Lietuvos istorijos institutas

The article analyses late 14th – early 15th-century scale armour plates from the grounds of the castles in Vilnius. This as yet poorly investigated topic allows a broader survey of the construction and development of the armour of the Vilnius castle garrisons and the GDL army to be made. The amour plate analysis showed that the armour elements used by some GDL warriors in the late 14th – early 15th century had ties to the armour used in the lands of the Eastern Slavs and in Western Europe at this time and somewhat prior to it. Scale armour subtypes, which have no analogies and can probably be associated with local armour manufacturers, were also discovered.

The name of the artist and stage decorator Konstanty Ottosielski (Otoszelski, ca 1755–1809) is well known among culture historians, with brief biograms being included in biographical dictionaries of Lithuania’s and Poland’s artists.3 Nonetheless, in terms of his biography and his artistic legacy, this is a figure who has been researched in a very fragmented manner, perhaps because thus far not a single piece of his work is known to exist. Data is usually given in publications that in around 1780 Ottosielski worked for the Radziwiłł princes in Nesvyzh, where he painted decorations for the court theatre there, before moving to the Sapieha family’s Derechin estate, and lived in Vilnius from 1793 where he created a number of theatrical set designs and interior mural paintings.4 This article focuses on research of this artist’s biography, using sources to correct the life dates of the artist and his family members, the geography of his activities, paying particular attention to his time spent in Vilnius.

On the map of schools in 18th-century Vilnius, a prominent place was occupied by the Vilnius Academy, which during the times of the Commission of National Education was called the Main School of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and after the loss of independence of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Vilnius Main School. In addition to the university, there were also schools providing secondary and elementary education, as well as educational institutions. The paper is an attempt to look at the possibilities of education in Vilnius during the period of the Commission of National Education and in the years after the Commission, until the reform of Alexander I in 1803.

This article presents an analysis of the issue surrounding the debts of the city of Vilnius in the 18th century, focusing mainly on the second half of the century, when the city treasury faced financial difficulties. I seek to identify the reasons for these debts, the most important of them being expenses incurred for the upkeep of the Russian army. The treasury was also burdened with providing for the soldiers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the city garrison. The extent and nature of these expenses is analysed. The largest creditors are registered in the article, and expenses for debt administration and return are also analysed.

The aim of the article is to highlight the peaceful functioning of the military garrison in Vilnius from the mid-1760s to the early 1790s. In addition to other issues, the article presents the peaceful composition and structure of the garrison, the form of accommodation, the functions performed by the army, as well as conflict situations.

The handwritten diary of Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł (1702–1762), also known as Rybeńko, a source familiar to researchers dealing with the history of the 18th century in various fields, is certainly extremely interesting. The diary is kept in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw (Archiwum Główny Akt Dawnych w Warszawie, AGAD) in the Radziwiłł Archive collection (section VI, sign. II-80). Rybeńko was one of the richest magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the time, and this is evidenced by the numerous and extensive estates he owned in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He owned about 20 towns, and more than 300 villages, which he inherited from his father and from his father-in-law Janusz Antoni Wiśniowiecki. In view of the above, and concerning the fact that Michal Kazimierz Radziwiłł held one of the highest senatorial offices (from 1744 he was governor of Vilnius, so he was formally in charge of the city that he knew well), did he include information about the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the pages of his diary? Being a politically active man who was in possession of such extensive estates, he was constantly on the road (pursuing at the same time a variety of political, economic and social goals), which both his wives complained about. He stayed in many cities of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including the capital of Lithuania. Therefore, this article has been written with the intention of presenting the diary as a source for researching one of the most important centres of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time. An attempt is made to consider the circumstances in which entries appear in the diary, whether the prince visited the city regularly or only occasionally, and whether the entries in the diary are systematic reports, or if they are ‘second hand’ information. Finally, the question should be raised as to what type of data was recorded by Rybeńko in the context of Vilnius, and to what extent it can be useful in the study of the city’s history. It also seems crucial to consider the question of what image of the Lithuanian capital emerges from the governor’s records.

The article presents a discussion of the state of the city of Vilnius, its buildings, people, disasters and memorable events following the disasters that swept through in the beginning of the 18th century. The start of the Great Northern War in 1700 (1700–1721), the campaigns of the Lithuanian, Russian and Swedish armies and the plague epidemic that followed the war (1710) severely affected the city of Vilnius and its inhabitants. Despite the devastation and disasters, Vilnius was still the most important city in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania where the most important political affairs in the land were decided. The article is mainly based on the letters of Maciej Józef Ancuta, the suffragan of the Bishop of Vilnius, to the Chancellor of Lithuania, Karol Stanisław Radziwiłł.

Straipsnyje nagrinėjama Vilniaus vaito suolininkų teismo veikla 1795–1814 m. Aptariamos vaito ir suolininkų profesinės biografijos, teismo darbo veiklos sąlygos, nulemtos ilgamečių tradicijų ir naujų kardinalių politinių pokyčių, taip pat teismo nagrinėjamų civilinių ir kriminalinių bylų turinys, teismų sprendimų praktikos. Atskleidžiama teisminės kultūros tradicijos kaita Vilniaus mieste po Abiejų Tautų Respublikos padalijimų. Tyrimas padeda geriau pažinti miestiečių luomo ūkines, finansines, kriminalines, visuomenines ir šeimyninio gyvenimo problemas bei jų santykius su kitų luomų ir sluoksnių miesto gyventojais.

The article deals with the activities of the Vilnius Magistrate’s Court between 1795 and 1813. It discusses the personal composition of the court, the working environment of the judges, and judicial and administrative practices that are relevant and offer an opportunity to gain a better understanding of the economic, financial, social, and familial problems of the urban residents and their relations with other estates and strata of the urban population.

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.