scholarly journals Genealogical Researches of Karpiai Family: the Possibilities Evaluation of Prosopography Researches

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 100-120
Author(s):  
Rugilė Pangonytė

Karpiai – a famous noble family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania – are distinguished by their political and educative activities. The family’s influence is most markedly observed in the 18th–19th centuries, when the most famous and active members of the Karpiai family had lived. This family has not received plenty of scholarly attention, though from time to time new studies do spring up. Almost all of them are oriented to analyzing the activities of separate members of the Karpiai family, while the family’s origin and genealogy researches are scarce. Recently, prosopography has been found to be a very promising method for analyzing noble families. It analyzes the person, their environment, social position, career, power amassment, political influence, and other factors, researching bonds between individuals and constantly evaluating them in an interplay aspect. Besides, in prospect, a prosopographic analysis creates an ideal base for a person’s historical biographical research. This article returns to the beginning of the Karpiai family, studies the theories regarding its legendary origin and the appearance of their progenitor’s in the Grand Duchy, and explains how the recent researches of the Karpiai family’s origin lay the foundation for productive prosopographic researches. Since in prosopography one of the most important methods is the genealogical one, this article discusses the topic of genealogical tree researches of the Karpiai family.

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
Alvydas Nikžentaitis

This article presents an analysis of the role memory culture plays in information wars. Based on the examples of Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus, it finds that the phenomenon of using the past in information wars can be explained as a fighting measure to entrench the authority of a given country in the eyes of the global community. This requirement emerged among countries in this region following the collapse of the old global systems and with the creation of new political blocs. Associations have been noticed between information wars that exploit the past and the growth of a country’s economic potential. For this reason, this foreign policy tool has not been used to the same degree in different countries in the region, nor did it start being used at the same time. Almost all the countries in the region started to massively exploit the past as a means of soft power only in the 21st century. This tool is especially significant in Poland and Russia, being used less often in Lithuania and Ukraine, and hardly at all in Belarus. The storylines of the past being used in information wars can be divided into two categories: Global identities, whose symbols have become Holocaust and Gulag figures; and symbols associated with the memory cultures and identities of separate societies, such as the idea of Slavic unity (in Russian-Ukrainian relations) or the past of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (in Lithuanian-Belarusian relations). The author predicts that the use of the past in information wars is set to intensify in the future, and as such, the teaching of expert skills is necessary to address this; at present, these skills are lacking in countries in the region.


2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-53
Author(s):  
Jelena Celunova

This article is devoted to the research of the Book of Psalms manuscript from A. S. Norovʼs book collection stored in the Department of manuscripts of the Russian State Library. The manuscript is written in the beginning of the 18th century in Church Slavonic language Polish letters. This manuscript has never been studied before, it is nonetheless of interest primarily as a Latin-graphic text, which is a transliteration of the originals in Church Slavonic. Very few such texts have survived, and almost all of them were created in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The article provides a complete description of the manuscript and analyses of its language peculiarities. The analysis has made it possible to identify Church Slavonic protographs of the manuscript, and also to establish that the manuscript was written by women (most likely nuns) for private use. Since the authors of the transliteration themselves had very good command of Church Slavonic, it can be assumed that the text was written to order. Against the background of the cultural and historical context of the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries it can be assumed that the manuscript was written by the nuns of one of the southwestern Russian Uniate monasteries who had moved to one of the monasteries in Russia at that time.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcin Grala

BISHOPS AND SECULAR RULERS OF RUTHENIA UNDER THE POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF MOSCOW DURING THE TIME OF METROPOLITAN CYPRIAN The subject of this dissertation is the broadly understood church policy in North- -Eastern Ruthenia at the turn of the 15th century. At that time, the political situation in this region was dominated by the rivalry between Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well as other local political entities involved that wanted to retain their independence. Political disagreements that emerged in Ruthenia at the end of the 14th century were not limited to military conflicts. Since Metropolitan Alexius associated himself with Moscow, it became apparent that ecclesiastical influence began to play a very important role as well. Alexius used his power and ecclesiastical authority to tame the political ambitions of the rulers of Tver and Suzdal. Soon, he was using the same weapon in the conflict between Moscow and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Viktorija Ušinskienė

The paper deals with the local court records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) from the collection of Vilnius University. The study of Trakai Castle Court documentation of 1660‒1661 (F7–TPT, 1660‒1661) allows us to conclude that the chancery work in local courts in the GDL was highly developed at the time. The system of documents’ drawing up and registering was clearly regulated and structured, taking into account the needs of state and public life. Almost all types of court records were composed according to well-defined canons, owing to which we can speak about certain genres of legal documentation that had developed apparently by the end of the 16th and the middle of the 17th centuries. The manuscript written in Polish and Ruthenian languages is important for research of Lithuanian, Polish and Byelorussian history. The abundance of accumulated information enables us to consider it as unique reference book that reflects changing sociolinguistic situation of the GDL. From the middle of the 17th century, Polish starts to significantly dominate in legal documentation, thus forces Ruthenian out of court by the end of the century.


Menotyra ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Balaišytė

The article discusses how the ratification of the 3rd of May 1791 Constitution was celebrated in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This event, understood by the contemporaries as the beginning of the new epoch, inspired organization of both official and spontaneous celebrations all over the country. While analysing the content and visual expression of these events, it is sought to disclose how these festivals of “the new epoch” were formed and what they looked like, what transformations of the society had inspired them. These celebrations were a tool and product of “the Joyful Revolution”: they were used for patriotic upbringing and unification of the society in the presence of outward threats, though, at the same time, the high spirits of the “revolutionary” time inspired spontaneous festive events. The organizers of such celebrations were mostly the representatives of middle nobility and townspeople, as they had become the most active supporters of the ruler and implemented the reform programme. There were especially many initiatives by townspeople, who due to the new law felt the full-fledged citizens of the state. Similar to earlier celebrations of state significance, almost all festivities were dedicated to the ruler, who was pictured as the father of the nation and creator of the Constitution. A new image of the ruler was started to propagate: the portrait of a king-patriot working for the wellbeing of the homeland and its citizens. The ideas of the “citizens’ nation” encompassing all social strata of the Republic were actively manifested. Acts of the nobility oath to the town law were very important for unification of the society in a symbolic sense; they demonstrated the fraternity of all estates. It is worth mentioning here the demonstration of military attributes and military capacities in order to strengthen the morale of population in troublous times. The article covers in more detail the decorations created for the Constitution anniversary by a nobleman Vincentas Ignacas Marevičius (Wincenty Ignacy Marewicz) in his homestead near Lukiškės, which most visually demonstrated the new structure of the society entrenched by the Constitution. These celebrations of the “3rd of May epoch” could be held for quite a short time and thus failed to create new rituals and symbols. Maybe this was the reason why texts were so important in their décor and explained anew the meanings of symbols applied in earlier celebrations.


Author(s):  
Nadiia Kravchenko

The article is devoted to the subjects and symbolism in the hunting heraldry of the Volyn and Kyiv regions in the 16th – early 17th centuries. Among the innovations of this time period is the appearance of atypical imagery in Ukrainian heraldry, namely that of wild animals and hunting horns. The author analyzes the well-known coats of arms associated with hunting, their prevalence and probable reasons for their obscurity in these areas compared to the Kingdom of Poland. In the early modern period, nobility used heraldic signs and legends to emphasize their ancient origins, land tenureship and political influence. The appearance of wild animals on Ruthenian coats of arms was symptomatic of the spread of Western heraldic tradition and hunting culture as such. There were multiple instances of symbiosis between the Ruthenian heraldic tradition and Western templates, the most striking of which is the “Korczak” coat of arms. It is believed that the mantling in the form of a dog of the Hungarian Vizsla breed, depicted sitting in a bowl is of Hungarian origin, but the image of the shield (an "escutcheon") of this coat of arms is actually Ruthenian, interpreted as three belts, logs or rivers. Less prolific than the “Korczak” coat of arms and its variations were the addendum of Western heraldic attributes to the old coats of arms, such as that of hunting horns. Most of the Western-style coats of arms known or relatively known in these areas belonged to those granted to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania nobility in 1413. Many of them were distributed mainly among the small gentry of Polish origin or Galician immigrants. Instead, in the Volyn and Kyiv regions, the gentry preferred their own historical coats of arms, created on the basis of ancient territorial symbolism. Conceivably, their commitment to ancient heraldic tradition was intended to accentuate their Ruthenian identity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (1 ENGLISH ONLINE VERSION) ◽  
pp. 57-77
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Naworski

The article deals with taxation of tobacco and tobacco products in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After tobacco was imported into Poland, its use spread extremely quickly; initially it was used as snuff, and from the 18th century onwards, smoking in pipes became prevalent. Importantly, tobacco and tobacco products were then regarded as a medicine to prevent and cure almost all diseases. Duties on tobacco/snuff were first imposed in 1643 in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in the Crown tobacco monopoly was introduced in 1659. From that time, tobacco/snuff duties were imposed regularly in Lithuania; in the Crown duty on these products was imposed once again in 1677, and then in the 1690s tobacco monopoly ended throughout the Polish Republic. The issue was revived only in the times of King Stanisław August Poniatowski, when tobacco monopoly was introduced, initially managed by a private company called Kompania Tabaczna, and then, in the 1690s, by the state-owned Manipulacja Tabaczna. However, over the whole period under consideration, revenues from tobacco/snuff taxation were relatively small.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 107-121
Author(s):  
Lilia Kowkiel ◽  
Arvydas Pacevičius ◽  
Iwona Pietrzkiewicz

Historians and publishers of historical sources have a lot of problems with the texts written in different languages and alphabets, which were created at different times, in the multilingual areas inhabited by many nations following different religions. The historians of book culture have the same problems with texts of inventories and catalogues of books, which are the primary source of knowledge about the content of libraries. At present it’s also important the historical texts to be published in the digital form. This article is a part of the discussion on this very important subject.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.


2020 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 219-236
Author(s):  
Andrey Yu. Dvornichenko

The abundant Russian historiography of the medieval history of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuanian-Russian State) has become in the last decades the centre of the discussions and is often subject to groundless criticism. This historiography was not very lucky in the Soviet period of the 20th century either, as it was severely criticized from the Marxist-Leninist position. When discussing Russian historiography the author of this article is consciously committed to the Russian positions. There are no reasons to consider this historiography branch either Byelorussian or Ukrainian one, as that was really Russian historiography, - the phenomenon that formed under the favorable specific conditions of Russian Empire before the beginning of the 20th century. The said phenomenon can be studied in different ways: according to the existing then main trends and schools or according to their affiliation with specific universities of Russian Empire. But according to the author of this article the best way to study the issue is in accordance with the main concepts of history. And then the pre-revolutionary historiography appears as an integral scientific paradigm that turns out to be the most divaricate branch of the Lithuanian studies of the time. It created, in its turn, the most vivid and objective historical picture that can still serve as the basis for the studies of Lithuanian-Russian state.


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