Kiprijonas Nezabitauskis

Kiprijonas Juozas Nezabitauskis-Zabitis (, 12 September 1779 – 10 July 1837) was a Lithuanian Roman Catholic priest and poet. He was half-brother of Kajetonas Nezabitauskis. After studies at Vilnius University and Vilnius Priest Seminary, Nezabitauskis was ordained as a priest in 1803 and worked as a parish priest in Varniai and Veliuona. After the Uprising of 1831, he fled Tsarist persecutions first to East Prussia and then to France. In 1836, he became director of a school established by Polish émigrés in Nancy, France, but died just a year and half later.

In Lithuania, Nezabitauskis joined the Samogitian literary movement (an early predecessor of the Lithuanian National Revival) which supported and promoted the use of the Lithuanian language. He published a translated work on beekeeping, contributed material to a Lithuanian grammar textbook, and began working on a Lithuanian–Polish dictionary. It appears that he abandoned the dictionary after the letter K due to losing support from professor and Count Nikolay Rumyantsev. His brother Kajetonas claimed authorship of both the dictionary and the beekeeping work. In exile, Nezabitauskis wrote a collection of 18 epic poetry works plus a modification of a ballad by Silvestras Teofilis Valiūnas. This was one of the first political and philosophical poetry works in Lithuanian. The manuscript was discovered in 1909 and first published in 1931. He also translated and published excerpts from works by Félicité de La Mennais and Adam Mickiewicz that were very popular among Polish émigrés in France.

Biography In Lithuania Nezabitauskis was born in near Salantai, Samogitia, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, to a family of free peasants. Born as Zabitis, his name was Polonized as Niezabitowski (signed in Lithuanian as Nezabitowskas) to appear to be from the Lithuanian nobility.