Heavenly guardian and/or a national hero?

The paper analyses the image of St Casimir as it is reflected in the Lithuanian underground periodical press of the 1970s and 1980s. The analysis rests on the definition of a national hero proposed by Stefan Czarnowski in 1919. The aim of the analysis was to check if St Casimir was depicted as a national hero in the periodical press of the period discussed, how and from what historical, symbolical or other elements this image was built, and whether it had other variants. At least three variants of depicting St Casimir as a national hero can be recognized: (1) the historical variant, which was characteristic of the authors of the underground press and representatives of the intelligentsia, (2) the ‘civic’ variant, which was disseminated by the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, and (3) the ‘Balt’ variant, linking St Casimir to the pre-Christian images of Lithuanian history. It should be emphasized that these three types emerged as elitist in the environment of the intelligentsia, while the research material did not make it possible to establish whether it had taken root in other layers of society. Therefore these types can be seen as projects of revival and actualization of St Casimir’s cult that was ‘triggered’ by two anniversaries (St Casimir’s death and Christianization of Lithuania) celebrated in the 1980s