Past exhibitions

Christianity was from the beginning a religion of the book - the Holy Scriptures. Already in the first centuries of the Church's existence, ritual prayers were written down. The earliest manuscript liturgical texts were written down no later than the first half of the 6th century. With the advent of the printing press, the printing of Mass books began. In 1474, the first Latin Missal, Ordo Missalis, was printed in Milan, and in 1500, the Graduale, a hymnal of the Roman Catholic Church, was published in Venice. In 1493, one of the first ecclesiastical books in the Slavonic language, the Verba Triodica, appeared in Krakow. Liturgical books dedicated to the worship of God were particularly ornate, focusing not only on the text itself, but also on its decoration: illustrations, fonts, colours.
The exhibition "Introibo ad altare Dei" presents the liturgical books of the Mass of the traditional Christian denominations of Lithuania. For the first time, the Museum of Church Heritage is exhibiting together the printed and manuscript books of Eastern Rite Christians (Orthodox, Old Believers, Unitarians) and Western Rite Christians (Roman Catholics, Evangelical Lutherans, Evangelical Reformed).