The Use of Books in 16Th-Century Vilnius
TERMINUS t. 15 (2013), z. 2 (27), s. 167–184 doi:10.4467/20843844TE.13.013.1570 www.ejournals.eu/Terminus THE USE OF BOOKS IN 16TH-CENTURY VILNIUS JAKUB NIEDźWIEDź Uniwersytet Jagielloński, Kraków Abstract The main goal of the paper is to answer the question of what was unique about the use of books in Vilnius between 1522 and 1610. The reason to take a closer look at the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is the fact that it has always been a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious city. This observation allows the author to assume that the use of books there could have been different than in other European cities of the time. To find possible answers to the question posed, the author traces the changes in production, distribution and reading of books in the city. The research is based on sev- eral sorts of sources, such as printed books, manuscripts and documents from Vilnius archives (mainly the municipal archive, the Catholic chapter, the castle court etc.). He was supported by contemporary studies about early modern Vilnius scriptoria and printing houses (Kawecka-Gryczowa, Topolska, Nikalaieu), bookbinders (Laucevičius), book writing (Ulčinaitė, Narbutienė, Narbutas) and the history of the city (Frick). At the beginning of the paper the author recalls the main facts about Vilnius in the 16th century. The city had increasingly grown in importance as a political, economical and cultural centre of the Jagiellonian monarchy. The central part, divided in four chronologically arranged chapters, focuses on several problems, among them: the beginnings of Cyrillic prints and Skaryna’s print- ing house, languages and alphabets of books (Latin, Ruthenian, Polish, Lithuanian, German, Hebrew, Yiddish and Arabic), book production, dissemination, storage and reading.
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