From Baptism to Faith (the end of the 14th century - first half of the 16th century)

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Bažnyčios istorija; Katalikų bažnyčia; Krikščionių tikėjimai; Krikščionybė; Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Lietuvos istorija; Religingumas; Vokiečių Ordinas (Teutonic Order; Kryžiuočių ordinas); Christianity; Church history; Lithuania; Lithuanian history; Religiosity; Christian faiths; Catholic Church.

ENThe period between 1387 and the mid-sixteenth century marks one of the most important phases in the christianisation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After the official mass conversion of the pagan Lithuanians to Roman Catholicism in the late fourteenth century, efforts got under way to create an ecclesiastical institution that would form the basis for spreading the new Faith. As a network of churches became established in this period, we find the first appearance of many forms of Catholic activity in fifteenth-century Lithuania. The diocese of Vilnius (1388) covered a large part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania but it did not coincide geographically with state borders, which were much wider. In the southern territory of the Grand Duchy a bishopric was established in 1400 at Lutsk (now in the Ukraine). At first it was called the diocese of Vladimir, then Vladimir-Lutsk (from 1404) and in 1425 it took on the title of Lutsk. In 1405 the fourteenth-century Catholic diocese of Kiev was refounded. Neither of these bishoprics matched the see of Vilnius in size or in their initiatives for founding parishes. After the Union of Lublin (1569) all of Kiev and most of Lutsk would come under Polish control. The official conversion of north western Lithuania, Žemaitija, took place some twenty years after the main baptism of Lithuania. In 1400 the area was still under the temporary control of the Teutonic Order. Only after the Battle of Grunwald (1410) and the success of Polish-Lithuanian complaints to the Council of Constance in 1416 was a bishopric set up at Medininkai (and later Varniai) in what by then was once more Lithuanian-controlled Žemaitija in 1417. [Extract, p. 50]