Military Courtesy in Sixteenth-Century Lithuania: Il Cavaliere of Domenico Mora
Military Courtesy in Sixteenth-Century Lithuania: Il Cavaliere of Domenico Mora

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the rare military courtesy treatise, Il Cavaliere (The Knight), by Domenico Mora, published at Vilnius by Daniel Lancicius (Lenèickis or Ùæczycki) in 1589. After a brief summary of the literary career of the author (ca. 1536-after 1600), an account is given of the contents of Il Cavaliere. The book is in the form of a reply to Il Gentilhuomo, a courtesy book by Girolamo Muzio, but its greatest originality lies in its specifically Livonian content, since Il Cavaliere is clearly the work of an Italian far from home. Mora's social attitudes, his profound dislike of non-Catholics, and his truculent opinions on the defense of Catholic Europe against external enemies in Muscovy and Turkey were all conditioned by his long stay on the frontier of Poland-Lithuania. The quality of Italian printing at Vilnius, Mora's relations with the Jesuit writer Antonio Possevino, and Mora's telling of two ghost stories set in Lithuania are also discussed. Mora emerges as a representative of the Italian professional soldiering class, self-exiled to the frontiers of Catholicism in search of patronage and piety.

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