Lietuvos atsivertimas: pagonys barbarai tampa vėlyvųjų viduramžių krikščionimis

Preface -- Introduction -- Tepid Beginnings and the First Martyrs: Adalbert-Wojciech and Bruno of Querfurt -- High Hopes on Difficult Terrain: Mindaugas – the First and Last King of Old Lithuania -- How to Play with Western Christians: a Battle of Wits between the Literate and the Illiterate -- Going East, Facing West: Pagan Lithuania and Christian Neighbours -- Orthodox and Franciscan Martyrs: Spiritual and Bodily Arms Talk -- Grassroots Christianity in Pagan Lithuania and the Final Turn: the Road from Vilnius to Cracow -- The Demonstration of Christian Power in Vilnius in 1387 and Its Aftermath -- How to be Big in Europe: Convert the Pagans, Reduce the Schismatics -- Bulwark of Latin and Greek Christendom? -- Supplications and Indulgences -- Lithuanian Catholics go to Court -- Diocesan Structures and Reform -- Epilogue: From Pagan Europe to Christian Europe -- List of abbreviations -- Manuscript sources -- Bibliography -- List of maps and illustrations -- Index. Medieval Lithuania was the last state in Europe to accept Christianity officially, pagan Lithuanians converted to Roman Catholicism in 1387; the westernmost part of the country, known as Žemaitija (Samogitia), became ‘Christian’ only in 1417, when the diocese of Medininkai was established by the commission of the Council of Constance and through the good offices of King Jogaila of Poland and Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania. It took almost a millennium from Clovis to Jogaila to complete the project known as Christian Europe: eleventh-hour Christians arrived not long before the Discovery of the New World and the final break-up of medieval Christendom. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the road the medieval Lithuanians took tip-toeing a delicate line between Latin and Greek Christendom. Once crossed, Lithuanians embraced essentially all paraphernalia of late-medieval Christian spirituality thus becoming a recognizably European nation. In its scope and detailed analysis this monograph is the first attempt to introduce English readership to the arcane world of Baltic-speaking tribesmen who succeeded in countering expansionist Latin and Russian Orthodox Europe by employing much the same means and devices as their Christian neighbours; it also examines how Lithuanian society adopted and adapted Christian institutions and practices during the long fifteenth century he Conversion