Lithuania

LITHUANIA. - Baltic republic, which proclaimed itself independent from the Russian Empire on 16 February 1918 and was annexed, as a federated republic, by the U.S.S.R. on 22 July 1940. Following the return of Vilna and its territory (6,656 sq km with 458,000 inhabitants), obtained from the U.S.S.R. on 10 October 1939, the area of Lithuania rose to 62,550 sq km.

I. GEOGRAPHY

The territory is a strip of the great lowland plain and, like it, is flat and even better suited to agriculture than the other two Baltic Republics.

Its coastal frontage on the Baltic, by contrast, is narrow (90 sq km, and even more noticeably so after the loss of Memel in March 1939, annulled with the return of the Soviets in 1944).

The population, which numbered 3.3 million inhabitants in 1940, suffered greatly from the deportations that accompanied the German and Russian occupations, and from the exodus of the Germans, who constituted a notable minority (1.4% of the total). At that time Lithuanians made up 84% of the population; Jews 7.7%, Poles 3.2% and Russians 2.7%. The capital, which had first been established at Kaunas (153,000 inhabitants in 1939), was moved after 1941 to Vilna (210,000 inhabitants), which the Lithuanians have always regarded as the center of their nation.

Lithuania has a purely agricultural economy (77% of the population was engaged in it), with the production of cereals and above all of flax (a State monopoly) and of hemp. Its forest reserves are considerable: timber feeds the cellulose and paper industries. Livestock raising was also flourishing (1.2 million head of cattle) and made possible a notable export of meat and butter. Lithuania's incorporation into the Soviet Union has not failed to produce a profound upheaval in the country's economic structure, of which, however, little is known.

Giuseppe Carsci

II. CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY

The Lithuanians, together with their neighbors the Latvians and Prussians (the latter having disappeared under the domination of the Teutonic Order), belong to the Indo-European stock. Having remained for a long time relatively isolated, they have preserved their ancient linguistic forms.

The present-day Lithuanian language, with its archaic forms, is closer than any other European language to ancient Sanskrit.

From the time of the corded-ware pottery of the Neolithic period (ca. 1800 B.C.), traces of the ancient ancestors of the Lithuanians are found in the area between the Vistula and Dvina rivers. Tacitus, in the Germania, distinguishes them with the generic name Aestiorum gentes, and Ptolemy (150 A.D.) already names two distinct tribes. The numerous finds of Roman objects (ornaments, coins) demonstrate the existence of flourishing cultural and commercial relations with the Romans in the 1st-4th centuries A.D.

1. Ancient religion

Modern research in the field of the ancient religion of the Lithuanians shows that it consisted in the spiritualization of the various forces of nature and their manifestations.

In his conception of the world, the ancient Lithuanian saw no clear dividing line between man, the plant or animal kingdom, or the celestial bodies. In every manifestation of the surrounding nature he discerned the presence of life, whose varied manifestations he attributed to mysterious vital forces.

Certain beings (animals, plants, etc.) appeared to him to possess a mysterious life in a preeminent degree. Thus it is that in historical sources, almost down to the 17th century (including in the reports of the nuncios), mention is made of the survival among the people of traces of ancient paganism in the veneration of the serpent, which people kept in the corners of their houses. Among other animals, judging also from the ornamental motifs of folk art, it seems that the horse, the goat, the ox and the rooster were also objects of particular predilection.

Trees too were held in particular consideration: among them the oak, the linden, the rowan, the fir, the maple and the poplar; and entire woods, or watercourses, or lakes, or large morainic boulders, which appeared isolated somewhere on the Lithuanian plain, were considered sacred. Indeed, hundreds of place names containing the sacred root alk still remain in the toponymy (Alkalkalnis, Alkamiškis, Alkupis and similar). It seems, therefore, that at the basis of these cults lay the concept of defending, preserving, inciting and exalting the forces of life, against which evil, as the bringer of death, incessantly lies in wait.

Death and evil were imagined as spirits, mysterious immaterial forces that lay in wait for humans at every step and could dwell both in the various parasites that bring diseases and in the eyes of man (the evil eye). The sound of a little bell also served for conjurations, and it brought good luck to carry with oneself a rowan stick.

The most powerful means of conjuration and purification, which annihilates and consumes everything, was considered to be fire. It was believed that even in a fire it was the spirit of fire that powerfully and mysteriously manifested itself in the lightning bolt, which, setting flame, demanded and took of itself the sacrifice of man's goods. Hence the rites of spontaneous offerings, burned to propitiate the divinity of fire. Of this particular cult there are many survivals that have tenaciously preserved themselves even after the introduction of Christianity; even today no one, not even a child, would spit in the hearth or in any case on a lit fire. Another means of purification was water.

The force of life is perpetuated by the concomitant action of a masculine element represented by the divinity of the lightning bolt, Perkūnas, a very vague personification of lightning and thunder, and of a feminine element: Mother Earth, Žemyna (Žeme = earth), who produces all the manifestations of life; and because of this power of hers to give life, to produce fruits, she was considered sacred. Neither the one nor the other ever had, beyond the proper name, anthropomorphic features or any precise plastic representation. Only literary Romanticism, on the faith of sources anything but scientifically reliable, was able to create a kind of Lithuanian Olympus.

In listing the various Lithuanian divinities one must avoid the error into which historians and men of letters of the 19th century fell, who, basing themselves solely on works of the 16th and 17th centuries, gave place names as those of divinities, listing as many as 70. In reality the names drawn from reliable chronicles are only those of Perkūnas, Žemyna and Medeine.

There emerges very clearly among the ancient Lithuanians a firm conviction in the future life. Cremation and inhumation having succeeded one another in funerary rites, irrefutable evidence of this belief has also been found in excavations, confirmed also by written sources (the term zirmen, in Lithuanian šermenys = "funeral", is already encountered in sources of the 15th century).

On anniversaries, as well as during the funerary ceremonies following the burial, foods were brought to the tombs for the souls of the deceased. J. Dlugosz recounts that in the alkai (sacred places) there existed altars belonging to individual households or to entire settlements, on which the ceremonies of incineration were performed; afterward foods were brought there on plates of wood or vegetable bark, to be left there, while drinks were poured directly onto these altars.

Until the 16th century the custom was preserved of bringing foods to the tombs as an offering to the dead, it being believed that by night their souls refreshed themselves with them. Positive data are lacking on the organization of the cult and on the existence or non-existence of a priestly hierarchy, but the latter must be excluded by the fact that there were in the religion no anthropomorphic forms of cult nor idols of well-defined divinities, of which such priests would have constituted themselves representatives. Instead, individuals are found who could assert themselves as magicians, sorcerers or holy men, and offer themselves to the people as mediators, especially in presenting propitiatory offerings to the di-

(from S. Grande, Russia - europea, Finlandia, Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania, in Terra e Nazioni, Milan 1926, p. 235)
LITHUANIA - Church of the Pazaislis monastery near Kaunas.

divinities capable of keeping evil spirits at bay, of healing with herbs or with incantations. The ancient Lithuanians in fact felt themselves surrounded by the malignant or benign influences of various spirits, whose names are known: slogūtis, kaūkas, āitvaras, laūmē, etc., and by such mediators who, according to their various specialities, were called būrtininkas, kerētojas, etc.; the documents seem to know better than the others the žyniai (žynys in the singular, from the verb žinōti = "to know").

2. Christianity

The first contacts with Christian Europe are relatively late. In 997 the attempt to evangelize the Prussian tribes undertaken by the archbishop of Prague, St. Adalbert, failed and he himself fell there as a martyr. A similar fate befell in 1009 the monk Bruno of Querfurt (a German) and his 18 companions, martyred, according to the documents, "on the borders between Lithuania and Russia."

At the beginning of the 13th century the order of the Sword-Bearers established itself along the Baltic coasts, and it soon merged (1237) with the Teutonic Order, which had shortly before moved (1230) from Palestine. The Order soon showed that it was seeking above all to extend its territorial conquests to the whole country. In fact (1283), having reached the Nemunas (Niemen) river, the Order attacked Lithuania. From the beginning of the 13th century the latter presented a strong unitary state formation under the power of King Mindaugas. In 1250 Mindaugas embraced the Christian faith and received the royal crown from Pope Innocent IV, while Lithuania was counted by the same Pontiff as forming part of the patrimony of St. Peter (1252). The first diocese of Lithuania was then erected (Lethovien. dioec.), dependent directly on the Apostolic See, and its first bishop was Christian, a priest of the Teutonic Order. The methods, however, of evangelization by fire and sword followed by the Teutonic Knights, who did not cease to devastate the country with their incursions, were not conducive to a rapid expansion of the Christian religion. Therefore with the death of Bishop Christian (1279) the diocese he had founded also came to an end. The struggles lasted almost two centuries. The Lithuanians defended themselves to the last, at the same time extending their State toward the East.

In the course of the 14th century there were repeated attempts to resume the Christianization of Lithuania. In 1322-23 Gediminas ("Rex Lithuanorum et multorum Ruthenorum") wrote for this purpose from his capital Vilnius letters to many cities of Germany, to the Franciscans, to Pope John XXII. Under his son Algirdas, in Vilnius, in Naugardukas and elsewhere the Franciscans were not only able to carry on their peaceful missionary work undisturbed, but also plainly enjoyed the protection of the Lithuanian sovereigns. In 1386 the sovereign of Lithuania Jogaila (= Ladislaus Jagiello), by marrying Jadwiga, heiress to the throne of Poland, became king of Poland itself and promised the conversion of Lithuania; this took place in Feb. 1387.

In the capital the diocese of Vilnius (dioec. Vilnensis) was also erected. The Teutonic Order, seeing its plans of conquest compromised, went about preaching that the Baptism of Lithuania was not valid and continued its military expeditions against Lithuania, but on 15 July 1410 the united forces of Lithuania and Poland, under the command of Vytautas the Great (1392-1430), completely defeated the Teutonic Order near Tannenberg. Thus the Teutonic claims to Samogitia also ceased, and the Council of Constance (1417), on the proposal of Vytautas, provided for the erection of the second Lithuanian diocese in this western part of Lithuania, in the region of Medininkai (Mednicens. dioec.) with its seat at Varniai.

Catholicism, even if introduced late, was consolidating. The long period of peace during the reign of Jogaila's son, Casimir IV grand duke of Lithuania (1440-92), was conducive to this. His son Casimir (d. at Vilnius in 1484) was enrolled by the Church in the roll of the saints as patron of Lithuania.

Catholicism subsequently found a great obstacle in the scarcity of the clergy; and this, added to the passage of the Teutonic Order to Lutheranism (1525) and to the favor shown to Calvinism by the Polonized Lithuanian nobles, contributed to the expansion of the "Reformation"; but the positions of the Catholic Church were soon regained through the zealous work of the Jesuits, Piarists, Dominicans, Basilians, Bernardines. And it also helped that the sovereigns of Lithuania, after the real union with Poland (1569) common to both States, were fervent Catholics. The Lithuanian bishops also labored much at this; for example, Merkalis Giedraitis (d. in 1609) bishop of Samogitia, who earned from the people the name of saint, and his collaborator Nicholas Daukša, who in 1595 published the first Catholic catechism in the Lithuanian language. King Sigismund Vasa (1588-1632) declared Catholicism the state religion and in 1596 the union of the "Orthodox" with the Catholic Church was proclaimed at Brest Litovsk.

In the subsequent partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795) Lithuania found itself almost entirely under Russian occupation (1795-1915). The ecclesiastical circumscriptions were reorganized; but the failed political insurrections of 1831 and 1863 brought harsh and atrocious persecutions; the German occupation of 1915 also contributed to dispersing the inhabitants, who emigrated abroad in great numbers. The reconstruction of Lithuanian independence on 16 Feb. 1918 restored freedom to the Church, which was able to normalize the question of the ecclesiastical circumscriptions (cf. the apostolic constitution Lithuanorum gente of 4 Apr. 1926) and on 27 Sept. 1927 the Voldemaras government made the Concordat with the Holy See, in which were sanctioned full freedom of worship, of jurisdiction and of governing itself according to its own canons, the exemption of ecclesiastics from military service, obligatory religious instruction, exemption from taxes for ecclesiastical property, the obligation for the State to pay every year the sums established in the concordat to the bishops and the diocesan clergy, and the full recognition given to Catholic Action.

The Second World War, which brought first the occupation by the U.S.S.R. (15 June 1940), then by Germany, and then again by Russia, destroyed everything, and there were mass deportations, massacres, imprisonments. The entire Catholic hierarchy was suppressed, the bishops either dead or in exile.

In 1949 Pope Pius XII established in Rome the Ecclesiastical College of St. Casimir, thus welcoming the requests of the archbishop metropolitan Msgr. J. Skvireckas, who donated to the young ecclesiastics a summer residence near Tivoli, while the urban seat was offered by Msgr. A. Briška, a Lithuanian parish priest in Chicago. Provision was thus made to ensure the formation of the young Lithuanian clergy destined to fill the grave losses suffered by the Church in Lithuania.

From the point of view of international law, Lithuania continues to be recognized as a sovereign national State, only temporarily prevented from the effective exercise of some of the prerogatives of its sovereignty. The constitutional organs of Lithuania, abolished within the country, continue to exist abroad, where legitimate diplomatic representatives of Lithuania function with full recognition by the governments to which they are accredited. Thus Lithuanian legations exist at the Holy See, in Washington, London, and functioning has been restored in Paris; a series of Lithuanian consulates also function in America. The Supreme Committee for the Liberation of Lithuania (V.L.I.K.), which was at the head of the resistance in the country occupied by the Nazis, after transferring its seat abroad, carries on the struggle in defense of Lithuania's rightful claim, coordinating the various initiatives of the individual Lithuanian communities in exile or emigration and acting as spokesman for oppressed Lithuania before the UN and the various governments.

III. LITERATURE

Religious poetry, which developed after the adoption of Christianity as a new vein from the very rich heritage of popular songs, is earlier in its anonymous oral form than written poetry and created songs and sacred hymns of rare beauty and intense Christian feeling. Many are sung by the people during Mass, and also in chorus within families as a collective prayer of Lent, Advent and Easter.

The first books in Lithuanian saw the light through the work of Lutheran preachers. The Jesuits, who hastened to combat them, promoted through popular preaching the publication of numerous Catholic books in the Lithuanian language. Of the writers of that period, mention is made of the canon Mikalojus Daukša (1527-1613) and the Jesuit Konstantinas Širvydas (1580-1631). A place apart is deserved by C. Duonelaitis (1714-89), author of a poem in hexameters entitled Metai (The Seasons).

From the religious literature of the 19th century stands out the new branch of didactic narrative, composed mostly of edifying tales for the people. Its prolific author was the Bishop of Samogitia Motiejus Valančius (1801-1875), followed by some Lithuanian priests, among them Dovydaitis and Tatarė. Meanwhile there arose, nourished by popular poetry, the first authentically Lithuanian representatives of learned poetry: the priest Antanas Strazdas (1763-1833), the bishop Antanas Baranauskas (1835-1902) and the priest Antanas Vienaišindys (1871-92), whose lyrical production almost immediately became popular heritage and contributed enormously to keeping alive the Catholic faith and love of country among the people. A pre-eminent place belongs to the poet of the national resurgence, the prelate Janas Maironis-Mačiulis (1862-1932). A guide for the generations of an entire era, in his lyric poetry (collected under the title Pavarario Balsni [Voices of Spring]), in his poems and in his theatrical works he expressed the ideals of the national rebirth with evocative beauty and profound optimism. In narrative and in journalism a similar influence had been exercised by the canon Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas (1860-1933). In his masterpiece Progiedruliai (Clearings), a classic of modern Lithuanian prose, no one like him knew how to show how national consciousness, besides being an inner fact of the individual soul, is also a collective fact of the soul of an entire people. Another masterpiece of Vaižgantas, wholly pervaded by a Franciscan love of creation, is Dedes vi Dodienes (Uncles and Their Wives), in which he dwells to illustrate the mysterious and subtle bonds existing between the events of nature and human life.

To the propagation and deepening of Catholic ideology the prelate Aleksandras Dambrauskas, alias Adomas Jakštat (1860-1938), dedicated his multifaceted work. A polyhedral personality, he knew how to fuse within himself harmoniously and with breadth of vision the Christian philosophy of the East (Soloviev) with Western Thomism; always on the breach in defense of Catholic values, he exercised an incalculable influence in the Catholic rebirth among Lithuanian intellectuals.

After the reconstruction of the independent State, the new literary movements reached the young writers, bringing the ideas of liberalism and Marxism alongside the other avant-garde literary tendencies in vogue in Western Europe. Nevertheless Catholics remained in the leading positions also in this period. The principal driving force of the movement of philosophical, pedagogical and social thought was Stasys Šalkauskis (d. 1942), a soul of an apostle and a thinker of solid Thomistic formation, and a connoisseur of Soloviev's philosophy. Antanas Maceina (b. 1908) grew up in his school, and now continues his literary activity in exile.

In poetry the symbolist Jonas Aleksandriškis-Aistis (b. 1904) has reached a considerable place, whose lyric poetry investigates the anguished problems of human existence, without Christian ideology managing entirely to soothe its pessimism. Paustas Kirša (b. 1891) meditates, instead, on the problem of eternity, toward which he is walking like a pilgrim, who while on the way seeks to grasp its mystery, and whereas the mists at first hindered his vision of the essence of eternity, now he clearly glimpses the Divinity as Providence that sustains all. Not a philosophical seeker like Kirša, but a prophet and herald of the eternal God is Bernardos Brazdžionis (b. 1907). In his lyrics one often encounters the antithesis between the primordial innocence of nature and humanity which, having turned away from the Creator, goes blindly together with all its civilization toward perdition. Of the poets of the present generation, Brazdžionis is perhaps the most openly Catholic and the most popular. Kazys Bradunas sings with talent the feelings of the Lithuanian rural man, tenaciously attached to his land and to God.

In the field of prose the majority of Catholic writers describe Lithuanian life with its problems. Some of them treat figures and milieu by drawing on the past and dwelling to investigate the psychology of their people. Among these a place of the first order belongs to Antanas Vaičiulaitis (b. 1906), a miniaturist of the Lithuanian landscape and evoker of the humble people's hidden sorrow. Also worthy of note are the short-story writer Juozas Grušas (b. 1901), and the novelist Vincas Ramonas (b. 1905), author of Dalkeis randonam Saulelaidy (Motes in the Red Sunset) and Kryšiai (The Crosses), which both refer to the Bolshevik invasion of Lithuania. Jurgis Jankus (b. 1906) in the form of a short-story novel has treated human destiny under the influence of the twofold totalitarian regime (Naktitant moru: The Night on the Mulberries). The Bolshevik invasion forced seventy percent of Lithuanian writers into exile: those who remained in the homeland are silent, freedom having failed.

Giuseppe Brazaitis

IV. ART

Only with the introduction of Christianity does Lithuania's integration into the common movement of Western civilization take place, and European art makes its first appearance there with the erection of numerous churches. Some art historians distinguish, as sub-styles, Baltic Gothic, Polish Renaissance and Lithuanian Baroque, and it is an undeniable fact that artistic production bears witness to a synthesis of heterogeneous elements, yielding an interesting and original result. A further artistic reworking, in the sense of a subsequent greater acclimatization and fusion with the indigenous artistic tradition, takes place through the work of anonymous craftsmen devoted to folk art, so that in this process of assimilation one comes to recognize only with some difficulty the original Western stylistic element in the metamorphosis it has undergone through successive stages of reworking. The ab antiquo existence of a vast heritage of decorative motifs and ornaments rich in pre-Christian symbolism leads to the conclusion that from time immemorial the Lithuanian people cultivated art in its various manifestations, in forms of its own.

With their conversion to Christianity the Lithuanians placed this traditional art of theirs at the service of the Christian idea. Original in their lines, in their structural details and above all in their decoration are the Lithuanian wooden churches, and the bell towers that rise isolated on the church square and reproduce architectural motifs dear to the people.

But the archaic quality of the decorative forms prevails and stands out in the innumerable rustic chapels and wooden crosses, which constitute the characteristic feature of the country, often called "the land of crosses". The variety of types of these crosses and chapels is such as to seem inexhaustible. Almost all of them, however, are characterized by a very rich halo of rays, sometimes double or triple, because in addition to the crossbar, at whose height the figure of the Crucified is applied, there is almost always a wheel-shaped halo of rays, variously radiated, in wrought iron, which crowns the top. Sometimes, in addition to the wooden carved figure of the Redeemer, there are also those of the Madonna and of St. John Nepomucene, of St. George on horseback killing the dragon, of St. Florian putting out the fire, of St. Isidore in the act of guiding the plough, of St. Anthony with the Child Jesus, of St. Francis receiving the stigmata, of the Madonna with her heart pierced by seven swords, of St. Casimir, king and patron of Lithuania. In this wooden statuary, the so-called Rupin-tojelis, that is, the pensive Christ, stands out for its effective expression of sorrow; not even great art can claim to have achieved such expressive power. Common iconographic traits are also found in folk painting and in woodcut engraving, often in several colours, which may be encountered in rural churches or in Lithuanian farmhouses.

As for learned or individual art, political circumstances allowed it to flourish again only after the revolution of 1906. Among the Lithuanian painters of that time, the powerful and profound art of M. K. Čiurlionis, painter and musician, stands foremost, along with the notable works of the portrait painter A. Varnas, of the landscape painter A. Žmuidinavicius, and of the sculptors P. Rimša and J. Zikaras. To them many other artists were added when, with the rebirth of state independence in 1918, work began on the founding of the National Art Association and the Academy of Arts, as well as of the art gallery named after M. K. Čiurlionis in free Lithuania. The young generation of Lithuanian artists, who grew up in the independent homeland, breaking away from the previous generation of nineteenth-century Romantic tendency, followed the various new contemporary currents, without however departing from the traditions of national art. - See pl. XCVIII.