Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Vilnius

Late medieval and early modern cities in Europe could not exist without the use of the written word. Using Vilnius, the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th-18th centuries, this book shows how rhetoric influenced all the spheres of urban literacy: the rules of writing, rhetorical genres and their functions, and the social practices of producing, preserving and disseminating texts. Vilnius was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-scriptural city and its literary culture was particularly rich. What was the legal basis of the city? Who were the professionals of the written word? What was the role of schools and books in the literary culture of the city? How did women participate in Vilnius's textuality? Which rhetorical genres were used? This study is based on research into the different types of texts used in Vilnius: contracts; last wills; sermons; municipal, state and church records; primers; shopping lists; poetry; manuals; and letters, in Polish, Latin, Ruthenian, Lithuanian, Yiddish and other languages written or printed in five alphabets. The rhetorical organization of Vilnius can serve as a model for examining other towns of the time. It also shows the complexity of the use of script in the multi-ethnic urban communities of North-Eastern Europe.