Ducal Prussia, the first state to officially adopt Lutheranism as state religion. Ducal Prussia emerged from the Roman Catholic Teutonic Prussia, which, however, only had superficially missioned the rural, mostly Lithuanian population and thus only erected few churches. The Prussian Lithuanians were only thoroughly Christianised starting with the Reformation in Prussia, the Prussian estates established the Lutheran Church in Prussia by the Church Order decided on 10 December 1525. Already on 18 January 1524 Bishop George I of Pomesania (and Samland), who had converted to Lutheranism in 1523, ordered to only use native languages at baptisms. The widespread pagan worship of Perkūnas, symbolised by the goat buck, was forbidden in the same year, and repeated in 1540. The Church Order provided for visitations of the parishioners and pastors, first carried out by Bishop George I in 1538. The principal usage of the native language secured the survival of the Lithuanian language in Prussia. In 1544 Albert, Duke of Prussia founded the Albertina University, Königsberg in Prussia/Karaliaučius, which became the principal educational establishment for Lutheran pastors and theologians of Lithuanian language. At the same time the Counter-Reformation reduced the number of Protestants in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuania proper). Right in 1544 Duke Albert appointed Lutheran pastors, who had fled anti-Protestant oppression in the Grand Duchy, as professors at the Albertina, namely Stanislovas Rapolionis (who finished his doctorate at Wittenberg University with a ducal scholarship) and Abraomas Kulvietis (exiled 1542). More refugees from Lithuania proper followed and became pastors in various parishes, such as Martynas Mažvydas, who published the Lutheran Catechismusa Prasty Szadei in 1547. Among the first native Prussian Lithuanian pastors were Johannes Bretke/Jonas Bretkūnas (pastoring in Labiau/Labguva (Polessk) and later in Königsberg), who published a Lithuanian hymnal in 1589, and wrote the first Lithuanian translation of the Bible between 1590 and 1591. Thus the Reformation brought to Lithuania Minor and Lithuania proper the first printed book in the Lithuanian language, the Lutheran Catechism (1547), and later (1591) the first Lithuanian Bible, which was not printed before the 18th century, however. Counter Reformation and decline of the Church With the dwindling of Protestantism in Lithuania proper after the 17th century, the Prussian Lithuanian Lutheran clergy consisted mostly of natives, many of German language, who had learned Lithuanian only as a second language. In 1525, the Lutheran church had churches in only nine places in Lithuania Minor, to wit Gerdau/Girdava