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A Copy of the Berlin Copy of Chylinski’s Old Testament Has Been Found

At the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, the first volume of the scholarly edition of Chylinski’s Old Testament—the first printed Lithuanian Bible (London, 1660)—is currently being completed. The book is based on the only surviving copy of this Bible, held in the British Museum Library, and relevant excerpts from its principal translation source, the Dutch Statenbijbel. In preparing the edition, the aim was to bring together all of Chylinski’s printed legacy in one place; consequently, both booklets published by Chylinski are also included: An Account of the Translation of the Bible into the Lithuanian Tongue (1659) and Ratio Institutæ Translationis Bibliorum in Linguam Lithuanicam (~1660). Both were printed in Oxford.

Information about Chylinski’s Bible translation was included in many European bibliographic and polyglot publications during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. However, this information was scant and repeated continuously from one publication to another; the bibliographers who described the book had not seen the book itself. In 1879, following appeals by Adalbert Bezzenberger in Athenaeum and Kurjer Poznański, and in 1880 in Mitteilungen der Litauischen Literarischen Gesellschaft, the scholarly community took up the search for Chylinski’s Bible, and soon three copies of the Old Testament were found one after another. In 1891, A. Neubauer announced in The Academy that one copy of this Bible was in the library of the Gymnasium at the Monastery of St. Mary in Stettin (this copy was later moved to Berlin, and it became customary to call it the Berlin copy). In 1888, in the journal Записки Императорской академии наук. Извлечение из протоколов заседаний Академии, Academician A. Kunik reported that he had found a copy of Chylinski’s Old Testament in St. Petersburg. It had belonged to Jerzy Grużewski, who later donated this rare printed book to Vilnius University, from where it was transported to St. Petersburg. The British Museum Library acquired the third copy of Chylinski’s Old Testament; in 1893, its librarian and staff member of the Slavic literature department, John Naake, reported on it in the London publications Athenaeum and The Academy. Just a few days later, on July 13, 1893, M. E. Trepka described this discovery in the Polish St. Petersburg weekly Kraj: “among the heaps of old rubbish which antiquarians set out in entire stacks before the administration of that unique library in the world, Mr. Naake found a book without a title, damaged and covered with the dust of centuries.”

The so-called London copy is the shortest (it has 176 pages and extends as far as the Book of Joshua), while the Berlin copy is almost twice as long (384

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pages, ending with the Book of Job); the Vilnius copy is the largest (416 pages, printed through Psalm 40). Both of the latter are currently considered lost, but excerpts from them were published in various works from the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was planned to include in the book those reprinted passages from the Berlin and Vilnius copies that are absent from the London copy. Excerpts from the Berlin copy were published by Heinrich Reinhold (1896), August Leskien (1919), Eduard Hermann (1926), Jurgis Gerullis (1927), and Jan Otrębski (1957). Jacob Quandt had the Vilnius copy in his possession and mentioned it in the preface to the Bible he was preparing (1735); Jurgis Pliateris described it in detail (1831), and excerpts were published by Adamas Jocher (1842), Eduardas Wolteris (1887), and Maurycy Stankiewicz (1889). In 1842, the Vilnius copy was taken from Vilnius to St. Petersburg; after 1918, no further information about it is available. The Berlin copy disappeared during the Second World War, but Jan Otrębski used a copy of it, as noted in the anthology he compiled, Teksty litewskie 1. Teksty dawne (Warszawa: PWN, 1957).

At the urging of Juozas Karaciejus, I inquired into the fate of Professor Otrębski’s archive. Norbert Ostrowski (University of Poznań) reported that Otrębski had bequeathed all his books to Vilnius University Library. With the help of Vilija Lukševičienė, librarian at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language, I contacted Nijolė Šulgienė, head of the Manuscript Reading Room at VUB, and Loreta Vinclovienė, a staff member of that department. There was no mention of Chylinski’s Bible in the catalogue, but at the initiative of the library director, Birutė Butkevičienė, department staff checked every document held in Otrębski’s collection and brought the good news: a copy of the Berlin copy of Chylinski’s Bible is in the Manuscript Reading Room of Vilnius University Library; its reference is VUB RS f. 124–155. Helena Orębska-Samaniūtė transferred Otrębski’s archive to Vilnius University Library in 1989, carrying out her husband’s wishes.

The copy, most likely made before the war, is of good quality for its time and ends at page 384; pages 337–368 are missing (gatherings 22 and 23 were omitted). The entire double-page spread was copied onto an A4 sheet, so the original is somewhat reduced (the dimensions of the London copy are 18 × 22 cm), but it is relatively legible. The first page bears the call number “Biblia sacra oct. 9”. The title was written by hand by the bibliophile Andreas Müller, a contemporary of Chylinski and the first owner of this rare edition:

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The book, sought from the end of the seventeenth century until the last decade of the nineteenth, and considered lost during the Second World War, has now—on the eve of the 350th anniversary of its printing—returned to readers, albeit in the form of a copy.

Books have their own fates.

Gina Kavaliūnaitė

Institute of the Lithuanian Language

5 P. Vileišio St., LT-10308 Vilnius, Lithuania

[email protected]

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