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Many of the printing houses in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that operated during the 17th-18th centuries belonged to institutions the biggest part of which consisted of Catholic monk monasteries. Despite belonging to one group, the development path of each printing house and its contribution to book culture has unique features. Of the four institutional printing houses operating in the 18th century in Vilnius, the printing house of the Franciscan Conventuals Monastery was the first to be closed and its operations terminated. The purpose of the article is to identify the following causes behind the issues and eventual closure of this printing house. Based on the expenses and income book of this printing house for the period 1752-1769 (it is preserved at the Department of Manuscripts of Vilnius University Library,) this paper examines various aspects of the Vilnius Franciscan Conventuals monastery printing house: funds, sources of equipment and paper, building location, relations with employees and hired craftsmen, orders, sources of income, profitability. In order to better understand the specificity of the institutional press, an effort was made to establish a link between the research outcome and the wider context by addressing the question of the impact of both the society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Franciscan Order itself on the destiny of the printing house. In addition, the book of expenses and income reveals new biographical data about Vilnius engraver Franciszek Balcewicz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is devoted to the history of cultural relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Moscovian Rus' as well as the artifacts that testify to it. The object of the research is a Vilnius transcript of the Health Garden (a translation of Gart der Gesundheit (1492) into Russian) kept in the Wróblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (LMAVB RS F22-25). The aim of the article is to present a revised codicological description of the object, identifying the features of the Vilnius transcript and its links with the culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This aim is achieved by using codicological, comparative and textual methods, compiling a detailed codicological description of the copy, analyzing the architecture and internal structures of the code, and identifying differences or similarities between the Vilnius, Flor, Uvarov, and Shelonin copies of the Health Garden. Based on the gathered data, the circumstances of compiling the code are clarified. The study identified the following features of the Code. The large-scale codex, created in Moscow between the 17th and 18th centuries, is not a homogeneous object. It consists of two different editions: the index is closer to the Uvarov transcript and the main text to the Kharkov / Flor transcript. The second feature is careful preparation of the transcript. The codex was drafted as an exemplary edition of an old manuscript and is richly illustrated. Colored pigments were used for decoration, leaving traces of gilding. The edges of the Codex block were painted and decorated in ornamental prints. This allows us to consider the high social status of the client of the code. The third feature is the completeness of the text of the Vilnius copy. It consists of the most comprehensive block of indexes; the main text has been supplemented with new objects, enriched with new images; the text contains as many as 237 names of medicinal substances and 38 minerals in Russian. The remarks and additions contained in the previous transcripts became an integral part of the texts of the Vilnius transcript. The identified features, overlapping formal features, and organization scheme of the text, as well as the same manner of illustration, gave reason to search for a place where all the mentioned copies - Flor, Uvarov, Shelonin - as well as other old prints or their translations could have been seen by the creators of the Vilnius transcript. It is believed that such a place could have been the The Apothecary Chancery. Some Polonisms are found in the text; the works of authors from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were used in the Rus' at that time and thus encourage a closer look at the translations and the search for citizens from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth who could have participated in the works. The research clarifies the available knowledge about the transcript kept in Vilnius. The information gathered is expected to help book historians clarify the origin of the codex, its production environment, and its place in the Gart der Gesundheit's line of translations and transcripts; this paper will make it possible to identify other stored fragments. The article is supplemented with a comparative table of the structure and content of the Vilnius transcript of the Health Garden and a decor picture of the code block. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the development and the contents of the library of Ignacy Oginski, appointed elder of the Darsūniškis and Vaiguva communities; his collection of books is discussed with an emphasis on how the sense of self as well as geneological and religious identity are expressed. The library of I.Oginski is discussed within the context of the history of his family and closest relatives as well as his connections with the Bernardines of Trakai. The bibliographical and provenance analysis is founded on I. Oginski's books, which are stored in Vilnius University Library (10 specimens); also published at the end of this paper is a list of books bestowed by I. Oginski to the Trakai Bernardine Monastery, which itself was added into the 1787 catalogue of the monastery's library. It was determined that I. Oginski belonged to the third order of the Franciscan tertiaries and was a financial affairs trustee (i.e., a syndic, Lat. Sindicus Apostolicus) of the Trakai Bernardine Monastery, which he, together with his mother Antonina Oginska, had amply sponsored and to which he bequeathed upon death a sum of 7 thousand Lithuanian Zloty. I. Oginski bestowed his personal library, which consisted of 201 volume, to the Bernardines on March 29, 1786 based on a testament written in Kruonis. It contained not only the more traditional printed materials but also some sheet music characteristic of courtly culture, ledgers, and silva rerum manuscripts. Noteworthy is the prayer "On the Appeal for a Fulfilling Life" (Pol. O uproszenie stanu życia przyzwoitego), handwritten by I. Oginski himself. A large part of the library consisted of ascetic lectures, spiritual exercises, and sermons typical of the Bernardine monks, but the collection was not limited in this aspect, as it also had some secular French works from the Enlightenment period and textbooks printed by the publishing house of the Vilnius Piarists. The considerable number of historical works and books containing dedications with references to the merits of the Oginskis to the state and the Church shows that I. Oginski was particularly attentive of his family history. Generally, the library demonstrates quite clearly a promotional-religious aspect of I. Oginski's genealogical sense of self and identity. And here, too, the ascetic literature supplements the data from other sources regarding I. Oginski's piety and his belonging to the tertiary community. The carried out study of I. Oginski's identity and his personal library's development and the relevant associations confirms the available possibilities of using the approaches and methodologies of cultural anthropology and social communication in book science studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The subject of the research depending to the history of the librarianship of Lithuania is directly social situation connected to the political and in the state in the beginning of the 19th century and the dispersion of the ideas of the Enlightenment all over Europe. The article explores various historical sources (library manuscript catalogues, book proveniences, orders of tsar, correspondence of Vilnius University with the imperial administration) to investigate the period from the time Lithuania was annexed by Russia and Vilnius Jesuit Academy was reorganised to the imperial university in 1803 by tsar Alexander I up to the date Vilnius University activity was interrupted by the orders of tsar Nicholas I in 1832, which coincided with the noticeable alteration in the educational system, new subordination and points of the academical community, changed structure, financing, replenishment methods and finally the partition of Vilnius University library. The main notice of the article is to refer to a description of influence of the imperial government to the library and Vilnius University community as the most educated part of Lithuanian society of this epoch for compare appropriate characteristics with and the substantiality at the end of the 18th century when the local community and its library was under leadership of the order of Jesuits (dissolved in Europe in 1773) to examine existing positive estimations of the traditional historiography on the issue. The research covers some directions of Vilnius academical community activity under changing conditions related to the replenishing of the library (using traditional and the new forms), management, catalogues rewriting, imperial censorship, propaganda and the painful partition of book collection confiscated from the closed Vilnius University and lifted to Kiev and Charkov universities, the gymnasium of Orsha (now -- Mogilev district, Belarus) and to other libraries of the empire of Russia. After the detailed analysis of significant historical documents kept in Lithuanian State Historical Archive and Vilnius University Library it is recovered the negative impact of the Russian imperial Government authority both for the local community and its library as well. It is disclosed that next to particular progressive changes in the field of the library financing and replenishing of the book collection by European science papers and popular periodicals, such as "Journal des sçavans" by D. De Sallo (Paris, 1665-1797), "Allgemaine Literatur Zeitung" by F. J. J. Bertuch (Halle, 1804-1849), "Bibliotheca italiana, o sia Giornale di letteratura scienze ed arti compilato da vari letterati" (Milano, 1816-1840), "The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufacturers, Fashions and Politics" by R. Ackermann (London, 1809-1829), "The Repertory of patent inventions, and other discoveries and improvements in arts, manufactures, and agriculture" (London, 1825-1862), "The Annals, Edinhourgh Medical und Surgical Journal" (Edinbourgh, 1805-1855, etc.). The Russian imperial authorities forwarded significant loses of values, changed essential points of members of the local academical community, limitated the access of works of modern European authors (Voltaire, C. F. de Volney, P. H. Holbach, D. Diderot, etc.) and influenced the straitening of dispersion of ideas of the Enlightenment, influenced the obsolescence of Vilnius University library and the noticeable interruption of development of the traditional European librarianship in Vilnius social environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]