Vol. XXXVII
 p25  Lithuania​a

Lithuania, Lithavia or Litavia. An ancient country of Europe, between Poland to the south, Prussia to the west, Courland to the north and Russia to the east. It is about 150 leagues long, 100 wide, and 6100 square leagues in area. Its surface, uniform, flat, and in many places marshy, is sown with many lakes and large rivers plentiful in fish, some of which flow down to the Black Sea, and others to the Baltic. The lakes are formed by the melting of snow. Its principal rivers are the Dnieper, the Borysthenes​b and the Vilija, which have their sources in Lithuania. The Dvina flows thru it, and the Nemunas, formed by several rivers, ends in the Gulf of Courland. The country has excellent pasturelands, and the soil is fertile. The dominant religion is Roman Catholicism, but there are many Protestants and Greek Orthodox. It has a population of one million four hundred thousand, who speak their own distinct language. Lithuania, which in very early times had its own princes, was conquered by the Ruthenians in the eleventh century, and made tributary to them; but it threw off that yoke thanks to the work of its able leader Erdivil, who took up arms to defend his country, even becoming master of a part of Russia in the year 1217, and exacting from it the same tribute which the Lithuanians had hitherto paid. Ringaudas, one of his successors, having carried his conquests into Prussia, Masovia, and Poland, assumed the title of grand duke of Lithuania, and the country that of grand duchy. Here follows the series of the grand dukes or grand princes his successors.​c 1238 Mendog or Mindowe [Mindaugas]. 1263 Treniota. 1265 Volstinik. 1268 Swentorog. 1270 Germond. 1275 Gilligin. 1278 Romond. 1280 Trab. 1280 Narimund. 1282 Traidenis. 1282 Vytenis. 1315 Gediminas. 1328 Jaunutis, deposed in 1330, died in 1365. 1330 Algirdas. 1381 Kęstutis. 1386 Jogaila [Jagiełło] king of Poland. 1387 Skirgaila or Casimir, deposed in 1382, died in 1394. 1392 Vytautas Alexander. 1430 Švitrigaila or Bolislaus, deposed in 1432, died in 1452. 1432 Sigismund who died in 1440, at which point Casimir IV king of Poland became grand prince of Lithuania, as did the kings that followed him.

Mendog or Mindowe or Mindano [Mindaugas], the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who succeeded Ringaudas in 1238, followed in his footsteps, but in the end his constant plundering of the neighboring peoples drew their hatred upon him, and the Teutonic Knights of Prussia attacked him fiercely. Mindaugas, in order to save his states, declared himself a Christian, and placed his grand duchy under the protection of the Holy See and of Pope Innocent IV, who, when he was in Milan in 1251, accepted this submission, created Mindaugas king, and ordered the  p29 bishop of Chełmno to crown him with the royal insignia acting in his name as pope: the coronation took place in 1252 in Navahrudak. The Lithuanians worshipped fire and snakes as gods, and with a dead lord used to burn the servant who had been dearest to him. Mindaugas then abandoned Christianity, and retook Courland from the weakened Teutonic Knights. As proof that the Lithuanians had returned to paganism, Rinaldi (s. a. 1279, no. 42), recounts the cruelties they committed against two Christian German knights; he goes on to say that the Yatvegians or Sudavians, defeated by the Poles in 1282, allied themselves with the Lithuanians and exacted a bitter revenge; but that Leszek the Black Duke of Cracow and Sandomierz, under the invocation of the archangel St. Michael put to death almost all the Yatvegians, and a great part of the Lithuanians perished there, while not a single Pole was killed. The following year the Lithuanians burst into Poland, ravaging it without mercy, yet as they were leaving laden with booty, Duke Leszek had his soldiers receive the Holy Eucharist, and though inferior in strength to the enemy, he defeated them, taking many prisoners. The Lithuanians kept the conquests made by Mindaugas, however, and extended them: led by their Duke Vytenis they entered Prussia in 1311. They plundered it savagely, trampled on the Holy Eucharist with horrible contempt, and made more than fourteen hundred slaves. But God punished such iniquity by the hand of Heinrich von Plauen, Master of the Teutonic Knights of Prussia, who attacked the Lithuanians with his men and made such a massacre of them that only their duke Vytenis, who received a head wound, and two of his counts barely escaped. In memory of this triumph the Teutonic Knights built and endowed a nuns' monastery in Toruń. Gediminas or Godymin, king or duke of the Lithuanians, waged war success­fully on the Poles and the Russians. In 1323, calling himself king of the Lithuanians and Ruthenians, he wrote to Pope John XXII, declaring that he had been struck by divine inspiration with a desire to convert to Christianity with his men, and wished to submit to the obedience of the Holy Roman Church, requesting apostolic legates that they might admit him to the Catholic faith and instruct him in it. The Pontiff rejoiced with Gediminas, recommending to him his nuncios, Barthélémy bishop of Alet and Bernard abbot of the monastery of St. Theofred of the diocese of Le Puy,​d who, accompanied by pious and learned religious, had to work hard to convert the pagan Lithuanians and Ruthenians to the faith. And when Gediminas complained to the Pope about the Teutonic Knights, who had formerly oppressed King Mindaugas or Mindowe because they aspired to rule Lithuania and who had thus been the cause of Gediminas' return to paganism with his people after receiving baptism, John XXII promised him that he would authoritatively intervene to insure ongoing harmony; and in fact he succeeded in pacifying them, so he approved the conditions.

King Gediminas, however, did not persevere in his good intentions. When the apostolic nuncios arrived, the barbarian prince told them that he did not know the Pope, and that he wanted to remain in the religion of his fathers, which he would defend to the death. The legates, having traveled so far and  p30 faced so many perils on land and sea, left mortified.​e In 1325 Gediminas gave one of his daughters in marriage to Casimir, son of Władysław IV king of Poland, and in lieu of a dowry he freed all the Poles he held in slavery. The bride was solemnly baptized in the church of Kraków, and was given the name of Anna. Thus a truce was arranged between the Poles and the Lithuanians, but by the just judgment of God, Gediminas was wretchedly killed by a shot from an arquebus in a battle against the crusaders, under the walls of Veliuona in Prussia in 1340, dying as a brave knight.​f Gediminas' sons Algirdas and Kęstutis made great conquests in Prussia; the latter had a part of Lithuania, and usurped the remainder from his brother, whom he put to death in prison. His son Jogaila, having made himself a power in Poland, and fearing the vicissitudes of fortune, proposed to the Poles that the Duchy of Lithuania be united to the Polish kingdom, and that he himself receive baptism and wed Queen Jadwiga, second​g daughter of the late Louis I, king of Poland and Hungary, which kingdoms had been divided upon his death. The Poles accepted his proposals, Jogaila was baptized at Kraków on February 12, 1386, took the name of Ladislas or Uladislaus [Władysław] V, married Jadwiga, and was proclaimed king of Poland. Thus Lithuania, Samogitia, and those Russians who were subjects of Jogaila embraced the faith, and the frequent wars between the Lithuanians and the Poles came to an end. In 1387 Christianity spread extensively thruout Lithuania, whose people flocked in crowds to receive the sacred bath, killing the snakes they had erstwhile worshipped; they cut down the trees that they had venerated in the sacred groves, and extinguished the eternal flame to which they had devoted a cult; they also destroyed the profane altars. King Władysław V held a great parliament in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, to abolish idolatry, to replace the ancient superstitions with Catholic rites, and to do everything for the spread of the Gospel. In a single day thirty thousand Lithuanians received baptism. Jogaila then built two episcopal churches in this region, those of Vilnius and of Samogitia (q.v.), and endowed them with revenues sufficient to maintain the bishops that were to be created, and the priests to instruct the people in the faith. In the old ecclesiastical notices Lithuania and Samogitia are recorded as Lithuania and placed under the metropolitan of Gniezno. Historians highly praise Władysław V for his zeal in spreading the Catholic religion, calling him an apostle because he explained to his people the creed and the Lord's Prayer in the Lithuanian language, and served as an interpreter for the priests. He then sent the bishop of Poznań as his ambassador to Pope Urban VI, to tender him obedience. Much is said about his exemplary piety by the annalist Rinaldi.

In the year 1414 the conversion of Samogitia was accomplished, where the principal worship had been that of the sun, and since the Catholic priests did not know the Samogitian language, Władysław V performed the office of apostle, instructing those people in the mysteries of the faith. Martin V therefore declared him vicar of the Roman Church in his realms and provinces, in order better to spread the light of the Gospel  p31 among the barbarians, and to reduce the Greeks to the obedience of the Apostolic See. Similar favors were granted by Martin V to Vytautas Alexander, Duke of Lithuania. He and the king refused to take up the defense of the Bohemian heretics against the emperor Sigismund, even though the latter had done them harm. They did, however, send Sigismund Korybut to Bohemia: but in 1428 Martin V admonished the king and the duke to recall him. Eugene IV appointed Isidore, the archbishop of Kyiv, as legate a latere in Lithuania, and then created him cardinal: the article Kiovia (q.v.) contains much information regarding Lithuania, whose princes always had the metropolitans of Kyiv under their protection. Under Casimir IV son of Jogaila, Grand Prince of Lithuania in 1440 and King of Poland in 1445, the Poles confirmed that they would thenceforth be but one people with the Lithuanians, and it was decided that the king would be elected in Poland, that the Lithuanians would have seats and votes in the Diet, that the currency would be the same, and that each nation would follow its ancient customs. Pope Gregory XIII founded a college in Vilnius, and in 1583 created Jurgis Radvila [Jerzy Radziwiłł] cardinal: a Lithuanian nobleman, of the dukes of Ołyka and Nieśwież, bishop of Vilnius, who died in Rome in 1600. In 1709 Clement XI, by the constitution Desiderantibus (Bull. Rom. vol. X. par. I p209) erected the monasteries of the Benedictines of Lithuania as a congregation with the title of Holy Cross. Benedict XIV, by the constitution Inter plures, of May 2, 1744 (Bull. Magn. vol. XVI p198), approved the union of the congregation of the Basilian monks of the Holy Trinity of Lithuania, with those under the Patronage of the Blessed Virgin of Poland. The Basilians having taken over the chief dignities of the secular clergy, the chapters and the collegiate church came to be constituted of Basilians only, despite frequent admonitions by the Holy See.

At the time of the first partition of Poland (q.v.), in 1773, a considerable portion of Lithuania passed to Russia (q.v.), constituting the gubernias of Mahilioŭ, Polotsk and Vitebsk. Thus Russia incorporated the great part of Lithuania that fell to her into Podolia and Volhynia. What still remained to the Polish monarchy comprised the six voivode­ships of Vilnius, Troki, Polotsk, Navahrudak, Brześć [Brest-Litovsk] and Minsk; the first two were in Lithuania proper; the others were in Ruthenian Lithuania, which was divided into White Russia, Black Russia and Polesia; Samogitia was annexed to Lithuania. By the partitions of 1793 and 1795 Russia received from Lithuania the territory now constituting the gubernias of Vilnius, Grodno and Minsk, and Prussia (q.v.) received a territory which is now part of the regency of Gumbinnen in the province of East Prussia. The fifth Russian section is known today by the name of Lithuania. Until the Russian conquest Lithuania had three Latin bishoprics, one for Samogitia, that of Smolensk for White Russia, and the third of Vilnius for Lithuania, which was also often called the bishopric of Lithuania. The city of Smolensk having been ceded by treaties to Russia, for two centuries Catholics, mainly nobles, emigrated to Poland: the bishop  p32 did not reside in Smolensk and was pretty much in partibus. This episcopal see and that of Livonia having been abolished by the Russians, in their stead Catherine II obtained from Pius VI the erection of a bishopric for all Russia, later a metropolitan archbishopric, in Mahilioŭ. The bishopric of Kyiv having been destroyed thru the ruthlessness of Catherine II herself, the Emperor Paul I, while yet wishing to placate the Catholic Church, did not dare to re-establish it, but as a sort of compensation, and with the consent of Pius VII, founded the bishopric of Minsk in Ruthenian Lithuania; and thus ancient Lithuania came to have the archbishopric of Mahilioŭ, and the bishoprics of Minsk, Vilnius and Samogitia. For further information on Lithuania, especially ecclesiastical, in addition to the articles cited one may read the following. Minsk, episcopal see of both the Latin Rite and the Uniate Greek Rite. Pinsk and Turovia, Uniate episcopal sees of the Greek-Ruthenian rite. Uladimiria and Brest, episcopal sees of the Greek-Ruthenian rite. Vilnius, episcopal see with four suffragans. In 1839, as mentioned in the article Kiovia, mainly due to the efforts of the schismatic Siemaszko, bishop of Lithuania, the Ruthenian church was separated from the Catholic Church and joined to the schismatic Russian church.

(my translation)