The Ruthenian Burgomaster and his library: a Vilnius inventory from 1648

ENA. POSTHUMOUS inventory of the worldly possessions of Stefan Lebiedzicz, a Uniate burgomaster of Vilnius, was conducted on 27 September 1649 and entered into the acta of the city magistracy. It was printed in 1878 in volume 9 of the Akty, izdavaemye Vilenskoiu arkheograficheskoiu komissieiu (AVAK), with all the scholarly care characteristic of that estimable series. The text has drawn some cursory attention focused exclusively on the list of books that were registered as a part of the burgomaster’s estate. (That list is published as an appendix here, with a few corrections vis-a-vis the edition printed in A VAK.) Maria Lowmianska devoted two paragraphs to the collection in her study of “Vilnius before the Muscovite Invasion of 1655,” and Maria Topolska made a few references (led astray a bit by Lowmianska) in her panoramic overview of “reader and book in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the period of the Renaissance and Baroque.” Aivas Ragauskas has corrected some of the doubtful assertions Lowmianska and Topolska made regarding Lebiedzicz’s Catholicism: Lebiedzicz remained faithful to the Greek rite-reading Catholic books does not a Roman Catholic make! Further, his putative studies at the Vilnius Jesuit Academy, as well as the notion that he might have inherited part of the library from a bookish father, remain in the realm of pure speculation. One can understand, however, why Lowmianska and Topolska felt the need to make these baseless assertions: Lebiedzicz’s collection is remarkable for its place and time, and the question remains how he amassed it and what sort of learning stood behind it. This was, after all, not primarily a scholar but a merchant, specializing (so it would seem) in iron goods and silver, and a longtime member of the Vilnius magistracy. [...].