Motiejus Valančius
Lithuanian bishop (1801–1875)
Motiejus Kazimieras Valančius (Lithuanian pronunciation: [moːtiː.əjʊsʲ vɐɫɐŋtʃjʊsʲ]; Polish: , also known by his pen-name Joteika and Ksiądz Maciek; 1801–1875) was a Catholic Bishop of Samogitia, historian and one of the best known Lithuanian/Samogitian writers of the 19th century.
Biography
Motiejus Valančius was born February 28, 1801, into a well-to-do peasant family in Nasrėnai village, Kretinga district. Early in his youth, he had his baptismal records altered to indicate noble birth; the family name was Polonized to Wołonczewski. This practice, not uncommon among prosperous peasants, was a means of providing educational opportunities otherwise denied to Lithuanian children. In 1816 he entered the Dominican school at Žemaičių Kalvarija and six years later began his studies at the Theological Seminary in Varniai. He transferred to the Vilnius Priest Seminary in 1824, from which he graduated in 1828. Ordained a priest that same year, he spent the next six years teaching religion in Mazyr. In 1834 he returned to Lithuania to take up a teaching position at the Kražiai College.
In 1840 he was assigned to the Vilnius Theological Seminary, where he lectured in pastoral theology and biblical archaeology and where he earned his doctorate in theology in 1842. That same year on orders of the Tsar, the academy, its teaching staff and student body, was moved to St.
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This entry incorporates text from “Motiejus Valančius” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.