1525. aasta Liivimaa keeltes trükised Euroopa raamatuloolisel taustal
Printed works in the vernacular languages of Livonia (1525) in the context of European book history

Summary/Abstract: In 1525, a barrel containing Lutheran books was confiscated in Lübeck. According to the chapter register (Actus capitulares) of Johannes Brandes, dean of the cathedral chapter of Lübeck, the shipment included masses in Estonian, Latvian and possibly Livonian. These liturgical prints, the earliest known books printed in the vernacular languages of Livonia, have not survived. This study examines them within the wider context of European and Lutheran book culture and explores their likely content and form. Before 1525, eighteen European vernacular languages, besides the traditional learned languages, had already entered print. These included the major languages of larger states and a few smaller languages whose appearance in print was facilitated by their proximity to important printing centres. The first printed works in the Livonian vernaculars, produced in 1525, broke this pattern. Their emergence was linked to the rapid progress of the Reformation in Livonia. They also belonged to the earliest phase of linguistic diversification within Lutheran print culture. According to the surviving evidence, the vernacular languages of Livonia were the first to enter print specifically as a result of the Lutheran Reformation. They likewise appear to represent the earliest known printed texts of Lutheran worship in any language other than German. From the late 1520s onwards, surviving service books appeared in the Scandinavian languages. Although the Reformation initially spread there only slightly later than in Livonia, stronger support from central authorities subsequently accelerated its institutionalisation and its impact on book production. In every smaller language that saw a substantial output of Lutheran publications before the mid-sixteenth century, this development was driven by a small number of productive authors supported by rulers or patrons. Earlier scholars interpreted the masses in the Livonian vernaculars of 1525 as adaptations of a preliminary version of Luther’s Deutsche Messe, printed only in 1526. Such a view would require remarkably rapid and extensive preparation. Jüri Kivimäe instead suggested that they may have been based on Luther’s shorter liturgical treatise, the Formula missae. While this interpretation is plausible for the German-language books confiscated in Lübeck, it is less convincing for texts in Livonia’s indigenous languages, where a theoretical liturgical treatise would have had limited practical use. Other suggestions have identified the publications as translations of Luther’s messages to Livonia, early Lutheran hymn collections, or Catholic humanist devotional works, but none is strongly supported by the surviving evidence. This study argues instead that by 1525 Lutheran writing and publishing were already firmly established across much of Germany, and that the development of evangelical liturgy in the vernacular had in several places progressed beyond Wittenberg. Before 1525, numerous evangelical liturgical texts had appeared whose titles explicitly used the term mass, just as in Brandes’s account. These were usually short pamphlets of eight to twenty leaves containing only a few key liturgical elements. Their preparation and publication required neither extensive resources nor institutional support. It is therefore likely that the mass prints in the Livonian vernaculars of 1525 were similar in character and scope.

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