Catholic Church and Reformation in Žemaitija (Samogitia) (the 16 th C.): fundamental features of development

Hitherto little attention has been paid by scholars to the development of the Reformation in Žemaitija for several reasons. We should note not only the fact that the fire that struck the Vilnius Calvinist community in 1611 destroyed or dispersed many of the sources which might have helped uncover the details of this process. The situation with research into basic Catholic social history in Žemaitija is not much better. Two specialist studies appeared in 1992-1993 from the pen of G. Błaszczyk. However, despite the decade or more which has passed since then, the arguments that historian set forth for the development of the network of separate Catholic parishes has not been subject to serious examination. Recently I. Lukšaitė has published several works devoted to the Reformation as a “process” in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the sixteenth century and these help us to examine essential sixteenth-century confessional processes in Žemaitija too