Istorijos šaltinių tyrimai / Studies in Historical Sources

The article analysed case registration books of the Supreme Tribunal of the GDL in the 16th-18th century, their structure, development, and the main issues relating to the use of these books in court practice. The oldest surviving register books date back to the mid-17th century. At that time the structure of the records had already become well-established – each page contained a brief entry at the right-hand-side corner, offering data on the parties to the proceedings (names of claimants and defendants, positions held by them or their titles) which were copied from the writ of summons of the case. This structure of each entry remained unchanged until the very end of the 18th century. The case registration books not only informed the court about the considered cases and set the order of their hearing, but also performed other functions, for example, the proceedings of the case and the court rulings were recorded there. The laws only fragmentally provided for the keeping and use of registration books, usually the corresponding requirements were only introduced in order to prevent the misconduct of litigants and clerical staff. In order to organize the work of the court more efficiently, the registration books were started to be categorised according to the nature of the cases, however, the rational way of their use was not devised. Meanwhile, the fact that some of the registration books were singled out from the common system of use led to their wrongdoings, which had a strong negative effect on the efficacy of the GDL Supreme Court and affected the Supreme Court’s ability to effectively deal with appeals and other important cases.

The GDL signs in the 15th-16th century would not only send a symbolic and informationrelated message, but would also express the exceptional relation between a person or a group of persons and things or objects. This is suggested by the signs bearing legal protective power that were used in property marking. The said signs were used by people of humble descent and also by those representing a higher social class prior to the introduction of coats of arms. It is obvious that signs of the base-born people are seldom subjected to analysis, most probably due to the limited possibilities offered by sparse sources. Therefore the article focuses on the issues related to non-heraldic signs used in the GDL in the 15th-16th century, viewing them as an object of research. The article dwells on various concepts utilized in multilingual GDL sources of the 15th-16th century to denote the said signs, analyses the conditions of their appearance and application. Written sources and iconography detected therein serve as the basis for the consideration of the graphic aspects of such signs. In addition, in order to supplement the number of the published sources dedicated to the analysis of the GDL signs, the appendix of the book contains an archival GDL document dating back to 1541, namely a letter of Vilnius cathedral chapter listing the tribute paid by peasants of Volčia domain (Dokshytsy District, Belarus) and featuring 29 legal signs used by these peasants.

This is a research of the notaries public as a corporate group. The research deals with the issues pertaining to the existence of a certain network of notaries public in the dioceses of Vilnius, Samogitia, and Lutsk in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and their correlation in the space of notaries public of the province of the archdiocese of Gniezno in the 16th century. The period under investigation is chronologically enframed by two dates. The first conditional date is 1501 which marks a stage in the maturity of the notarial system when the clergymen of the GDL started being awarded the honorary title – Count of the Sacred Palace of Lateran (comes apostolicus) accompanied by the right granted by the Pope to delegate notaries public (the Emperor could also award the title of the count of the palace). The said right was usually exercised by bishops, church officials, and notaries general. 1515 is considered an interim important date in the research as this was the year when the statutes of local dioceses of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were drawn up and the first wording of Vilnius cathedral chapter statutes, for the first time mentioning the participation of the notary public in the life of the chapter and his functions, was carried out. The second date is 1566 – the year when the Second Statute of Lithuania legitimized the activities of notaries public on the national level throughout the GDL. The said dates mark the dynamics and spread of the notarial system – introduced through the institution of the Church, the function of the notary public gradually entered the sovereign’s chancellery, noblemen, following the example of the sovereign, started using the services and notaries public gradually found their way to municipal institutions of towns and cities. The codification dates of the two separate structures of government – the church and secular authorities – can be equally applied to mark the development stages of the notarial system as they indicate the process of notary public participation in both – the church and state government institutions. The utility register of notaries public (see the Annex) containing the list of all notaries public that were in operation in the territory of the GDL from the early 16th century to 1566 was employed as a means of visualization of the research object, namely the activities of notaries public. Based on the provisional data, there were 174 notaries public. The register offers references to notarial documents drawn up by the said persons as well as written sources pertaining to notarial activities which represent the directions and sphere of such activities; the inserted records witness functional dynamics of notaries public. Place-names pertaining to document issuance serve as indicators of the locations where the notaries public of the dioceses operated and reveal their mobility within a particular diocese. The topic-related sub-chapters of the article include Reception of the Notarial System in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Public Service and Private Relations, Was it Easy to Become a Notary Public, Service of Notaries Public in the Dioceses: Notaries Public of Cathedral Chapters, Consistories, and Curiae. Sporadic local and institutional activities could be named as the peculiarities of the institutional activities of notaries public. The activities of notaries public and their career steps offer a vivid picture of both vertical and horizontal dynamics of the notarial service. It can be stated without hesitation that notaries public were active players in the dissemination of written culture that contributed to the development of legal consciousness in the GDL society. The 1st half of the 16th century is the period of prosperity of the notarial system marked by the spread, dissemination, and establishment of notaries public in both church and secular institutions.

The institution of the powiat vozny (vaznys) established by the Second Statute of Lithuania had developed from the former function of the vizh (vižas) in the courts of selected judges. Following the introduction of the vozny function, vizhes were demoted to the lowest link of court executors employed by state-non-judicial or private estate administrations. The number of voznys in each powiat of the GDL ranged from several to a dozen and more. Any powiat nobleman of impeccable reputation who had immovable property in the area could be sworn in as a vozny. Voznys would serve in both powiat land courts and castle courts. At first they were appointed by the voivode’s discretion, later voivodes would appoint voznys elected at sejmiks, based on the noblemen’s request. Each powiat viozny had a certain territory for his supervision and service. This could have been a volost, a district, etc., though most often the territory assigned to a vozny was indicated as a powiat. The number of voznys was not regulated – there could be several voznys in a volost or a single vozny for several volosts and there was no literacy requirement to become a vozny. Only the vozny general of the powiat introduced by the Third Statute of the GDL was expected to be able to read and write. Kaunas powiat was formed after the administrative reform of the GDL in 1565–1566. It stretched in a strip widening towards the southwest from Kėdainiai (Samogitia) in the north to Vyštytis in the south, was the smallest of all powiats in the Voivodeship of Trakai covering the area of around 6045 km². There is no available information on the appointment of the first voznys in Kaunas powiat. They might have been appointed together with the first composition of the post-reform land courts at the beginning of 1566 as it was the case in Slanim powiat where on 1 June 1565 eight powiat voznys were appointed. Inscriptions made by voznys themselves make up a small part of all the records in these books. It should be noted that as time went by and the work of court offices improved, voznys’ work became more intense though less “noticeable”. As court executors they continued to participate in all stages of the land courts’ activities, yet the clerks responsible for record keeping would incorporate them into both the “notarial” (recording of property-related acts) and the procedural (complaints, inspections, litigations) spheres. The article analyses the work of powiat voznys, based on the oldest preserved books of Kaunas land court (10 books 1566–1601). Numerous examples from manuscript books of Kaunas powiat land court employed in the work (3699 inscriptions on 5824 folios in the analysed books) revealed that powiat voznys were the key technical administrative cog in the institution of the land court. Voznys were important in the notarial block of court books indicated therein as the principal witnesses, executors, and officials responsible for statement preparation. Their role in court cases is often primary and they also participate in the work of the lowest link of powiat courts, namely company (kuopa) courts. Not a single court matter could have been solved without the participation voznys as they were required not only for the inspection of loss, but also for witnessing the authenticity of documents and their copies, etc. Moreover, court books contain a lot of “non-standard” information on voznys, including that describing the difficulties and obstacles they would face in their work, a spark of class-related consciousness as well as their activities as ordinary noblemen who work on personal documents, participate in litigations and arguments, file complaints and protests. The investigation of the activities of Kaunas powiat voznys opens new possibilities for the research of the land court as a noblemen’s institution.

The aim of the article is to present the hitherto unknown facts relating to the appeals of Kaunas citizens filed with the assessors’ court and the court in relationibus of the GDL in the first half of the 16th-mid-17th century. The assessors’ court was the main instance of appeal in the GDL which on the sovereign’s behalf, alongside other cases, dealt with the complaints of the citizens of state or royal cities that were granted Magdeburg rights with regard to the rulings of the courts of the first instance, namely the courts of the council, voigt (vaitas), and benchers (suolininkai), in the said cities. The court in relationibus was a higher level of the assessors’ court. These courts would mostly hear cases forwarded from the assessor’s and other courts. The Lithuanian Metrica is a block of the GDL chancellery books. The Voivodeship of Podlachia is a territory comprising mostly the lands of Drohiczin, Bielsk, and Mielnik which from 1513 was administered by the Voivode of Podlachia, was part of the GDL until 1569 but, following the Union of Lublin of 1569, was handed over to Poland. Out of 12 Voivodeship of Podlachia books at the moment 8 are available for the use of researchers. Out of the documents that are of importance to the city of Kaunas, the following are worth mentioning: firstly a group of files related to the arguments of the former voigt Stanislovas Stanas with the authorities of the city and individual citizens (No. 25, 46–49, 57). They offer important information on the relations between the city’s officials and certain data on the books of the voigt office. Two orders of Žygimantas Augustas (Sigismund II Augustus) with regard of the order of filing appeals with the sovereign’s (assessors’) court and court fees (No. 79 and 95) are of particular importance. Several documents (No. 33, 40, 66) refer to Jonas Kojala, the ancestor of the renowned Lithuanian historian of the 17th century Albertas Vijūkas-Kojalavičius (Albert Wijuk Kojałowicz) (1609–1677) born in Kaunas; there is also unexpected information about the relatives of another famous historian – Pole Marcin Kromer (1512–1589) living in Kaunas (No. 68, 76, 81, 85). Uršulė Liubnerienė-Špilienė’s argument with the Council of Kaunas with regard to the role of the latter in the unlawful sell-out of the timber owned by the woman’s husband Jonas Špilis in Königsberg (No. 88) and the argument of Margarita Šulcienė, the widow of the former voigt Jokūbas Šulcas with regard to the retrieval of the possessions of the late voigt (No. 90) are also worth mentioning.

This is the publication of the grant issued in 1519 by the Voivode of Vilnius and the Chancellor of the State Mikalojus Radvila (Mikołaj Radziwiłł) in favour of landowner Jan Sławski. It is a document written on a parchment in a manner akin to the humanist minuscule. The parchment has a red wax seal of Mikalojus Radvila attached to it. The published document is accompanied by the text aimed at disclosing and relating the history of the issuance and existence of this document. The main reasons for drawing up such document was the model of Mikalojus Radvila’s rule in Podlachia. When in 1509 the sovereign Žygimantas Senasis (Sigismund I the Old) conceded the domains in Goniądz and Rajgród to the said nobleman and in 1517 also granted the immunity, Radvila employed several interrelated methods to establish his power in the territory. Alongside the castle another important manifestation of such power was subordinate noblemen who eventually would become local officers and form a part of the organization of the lord’s court. The recipient of the published document – landowner JJan Sławski – also found himself in a similar network of the lord’s power. The drawn up document was aimed at establishing and recording the relations between the lord and the representative of the petty nobility. The medium of Mikalojus Radvila’s court (and, we can guess, also the chancellery) was favourable for such task. The Latin text of the grant was written on the parchment by Mikalojus Husovianas (Mikołaj Hussowczyk) who served as M. Radila’s clerk (lat. notarius). The newly discovered data make it necessary to adjust the knowledge of the latter humanist’s biography and activities in the period in question. The document defined the subordination based relations between M. Radvila and the nobleman. The said relations were confirmed by means of granting (verifying) the Mikitin domain and newly allocating a neighbouring domain. Such grant and the domains in Jan Sławski disposition ensured his service to M. Radvila which first and foremost meant military service. The established relations can be interpreted in the context of feudal relations (relationship between lord and vassal, fief, etc.). In this case the published document becomes a rare source shedding light on such relationship “from within”. Situations established (or recorded) by the document, the fate of the Radvila family’s rule in Podlachia and that of certain social processes in the state are closely interrelated and mutually supplementary. The death of the Voivode of Vilnius and the Chancellor of the State Mikalojus Radvila in 1522 was followed by unrests in his domains – the discontent was mostly expressed by subordinate noblemen. Jan Sławski was among them. Several court litigations resulted in the landowner being issued with a new privilege for Mikitin domain in 1528. In 1529 together with a group of other noblemen he was freed from the Radvila “yoke”. These events occurred in the same year when Žygimantas Senasis issued the land privilege which provided for the restrictions regarding the formation of tiered subordination. In 1522, based on the Sovereign’s order, Slavskis was expected to return the document to the Radvila family. Actually, we cannot tell for sure if he did what he was ordered to do. Later, it was owned by Bona Sforza and after 1569 became a part of the archives of the Crown Treasury in Wawel. In 1765 the archives were relocated to Warsaw and following the occupation of the city, were moved to Russia. In 1799, after the Prussian authorities explicitly declared their wish to obtain archival materials pertaining to the territories under their control, the document most probably was stored in Białystok. In 1854 via Grodno the grant together with other documents reached the Archives of the Ancient Acts established in Vilnius, which later in its own turn handed the parchment over to Vilnius Public Library.