Istorijos šaltinių tyrimai / Studies in Historical Sources

Lithuania and the Teutonic Order on an island of the Dubysa river on 31 October 1382. Until recently, only three legal acts of this treaty, all issued by the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila and his brothers, were known in historiography. Two of these acts, featuring the terms and conditions of the four-year peace and of the mutual military aid as well as Jogaila’s promise to take baptism, survived to the present day in the form of parchment originals. The third one, listing the terms of the cession of Samogitia to the Teutonic Order, came down to us only in a copy made in 1410. Although the Grand Duke of Lithuania Jogaila seems to have issued a certain legal act on the cession of Samogitia to the Teutonic Order in 1382 (this fact can be proved by a documentary source), the preserved text of the act may contain amendments and interpolations made later by representatives of the Teutonic Order for a political purpose. There are several arguments in favour of this assumption. For example, in 1393 the Grand Commander Wilhelm von Helfenstein made notarized copies of some documents on the history of the relationship between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Teutonic Order, particularly pertaining to the Samogitian problem, however, at that time he failed to make a copy of the aforementioned legal act on the cession of Samogitia to the Teutonic Order. The form of this act significantly differs from the form of the two other acts issued by the Lithuanian part in 1382. Besides, mention may be made of another counterpart of the Dubysa peace treaty which was issued by the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order Konrad Zöllner von Rotenstein and currently remains deposited in the collection of manuscripts of the Czartoryski Library in Krakow. There is no reference to the cession of Samogitia to the Teutonic Order in this document that has hitherto remained unpublished. The text of the Teutonic Order’s counterpart of the Dubysa peace treaty is reproduced in the appendix to the article, alongside with its translation into the Russian language and the description of the seals most of which unfortunately are in very poor condition.