The practices of the Printing house of the Vilnius Basilian Monastery (1628–1839).

The Printing house of the Vilnius Basilian Monastery has left a rich multilingual book heritage of the early modern era, but has not yet received methodical research. The aim of the dissertation is to elucidate the history of this printing company by linking its working methods and publishing trends with simultaneous processes in the Church and culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL). The study takes a complex approach to the 17th-18th centuries institutional printing house, implying social multi-layer nature of this phenomenon. Such approach makes it possible to determine how the interests of the founding Church, the printing business factors, and the public communication tendencies have evolved in the development of this institutional printing house. Thus emerges the possibility to reassess the role of an institutional printing house in shaping the traditions and values of the GDL society. In the first part, the context that stipulated the establishment of the printing house is scrutinized on several levels (the Chuch, The Order, the monastery). The second part justifies the periodization of the printing house practices and examines the legal, technical and organizational aspects. In the third part, quantitative and qualitative (originality) indicators of the production of the printing house are determined, as well as the thematic and typological structure, influenced by the changes in the Church and society of the GDL up to the early 19th century. The study is the first to highlight the role of an institutional printing house in the GDL of 17th-18th centuries in initiating the activity of several professional groups that ensured the communication of books