„Cnotliwy Litwin” z 1592 roku. Autorstwo i proweniencja tekstów źródłowych

Virtuous Lithuanian published in 1592 by an anonymous author is the first in the Lithuanian historiography thematic collection of historical records published in print. There are posted in it in extenso 9 unpublished before papers concerning the relations of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Livonia in the years 1557–1569. Contrary to the previous assertions the book was not developed by a Samogitian nobleman Chrysostom Wołodkowicz (c. 1591–1642 ), but by Elijah Pielgrzymowski, well-known representative of the Lithuanian literature of the late 16th c., and the great Lithuanian writer. He used the texts of published documents not from the individual copies, but from manuscript called Pamiętnik [Diary], with its authorship credited previously to the bishop of Vilnius Cardinal Jerzy Radziwiłł. A copy of this work is stored at the Czartoryski Library in Kraków (rkps 2180 IV) and was published in print in the late 19th c.; in fact this text is anonymous and without a title, and in the late 19th century was credited to J. Radziwiłł by its publisher – Teodor Wierzbowski, who also entitled the work as “Pamiętnik”. This anonymous work should not be called a diary, but a chronicle. Jerzy Radziwiłł could not be an author of it, as presented in the chronicle events are inconsistent with the facts of his biography. Hypothesis put forward in the article is that this anonymous chronicle was written by Wacław Agrippa (c. 1525–1597), stepfather of E. Pielgrzymowicz, well-known statesman and cultural luminary. This hypothesis explains also how E. Pielgrzymowicz received this source.