Memoriale of Friars Minor Conventual, text and context: the memorial books of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries

This article seeks to analyse the memorial book of Friars Minor Conventual that started to be compiled in Vilnius in 1702 by Fr. Antoni Gumowski and was given its final shape in 1842 by Fr. Antoni Niewiarowski. The manuscript in question is kept at the Lithuanian State Historical Archive (f. 1135, ap. 20, b. 669) and now is in the editorial process. It has been composed in the convent of Vilnius and contains the overwhelming majority of the names of Conventual Franciscans who were active in Lithuanian and White Ruthenian lands from at least the sixteenth century and down to 1832. Besides, it contains a lot of miscellaneous material thus making this manuscript, speaking figuratively, a memorial reliquary of Lithuanian Friars Minor Conventual. Trying to disclose its common and specific features we have conducted a contextual investigation into almost all known and accessible memorial books that have a direct or notso-direct relation to the religious Orders of the Roman Catholic rite active in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Friars Minor of the Observance, Carmelites, Benedictines, Piarists, Trinitarians; we paid some attention to Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic memorial practices, but did not include the memorial legacy of Jesuit fathers, which is well known and well preserved). In regard to memorial culture, there are differences specific to particular Orders and even to particular convents. This comes particularly true with regard to Friars Minor Conventual who did not run the memorial practices along the lines laid down for them in the Constitutiones Urbanae (1628). They maintained memorial observances, but did this in a decentralized fashion. This becomes evident when we compare the Vilnius Memoriale with other memorial books closely related to it. The comparison becomes especially fruitful when we take into account this manuscript and two necrologies produced in the convent of Valkininkai (some 50 km south-west of Vilnius). In the parts that overlap we can observe a phenomenon which can be characterized as “parallel biographies“. Even though the Valkininkai friars did not attempt to compile a pan-Lithuanian memorial book as their confreres in Vilnius did, they produced some biographies that not infrequently contain much more precise and colourful biographical information when compared to the Memoriale of Vilnius. This observation has allowed us to advance the idea of the existence of the Valkininkai necrological school that was active in the second half of the eighteenth century and finally faded away after 1832 when Russian authorites abolished the convent itself. The necrological biographies produced in the convents of Valkininkai and Vilnius do bear strong authorial character, sometimes they were written by eyewitnesses or men who knew each other well. However, owing to the anonymous nature of this literary output, the writers thereof may not be indentified thus far. A specific problem is presented by the fact that the dates indicated in the necrologies must not be taken at face value. The discrepancies between the likely dates of death may amount from a few days to some months and sometimes to even more. Discretion is advisable