This afternoon I delivered a paper entitled ‘Baroque Epic in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: James Bennett’s Virtus dexterae Domini (1674)’ at BaroCon 2025 in the Faculty of Philology at Vilnius University, an international Neo-Latin conference marking the 400th anniversary of the publication of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski’s Lyricorum libri tres.

The conference was organised by Dr Eleonora Terleckienė and others, and underlines Vilnius’s importance as the centre of learning that produced some of the greatest Latin literature of early modern Europe. Topics covered included the epic Radivilias by Jan Radwan (which was introduced by its Italian translator, Simone Carboni), Latin literature dedicated to the cult of St Casimir, and the Scoto-Lithuanian epic The Strength of the Lord’s Right Arm that I discussed in my own paper.