Virgil in Lithuania: Francesco Petrarch's interactions with paganism in the fourteenth century

ENThis article examines two margin comments found in the Codex Ambrosianus, Francesco Petrarch's manuscript of the works of Virgil, which mention the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the practices of its pagan inhabitants. These margin comments have yet to be fully discussed by historians of medieval Lithuania or Petrarch scholars, but they offer important evidence of the cultural exchange that came out of the Baltic Crusade. Though scholarship on the Grand Duchy has focused intensely on the political and military aspects of the Baltic Crusade, cultural exchange played an equal role, and it had a much greater influence on Christian Europe than has previously been attributed. This is especially important when we consider the later significance of Petrarch's works for the development of humanism. Such scholarship changes our understanding of how Petrarch conceived of the relationship between classical antiquity and his own medieval world. [From the publication]