Istorijos šaltinių tyrimai

The title of this article is taken from a somewhat unusual image of the ruler as fisherman. It comes from a summary of the now lost letter from Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania (1392–1430) to Paul von Rusdorf, Grand Master of the Teutonic Order (1422–1441). The letter accompanied a batch of sturgeon sent to Marienburg as a gift to the grand master and other officersof the Teutonic Order. The grand duke emphasised that this was fish he had caught himself in the Dniester estuary. Given that this piece of evidence has received little attention so far, this article will: 1. present the manuscript containing the document; 2. date the document; 3. analyse its contents; 4. consider what political purposes Vytautas might have been pursuing at the time; 5. examine what, if any, insights this information could give to a more general picture of Vytautas’ political activities in the last decade of his rule; 6. offer a critical edition of the summary of the letter.

With this text, two main tasks are being approached. On the one hand, a critical publication of the discussion between Olbracht Gasztołd and Jan Chojeński regarding regarding the judicial system in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is presented. It was based on a collection of documents compiled by the Krakow canon Stanisław Górski, known as the “Górski Archive” (Pol. Teki Górskiego), which contained the earliest manuscripts of this discussion and its later copies. On the other hand, the author delves into an analysis of a rather specific source research problem associated with these texts, namely, how do the various corrections made to the manuscript content and the metatext by Stanisław Górski himself relate to the emergence of the two main dating traditions of these sources (1529 or 1536).

In the 16th century, Orthodox believers predominated in the Ruthenian regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, yet in addition to the organisational structure of the Orthodox Church there was also the Catholic Church structure. This article seeks to investigate how the officials of these two Churches coexisted in the Ruthenian lands of Polotsk and Vitebsk in the 16th century. In the Appendix, which is at the end of the article, five documents are published that are kept in the Manuscripts Department of the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences that considerably contribute to existing knowledge about the researched topic.

The article analyses a letter from the Grand Duchy Chancellery of Sigismund Augustus to the archimandrite of Zhydychyn in Volyn, father Jonah, dated February 20, 1567, which is published in the appendix. The document is a piece of administrative documentation on behalf of the sovereign of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, informing about the decision of the Goroden General Diet on mobilization of the armed forces and taxation in the Livonian War with the Muscovites (1558–1583).

Codicological descriptions of late 16th-century Lithuanian Metrica bookcopies reveal the history of these manuscripts’ production, the organisation of the rewriting work and their later archival history right up to the present day – the 21st century. This article discusses the established codicological (paleographic) methods that are used in Lithuanian Metrica historiography to help distinguish the text from no-longer-extant original books from the additions made by subsequent rewriters when adapting them to the particular needs of the day and enabling easier searching for information in the books of the Lithuanian Metrica. For this purpose, I have used the studies by Egidijus Banionis (1948–1993) dedicated to the genesis of the early (pre-1506) original Lithuanian Metrica books. In the context of this research, an assessment was made of Oleg Chroruzhenko’s latest attempt from 2008 to use the codicological characteristics of these book-copies to answer questions about the physical nature of the original books and their structure.

In 2024, publication of the Fontes collegii Crosensis, qui in Archivo Romano Societatis Iesu asservantur was finally completed. Its final part contains, along with the so-called first and second catalogues (catalogus primus, secundus), all the extant necrologies of persons deceased in Kražiai College (collegium Crosense) and the Tilžė and Varniai missions (missio Tilsensis, Vornensis). The latter texts are the scope of the present article.

This article analyses the memoirs of Germany’s and Russia’s military and political figures Rüdiger Gustav Adolf von der Goltz, Pavel Bermondt, Gustav Noske and August Winnig, which are first of all analysed as a source for researching the genesis of modern statehood in the Baltic States. All the above authors of these memoirs admit and testify that they did not approve of nor support the emergence of the Baltic States’ statehood. Only Winning, as Germany’s representative for those states, formally gave his recognition when forced to do so by international circumstances, mostly under duress from the Entente countries, while Bermondt, factually supported by R. von der Goltz, tried to compromise the statehood of the Balts using military measures that the minister of war Noske and the entire German government did not even try to contain, whereas the Entente countries were incapable of doing so. Thus, international circumstances after World War I not only created the conditions for the emergence of the Baltic States’ statehood but also acted as obstacles for this statehood to exist, as the imperial aspirations of Germany, as well as Russia, remained vibrant and were still effective in the Baltic Sea region.