 and 1642. This is the largest portion of the material analysed in this article. Such a high percentage can be explained by the fact that SD is a more extensive work containing a larger number of Polish word combinations, which required the use of loanwords or hybrids in translation. <p lang="en-GB" style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Of the Slavisms and hybrids examined in SD, 13.6 per cent could be compared within the corresponding headword entries in both SD and SPr. A noticeable tendency is that SD omits Slavisms and hybrids that are formally identical to Polish headwords (e.g., Pol. katowanie / Lith. baudimas / buzavojimas SD 99 / Lith. kotavojimas SPr 51). However, more than half of these 13.6 per cent of cases involve instances where SPr uses native Lithuanian words, whereas in SD, Slavisms and hybrids appear instead.
The Book Market in the Light of Paratexts of Printed Books in the Kyiv Metropolitanate: Selected Issues
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article deals with selected issues concerning the functioning of the publishing market in the Kyiv metropolitanate in the first decades after the first Ruthenian typographers became active (up to the mid-seventeenth century). The source base is the paratexts (the preface, the dedicatory letter, the afterword) of books of mainly liturgical and more broadly Orthodox use dominating the books on offer, whose authors were mostly publishers, printers, and editors, acting independently or as members of teams developing the publishing process. In the paratexts, they attempted to explain the reasons for their publishing activity or justify the choice of a particular book. Among the most frequent reasons, they would point out errors occurring in manuscript books, the scarcity or unavailability of particular books caused by various factors, the existence of printed versions but not corrected within the scope of issues concerning liturgical and sacramental-ceremonial practice. In addition, the paratexts contain interesting data on the competition between various printing centres, indicating the difficulties in coordinating and controlling the publishing market by the Metropolitan of Kyiv. The paratextual material also brings interesting evidence on the existence of an in-depth reflection on the role of printing, the importance of books in religious life and in the process of expanding knowledge in the Ruthenian environment in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
The Sermon Against Drunkenness Attributed to St Job of Pochaev as a Manifestation of Serbian and Ukrainian Literary Ties in the Sixteenth–Seventeenth centuries (The Fourteenth-Century Translation of George Hamartolus’s Chronicle)
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">The article is devoted to a short anonymous sermon against drunkenness in a now lost manuscript that once belonged to the Pochaev Monastery and is believed to have been written by St Job of Pochaev (<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">c<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">. 1551–1651) in his own hand. Nikolai Petrov, who studied the codex, named it ‘Pchela Pochaevskaya’ (Pochaev’s Melissa) and published this sermon as one of St Job’s works. The attribution of the manuscript and several anonymous sermons contained therein to Job of Pochaev was met with reasoned criticism but is nevertheless recognised by contemporary scholars. The article shows that this anonymous sermon against drunkenness is not an original work and could not have been written by St Job. It is an excerpt from the second ecclesiastical Slavic translation (<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Lětovnik<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">) of George Hamartolus’s Byzantine chronicle, prepared by Bulgarian scribes and known only from its Serbian copies. It is presumed that this translation, unlike the much earlier one (<em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Vrěmennik<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">), did not reach the Eastern Slavs. However, the fact that the manuscript ‘Pchela Pochaevskaya’ contains an anonymous sermon against drunkenness, which is an excerpt from <em style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial;">Lětovnik<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; white-space: normal; text-decoration-thickness: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color: initial; display: inline !important; float: none;">, shows that this translation was known in whole or in part in the Ruthenian (Ukrainian) lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth where it could only have come from the Serbian manuscript tradition. Thus, this sermon is yet another example of the Serbian influence on early Ukrainian literature, unreported up until now, dating from the second half of the sixteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century.
Copyright (c) 2024 Authors https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Axel E. Walter, Orpheus Prutenus. Selbstkonzept und Rezeption des Dichters Simon Dach, Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla, 2020, 415 p. ISBN 978-609-481-083-1 Deutsche Gelehrte und die baltischen Sprachen, hrsg. von Harald Bichlmeier, Christiane Schiller und Silke Brohm, (Schriftenreihe der Gesellschaft für Baltische Studien 5), Hamburg: baar, 2024, 194 p. ISBN 978-3-935536-50-9 Kęstutis Daugirdas, Andrius Volanas ir reformacija Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje, monografija, Vilnius: Lietuvių literatūros ir tautosakos institutas, 2024, 445 p. ISBN 978-609-425-385-0 Alkiškių, Šiaulių, Žeimelio evangelikų liuteronų parapijos ir jų archyvai, sudarė Ernestas Vasiliauskas, Klaipėdos universiteto Baltijos regiono istorijos ir archeologijos institutas, Klaipėda: Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla, 2024, 239 p. ISBN 978-609-481-187-6
Miks Stolperjons, a Satirical Poem from the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Miks Stolperjons, a Satire in Verse (the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century): The Manuscript and Two Publications in the Lithuanian Press
Miks Stolperjons is a 192-line satirical poem written in Lithuanian in the second half of the nineteenth century (before 1879). The plot of the poem consists of a series of comic situations in which the protagonist, Mikas, keeps falling into due to his clumsiness and lack of good manners. The semi-German personal name Stolperjons (Ger. stolpern ‘to stumble’) in the title indicates that this is probably a translation. Two original quatrains are inserted into the text of the satire that mock the uncultured behaviour typical of Prussian Lithuanians. In its language and artistic expression, Miks Stolperjons is consistent with the general level of Prussian Lithuanian poetry of the time. Today, three versions of the text are known: the manuscript and two publications in the press. The manuscript copy of Miks Stolperjons is part of a notebook of poems in the Manuscript Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (shelf mark: F163–1086, fol. 13r–17v). The manuscript contains later corrections and additions in darker black ink in a different hand, which are not reflected in the publications. The first publication of the satirical poem appeared in Gothic type in the Prussian Lithuanian newspaper Lietuviška ceitunga of 23 September 1879. The text published here is almost identical to the manuscript text. The publication in Latin characters in the American Lithuanian newspaper Vienybė lietuvninkų of 8 July 1896 was slightly edited: the spelling and language were modernised. In the manuscript, the authorship of the Lithuanian text of the poem, with a question mark, is attributed to Mikelis Šapalas (1827–1887), a Prussian Lithuanian public figure, teacher, poet, translator, and an active contributor to the Lietuviška ceitunga. In the Lietuviška ceitunga, the poem is signed with X., a very popular pseudonym used by many authors at the time. In Vienybė lietuvninkų, the pen-name Lietuvaitė M. S. appears under the poem. It was used by Joana Tamošauskaitė-Baltrušaitienė-Želvienė, a physician and active public figure (1873–1950). Presumably she only edited the text of the poem.
I Wrote to the Quandt Family and Their Descendants in 1756. Genealogy of the Family Published in the Obituary for Quandt (1772)
Genealogy of the Prussian Line of the Quandt Family Written by Johann Jacob Quandt, the Last Bearer of the Surname
Johann Jacob Quandt (1686–1772), the general superintendent of Prussia, is well-known in the history of Lithuanian literature and culture as a promoter of Lithuanian writing in eighteenth-century Prussian Lithuania. About a dozen Lithuanian books were produced under his care. He involved students and graduates of the University of Königsberg in the writing process. It is not known what prompted Quandt to write the genealogy of his family and when he started this work, but it is known that he finished it in 1756 and left the manuscript to his nephew, Johann Christoph Bohlius (1703–1785). After his death, Quandt’s personal archive was reviewed and some of the documents were included in the obituary ‘To the Man While He Lived […] Magnificent [...] Johann Jacob Quandt’ (Viro, dum viveret, magnifico [...] Johanni Jacobo Quandt [...], Königsberg, 1772). This obituary was the first publication of the genealogy of eight generations of the Quandt family. The Quandts established themselves in Königsberg in the sixteenth century; the Teutonic Knights or their descendants may have been the founders of this branch of the family. The obituary with the genealogy of the Quandts is kept at the National Library of Poland in Warsaw (Biblioteka Narodowa w Warszawie, sign. SD XVIII.4.1170 adl.). Quandt’s manuscript has not survived or has not been found. Many of the men of the Quandt family had been educated at the University of Königsberg, served in government posts, were priests, and one was a merchant engaged in commerce. The men of the family usually chose the daughters of priests as their wives, making it an elite family. Of the Quandt family, three of its representatives are better known today: Jacobus, the great-grandfather of Johann Jacob Quandt, his father Johann, and our Johann Jacob Quandt, the general superintendent of Prussia, the preacher of the royal court, and first professor of theology. The appended source was translated from the Latin by Dr Mindaugas Strockis.
Recommendation of Heinrich Tilesius, the Rector of the Tilsit Provincial School, to His Pupil Johann Schultz
The article discusses and presents, along with its translation into Lithuanian and commentaries, a document kept at the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Ger. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin (shelf mark: GStA PK: I. HA GR, Rep. 7 Preußen, No. 191 [1685–1703]). It is a copy of the recommendation written on 30 April 1695 by Heinrich Tilesius (1666–1732), the rector of the Tilsit provincial school, to the pupil Johann Schultz (Jonas Šulcas, ~1678–1709), a future theology student at the University of Königsberg, a priest in Prussian Lithuania, and the translator of the first Lithuanian book of literary fiction, Die Fabeln Aesopi (Aesop’s Fables, Königsberg, 1706). Tilesius’s recommendation is important for several reasons. This archival source provides information about the Tilsit provincial school: the name of Johann Schultz extends the list of the school’s well-known pupils, evidences the most important subjects included in the curriculum of the time, and reveals some of the competences of the schoolmaster. Tilesius’s Latin text is an example of a recommendation written in a high or almost Ciceronian style of eloquence; it is a distinctive rhetorical piece demonstrating the excellent classical education of the rector of the provincial school of Tilsit. The recommendation also adds new details to the biographical information on Johann Schultz, the pupil of this school, a future creator of Lithuanian literature, or, more precisely, provides some facts about his education prior to his studies at the University of Königsberg: not only did he go to the provincial school in Tilsit, but he also attended the Latin school in Insterburg, where, besides learning Latin, he also studied Greek and acquired knowledge of poetry, philosophy, and, in particular, rhetoric. Schultz’s teachers included not only Heinrich Tilesius, but also Johann Picker (~1640–1693), a well-known pedagogue of the time, a follower of Philipp Jacob Spener (1635–1705) and a promoter of his ideas in Prussia.