Protestant confessions of faith in the early period of the Lithuanian Reformation (1543-1566)

ENIn the early years of the Reformation, the GDL Reformers achieved a breakthrough in developing Christian sensibilities and awareness among the followers of Western Christianity: until then authentic Christian thought had not taken shape in Lithuania. Important aspects of this thought, which have been given very little attention until then in the historiography of Protestantism, are reflected in the confessions of faith of the early (pre-Sandomirian) period of the Reformation in Lithuania. Namely, there are four confessions of faith which define early Evangelical thought (frühe protestantische Lehre) in the GDL up to 1570: the “Confessio fidei” written by Abraomas Kulvietis in 1543, a public answer written by Radvilas the Black to the Pope’s nuncio Luigi Lippomano in 1556 (viewed by his contemporaries as a confession), “Wyznanie wiary zboru Wileńskiego” (Confession of faith of the Vilnius Church) published in 1559, and the “Orthodoxa fidei confessio” by Nicolaus Pac written in 1566. More importantly, all these texts were original ones as opposed to the “Confession of Sandomierz”. The latter was an interpretation of Heinrich Bullinger’s “Second Helvetic Confession”, including a few fragments from Philipp Melanchthon’s “Saxon Confession” (1551) and excerpts from John Calvin and Theodore Beza.4 The early confessions of Lithuanian reformers constitute a significant body of confessional thought in the GDL. Moreover, the dramatic circumstances surrounding their creation often vividly delineate the origins of Reformation thought in Lithuania, the unique nature of its early phase of development and connections with the confessional processes in Europe. [Extract, p. 66]

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