Ivano Luckevičiaus gudų muziejaus bibliotekos senųjų knygų paveldas / The Heritage of Old Books from in the Library of the Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum

Abstract

The Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum was established in Vilnius over a century ago, in 1921. It was based on the documentary heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania collected by Ivan Lutskevich (1881–1919), historian, archaelogist and bibliophile, who also was a prominent activist in the Belarusian community in Vilnius. The holdings of the museum also contained various artifacts acquired by Lutskevich in archaeological expeditions and donated to the Belarusian Scientific Society in 1916. The reorganization of Vilnius museums that began in 1939 caused the complete liquidation of the Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum in 1945. At that time print publications and manuscripts from the holdings of the museum were handed over to the then Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. The museum’s library contained over 14 thousand volumes, with the collection of early print books (15th–18th centuries) consisting of about 600 items. The two-part Belarusian-language catalogue compiled in 1943 by the art scholar Vladas Drėma, museum custodian, contains 411 numbered entries for the books passed on to the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. Based on this catalogue, which is now kept in the Library’s Manuscripts Department and on other sources, the article aims to examine the heritage of 15th–18th-century books kept in the Rare Books Department of the Wroblewski Library. The Drėmaʼs catalogue lists the old publications by century: one book from the 15th century, 24 from the 17th century; 293 from the 18th century (several of which might actually belong to the 19th century). There are 411 books in total. At present, we have been able to identify 224 15th–18th-century books (208 titles) that come from library of the Belarusian Museum: eight books from the 15th century, 21 books from the 16th century, 47 from the 17th century, and 144 from the 18th century. These statistical data, however incomplete, show that not all old publications have been described in Drėma’s catalogue. The collection includes rare printing masterpieces such as eight incunabula, the earliest of which is the Czech-language Biblia Bohemica published in Prague in 1488 and Biblia Latina printed in Basel in 1491 (these and other five incunabula are not listed in Drėma’s catalogue). The first entry in the catalogue is Pentecostarion (Триодь цветная), a liturgical book published in Cracow about 1493 by Schweipolt Fiol, pioneer of Cyrillic printing. Other notable entries are printing masterpieces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania such as Part 4 of Бивлия руска published by Francysk Skaryna in Prague in 1519, the Slavonic grammar by Meletius Smotrytsky published in Vievis at the printing house of the Holy Spirit Brotherhood in 1619, extremely rare publications by the Vilnius Jesuit Academy, Basilian, and other printing houses of those times. The Belarusian Museum’s collection of old books is notable for its linguistic and thematic diversity. Most of the books, about 45 per cent, are in Polish; 25 per cent (53 publications) are in Church Slavonic, Old Slavic and Russian; 15 per cent (30 publications) are in Latin; several publications each are in French (six) and German (two), one incunabulum is in Czech. The content of the books is discussed after dividing them into two groups of equal quantity: religious and secular literature. A list of so-far identified old books is provided at the end of the article. Keywords: Ivan Lutskevich Belarusian Museum; heritage of old books; Vladas Drėma; manuscript catalogue; The Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Rare Books Department.