Merkelis Petkevičius

Merkelis Petkevičius (

In 1598, Petkevičius established his own press in Vilnius specifically for the purpose of printing Protestant books.[1] First he published a Polish book by Gregory of Żarnowiec [pl] on teachings of Paul the Apostle (a copy is kept by the National Library of Poland),^[5] and then he published bilingual catechism in Polish and Lithuanian. The press was very expensive to maintain and it is believed that Petkevičius sold it to brothers Sultzeris.^[3] Petkevičius was a member of the laity and he published religious texts on his own initiative. The first Lithuanian Protestant books published in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, unlike the Lithuanian Protestant books published in the Duchy of Prussia almost fifty years earlier, were a result of individual efforts of nobles and not of the clergymen or the synod.^[6]

Petkevičius died in Vilnius in early 1608 when the Lithuanian Tribunal was in session.^[2]

Catechism

Publication history

The catechism is titled in Polish (Polski z litewskim katechism) and is a truncated version of the Polish catechism most likely prepared by Stanisław Sudrowski and printed in Vilnius in 1595 (its title page is missing which makes it hard to determine its author or date of publication).

The catechism was found and published by Aleksander Brückner in Archiv für slavische Philologie in 1891.^[1] A photocopied edition was prepared and published by Juozas Balčikonis in 1939. The copy was kept at a city library in Gdańsk, but it disappeared during World War II. After the war, a new copy was found in Gotha and is currently kept at the Gotha Research Library (German: Forschungsbibliothek Gotha).^[1] In 1970, linguist Jonas Kruopas published a dictionary of all words used in the catechism.^[9]

Content

The catechism of Petkevičius is printed in Polish on the left and in Lithuanian on the right. Such format was likely intended to assist the clergymen, who were often Polish and knew little Lithuanian,^[1] in learning the Lithuanian language. The text also includes an 8-line poem urging the children to learn. As such, the book was likely intended for both audiences – the clergy and the students.^[1] Each language contains 252 pages.^[1] The book starts with a Polish foreword which emphasizes the need of catechisms in local languages to reach the faithful but, unlike Mikalojus Daukša, does not advocate switching back from Polish to Lithuanian. In addition to basic catechism, the book includes prayers, 93 hymns, 40 psalms (one psalm translated twice),^[7] and Agenda.^[1] The hymns and psalms were taken from various previous publications. Five of the hymns were taken from the Catechism of Martynas Mažvydas (1547).^[2] 27 of the psalms were taken from the Nesvizh catechism of 1563; two of them were translated to Polish by Mikołaj Rej.^[7] Six other psalms were translated by Jan Kochanowski. The Lithuanian translation of the psalms attempted to keep the same number of syllables so that they could be sung to the same music.^[7]

The Lithuanian translation is consistent and reflects the same Aukštaitian dialect as Daukša's work.^[3] However, the word-by-word translation from Polish led to stilled and artificial language full of loanwords (almost a quarter of vocabulary is loanwords). As such, it is of much lower linguistic quality and importance than works by Daukša.^[1] However, the prayers were not translated by Petkevičius but taken from already existing translations. Thus their language is much more archaic and with much less loanwords. Linguist Zigmas Zinkevičius determined that these translations date back to the 13th century when King Mindaugas converted to Christianity.^[4]

References