Lithuanian Tidings

Crop from a Supreme Court Tribunal decree about a building sale in 1590. (details) [very large jpeg of complete parchment document - 2Mb]

Crop from letter by the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania 1649 (details) [very large jpeg]

Martynas Mažvydas published the first Lithuanian book in 1547 - Catechismus, which included hymns in addition to the religious text. It was likely that the 450th anniversary of the publication in 1997 prompted digitizing of some samples of Lithuanian works.



The cover of Catechismus, published 3 years
after Mažvydas's death in 1563

For 40 years up to 1904, the publication of any work in Lithuanian was outlawed by the Russian government. This press prohibition or knygnesiai resulted in large numbers of people engaging in book smuggling from nearby countries.

{After quite a few hours of mostly interesting perusing but with a blogger downtime induced loss of a previous draft (grr) I'll just post in a bunch of links that are worth examining. Lithuania has a proud heritage and some wonderful biblio-material. (for Ondine - you better be happy.)}

• Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania Collection of Parchments
• Text scans of publications by Martynas Mažvydas (including hymn sample downloads)
• Scans of 16th century Lithuanian books
• Early books of Lithuania - 16th to 18th century
• The Year of the Lithuanian Book
• Accounts about the knygnesiai (booksmugglers) (map) (map page)
• The Road Travelled by the Lithuanian Book
• Bookplate competition galleries 1997
• Art Review of Lithuanian Artist's Association
• Lithuanian cultural heritage - A Virtual Exhibition
• Lithuanian resource links