The vaidilutė: how Lithuanian Catholic youth made a pagan priestess Christian

ABSTRACT

Combining literary analysis with historical study, this interdisciplinary article examines how, in interwar Lithuania, the Catholic youth organization Ateitis made use of the vaidilutė – a fabled pagan priestess that tended sacred fires in pre-Christian Lithuania – as an image assisting a newly emerging class of young educated Catholic women to envision their role in nation- and state-building. Analyzing the use of the vaidilutė in both dramatic productions put on by the Ateitis organization and in the magazine Naujoji Vaidilutė, the article investigates how this medieval figure functioned as a locus for negotiating national, religious, and gender identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Vaidilutė
• nationalism
• youth
• women
• medieval Lithuania
• Catholicism
• Ateitis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In his translation of Vijūkas-Kojelavičius, L. Valkūnas renders vestalis as vaidilutė in Lithuanian (Vijūkas-Kojelavičius 1989, 253).

2. Stanevičius wrote his history in 1831, but it was published (in part) in 1893 (Krapauskas 2000, 88).

3. ‘The Thoughts of an old Samogitian on the Hill of Biruta.’ All translations are the authors’ own.

4. ‘From Birutė’s Hill.’

5. ‘Pastebėta, kad istorinės dramos apeliuoja į bendrąją Vakarų Europos kultūrinę atmintį, į universaliuosius diskurso modelius, žanrines formas, temas.’

6. ‘Viduramžiai tarsi archaizuojami, pamatomi jų pačių gelmėje, per jų meninės vaizduotės formas, ir kartu lietuviškoji praeitis “suvakarietinama,” modernizuojama pagal Vakarų kultūros pavyzdį.’

7. See footnote 9.

8. Subscriptions to Moteris (Woman) did outpace Naujoji Vaidilutė significantly by the mid-1930s.

9. Jaunoji karta published an article in 1936 entitled ‘Būkite vaidilutės’ [Be vaidilutės] (Vasiūnienė 1936), while Liepsnos, a newspaper for girls in the Catholic Pavasaris organization for rural youth published A. Šležauskas’s Kryžius ant Perkūno aukuro, a play featuring vaidilutės converting to Christianity (Šležauskas 1938).

10. Influential advocates of Christian education, such as Marija Pečkauskaitė (Šatrijos Ragan) were regular contributors to Naujoji Vaidilutė. For an overview of Pečkauskaitės pedagogical ideals as found in Naujoji Vaidilutė, see J. Žilionis (2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Indrė Čuplinskas

Indrė Čuplinskas is an associate professor at St. Joseph’s College at the University of Alberta. She studies Catholic lay movements in the twentieth century and is currently working on a monograph comparing the ways in which European and North American Catholic student movements responded to modernization between the two World Wars.

Jūratė Motiejūnaitė

Jūratė Motiejūnaitė is a sessional instructor of English as a Second Language and English Literature Courses at Faculty Saint Jean at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. Her main field of investigation is comparative literature with the focus on Canadian and Lithuanian women writers of the twentieth century. Originally from Kaunas, Jūratė has traveled around the world teaching English, debate, and argumentation promoting the vision of the International Debate Education Association. She now continues to employ debate strategies to help her Canadian, multicultural students develop critical thinking, writing, and stress management skills.