Lietuvos istorijos institutas

This article examines the unpublished administrative documents of the governors and voivodes of Vitebsk and their deputies (vice-governors and vice-voivodes) from the 1490s to 1564. Twenty-two such documents were found in various manuscript repositories in Lithuania and Latvia, nine of which are provided in the Appendix at the end of this article. The article is divided into two parts. In the first, the documents under study are classified chronologically and according to their content in order to distinguish between the different areas of administrative activity of the governors, voivodes, and deputies. In the second part, the documents are discussed in the context of sources directly related to the governors, voivodes, and deputies who held office during the period under study.

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 deals with our research on the Ruthenian documents of Alexander Jagiellon and Sigismund the Old, the grand dukes of Lithuania, which cover the whole period of the reign of these rulers (1492–1544) and are kept in Vilnius. In the course of empirical research, we registered 142 such documents; the main data about them are represented in the annex to the article. Meanwhile, in the main part of the article we try to identify the scribes who were responsible for the preparation of the documents, to identify the documents that were written by the scribes who signed them, and to discuss the palaeographic features of all the documents.

The annexation of the Land of Smolensk by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1395 had a great impact on the situation of the ecclesiastical officials of the Orthodox Church in this region. The article investigates the development of the careers of the ecclesiastical officials of

Lietuvos ir kaimyninių šalių istoriografijoje Stačiatikių bažnyčios struktūros paskiruose Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės regionuose kaip pagrindinis tyrimų objektas pasirenkamos labai retai. Šiame straipsnyje aptarsime vieno regiono – Smolensko žemės – bažnytinius pareigūnus (vyskupus, vienuolynų archimandritus ir igumenus, cerkvių dvasininkus – šventikus ir diakonus) 1395–1514 m., kai šis regionas priklausė Lietuvos Didžiajai Kunigaikštystei. Dėmesys bus telkiamas į tris aspektus: Stačiatikių bažnyčios pareigūnų atsiradimo Smolensko žemėje laiką,

Istoriografijoje teigiama, kad 1387 m. Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės branduolio žemėms tapus krikščioniškomis, šioje valstybėje prasidėjo europeizacijos procesas. Tačiau menkai atsižvelgiama į jos politinio branduolio ir periferinių regionų, kuriuos sudarė rusėniškosžemės, skirtumus. Straipsnyje tiriama, ar Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės rusėniškose žemėse europeizacijos procesas išties prasidėjo po 1387 m. Taip pat analizuojama, kuriam Europos regionui ar regionams būtų galima priskirti šias žemes. Straipsnyje aiškinsimės, kaip XIII–XVI a. buvo suvokiama Europa ir kokie pokyčiai tuo metu vyko Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės rusėniškose žemėse.