There Is No Treasure More Precious Than Books for Study: The Development and Heritage of the Vilnius Augustinian Library

Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis

Abstract

The historical memory of the Augustinian monastery in Vilnius, founded between 1673 and 1675, traces its roots back to the Middle Ages. The community believed that Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania established the Augustinian monastery in Brest in 1380. The founder’s portrait was preserved in the Vilnius monastery, fostering a cult around Vytautas. Duke Butautas, also known as Henrikas, Vytautas’s brother and a former courtier of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg, who was believed to have died of the plague in 1380, was buried in St. Thomas Church, belonging to the Augustinians of Prague. In gratitude, Vytautas donated church utensils to them. The Vilnius Augustinians inherited the historical memory of Vytautas, documented in the monastery’s chronicles and in a portrait of the Grand Duke brought from Brest.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, Augustinians settled in Central Europe, and the monk Sebastian from the Brest monastery participated in the formation of the independent Polish Augustinian province in 1547. In Prague’s St. Thomas Augustinian Monastery, general studies for the Augustinian Province of Bavaria, which included Polish and Lithuanian monasteries until the early 16th century, operated from 1300. In Vilnius, the Augustinians developed studies in theology, philosophy, logic, and grammar, and ran a novitiate. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, they engaged in studies at Vilnius University. In 1686, Augustinian D. Grabiński, the future provincial of the Polish Augustinians, earned his Doctor of Theology diploma there. In the 19th century, Augustinians W. Gineyt, K. Wychorowski, and R. Pietkiewicz attended the University’s Senior Priest Seminary. In 1820, studies in moral and dogmatic theology and church history were active at the Vilnius monastery. Like the Prague monastery, which had about 350 book titles in the early 15th century (now with 18,000 volumes), the Vilnius monastery assembled a collection necessary for the community’s spiritual and intellectual culture. In 1804, the main library of the Vilnius monastery had 956 volumes, growing to 1,257 books in 1848, divided into 12 sections, including sermons, asceticism, moral theology, rhetoric, poetry, and literature. Besides religious writings, the Augustinians in Vilnius expanded their knowledge in philosophy, history, literature, and medicine, collecting works by authors belonging to their order (Giovanni Lorenzo Berti, Engelbert Klüpfell, Carol Van Hoorn, Benignus Sichrowski, Cornelius Curtius) and possessing around 40 books printed in Vilnius. In addition to the main library, the Augustinians in Vilnius assembled collections in the novitiate, church, and confraternity, including books bound in velvet and saffiano leather with silver bindings. The library experienced growth until the 18th century, as a result of the increasing number of monks, which reached 60 in 1786. According to the Augustinian eremitic tradition, the library in Vilnius was situated in the church, above the treasury, in a locked room of approximately 20 sq. m., accessible via a wooden staircase through a two-panel door. Library management adhered to the Rule and Constitutions, directing that the main library’s books should be kept separately from liturgical ones, which found their place in the sacristy. A 1627 constitution emphasized that “there is no treasure more precious than books for study,” detailing storage, librarian’s duties, cataloguing, and reading protocols. The book collection was assembled from private library donations ( J. Mojski, M. Birukiewicz), monks’ savings, and voluntary donations (F. Ro- koczewski). It is likely that the library in Vilnius was augmented by the Bernardines of Dotnuva, and books may have been acquired during the Augustinians’ travels to Italy to take part in general chapters. The future prior of the Vilnius monastery and the Augustinian provincial Erasmus Bartold was friends with the rector of Bibliotheca Angelica in Rome, Giovanni Lorenzo Berti.

In 1808, after the transfer of the monastery’s premises to the Senior Priest Seminary, part of the Vilnius book collection was moved to the newly established Kaunas monastery. However, in 1820, 337 titles, including philosophy and theology manuscripts, returned to Vilnius. In 1865, 2,032 volumes from the Kaunas Augustinian monastery, which was closed in 1864, were handed over to the Kaunas gymnasium, among them those that were previously held in Vilnius, including A Thesaurus of Medical Practice (Venice, 1733), A Guide to Medical Practice (Nuremberg, 1714), The Vilnius Dispute (Torun, 1599). Z. Wasilewski’s Logics or Dialectics (1784), J. Stanislawski’s Compendium of Logics (1686), and M. Birukiewicz’s Key Philosophical Postulates (1800) also travelled from Vilnius to Kaunas. Some books from the Vilnius Augustinian library were confiscated by the tsarist authorities in 1847. In 1852, the Vilnius Augustinian church was placed under Carmelite auspices, and in 1854, it was closed. The monks likely took some books to the still-operating Kaunas monastery, which was eventually closed in 1864.

During the current research, books of 9 titles (10 storage units) from the Vilnius Augustinian library were identified in Vilnius and Kaunas memory institutions: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania (4 publications), Kaunas County Public Library (2), and Vilnius University Library (3). Surviving books include religious works and those reflecting intellectual ties with the European Augustinian tradition. Notably, Miguel Bartolomé Salon’s work On Justice and Law, originating from the Augustinian library, eventually found its way to the Jesuit College in Kražiai and then to Kaunas. This highlights connections between Vilnius, Kaunas, and the monasteries of Samogitia, showcasing elements of the early national revival in the 19th century, particularly a predominant Samogitian-Lithuanian influence within the Augustinian order.