Francysk Skaryna was a Belarusian

Belarusians

Belarusians ; are an East Slavic ethnic group who populate the majority of the Republic of Belarus. Introduced to the world as a new state in the early 1990s, the Republic of Belarus brought with it the notion of a re-emerging Belarusian ethnicity, drawn upon the lines of the Old Belarusian...

 famous as one of the first publishers

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 in Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

, laying groundwork for the development of the Belarusian language

Belarusian language

The Belarusian language , sometimes referred to as White Russian or White Ruthenian, is the language of the Belarusian people...

.

He was born in the historical Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

ian city of Polotsk into the family of a wealthy merchant. The exact dates of birth and death are unknown; the two most probable estimates are 1485–1540 and 1490–1551.

Skaryna graduated from the arts faculty at the University of Kraków in 1504 with a Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

. In 1512 he received doctorate in medicine at the University of Padua

University of Padua

The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...

 in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. In 1517 he established a printing press in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, where he published his first book entitled The Psalter

Psalter

A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...

, in the Old Belarusian language

Old Belarusian language

Old Belarusian was a historic East Slavic language, written and spoken at least in the 14th–17th century, and reported spoken as late as the very beginning of the 19th century, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later in the East Slavic territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, probably...

 on 6 August 1517. The culmination of his life's work was printing a translation of the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

 in 22 books during 1517 to 1519.

Around 1522 he moved to Vilnius

Vilnius

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...

 and established the first printing house in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 12th /13th century until 1569 and then as a constituent part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1791 when Constitution of May 3, 1791 abolished it in favor of unitary state. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic...

. The first book published there was The Little Travel Guide. However, soon the printing house closed down and Skaryna spent his last years working as a doctor for Ferdinand I of Germany.

Legacy

Skaryna was one of the first to publish in the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

, but not the first, as the Oktoikh

Oktoikh

Oktoikh is an incunabulum Psalter, the first printed book in Cyrillic script. It was printed by Schweipolt Fiol, a German native of Franconia, in 1491 in Cracow....

was published by Schweipolt Fiol

Schweipolt Fiol

Schweipolt Fiol from Neustadt an der Aisch in Franconia was a German-born 15th century pioneer of printing in Eastern Europe....

 in 1491. While it was an Eastern Slavic language

East Slavic languages

The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups. Current East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian,...

, it is difficult to determine precisely what language he used as there was no conventional Belarusian language as we know it today. Some researchers maintain that Skaryna's books were in Church Slavonic heavily saturated with Belarusian. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Skaryna laid the foundations of the Belarusian literary language.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the disintegration of the federal political structures and central government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , resulting in the independence of all fifteen republics of the Soviet Union between March 11, 1990 and December 25, 1991...

, Minsk

Minsk

- Ecological situation :The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Center of Radioactive and Environmental Control .During 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons. The change of gas as industrial fuel to mazut for financial reasons has worsened...

 the capital of Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

, had Skaryna Avenue (praspiekt Franciška Skaryny). However, in 2005, under the rule of Alexander Lukashenko

Alexander Lukashenko

Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line...

, it was renamed into Independence Avenue (praspekt Nezalezhnastsi). Old Barysau

Barysau

Barysaw , also transliterated Barysau, is a city in Belarus situated near the Berezina River in the Minsk Voblast.-History:...

 Path (Starabarysauski trakt) was renamed into Skaryna Street (vulica Skaryny).

Two awards presented by Belarus were named in honor of Skaryna: the Medal of Francysk Skaryna and Order of Francysk Skaryna.

Several cultural organizations are named after Skaryna, particularly the Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society

Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society

The Frantsishak Skaryna Belarusian Language Society is an association in Belarus. The association's main activity is promotion and development of the Belarusian language...

 and the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum

Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum

Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum in London, England, is the only library outside Belarus to collect exclusively in the field of Belarusian studies and its collection is the most comprehensive in this field in Western Europe. The library is an independent institution owned by a...

, London.

See also

• Johann Gutenberg
• Symon Budny
  Symon Budny
  Symon Budny was a Belarusian and Polish humanist, educator, hebraist, Bible translator, Church reformator, philosopher, sociologist and historian.-Christology:...
  
  
• Ivan Fedorov
• Spiridon Sobol
  Spiridon Sobol
  Spiridon Sobol ), was a printer, educator and writer. Based by him in 1630 under Orsha the printing house became the center of the Belarus Cyrillic publishing...
  
  
• Spread of the printing press

External links