Abstract
The book addresses different aspects of the Baltic written and printed sources of the 14th-16th centuries: the Elbing Vocabulary, the so called Grunau's Vocabu- lary, Basel colophon, the Trace of Crete, the catechisms of 1545 and 1547. Spe- cial attention is paid to the problems of literacy and education of the Balts and those written monuments which were created (written or copied) by the Balts, as demonstrated by the paratextual elements of the books.
Those historical and cultural contexts which determined the emergence of the oldest Baltic written artefacts, their narrow function and existence are more thoroughly investigated. The book takes a comparative approach, which enables a better understanding of the peculiar characteristics of Old Prussian and Lithuanian written traditions.