The world of manuscripts and printed books in the 16th-17th centuries during the period of GDL: links and intersections

When researching the history of book culture, it is not only important to understand the stages of its development (manuscript, printed and electronic books) but the uniting and differentiating factors of the these stages as well. The age of manuscript book in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) is considered to have taken place from the 13th to the first half of the 16th century, while the history of printed book began at the junction between the 15th–16th centuries, also known as the time period when the first printing-house in the GDL was established. Although, according to scientific literature, manuscript books were still functional during the era of printed books, little attention was paid to manuscripts in this context. It is not known how many manuscript books might have been transcribed between the second half of the 16th and early 18th century. This article aims to uncover what knowledge about manuscript books of the time period has been acquired so far, whether the traditional manufacturing style of manuscript books was retained or whether it was brought closer to the one applied to printed books. The topic of whether all objects in form of a codex should be considered manuscript books is looked into as well. The books currently stored in the Manuscript department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Science were selected as the object of this inquiry. Based on updated dating, 112 exemplars from the libraries of Suprasl, Zhyrovichy, Markov and other monasteries were selected and studied de visu from the perspective of Book Science. The results obtained are only preliminary due to the limited number of studied samples. They are, however, sufficient to formulate further directions of research. The entirety of books in the GDL was influenced by political, cultural and religious events of the period as well as by the requirements for official and private communication. Manuscript books written in Latin were not being transcribed due to strict censorship imposed by the Catholic Church, therefore the majority or remaining exemplars are written in Cyrillic for Orthodox and Uniate Churches..