Lietuvos istorijos institutas

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 Kvėdarna Parish (Šilalė District) Poster of Jesus Christ Heart Fraternity SPASABAS PASYLECAWOIMA SZWĘCZIAUSE SZYRDEY PONA JEZUSA Broctwoy Saldziausios Szyrdies Chrystusa (The Manner of Commitment to the Holiest Heart of Lord Jesus in the Fraternity of the Sweetest Heart of Christ) preserved in the archive of the Kretinga Franciscan monastery was not recorded in the Lithuanian Bibliography. The Poster was published in Vilnius by the printer Abromas Dvorčius (most probably in 1848). Until now, the activity of this fraternity in Kvėdarna has not been recorded either. A similar document of that fraternity in another parish (Rozalimas parish) had been printed four years earlier, in 1844, and has survived till now. A comparison of the two documents (from Rozalimas and Kvėdarna) uncovers significant textual differences. Even if their structures are comparable (they both contain a part of commitment to the fraternity and both list obligations and indulgences), the remaining content and the linguistic features differ substantially. The documents must have been prepared by different persons. The dialectal peculiarities of the Kvėdarna Poster suggest that it must have been prepared by a southern Samogitian (from the southern part of the Lithuanian Lowlands).

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.

Three handwritten copies of an order issued by George Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg- Ansbach, have recently come to light in the Secret State Archives Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Berlin). Two of these, A and B, had been edited before by Jurgis Gerullis (1927), but were meanwhile considered lost. The third one, K, has been newly discovered in a file of drafts which also contained the German drafts both for the text of the order and the Duke’s accompanying letter to the church administrations of Tilsit and Ragnit. It is edited here with the variants from A, B and a photograph of the lost copy U, and together with the two German drafts. The edition is accompanied by a full commentary and glossary. George Frederick, nephew of the first Prussian duke Albert of Brandenburg, took over the administration of the Duchy of Prussia after Albert’s son had been declared unfit to rule. The order, dating from December 1578 and addressed to the church administration of Tilsit, admonishes the members of the Protestant church district of Tilsit to fulfil their obligations as Christians and refrain from heathen practices. It is the earliest extant administrative document written in Old Lithuanian.

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.