History of pericope texts of Jonas Bretkūnas’s postilla (1591) : sources of the editing

The paper analyses the first printed collection of Lithuanian sermons, compiled by Jonas Bretkūnas. His “Postilla” (1591) belongs to the type of Protestant postillas which consist not only of sermons, but also excerpts from the Bible (pericopes). The paper analyses Bretkūnas’ pericopes and sources of their editing. Martin Luther’s Bible (1546 or later editions) was the main source of editing the pericopes taken by Bretkūnas from Baltramiejus Vilentas’ “Evangelijos bei Epistolos” [Gospels and Letters] (1579). Bretkūnas presented one more version of Lithuanian liturgical texts to society, thus increasing the instability of Lithuanian biblical texts; however, the main direction of his work was to establish Luther’s Bible. Bretkūnas edited Vilentas’ pericopes that had been translated from the Vulgate or the Greek New Testament, thus diminishing the number of passages of the text corresponding to those originals and distancing further from the Vulgate that had been canonised by the Catholic Church. Due to conscious and purposeful changes, the texts of Bretkūnas’ pericopes should be considered a new version of “Evangelijos bei Epistolos” texts. Bretkūnas performed a philological analysis of Vilentas’ translation and critically evaluated his every pericope. The final result reflects not only Vilentas’, but also Bretkūnas’ mentality, knowledge of exegesis and the ability to communicate information by linguistic means. No proof has been found that while editing Vilentas’ pericopes Bretkūnas used earlier Lithuanian books. The correction of the initial lines of pericopes was determined not by the translation originals, but by the concept of the Bible excerpt as a liturgical text. This attests to the pragmatic competence of Bretkūnas