Valancius, Motiejus (1801-1875), bishop of
Samogitia, historian and writer, born into a well-to-do peasant family
in Nasrenai village, county of Kretinga, on Feb. 16, 1801. Early in his
youth, he had his baptismal records altered to indicate noble birth; the
family name was polonised to Wolonczewski. This practice, not uncommon
among prosperous villagers, was a means of providing educational
opportunities otherwise denied to peasant children. In 1816 he entered
the Dominican school at Zemaiciu Kalvarija and six years later began his
studies at the Theological Seminary in Varniai. He transferred to the
Supreme Seminary at Vilnius in 1824, from which he graduated in 1828.
Ordained a priest that same year, he spent the next six years teaching
religion in Boleros. In 1834 he returned to Lithuania to take up a
teaching position at the Kraziai secondary school. In 1840 he was
assigned to the Vilnius Theological Academy, where he lectured in
pastoral theology and biblical archaeology and where he earned his
doctorate in theology in 1842. That same year on order of the Tsar, the
Academy, its teaching staff and student body, was moved to St.
Petersburg, Russia. Valancius came back to Lithuania for reasons of
health in 1845 and was appointed rector of the Varniai Theological
Seminary, serving in this capacity until 1850.
Having been absent from Lithuania during
the anti-Russian uprising in 1831, Valancius was considered to be
relatively apolitical, and thus the Russian government did not object
when he was proposed as Episcopal candidate for the see of Samogitia. He
was consecrated bishop in 1850, the first peasant to ever head that
prestigious diocese. Taking up his duties, he quiped the diocese for the
next 25 years, years of religious, political and social change not only
within Samogitia but also in Lithuania as a whole. He expanded and
improved the Samogitian parochial school network, wrote a great many
religious books, and in 1858 inaugurated a temperance movement, which
grew to encompass nearly a million member, almost half of the
country’s population. His pastoral and educational work was
interrupted by the uprising of 1863-64 and was made extremely difficult
as the Russian government tightened its reins after the collapse of the
revolt. Yet these circumstances did not prevent him from following a
course which could not but bring him into direct conflict with the
authorities. He made every effort to undermine the government’s scheme
of Rustication. In 1874 Valancius fell seriously ill and died in Kaunas
in May 29, 1875.
His services to the Lithuanian cause were
lasting and important. His opposite to the Russian government and the
tactics he employed in resisting its policies, particularly the illegal
practice of printing Lithuanian books in East Prussia and smuggling them
into Lithuania, served to stimulate the emergence of the Lithuanian
national movement. An adductor, an able Church administrator, historian
and ethnographer, and a talented writer, Valancius emerged as one of the
most versatile and influential figures in nineteenth century Lithuania.
Well aware of the rising social importance
of the peasantry, Valancius concentrated the activities of the Church
towards this class. He was the first bishop who consistently published
his pastoral letters in Lithuania, in the Samogitian dialect that he
spoke himself. His pastoral letters admonished the peasants for their
superstitious beliefs and practices, scolded them when they showed
indifference to their faith, coaxed them into supporting education, and
always showed a fatherly concern for the welfare of his people, to whom
he affectionately referred as his aveles (lambs). He made
frequent visits to parishes throughout the diocese; improved the
discipline and raised the standards as the clergy; and enlisted a number
of his younger, more capable priests in the cause of Lithuania.
In spite of his generality conservative
social views and the fact that he sought to establish and maintain
friendly with the Polonized lanown nobility, he found his relations with
members of this class deteriorating. One of the reasons for this was his
practice of intervening on behalf on the peasants, who were maltreated
and exploited by estate owners, manorial officials and government
representatives. Thus, although he respected the role of the Polish
language in the Church and did not consciously attempt to subvert the
social supremacy of the country’s Polonised nobility, his own peasant
origins and close identification with the village population aroused the
landowners’ mistrust.
Valancius used the authority of his office
and of the Church to promote two important social movements in western
Lithuania during the 1850’s: peasant education and temperance. He
systematized the Samogitian parish school system by requiring financial
accountability and keeping of student records, and was responsible for
the construction of many new elementary schools. There is no doubt that
he contributed significantly to the spread of literacy among the
peasants, particularly in his own diocese. Some estimates show the
peasant literacy rate in that area to be as high as 50 present on the
eve of the 1863 insurrection, an impressive figure for that time.
He achieved an even greater, though
short-lived, success in the temperance movement of the late 1850’s and
early 1860’s (see Temperance). He was the major force behind the
establishment of the so-called temperance brotherhoods (Blaivybes
brolijos) across Lithuania, but it was in Samogitia that the
movement assumed massive proportions. He published many popular books
and pamphlets about the evil of alcohol and the virtues of sobriety. The
movement spread so rapidly that by 1860 over 80 percents of the
Catholics in rural Samogitia are estimated to have taken the oath of
abstinence. The total membership in Kaunas gubernia in 1860 was reported
as 684,536. The Russian government eventually came to realize that the
temperance societies posed a serious economic and social threat. State
income from liquor taxes dropped drastically: in Kaunas gubernia the tax
receipts on consumed liquor reportedly fell 67 percent between 1858 and
1859. In 1860 Russian’s finance minister even considered Valancius’
expulsion from the country in order to half the drain on the Tsar’s
treasury. Furthermore, the government recognized the temperance
societies as a dangerous precedent in the Church’s organization of a
volatile peasantry. In 1864 the government banned the temperance
movement.
Public demonstrations against the Russian
government began in 1860, and an armed rebellion broke out in Lithuania
early in 1863. In many localities in Samogitia these demonstrations were
constructed through the churches, which served to aggravate the tense
relations existing between Valancius and the authorities because of the
temperance movement. Realizing that an insurrection could not end
without affect the Catholic Church, in December of 1862 he appealed to
the clergy to refrain from participating in a revolt. In the ensuing
warfare he tried to steer a middle course between the rebels and the
government, but his concern for the survival of the Church made this
position uneatable. In the spring of 1863, together with Archbishop
Krasinki of Vilnius, he published a special pastoral letter to the
faithful of Lithuania urging a half to the bloodshed. With the arrival
of Governor-General M. N. Muraviev (q. v) in Lithuania in the May 1863,
his position became even more difficult. Muraviev immediately pressured
Valancius to declare himself against the uprising. Reassured by Muraviev
that an amnesty would be granted to those who laid down their arms, the
bishop sent the governor-general a copy of a proposed pastoral letter
condemning the insurrection and imploring the faithful to desist. One of
Muraviev’s aids made changes in the letter, which Valancius was
compelled to accept, and it was proclaimed, from the pulpits in
September 1863. Thousands of copies of the letter entreating the
peasantry to follow the example of the nobility incising armed
resistance were published by Muraviev and distributed throughout
Lithuania.
For his apparent support of the Russian
government, Valancius was bitterly criticized by many of the rebels as
well as by some later historians. Other scalars have tried to show that
he secretly sympathized with and, in fact, supported the rebels. The
best available evidence indicates that he was a realist who foresaw the
futility of the uprising. The welfare of the Church remained his
foremost concern. Indeed, the events following the uprising showed that
he had good reason to be concerned. The government promulgated a series
of anti-Catholic measures forbidding the construction of new churches,
controlling the appointment of parish priests, limiting seminary
enrolment, forcing school children to attend Orthodox services, and
closing all parochial schools. Furthermore, the government intensified
its policy of Rustication by introducing the Cyrillic alphabet into the
Lithuania language and placing a ban on the Lithuania press. In May
1864, Valancius was ordered to transfer his residence from Varniai to
Kaunas where his activities could be under closer scrutiny and,
according to the Russians, his “harmful opposition to the government
minimized”.
In late 1865 the Russian government’s
so-called Commission for the Examination of Lithuanian-Samogitian Books
ruled that Valancius’ religious books and pamphlets of the 1850’s
had had a define anti-Russian slant. Actually, it was only in 1865 that
Valancius began what can be termed a campaign of passive resistance
against the government. In the pursuit of his duties he unavoidably
skirted government regulations restricting Catholic activities and, on a
number of occasions, was subjected to heavy fines. After approving the
very first edition, he refused to give his imprimatur to any
subsequent Lithuanian books printed in the Cyrillic alphabet. Finally,
between 1867 and 1869, Valancius financed and organized the clandestine
publication of a series of his own anti-government pamphlets. The titles
of the publications are illustrative of their content, for example, Broliai
katalikai (To Our Catholic Brethren), Perspejimas apie sventa
viera (A Warning Concerning the Holy Faith), Snekesys kataliko su
nekataliku (Dialogue Between a Catholic and Non-Catholic), and Vargai
baznycios Lietuvoj ir Zemaiciuose (The Travails of the Church in
Lithuania and Samogitia). In these pamphlets, which were printed in East
Prussia, smuggled into Lithuania and disturbed to the people through a
secret network, Valancius disclosed the government’s plan to Russify
Lithuania and to convert the people to Orthodoxy, and set forth a
program of resistance. He told the people not to accept the Cyrillic
books and not to send their children to the Russian schools; urged them
to educate their children at home using old Lithuanian prayer books as
texts and to organize secret schools in the villages. He also appealed
to the peasants’ emerging sense of nationality by stressing the
importance of preserving their native language.
In 1870 the Russian police, in
collaboration with Prussian officials, uncovered the secret network
through which the pamphlets reached the people. The priests who had
distributed the literature were exiled to Siberia. But pamphlets had had
their effect. As a result of his campaign coupled with the Lithuanian
peasants’ natural suspicious of the Orthodox government, the people
completely rejected the Cyrillic books. Even more importantly, Valancius
by publishing books in Tilze (Tilsit) and smuggling them into Lithuania
paved the way for the later massive smugglers’ movement (see
Knygnesys), which defended the press ban and was probably the most
remarkable expression of the peoples’ determination to preserve their
own culture. It is for this reason that Valancius although primarily
concerned with the defence if the Catholic Church must be considered as
one of the founders of the national renascence movement.
In this field, Valancius played an equally
important role, for which he has the title of father of Lithuania prose.
His writings consist of religious, scholarly, and prose works. During
his 25-years tenure as Bishop of Samogitia, he wrote a great many
religious books and pamphlets intended primarily for the peasantry.
Written in simple language that the people could understand, these works
were immensely popular among the peasantry and stimulated the reading of
Lithuanian books. Furthermore, his literary style was a vast improvement
over previous religious publications, which often included superstitions
and were full of Slavicism. Of his religious works, noteworthy are Zyvatas
Jezaus Kristaus (The Life of Jesus Christ, 1852); Istorija sventa
Senojo Istatymo (Sacred History of the Old Testament, 1853); Zyvatai
sventuju (Lives of the Saints, 2 vols. 1858, 1868); and the
translation Tamosius is Kempes arba kniga sekiojimo Kristaus
(Thomas a Kempis or the Book on Following Christ, 1853). His scholarly
work pertains to history and ethnography. The two-volume Zemaiciu
vyskupyste (The Diocese of Samogitia, 1848), not only gives a broad
account of the history of the diocese from its founding in 1417 up to
1841, be also contains much information on the political and cultural
life of Lithuania. It is well documented, written in a vivid style in
the Samogitian dialect, and remains a work of enduring value, since many
of the sources used are no longer available. To the field of ethnography
belongs his Patarles Zemaiciu (Samogitian Proverbs, 1867), which
contains over 1,300 popular adages and which until fairly recent years
was the first major work of its kind.
But it is with his secular prose works
that Valancius secured his reputation, these are didactic in nature and
portray the virtues and vices of everyday life. His best work in this
genre is the delightful narrative Palangos Juze (Juze of
Palanga), a collection of tales as told a village tailor, Juze, about
his travels through Lithuania with many colourful descriptions of the
customs and more of the people. This book went through many editions and
was, quite possibly, the most widely read work of fiction in the 19th
century. No less popular was Vaiku knygele (Little Book for
Children, 1864), short stories teaching the young the moral principles.
