Ar galima rasti europietiško identiteto pėdsakų XVI a. Lietuvoje?

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Europa; Europa, identitetas, Lietuva; Europiečiai; Identitetas; Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); 16 amžius; Europe; Europe, Identity, Lithuania; Europeans; Identity; Lithuanian XVI c. history; The Great Duchy of Lithuania.

ENThe issues of the take-over of the European idea and its development in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modem times have not yet been properly analysed. The political processes of 1989-1990 in Central Eastern Europe encouraged the search for the historical contacts between Lithuania and Western Europe and the place of Lithuania in the Middle Ages and early modern times. The first attempts in this field show that the interpretation of Lithuania's adjustment to European processes varies. On the one hand, Lithuania's long-lasting backwardness is accentuated, and its development is referred to as a phenomenon of retarded history. Lithuania is seen as a country in the periphery of the eastern part of Central Europe. It is argued that in the sixteenth century Lithuania, an integral part of Western civilization, was still a 'newcomer', and after a little more than a century after its baptism in 1387 it merely imitated the reception of those values, which had become an existential part of other European countries. On the other hand, it is asserted that objectively, i. e., by its history and more or less absorbed European processes and cultural influences, Lithuania belonged to the Western Christian oikumene, and that in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Lithuanian society acquired all the characteristics, peculiar to the societies of the Central European countries, and that in the sixteenth century, in the Renaissance, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania appeared as a unique, full-fledged phenomenon of European culture. All these rather controversial attitudes relating to the Lithuanian issue of European identity are linked by one common feature.In Lithuanian historiography, Lithuania's adjustment or non-adjustment to Europe has been discussed up to the present time taking Europe itself for granted as something unchangeable, in the first place accepting it as a space of Western Latin Christian civilization without any boundaries and the very term 'Europe' as always abstract and amorphous. On the contrary, the perception of Europe has been changing permanently and it is not so simple as it might seem if it is treated as an allegedly undividable entity. Discussions on what Europe is and what the concept 'the European idea' is are renewed from time to time. The first part of the present article deals with the studies of Leonardo Benevolo, Pirn de Boer, Remi Brague, Norman Davies, Chistopher Dawson, Gerard Delanty, Andrzej Sulima Kamiński, Antoni Mączak and Peter Rietbergen, and presents an overview of the discussions of historians and philosophers on Europe and Europeanism. The second part relates to the sources and researches of contemporary Lithuanian historians of culture, touching upon the Lithuanian model of the concepts of Europe and Europeanism and providing ground for a discourse about the issue of European identity in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the sixteenth century.A conclusion is drawn that in the sixteenth century the background to the advance of European identity was formed: the society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was open to the spread of the ideas of the Renaissance and the Reformation. In the latter half of the sixteenth century it was commonplace for the representatives of 'the political nation' to enrol at Western European universities or to make extended study trips. On coming back they occupied influential posts in state institutions and took an active part in the political, social, confessional, educational or economic life of the country. Works on politics, social structure, theology or history and belles-lettres, written and issued in the sixteenth-century Grand Duchy of Lithuania, testify that 'the political nation', as the social leader, settled into the common rhythm of the Western world, and believably perceived itself as belonging to Latin Europe. [From the publication]

• Europos pagrobimas iš Lietuvos : Algirdo Martinaičio kūrybinės provokacijos / Rūta Gaidamavičiūtė. Kultūros barai. 2003, Nr. 6, p. 52-57.
• Pilietinė visuomenė : politikos įpilietinimo projekcijos / Klaipėdos universitetas. Politologijos katedra ; [sudarytojas S. Šiliauskas]. Klaipėda : Klaipėdos universiteto leidykla, 2006. 307 p. : schem.