English and Scottish Jesuits and print culture of the sixteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania
ENThis present study has aimed to examine sixteenth-century Anglo-Lithuanian Catholic ties, revealing the influences of those contacts on the print culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. As the Counter-Reformation solidly took root in both parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, offering safe havens to recusants from England and Scotland, profound British-Lithuanian Catholic ties were forged after the foundation of Vilnius Academy in 1579. All the publications produced with the involvement of British Jesuit students suggest that they were accustomed to life in Vilnius Academy as much as other foreign and local students and actively participated in the corporate life of the institution. Many Englishmen and Scots were well aware that the wealthiest Lithuanian magnates, who professed Catholicism, were among the leading defenders of the Counter-Reformation. It would be fallacious to assert, however, that English and Scottish Catholics perceived the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a purely Catholic state. In 1580, William Shepreve, a Catholic priest and scholar, who accompanied the English Catholic scholar Gregory Martin from Douai to Rome, sent a report to the rector of the English College in Rome. [...].Although in the second half of the sixteenth century Protestantism was one of the major confessional cultures of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, having gained a significant foothold, the connections between English and Lithuanian Protestants were generally fortuitous. In contrast, the relationship between English recusants and Lithuanian Catholics was better structured, in comparison with occasional encounters between the Protestants of Lithuania and England, and the presence of English and Scottish Catholics within the Grand Duchy was much more noticeable than that of persons with a Protestant affiliation. Furthermore, Polish-Lithuanian Jesuits were more successful in exploiting the power of the press in advancing the triumph of the Catholic Church in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, engaging not only local writers but also authors of various ethnic origins. As a result, the networks established by Polish-Lithuanian Catholics with their counterparts abroad facilitated textual transmission between the countries, resulting in the construction of a martyrological narrative applicable to the situation in Poland-Lithuania. [Extract, p. 124-125]
