Klaipėdos universitetas

This study uses letters, tax records and other sources to study the maintenance of Lutheran clergy in Prussia between 1540 and 1570, concentrating on the example of the material life of the Ragnit pastor Martynas Mažvydas, namely his clothes, landholding, his parish and personal property, the sources of his income, his expenditure, his economic life, and his close and more distant personal connections. The example of this father of Lithuanian-language literature reveals the domestic aspect of the everyday life of Prussian Lutheran clergy.

The paper analyses the techniques and methods of creating propaganda narratives about Lutherans in the chronicle of Dominican monk Simon Grunau (the early 16th c.). It examines how, during the Reformation, in the debates of the propaganda character between its supporters and opponents, narratives or their complexes were used with the intention to belittle the image and the arguments of the opponents. It also explains how the Dominicans’ common European experience of the fight against the spreading Reformation was used in the stories of Grunau’s chronicle about the Reformation gaining a foothold in Prussia.

On the basis of an analysis of legal documents, the article reviews the reglamentation of funeral rites in Prussia in the 16th to the 18th c. with the aim of disclosing the content of the legal orders and the intensity of reglamentation in the field of funeral. On the other hand, the regulation implemented by the Church and the state is sought to be reviewed as one of the components and consequences of the process of confessionalization.

Authors present problems connected with horse sacrifices in Early Middle Ages in Prussia. Discoveries nearby Poganowo site IV hill-fort, create new possibilities to discuss about Prussian religion in Early Middle Ages. Stone statue, cairns, hearths and remains of sacrificed horses have similarities to numerous cult places in Europe and in Asia.

The article is devoted to the new historical investigations concerning the project of Anti-King Confederacy in Lithuania in 1788. The oligarchs opposing the King Stanisław August Poniatowski attempted to wreck his plan of making an alliance with Russia. Their plan was to establish in coordination with Prussia a confederacy outside the structures of Polish-Lithuanian Parliament. It is known that two Lithuanian oligarchs: Karol Radziwiłł (then the Voivode in Vilnius) and Michał Kazimierz Ogiński (the Commander-in-Chief of the Lithuanian Army) sketched a project of confederacy in Lithuania. Up until autumn 1788 both did not collaborate with the opposition and were very cautious in their political moves.