A Spiritual Shield. The Munich Prayer Book of the Chancellor of Lithuania Albertus Gastold
This exhibition features a single masterpiece – the prayer book commissioned by the Lithuanian Chancellor Albertus Gastold and created by the Krakow master Stanislaus Claratumbensis in 1528, written in Polish and with a preface in Latin.
The person who commissioned this prayer book was one of the most famous and influential statesmen of Lithuania of all time, a long-serving head of the government of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and a staunch defender of state independence, the Lithuanian Grand Chancellor and Palatine of Vilnius, Albertus Gastold (ca 1480–1539). It was a long-held belief, albeit erroneous, that the owner of the prayer book could have been the King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Sigismund the Old (1467–1548). When the Gastold line ended, the prayer book could have indeed ended up with the rulers of Poland and Lithuania, the Jagiellons and Vasas. The prayer book may have found its way to Bavaria as part of the rich dowry of the duchess of Poland and Lithuania, Anna Catherine Constance Vasa, when she married the Count Palatine of Neuburg Philip William Wittelsbach. Today, the prayer book of the Lithuanian Chancellor Albertus Gastold, one of the most valuable manuscript books still existing, is kept in the Rare Prints Department of the University Library of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.
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