Bazilijonų vienuolynų pradžia Lietuvos Didžiojoje Kunigaikštystėje XVII a.

The history of publishing in Lithuania begins with the early formation of the Lithuanian state in the 13th century. As the state was taking shape over many centuries, its name, government, and territory kept changing along with its culture and the prevailing language of writing and printing. Geographically spread across Central and Eastern Europe, the state was multinational, its multilayered culture shaped by the synthesis of the Latin and Greek civilizations. Furthermore, the state was multiconfessional: both Latin and Orthodox Christianity were evolving in its territory. These historical circumstances led to the emergence of a unique book culture at the end of the manuscript book period (the late 15th and the early 16th century). In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), writing centers were formed that later frequently became printing houses; books were written in Latin, Church Slavonic, and Ruthenian, with two writing systems (Latin and Cyrillic) coexisting, and their texts and artistic design reflected the interaction of Western and Eastern Christianity in the GDL. During the period of the printed book, the GDL, though remote from the most important Western European publishing centers, was affected by the general tendencies of the Renaissance, Reformation, Baroque, and Enlightenment culture through the Roman Catholic Church and integration processes. During the 16th–18th centuries, publications in Latin, Ruthenian, and Polish prevailed in the GDL. In the 16th–17th centuries, about half of the press production were Latin books that spread along with Renaissance ideas and the Europeanization of the state, while the Ruthenian written language (one of the official state languages) was developed. After the Union of Lublin was signed in 1569, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth promoted the integration processes in public life, manifested by the emergence of the Polish language and the spread of Polish books as well as the growth of publishing in the 18th century. In the 16th century, several Lithuanian writers emerged in Prussian Lithuania (or Lithuania Minor), the region of the Prussian state populated by Lithuanians. A unique tradition of writing and publishing had flourished there until the start of World War II. In 1795, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe and a larger part of the GDL lands was annexed to the Russian Empire. However, Vilnius, a seat of old printing and book culture traditions, managed to survive as an important publishing center of the eastern periphery of Central Europe, and as a city fostering publishing in the Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages. In the early 19th century, the main forces of authors, publishers, book producers, and distributors of Lithuanian books began to concentrate in Lithuania. In 1918, after the restoration of an independent state of Lithuania, new conditions arose to benefit the development of book publishing. The Lithuanian tradition of publishing, owing to a renewed printing industry and the expansion of a publishing house and bookstore network, significantly strengthened. Between 1940 and 1990, the country suffered a half-century occupation (the occupation of the Nazi Germans in 1941–1945; the rest was the Soviet occupation) during which the Jewish national minority was destroyed, the Poles were evicted from the Vilnius region, the Germans were expelled from the Klaipėda region, and Sovietization and Russification were enforced in the sphere of civic thought. In Soviet Lithuania, although all the publishing houses belonged to the state and were ideologically controlled, a core of publishing professionals emerged who, after Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, readily joined the publishing industry developing under free market conditions.

In the middle of the second millennium AD, Crimea became an outpost of Islamic civilization in south-eastern Europe. Muslim values, Islamic law, morality and aesthetics were at the heart of medieval Crimea: in the system of government, military organization, business, art and culture. However, the relationship between Muslim Crimea and Christian Europe did not deteriorate into opposition, military conflict and religious confrontation. Crimea found allies in eastern and central Europe. These allies were primarily Lithuania and Poland (after the Union of Lublin, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland - Rzeczpospolita of both nations, otherwise known as, ‘the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’). The alliance of the Crimean Khanate with the Polish-Lithuanian state was motivated by the strategic objective of countering Moscovite expansion, which had been aggressively focused towards the east and west ever since the 16th century. This may be seen in the conquest of the Kazan and the Astrakhan Khanates by Ivan the Terrible, his foray into the Nogai prairie and Moscow’s participation in the Livonian War. These strategic objectives resulted in an alliance between Crimea and Turkey. Crimea’s status as a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire was the most important factor in safeguarding the Crimean Tatar state from the Moscovite threat. At the same time, the fact that the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of Porte (the Ottoman Empire) did not result in its losing its political independence and neither did it interfere with the authentic nature and development of Crimean Tatar culture.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore the features of the evolution of legal custom in Ukrainian lands up to the 18th century. It also aims to define the scope and directions of its influence on the development of Ukrainian law during the specified period. Methodology. The article employs a modern methodology of historical-legal research, based on which sources and literature are analyzed. In particular, the following methods are used: historical-legal, formal-dogmatic, synergetic, system-structural, hermeneutic, among others. Results. The research confirms the leading role of custom in the formation of Ukrainian law up to the end of the 18th century. In the pre-state era, law on Ukrainian lands was formed as the customs of tribal and clan communities. Legislative acts of the princes of Kyivan Rus and the Halician-Volynian state supplemented and systematized the norms of the existing customary law. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania allowed the preservation of most of the local customary law and adopted a significant portion of it. In the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainian legal customs interacted and blended with Polish law as well as German, Vlach, Jewish, and other laws. The Cossack customs of the Zaporizhian Sich gave new impetus to the development of Ukrainian customary law, which continued its evolution under the Hetmanate. Originality. The article reveals the significance of legal custom in the pre-state society of the Eastern Slavs, Kyivan Rus, the Нalician-Volynian state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Zaporizhian Sich, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Cossack-Hetman state. Archival sources were used for the analysis of this scholarly issue. Practical significance. The results of the research may be applied for academic and educational purposes and taken into account in the course of contemporary law-making and law enforcement.

In the early modern period, the relentless growth in the copies of printed books and the increasing competition between craftsmen meant that, since the invention of Gutenberg until the 19th century, European bookbinders were forced to look for cheaper and quicker binding techniques. Based on this assumption, the article focuses on some of the bindings of books printed from the middle of the 16th until the middle of the 17th century which belonged to the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. This study is part of a broader research on the bindings of the Vilnius Jesuit Academy Library, and the article is limited to two groups of sources: books printed in Italy and books printed in the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth). The historical bindings are discussed by following the approach targeting the field of decorative arts and material culture studies, which is also well known as the ‘archaeology’ of the book or the bookbinding. It focuses not only on the decorative features of the cover of the book, but also on the structural features of the bindings which reveal comprehensively the work of the craftsmen of the past. This method of analysis is particularly useful for discussing not only decorated but also undecorated bindings which have so far received very limited attention in the research of the old Lithuanian book. As a result, the research revealed that the modest parchment bindings form nearly a half of all the examined bindings of the collection, and confirm the practical rather than the representational aspect of the Jesuit Library. According to the complexity of the technical execution and the number of operations involved in the process of binding, five binding techniques have been distinguished, ranging from the most complex to the simplest bindings, closely related with a retail bindings. What is more, a consistent number of parchment bindings are denoted by structural features, which is close to the Italian bookbinding tradition. The predominance of the latter in the group of Italian prints makes it possible to consider the possibility of already bound books entering the library of Vilnius Jesuit Academy. Moreover, the research has revealed certain binding features linked to the bookbinding traditions in Italy and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Exile or free movement of Early-Modern Russian women abroad (first of all to Polish Crown and Grand Duchy of Lithuania) comes under scrutiny in the article, which is based on the manifold evidence from the 16th to the 18th centuries. Push-factors were decisions to leave the country with their husbands, children or other relatives, captivity, abduction and desertion in the frontier regions of the Russian state. The pull-factors were quite weak, and can be rarely proven by the evidence of sources evidence. Usually, the wives of the gentry (syny boiarskie) successfully integrated into the new society either with their husbands and sons or alone in the case of their death. These women of Muscovite origin often had a good grasp of the legal traditions of their home lands. They found familiar traits in the judicial practices of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Emigrees from the low classes emerged in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the normative “grey zone”, from which they could either rise to freedom, or remain in slavery owned by local gentry, magnates or town-dwellers. Special attention is paid to the sexual and family violence which could force the Muscovite women flee abroad, made them and their representatives bring lawsuits in the Commonwealth. Objectivation of women in Russia fed ethnical visions, but it did not stimulate stereotypes and phantasms typical for the Time of Enlightenment.

Political relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (further – GDL) and the Golden Horde, later with Crimean Khanate, are being investigated well enough. Priorities of the GDL’s foreign policy were addressed, on the one side, to the Central Europe, on the other side – to the East Europe. The relationship between Ottoman Empire and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth are being presented much more detail and broadly in the historiography, but too isolated from the political history of the GDL. Three important manuscript collections were preserved in Vilnius in the interwar period. One of these collections, which contained documents of the uttermost importance, which witnessed political and diplomatic relations between the Crimea, the Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was preserved in the Manuscript Department of the Library of Vilnius University. Another collection of Oriental manuscripts, which belonged to the muftiate, was for the most part lost in 1944. The third collection, which consisted of the Karaim museum fund and library, was presented to the state in 1941 by Seraya Shapshal. Oriental sources – yarlyks of the khans and letters of Turkish border pashas, which are stored at the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University, were presented in the article of Kılınç, Miškinienė (2014 = Oriental Materials in the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University: Yarlyks of the Khans and Letters of Turkish Border Pashas). Article analyses and discusses the condition of the documents, as well as their palaeographic qualities, content and possibility of preservation. The jarlyk of Kaplan Giray written on the 4th of March 1734 to Jan Klemens Branicki, the Voivode of Krakow, is presented in the above mentioned article. This paper presents five documents from the Manuscripts Department of the Library of Vilnius University, funds F 3 and F 5. All five documents according to their structure and content could be assigned to the letters. Letters were written from Khotyn or to Khotyn and addressed to Branicki. There were not only sultans, viziers of the Ottoman Empire, commandants and treasurers of Khotyn and Bender between correspondents of Branicki. Crimean khans were correspondents of Branicki as well. The main purpose of this article is to continue the list of published documents, presenting the transliteration of the texts, the translation to English language and the comments. In this way, coauthors G. Miškinienė and A. Kılınç, continuing the publication of documents, wants to draw attention to the rather interesting sources, which sheds light on the relations of Ottoman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Traditions are very important element of mass conciousness, which should characterize both society and army. Until recently on the European continent military traditions were one of important and carefully cultivated. One of the elements in the multithreaded traditions functioning in Polish armed forces before 1939, was the ethos of former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and thus the memory of the relationship between the Crown and Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As well, building the consciousness of those traditions in the military was convergent with the official policy of Polish political elites. One of the ways in which in the years 1921–1939 the Polish armed forces operated in the ethos of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In addition to native Polish, and military traditions of the lands forming part of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania were cultivated. In the course of training some conscripts from this lands an educational content recommended by the chief military authorities was used. Important components of this tradition were the bosses and the names and branches of the Polish Army and elements of symbolism and even departmental banners or commemorative badges. Therefore, the author tried to present the history of all infantry formations of the Polish Army in the years 1918–1939, which were cultivating ethos of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As well described how these facts were externalized in symbolic representation of those formations: banners, own names and commemorative badges. In addition, author gives information how these facts were used in the process of training and education of soldiers serving in these regiments.

This article is devoted to the history of cultural relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Moscovian Rus’ as well as the artifacts that testify to it. The object of the research is a Vilnius transcript of the Health Garden (a translation of Gart der Gesundheit (1492) into Russian) kept in the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (LMAVB RS F22–25). The aim of the article is to present a revised codicological description of the object, identifying the features of the Vilnius transcript and its links with the culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This aim is achieved by using codicological, comparative and textual methods, compiling a detailed codicological description of the copy, analyzing the architecture and internal structures of the code, and identifying differences or similarities between the Vilnius, Flor, Uvarov, and Shelonin copies of the Health Garden. Based on the gathered data, the circumstances of compiling the code are clarified. The study identified the following features of the Code. The large-scale codex, created in Moscow between the 17th and 18th centuries, is not a homogeneous object. It consists of two different editions: the index is closer to the Uvarov transcript and the main text to the Kharkov / Flor transcript. The second feature is careful preparation of the transcript. The codex was drafted as an exemplary edition of an old manuscript and is richly illustrated. Colored pigments were used for decoration, leaving traces of gilding. The edges of the Codex block were painted and decorated in ornamental prints. This allows us to consider the high social status of the client of the code. The third feature is the completeness of the text of the Vilnius copy. It consists of the most comprehensive block of indexes; the main text has been supplemented with new objects, enriched with new images; the text contains as many as 237 names of medicinal substances and 38 minerals in Russian. The remarks and additions contained in the previous transcripts became an integral part of the texts of the Vilnius transcript. The identified features, overlapping formal features, and organization scheme of the text, as well as the same manner of illustration, gave reason to search for a place where all the mentioned copies – Flor, Uvarov, Shelonin – as well as other old prints or their translations could have been seen by the creators of the Vilnius transcript. It is believed that such a place could have been the The Apothecary Chancery. Some Polonisms are found in the text; the works of authors from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were used in the Rus’ at that time and thus encourage a closer look at the translations and the search for citizens from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who could have participated in the works. The research clarifies the available knowledge about the transcript kept in Vilnius. The information gathered is expected to help book historians clarify the origin of the codex, its production environment, and its place in the Gart der Gesundheit’s line of translations and transcripts; this paper will make it possible to identify other stored fragments. The article is supplemented with a comparative table of the structure and content of the Vilnius transcript of the Health Garden and a decor picture of the code block.

The article deals with the collections of printed music dedicated to the distinguished nobles, statesmen and military commanders of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, brothers Jan Karol and Aleksander Chodkiewicz. These collections were printed in Venice in the beginning of the 17th century and dedicated to the Lithuanian magnates by Italian composers Giovanni Valentini and Giulio Osculati. However, it was not in their home country where composers became acquainted with the above-mentioned noblemen who had studied and travelled extensively in Italy but in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In fact, both composers had served for certain periods of time as musicians in the Polish court chapel under Sigismund III Vasa. The said collections of motets are being examined here with an emphasis on publicity and international representation. The author notes that besides the reasonable expectations of both Italian composers to raise their public profiles, to publish and disseminate their work in Europe, these personal aspirations also resonated with the interests of other public figures. They both represent Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, as a generous patron and a leading social figure. The dedications were intended to glorify the Chodkiewicz and raise their profile within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and beyond. They account for the magnates’ victories in major military campaigns of the time, such as those achieved during the Polish–Swedish war of 1600–1611, as well as Chodkiewicz’s merits in defence of the state. Within the context of shifting confessional identities at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (i.e. the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation movements) these notated sources should be considered as a reflection of the magnates’ confessional identity. The very genre of printed works – motets for Catholic church service – reflects Chodkiewicz’s firm self-determination as Roman Catholics.

This article attempts to show the emergence and development of epic poetry in the Latin language literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th century-the first third of the 17th century with regard to the art history and sociological concept by Pierre Bourdieu (theory of fields). From such point of view the work of the authors at that time can be seen as the specific ways of positioning in the literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Latin culture (Latinitas) was significant in forming cultural capital in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and works in Latin were the main means for transmitting social capital, which was also symbolic capital under the influence of certain habitus. Among such works are first of all the public and political ideas that were essential at that time (translatio imperii, “Jagellonian” patriotism), as well as the Polemon Legend. The herois perfecti idea became a significant part of symbolic capital at that time. This idea provided legitimate access to the Consecration process and was embodied in the idealized images of the agents in the field of temporal authority (that of a grand prince, a king or a magnate). The axiological potential of this symbolic capital at the point where the fields of literature and authority intersect was so great and acceptable within the European context that not only local but also foreign authors where actively integrated into the field of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which was also closely linked to the respective literature of the Polish Crown).

The Pandects, an anthology of passages from the Holy Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers, was compiled in Medieval Greek in around 620 by Antiochus, a monk of the Laura of Mar Saba, at the request of hegumen Eustachius of the Monastery of Atalina. In the 10th century, this collection was translated into the Church Slavonic language in Bulgaria and soon became known in Kyivan Rus’. No later than in the 1160s, fragments of the Pandects were included in the Synaxarion or the Prologue, a calendar collection of the lives of saints and sermons. The didactic part of the Expanded edition of the Prologue was supplemented for the first half of the year with 21 carefully edited passages from the Pandects. During the 14th‒17th centuries, scribes revised the translation of the Pandects again. The subject of this study is the new versions of the Pandects of Antiochus in comparison with the traditional synaxarian sermons from this source. When examining about 100 copies of the Prologue from the autumn-winter half of the church year, dating back to the 14th‒17th centuries, 6 such articles were found. In the Moscow and Kirill-Belozersky editions of the Prologue, which belong to the Moscow literary tradition, I found two new versions (A Sermon on Fasting and on Prayer, A Sermon on if one Loves the World). The fragments of the Pandects were copied from the source in their entirety, without introducing significant changes. In the manuscript tradition of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), and later also of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC), more new variants of the sermons appeared. In the Navahrudak edition, in the two varieties of the Expanded edition and in the Museum edition, four traditional Prologue articles were edited (A Sermon on Eloquence, A Sermon on Dreams, A Sermon on Fasting and on Prayer, A Sermon on if one Loves the World). The writers used a special technique of segmenting the sermons and amending their style. It is possible to conclude that the 10th century translation of the work of monk Antiochus underwent a greater transformation in the literary tradition of the GDL than in the Grand Duchy of Moscow. Ukrainian scribes played a special role in the reception of the Pandects of Antiochus in the lands of the GDL and later in the PLC.

The 1560s, 1570s and 1580s were a distinctive period in cultural exchange between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and England. Although there seems to have been almost no correspondence exchange and the flow of information from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to England was insignificant, the spate of English texts was quite intense. This textual traffic from England generated a vast network spanning the two countries. Both Protestants and Catholics turned their energies to translating into Polish and utilizing the texts as tools in their cross-confessional debates over ‘right religion’. Although there is evidence in Lithuanian and English sources that English Protestants took shelter in the Grand Duchy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was an amenable home chiefly for Catholic recusants, many of whom found their way to the Jesuit Academy of Wilno (Vilnius). As a result, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became the principal place where the majority of English texts were translated and printed. Moreover, due to the lack of local Catholic martyrs English martyrs, and Edmund Campion in particular, were chosen to be framed and memorialized in polemical literature. By looking into which texts circulated between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and England and the various kinds of networks this circulation created, the chapter aims to re-evaluate the importance of Anglo-Lithuanian networks of textual exchange in the second half of the sixteenth century.

The article presents the engraver Conradt Gotke – the most famous artist-graver who worked in Vilnius in the first half of the 17th century. The study aimed to replenish the list of his works – illustrated books. The list of the new bibliographical data is published in the appendix of the article. On the ground of these data, the peculiarities and significance of C. Gotke’s works in the history of Lithuanian art of the 17th century are discussed. According to the signed engravings and on the basis of formal similarity of the samples it was established that the artist worked in Vilnius in 1636–1653. C. Gotke enriched books and Lithuanian book art with the following features: 1) illustrations of a high artistic quality gave an extra visual information on the text: C. Gotke used to add to the text particular artworks with an explicite meaning of the text subject; 2) C. Gotke was the first to popularise the copper engraving technique in Vilnius prints; he was the first to amplify several composition patterns typical of his hand; the precise line-drawing and accurate line-engraving allowed him to create an individual artistic language; 3) C. Gotke popularised the Baroque style language in Vilnius book illustrations; he used to engage largely popular hieroglyphic, emblematic as well as heraldic symbols in combination with inscriptions; 4) C. Gotke intensely collaborated with various clients – high and middle rank nobles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, clerks in holy orders, members of the royal family; 5) Gotke’s illustrations developed the subject of genealogical and heraldic relations of particular noble families of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Some of his art-works are valuable and authentic portrayals of important 17th century personalities; such images are often supplied with inscriptions indicating names and official positions. Gotke’s oeuvre is an exceptional phenomenon in the field of book illustration of the 17th century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland. Gotke’s works prompted the development of book illustration and the formation of a peculiar artistic language of Baroque; the artist sought for a greater variety of motifs and subjects of his compositions. C. Gotke is a good example of the social position of an artist in the 17th century: he was a freelance artist-townsman who actively portrayed customers, had a wide circle of clients and created invaluable documents of the 17th century nobility life.

this special issue of Acta Orientalia Vilnensia is dedicated to the bicentenary of the commencement of asian studies in lithuania and particularly at Vilnius university, which was founded in 1579 and is the oldest academic institution in Lithuania. Two hundred years is a comparatively short period, but these years have a wealthy history, especially keeping in mind that Asian or Oriental studies, as it was called at the beginning of this period, was a newly emerging academic field that has grown from a purely comparative and philological approach to recently discovered non-European cultures due to of the increasing implications of colonial aims and the imperative to manage properly those subjugated Asian counties and nations. Certainly, an integral part of this interest in Asian learning was European romantic fascination with the cultural and intellectual otherness of that area. Lithuania was not excepted from this kind of intellectual involvement. The beginning of the 19th century was a politically complicated and turbulent period in Lithuanian history. After the third and last division of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, between Tsarist Russia and Prussia in 1795, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became an eastern province of the Russian Empire and formally disappeared from the world map for a more than a century. Notwithstanding, some academic institutions, including the main one, Vilnius University, continued their activities, even though under the strict control and supervision of Russian officials. the intellectuals of Vilnius university clearly understood in those days the importance and future prospects of developing Asian studies. And due to the activities of non-formal student societies (the Filarets, Filomats, and Shubravcy) and members of freemasonic lodges, especially of the Zealous Lithuanian (Gorliwy litvin) lodge, the romantic fascination with the East developed into serious academic preoccupations.

SUMMARY: The subject of Alexander Filjushkin’s research is the discourses of Russian Historiography and political studies about the place of Great Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in Russian history. The author describes four discourses. First – “Russian lands were the victim of the Lithuanian occupation”. Second – “The absorption of lands of the Great Limitroph as Western project of the Russian empire”. Third – “The lands of the GDL from most ancient times were Russian lands, the hereditary possession of the Moscow princes. The author in detail studies the development of concept “Vseja Rusi” (“of All Russia”) and the genesis of its contents from the end of the 15 th till the end of the 16 th centuries. A separate subject of study is a role of Livonian war (1558–1583) in the development of the idea “Vseja Rusi”. Fourth discourse – “The GDL was the model of democratic alternative of the Authoritarian type of power in Russia”. In the conclusion the author describes the low level of modern investigations of GDL in Russian. Therefore he names the image of GDL in historiographies and political doctrines of East-European countries as “The Kingship of curve mirrors”: each of the countries sees the image GDL, which frequently is rather far from a reality, but depends from the political discourses of the 19 th and 20 th centuries.