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Before we busy ourselves with the second part of the 16th century...

The death of Valdislavas I of Lithuania marked an end to the spread of the Renaissance in the lands of the Kingdom of Lithuania. While there were a few churches built with Gothic style architecture, Renaissance is the first major art and literature movement that the Lithuanians took part in and actually contributed to, however meagerly. In this eastern land, the Renaissance came late compared to Western Europe, only in the last moments of the 15th century, and was quick to vanish as well. This period in Lithuanian history is most importantly marked by widescale copying of Western artstyles and concepts with little creative thought put into adapting it for local usage. As such, most of Renaissance Lithuanian literature was written in Latin, most paintings and sculptures depicted ancient Greek and Roman deities or events - even though such concepts were alien to Eastern Europe - and on and on.

That doesn't mean that there weren't great works written by Lithuanians, even if many of them were just copying Western styles.

The greatest literary work of the Lithuanian Renaissance is, undoubtedly, Mikalojus Kerzinis's "Glinskiada" ("Glinskiad"), an over 3000 line long, written in dactylic hexameter, epic poem published in the year 1525 in Vilnius. Not much is known about the life of Kerzinis, as there are very few living records about his life, but he was likely an ethnic Lithuanian from the Upytė region. It is known from the Metrica that he was employed in the court of Valdislavas I as a court poet, and this is where he likely learned the arts of Renaissance literature and writing. In 1519, the famed former regent, Grand Chancellor and Grand Hetman Mykolas Glinskis died, and much like Alexander the Great envied Achilles on the grave of Homer that his deeds were written by such a great poet and will never be forgotten, the followers of Glinskis too feared that their protector and leader will be forgotten to time, and thus his heir, Augustas Glinskis, hired Kerzinis to create a poem about him in memory. Kerzinis broke all expectations.

The poem stars Glinskis as the main character, following his life as the Regent of Lithuania in his war against the evil and tyrannical Ivan Mikhailovich of Tver, and while it has many qualities of a panegyric, it also deals with the themes of war brutality and honor. In the poem, Glinskis is raised and taught to be a modest and pious man, always reminded that all that is material and physical will not last forever, so man should not bother with gathering riches or wealth and instead seek divine qualities. As such, modern literary historians consider "Glinskiada" to be one step in the Baroque era and one step still in the late Renaissance. Nowadays, this epic poem is considered to be one of the first great works of Lithuanian literature, with many more to come.


One of the first examples of Lithuanian literature to travel to foreign countries was Mikola Vichenski's 1544 poem "The Aurochs of Lithuania" ("Lietuvos taurai"). Extinct in the rest of Europe, yet still alive in the great forests of Central Europe, as well as in Lithuania, the aurochs were the ancestors of modern cattle, and one of the most famed beasts that roamed the land. Extremely powerful, massive and hard to find, they were the greatest prize any proud hunter could hope to reach. Mikola Vichenski, a Lithuanian Ruthenian poet from Navagrudok, on the occasion a visit to Rome in 1543, presented this small, about 800 line long Latin poem on this great beast to the Italians. This work of literature was chock full of metaphors, hyperboles and panegyrics both to the wilderness of Lithuania and this great beast - he told that "just the hot breath of this animal could kill a man" and "Only the bravest hunters dare to make a stand, / But alone. It is a great honor to fight the auroch". Not only that, but the end of the poem also contains parts about Jogaila the Great and his great successes.

Jogaila the Great was already romanticised in these times as the greatest ruler of Lithuania, and this is best seen in the 1531 panegyric "Song of Jogaila the Great" by Janas Limbojus. It had already been almost 100 years since the death of this grand duke of Lithuania, and in the times of being the second fiddle to the Visegrad, the times of Lithuania being one of the strongest countries in all of Europe was viewed in a very nostalgic light. In this panegyric, also written in Latin, Limbojus writes about the great campaigns of Ilava and Vorskla that Jogaila the Great headed, and it is the oldest known description of his rule. Jogaila is described as a tall man with a strong stature, without a beard, but still a great terror to his enemies, just both to his friends and enemies and extremely pious - pretty much all positive words you could find in the Latin language were put into this poem. The King of the time, Valdislavas I, is also exalted, as a wise and powerful ruler.

That's not to say that the only written works in Lithuania were about the past or about the great kings that once ruled the land. In 1556, Mykolas Lietuvis ("the Lithuanian") published "On the Customs of Bohemians, Hungarians and Lithuanians". This treatise is interesting, in a way that it critiques the country rather than exalts it. While the bitterness over the defeat of the Polish Succession War was gone by now, the Visegrad Union was seen as a worthy rival and opponent by the Lithuanians, and Lietuvis declares that Lithuania will never be able to take revenge on the Westerners. He hails the reforms taken by Valdislavas I, but is disgusted by the "decadence" of the Lithuanian nobility - they no longer want to wage war, they have become too wealthy, and drown themselves in alcohol. Lietuvis states that "you can't find any sober man in the streets of Vilnius, even children crave for wine or vodka", while "in Prague, if even a single drop of beer is found, then that house is torn down and the owner is punished greatly". Oddly enough, many public figures in Visegrad were complaining just as much that alcoholism and decadence is rampant in our nation, so the writer's text is obviously hyperbolized. However, that is not the point of the treatise. Mykolas states that "Charles of Luxemburg accomplished just as much as Jogaila the Great, but the difference is that his people still follow him".

He states that the Lithuanians have forgotten the rule of Jogaila the Great and have become decadent as a result. His critique of the Lithuanian nation is similar, though viewed from a civilian rather than religious manner, to Andrius Volanas's famous "The Concordate, the Godliness of the Kingdom and a New Path for the Church of Christ", which critiques the Concordate of Brest and declares the need for reform in the Lithuanian Orthodox Church.

The era of the Renaissance came and went, and so has the Lithuanian participation in it. In many ways, Lithuania was only a follower of what the Western cultures created, but it's great writers and artists have nevertheless managed to make some incredible works of art. Both artistic and non-fiction, indeed.

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