BAŽNYTINĖS ŽEMĖVALDOS PAVYZDYS: TRYS VIENOS TERITORIJOS XVII–XIX AMŽIAUS PLANAI
An Example of Church Land Ownership: tree Plans o fone Property from the 17th–19th Centuries

Summary/Abstract: Researches of the historical geography of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are still fragmentary. Therefore, the publication of cartographical documents newly found in different archives, especially of the 16th–17th centuries, let scientists to use visual material widely. For historians, the common content and juridical aspect of plans are important most. Private property, the owners and party wires may give plenty of information to the researches of local society. Sometimes plans involve information about the land use – the wilderness or a built environment, such as fields, pastures, and settlements. The other important reflection on the property plans is a picturesque landscape visualization, which could give more details about the road system, the spread of settlements, and the landscape of a particular area, depicting local churches, large manors or even small architecture details. These visual documents are a valuable source for local researches disclosing the whole region panorama. This paper offers an analysis of three plans from the 17th–19th centuries, representing the present-day Vilnius district (Lithuania) near the Šumskas and Medininkai settlements. All these plans are kept at the Manuscript Department of the Vilnius University Library. They depict the real party wires between the Vilnius Basilian Fathers’ and the Šumskas city Dominicans’ land property. The main purpose of these plans was to fix the real borders between the lands, so a special attention is paid to the border marks. These land plans give us a unique possibility to overview and analyze the progress in the land marking process. Comparing three plans of different centuries, we can perceive constant changes in the land ownership process dynamics, what makes this publication valuable not only for historical cartography, but also for local microhistory researches.

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