Lietuvos istorijos institutas

If register is an essential part of language description, as has been stressed in past decades, it cannot be left out of consideration in the historic stages of a language, even though we have no direct grasp of its situational-functional contexts there. Although time-consuming and methodologically challenging, this is a necessary undertaking. The paper takes up the challenge, using the examples of Old Lithuanian and Old Latvian, where the beginning of written transmission roughly coincides with the spread of the Reformation and its counter-

The third edition of Wujek’s Poſtilla Catholicka Mnieyſza (W3 1590) is commonly regarded as the main source of Daukša’s postil, though it has been previously suggested in earlier investigations that some of the sermons might have been translated from the second edition of Wujek’s postil (W2 1582). From the evidence adduced here, it can be shown that all three of the earliest editions (W1 1579/80, W2–3) have entered into Daukša’s translations, exhibiting a clear distribution within the postil. Furthermore, it became evident that within the sermons a distinction must be made between pericopes, expositions and marginalia. The expositions can only be based on one of the three editions of W1–3 respectively, whereas the pericopes often seem to have additional, hitherto unidentified Polish, Latin or even Lithuanian sources. The marginalia as well as the chapter headings are, in turn, rather technical in nature and are mostly taken from W3, which clearly served as the model for the layout of Daukša’s postil.

Three handwritten copies of an order issued by George Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg- Ansbach, have recently come to light in the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Berlin). Two of these, A and B, had been edited before by Jurgis Gerullis (1927), but were meanwhile considered lost. The third one, K, has been newly discovered in a file of drafts which also contained the German drafts both for the text of the order and the Duke’s accompanying letter to the church administrations of Tilsit and Ragnit. It is edited here with the variants from A, B and a photograph of the lost copy U, and together with the two German drafts. The edition is accompanied by a full commentary and glossary. George Frederick, nephew of the first Prussian duke Albert of Brandenburg, took over the administration of the Duchy of Prussia after Albert’s son had been declared unfit to rule. The order, dating from December 1578 and addressed to the church administration of Tilsit, admonishes the members of the Protestant church district of Tilsit to fulfil their obligations as Christians and refrain from heathen practices. It is the earliest extant administrative document written in Old Lithuanian.