| Abstract [eng] |
This dissertation explores how the Latin language and culture influenced the formation of the Early Modern ethno-political identity of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It examines Latinitas not merely as a linguistic phenomenon, but as a universal cultural code, enabling the articulation of political sovereignty, historical subjectivity, and collective memory. The study demonstrates that Latin culture, deeply embedded in the Western intellectual tradition, helped the elites of the Duchy to develop a proto-ethnic identity. By appropriating a system that included myth-symbol complex, foundational narrative of origin, and the paradigms of translatio imperii, translatio studii, and translatio iuris, the Duchy’s authors crafted a coherent self-image based on the strengthened cultural unity. Interdisciplinary in nature, the research applies historical ethnosymbolism and integrates methods from political science, literary studies, cultural history, and intellectual history. Rather than providing a linguistic biography or an institutional history of reading, it focuses on the symbolic dimensions of identity construction. The analysis relies on the array of Latin sources—literary works, heroic poetry, historiography, legal documents, and occasional writings—supported by contextual materials in Old Ruthenian and Polish. These sources reveal how the Latin cultural model facilitated the reception of Western Christendom, molded the community’s spatiotemporal frameworks of memory, and anchored the legitimacy and autonomy of the emerging ethnie. The dissertation thus rethinks the concept of ethnicity in the Early Modern period and underscores the critical role of Latin culture in shaping Lithuania’s historical subjectivity and political self-understanding. |
