Piligrimai iš Lietuvos - Romos Šv. Dvasios brolijos nariai 1492–1503 m.

ENThis paper deals with the pilgrims who arrived in Rome from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. The information was collected from the manuscript book Liber fraternitatis Sancti Spiritus (Ms. 328) kept at the Biblioteca Lancisiana. Here we present the results of our research carried out de visu from cover to cover. We hope that we have succeeded in tracking down all the most relevant material dealing with the people from the Grand Duchy who joined the Holy Spirit fraternity from 1492 to 1503. The first known such pilgrim is a Lithuanian named Alexius, coming from Raseiniai in Žemaitija (Western Lithuania), the last were a group of pilgrims made up of nobles coming from the Grodna (in present-day Belarus) region. We have identified no less than 13 pilgrims plus an unknown number of children (servants attending their lords must be assumed, but there is no trace of them left in written record). All in all, these pilgrims from the Grand Duchy included one Roman Catholic bishop (Bartholomew of Kiev), one canon of the Vilnius cathedral chapter (Stanislaus), one parish priest (Nicolaus of Shchuchin), one cleric (Alexius), five members of nobility and at least four of their wives. They were, to be sure, not the only ones from Lithuania who reached Rome in the period under consideration, but perhaps it is no accident to find them in such numbers joining the Roman Holy Spirit fraternity at a time when lay and priestly piety reached new heights in Lithuania. Stressing the need to conduct further research aimed at identifying the pilgrims to Rome from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we have decided to publish all the gathered material in the appendix to this paper. [From the publication]