Matthäus Prätorius
Matthäus Prätorius (Latin: Matthaeus Praetorius, Lithuanian: Matas Pretorijus; c. 1635 – c. 1704) was a Protestant pastor in the Duchy of Prussia and later a Roman Catholic priest in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
[4] With two older brothers, Prätorius enrolled at the University of Königsberg in 1650 but was likely too young as he re-enrolled in April 1654.
[10] In May 1684, Prätorius left his wife and debts in Niebudszen and moved to the Catholic Oliwa Abbey near Danzig.
A 19th-century priest who worked in Niebudszen recorded a local rumour that Prätorius' daughter killed herself because she was pregnant out of wedlock.
[11] In Oliwa, Prätorius became a royal historiographer of John III Sobieski, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania.
He wrote several panegyrics, the first of which was Scutum Regium (Royal Shield) about the Sobieski's victory in the Battle of Vienna in 1683.
[15] In 1701, Prätorius wrote a letter protesting the use of torture to extract a confession from a woman accused of witchcraft.
[16] In his 1907 work Geschichte der Kreise Neustadt und Putzig, Franz Schultz, who had access to now-lost city archives of Wejherowo, wrote that Prätorius was priest until 6 October 1704.
[9] Hartknoch evaluated the summary as providing no new information and copying the badly translated Latin dissertation of one of his students; this criticism effectively derailed Prätorius' efforts.
[18] In 1703, Prätorius gave his manuscript to Adam Bogislaus Rubach [de], resident of the Margraviate of Brandenburg in Danzig,[18] who tried to get royal funding for the publication.
[29] Prätorius used a great variety of sources, including ancient historians (Herodotus, Tacitus, Jordanes),[30] chroniclers (Peter of Dusburg, Simon Grunau, Jan Długosz, Maciej Miechowita), medieval historians (Philipp Clüver, Johannes Micraelius, Erasmus Stella [de], Caspar Hennenberger), travellers (Olaus Magnus, Salomon Neugebauer [ru], Adam Olearius), archival documents.
[31] He also used various published (e.g. Sudovian Book, Jan Malecki [de]) and unpublished texts on Prussian mythology and customs.
He recorded examples of customs, legends, and stories from a large area that covered most of Lithuania Minor.
[18] While Prätorius maintained contact with some university professors, he was outside of the academic circles which allowed him to develop an independent and original outlook on Prussian culture and history.
[37] Further, Prätorius treated Widewuto not as a legendary figure, but as a historical person merging fact and fiction.
[13] It was published in Cologne and Amsterdam and translated to German but was not well received by either the Protestant or the Catholic camp.
