Sudovian Book

The so-called Sudovian Book[nb 1] (German: Sudauer Büchlein, Lithuanian: Sūduvių knygelė) was an anonymous work about the customs, religion, and daily life of the Old Prussians from Sambia.

[1] According to the Polish scholar Aleksander Brückner,[2] the book originated from letters written around 1545 by Protestant priest Hieronymus Malecki using information from Constitutiones Synodales published in 1530.

[2] The German philologist Wilhelm Mannhardt believed that Malecki only prepared a previously written, anonymous manuscript for publication.

[4] During the 1520s, they visited different parishes, collected information about pagan beliefs, and memorialized the findings in the Sudovian Book, which was then summarized in the Constitutiones Synodales.

[2] Lithuanian historian Ingė Lukšaitė claimed that both the Sudovian Book and Constitutiones Synodales were parts of a larger, more extensive work.