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The article publishes and analyses the text of an unknown until now Slavic Athonite document preserved in the Wallacho-Moldavian archives of the monastery of Vatopedi. This charter was composed by the Archbishop of Ochrid, Paisios (1605-1614 г.), as a letter of recommendation intending to facilitate a mission of an unspecified Athonite monastery, which was dispatched to the Russian Czar Vasiliy Ivanovich (Shuyskiy). The name of the monastery is intentionally omitted, so its identification is possible only thanks to the mention that St. Sava of Serbia had taken his monastic vows in one of its towers. According to the well known Athonite legend, this event had taken place in the Russian Athonite monastery of St. Panteleimon.
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The church of St. George at the village of Gorni Kozjak near Shtip has been the object of study for a long time. One of the interesting questions of its history are the graffiti (inscriptions) scratched into the preserved frescoes. They have been dated to the 40s-50s of the 14th c. and carry important information. They are linked to many highly educated personalities ("grammarians") who wrote books and taught the people literacy. To be noted are Stanislav the Grammarian, Voihna the Grammarian. Grammarian Nistor and Priest Ivanko. The authors were able to decipher and interpret two remarkable texts. One deals with a certain Bratan who had come to church for the services on Friday with a woman, Macedonia. The second is a text, already known, which speaks of a Despot Tornik not attested elsewhere. On the basis of recent publications, the authors propose several variant identifications. Most acceptable is the identification of Despot Tornik with Tornik Radoslav, kefalia in Seres in 1356 and close to the widow of King Stefan Dushan, Queen Elena.
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Several unpublished graffiti drawings on the mural calendar in the narthex of the church of the "Holy Forty Martyrs" in Turnovo are examined in the article. They represent a naval vessel (a galley), two boats, a peacock, a deer, the sing of the cross, four human palms and an interesting combination of graffiti of a chalice with part of the mural figure of the Prophet Micah. The detailed analysis of the graffiti, especially of the characteristic peculiarities of the galley, and the direct parallels indicated for it allow a dating to the 16th/ 17th century. This dating is supported by architectural observations made in the narthex during recent archaeological excavations (1992-1995). This new information about the functioning of the church of the "Holy Forty Martyrs" in the period after the end of the 14th с (during the Ottoman rule) provides a direct link to the graves, discovered in the course of the excavations. They indicate the existence of a large Christian necropolis up to the mid-17th c, the exploration of which has not been completed yet.
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The article presents an analytic description of the contents of the M.S. Sin. Gr. 286 (13th c, Moscow, The State History Museum), a Byzantine miscellany of canon law with comments by John Zonaras. The manuscript preserves the second known copy of the List of the Bulgarian Archbishops, called also The Du Cange Catalogue after its first publisher. The text of this copy is published here for the first time. A comparision with the copy in Cod. Gr. 880 of the National Library in Paris is made.
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The goal of the present article is to present the scope and character of the authority of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Witold at the time of the Union of Horodlo on the basis of the entirety of written and iconographic sources dating back to the beginning of the 15th century. The documents of Horodło did not exert a direct impact on the legal status of Witold himself, yet in 1413 his real authority was much more extensive than 10 years earlier. The author focuses on an analysis of Witold’s policy in the first decade of the 15th century since the period between the year 1401 when he was officially entrusted with the grand ducal authority, and the year 1413, was by far the most important one in the task of building an independent political organization in Lithuania. Witold’s activities (diplomatic, territorial and propagandist ones) had led to an establishment of the sovereignty of power which was legalized by the Pact of Vilnius and Radom of 1401. The new monarchic conception and the image of Witold had been worked out in the ruler’s immediate entourage, whose core consisted of foreign scholars, secretaries and local Lithuanian magnates. The role of advisors from the grand ducal office in the process of development of monarchic ideology is unquestionable; it is particularly visible during the ideological struggle with the German Order in the Grunwald era. The development of monarchic power in Lithuania exerted a negative impact on Witold’s relations with his senior brother, the king of Poland and the supreme Lithuanian duke Jagiello. Shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Vilnius in 1401, Witold who concentrated power in his own hands began to treat his tributary obligations and oaths as his own exclusive rights. Ever since that moment Witold, who was a sovereign ruler in Lithuania, did not allow anyone to interfere in the relations between him and his subordinates. Jagiello could have only one vassal in Lithuania – namely Witold.
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The subject of our deliberations is the ideological significance of the Byzantine frescoes founded by Ladislaus Jagiello and preserved until the present day in the Sandomierz cathedral. The origin of the polychrome should be traced to the period of the king’s marriage to Anna of Cilli, whose coat-of-arms is to be found in the row of coats-of-arms discovered during the conservation work conducted in the cathedral in the years 2008–2011. The very fact that Anna’s coat-of-arms had been placed within the row of coats-of-arms of the Kingdom of Poland, should be viewed in a wider perspective as a pictorial testimony of the royal legacy after king Casimir the Great and the continuity of the Piast monarchy under Jagiello’s rule. Thanks to an analysis of the content of the scenes as well as their arrangement, the authoress distinguishes two main axes of interpretation of the content of the paintings – the historical-eschatological image of theophany and the royal foundation. The polychromes gave testimony to the existence of two Christian cultures united within a single state organism, whereas the placing of the paintings and foundation plaques in within the space of the presbytery, proves that they fulfilled an important role as propaganda tools during the visits of the most illustrious guests of the kingdom.
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The authoress supposes that the numerous resolutions of the Union of Horodło of 2 October 1413 had been authored by various subjects, both individual and collective ones. The creator of the article concerning succession to the throne in Poland and Lithuania, after the death of Jagiello and Witold, as well as of the resolution introducing the permanence of the institution of grand ducal authority in Lithuania, which is closely associated with it, including after the death of Witold, was none other but Ladislaus Jagiello himself. It was also the latter one who together with Witold extended the scope of the land privileges for the Lithuanian boyars. The price which the Poles had to pay for the succession article and the stabilization of the grand ducal power in Lithuania was the article concerning the incorporation of Lithuania into Poland in the year 1386 and in the present. The above article was of considerable importance from the ideological point of view, but had no real foundations. The authoress is of the opinion that it was the archbishop of Gniezno Mikołaj Trąba, who at that time as well as previously had enjoyed Jagiello’s full trust, that had been the real initiator of Lithuanian boyars’ heraldic adoption by the Poles. The authoress is also of the opinion that the complete texts of all four Union documents had been brought to Horodło only to be sealed there.
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The article constitutes an attempt to show in a synthetic way the main elements of Jagiello’s policy in relation to the Polish Church and the latter one’s situation in the complex reality of the western schism, the conciliar movement as well as Hussitism; it also draws attention to the most important processes taking place in the Gniezno province. The author of the article also describes the monarch’s active policy in relation to the issue of appointments to church posts. As a rule it was the well-educated people who had proved themselves in the service of the monarch’s office as well as in the diplomatic service who were appointed as heads of bishoprics. The monarch had also conducted an active policy in relation to the appointments of some prelatures and canonries in cathedral chapters. The article discusses the foundational activity of the king and its impact on the development of the parish network. While presenting the reform initiatives within the Polish Church at the time of the great western schism and the conciliar movement, the author tries to prove that it was the synods and their legislation that became the main instrument of these changes. In the synodal statutes one can observe a process of gradual deepening of the religious life of the faithful as well as striving to their moral formation. The intellectual and moral requirements as regards the clergy and their pastoral ministry were also on the increase. The author proves that the figures of Queen Hedwig and Ladislaus Jagiello had played a key role in the history of the state and of the Polish Church at the turn of the 14th and at the beginning of the 15th century and that the most important fruits of their activity and decisions have continued to exert an impact throughout centuries right up until the present times.
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The author analyzes the policy of King Ladislaus Jagiello towards the Catholic Church on Ruthenian territories of the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Lithuanian Duchy. It concerned almost exclusively the territory controlled by the Lvov Archdiocese as right up until Jagiello’s death in 1434, the area of north-eastern Ruthenia was almost entirely derived of Catholic infrastructure. An absolute predominance of the indiginous Orthodox Church population could be observed there. The monarch’s strong material support for the Catholic Church (for bishoprics, diocese institutions and parishes) had contributed to civilizational transformations (including political ones) of the Grand Lithuanian Duchy; it had also contributed to social reorganization and a comprehensive integration of the Ruthenian territories that had been incorporated into the Polish Kingdom. On the Ruthenian territories of the Crown and Lithuania, the church institutions had embarked on different tasks than on the ethnically Lithuanian territories of the Vilnius and Zmudz dioceses; this was the result of the different religious and social structure of the local population.
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In the article the author tries to describe and characterize the group of Crown deputies to the Lublin Seym of 1569; initially the group consisted of 95 and then of 113 deputies – after incorporating 18 representatives of the provinces taken away from Lithuania and incorporated into Poland in the course of the Seym session. Following an analysis of the numerous and heated debates devoted to the new shape of the Polish-Lithuanian union, the author comes to the conclusion that the Crown deputies emphasized the continuity of the union, by recalling those legal acts and agreements which supported their strivings to conclude a unitary union. Ultimately, confronted by the course of events and the uncompromising attitude of the Lithuanians, the deputies displayed a certain degree of flexibility and the union of Lublin became closer to a federation of states.
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The subject of the deliberations is an anonymous publicist text entitled “Fundamenta catholicae religionis”. The text from the manuscript of the Czartoryski Library refers directly to the Union of Horodło. On the basis of an analysis of its content, the authoress of the article has dated it to the year 1632 – that is to the beginning of the period of interregnum after the death of Sigismund III Vasa; it was a time of persistent political struggle between on the one hand, the royalist faction which grouped supporters of hereditary monarchy and Catholic confessionalization, and on the other hand, the Protestant-Orthodox opposition under the leadership of Krzysztof II Radziwill. The most important feature of the above text, from the point of view of taking advantage of the tradition of the Union of Horodło in the political argumentation, is emphasizing the contractual character of the union and refusing Lithuanians (and particularly Catholics) an equal share in the public and civil rights, on a par with the Poles. It is worth noting that according to the conception of a strong Catholic monarchy, propagated by the supporters of Catholic confessionalization (above all by Jesuits), it is suggested, albeit in a concealed way, that the decisions concerning issues of key importance to the state, should be made by the monarch himself as well as the senators (particularly the clergy), whereas the public rights of the gentry, including the Catholic one, are limited to the defense of the state.The basis of the historical-legal argumentation at the times of the Vasas was not a historical factography in the present-day understanding of this term, but rather historiosophy whereas the interpretation of the Polish-Lithuanian relations and the status of the Great Lithuanian Duchy in the Polish-Lithuanian federation depended on the political option and the religion of the authors. This concerns also the resolutions and the tradition of the Union of Horodło which contrary to the intentions of its initiators and participants was often used in an instrumental way.
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The authoress of the present article has embarked on the task of presenting the different views with regard to the Union of Horodlo of 1413, as presented in the Polish and Lithuanian press articles on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of this union. Moreover she has tried to find an answer to a few fundamental questions concerning the formation of the historical memory of the Poles and Lithuanians at the threshold of the restoration of their statehood. The questions concern, among others, the reasons for the differences in the evaluation of the Union of Horodlo between the Poles and Lithuanians, the moment when the memory of the Union began to take on a different shape and the links between historical memory and political culture. On the basis of examples derived from the Polish and Lithuanian press of 1913, the authoress proves that despite the many years of the Polish-Lithuanian union, a real rapprochement between the two states and societies did not take place, neither in the 15th century, not later, until the very end of the existence of the Commonwealth of Both Nations. The Polish interpretation of the union which was negotiated in Horodło in 1413 was unacceptable to a modern Lithuanian nation. Both sides, that is the representatives of the Polish and the Lithuanian nations had used the celebrations associated with the 500th anniversary of the Union of Horodło to formulate and propagate their most important goal – that is to restore their statehood and in order to achieve this goal, they were ready to subordinate their historical memory. But it is important not to forget that we are dealing with a specific kind of historical memory which is targeted and focused above all on the future.
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The paper is an inquiry into the origins and impact on the historical culture of modern Lithuania of the view of GDL as an empire. The inventor or discoverer of the GDL as empire was a Lithuanian geographer and geopolitician Kazys Pakštas (1893–1960), who provided seminal imperiological analysis of the ancient Lithuanian polity in his book Political Geography of Baltic Republics (1929). This work was probably the main source of inspiration for the Antanas Smetona (1874–1944), who was Lithuanian President in the years 1926–1940. He repeatedly designated GDL as an empire in his speeches, starting with the celebration of the 500th death anniversary of Vytautas Magnus in 1930. An important exponent of this idea was Vytautas Alantas (1902–1990), who served as editor-in-chief of a semi-official newspaper “Lietuvos Aidas” in 1934–1939 and contributed to the discourse on GDL as an empire in the Lithuanian diaspora. Because of ideological reasons, the subject of ancient Lithuanian imperialism was avoided by Lithuanian historians in the Soviet era. In the post-communist times, Gintaras Beresnevičius (1961–2006) resurrected and popularized the idea of GDL as an empire to legitimize the Eastern strategy of the foreign policy of the contemporary Lithuanian state and to mythologize the challenges of the Lithuanian membership in the European Union. Because of the mainstream historiography’s commitment to hermeneutic methodology (historism), Lithuanian academic historiography in the interwar period remained cautious about the very idea of GDL as an empire.
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For the author of the present article the basis for the analysis of the contemporary understanding of collective identity and the condition of historical memory, is a confrontation of the ways of shaping the memory of the Union of Horodło in the 19th and 20th c. The issue of identity, both Polish and Lithuanian one, as well as of common memory is closely associated with the legacy of the Union of Horodło. At the same time, the author is looking for ways of remedying the situation in which one deals with a loss of positive identification with the cultural and political legacy of one’s own community – a phenomenon which is currently observed in Poland. A suitable foundation for this kind of remedy is perceived by him in Poland’s past, and since the time of the Union of Horodło – also in Lithuania’s past, and in referring to the idea of the Commonwealth of Both Nations, to the notion of citizenship which co-creates it, to the specific vision of positive freedom which founds it. In the foreground of this collective memory, one finds the voice of the local council, Seym, of common parliamentary sessions devoted to the common good, the difficult process of forming opinions and shaping the foundations of political freedom, and of transformation of subjects into citizens. From this republican perspective, the Union of Horodło looms as an important experience and symbol.
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The attitude of the Polish gentry towards the union with Lithuania and the new dynasty was subject to evolution – it evolved from distrust towards a dangerous aggressor of not long ago, to searching for possible advantages that might accrue from the union of the two states. Jagiello sought social support for his rule not only among the elites, but also among provincial gentry, by accepting them for service and creating conditions that promoted individual careers, and sometimes opened up possibilities for entire families. Genealogical research comprising wider circles of the gentry allow one to assess the scale of involvement of the provincial gentry in the service of the monarch and the state. It is clearly visible that it was above all the sons of the local lower-rank officials who having an easier access to the monarch, were characterized by greater activity in this respect; but also gentry who did not come from families of officials, proved to be active here. Mixed marriages between the Poles, Lithuanians and Ruthenians began to appear already after the Union of Horodło. Initially this phenomenon had an elitist character and it was only later that it began to encompass wider circles of society. Horodło was also one of the turning points which opened up the way to the migration of the gentry to the East.
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In the article the involvement of the delegation of the Kingdom of Poland in the work of the Council of Constance (1414–1418) was assessed. The analysis was carried out chiefly from the point of view of the key issues in the external policy of the Jagiellon monarchy; the analysis also focused on the reactions of the participants of the Council to the activities of the Polish delegation. Although the author agrees with the opinions that the Polish Kingdom did achieve an image success in Constance, yet he is of the opinion that the success played a secondary role as regards real-life events which took place in Central Europe; he also thinks that the success tends to be exagerated by Polish historiography. Apart from a narrow group of intellectuals, the contention between Poland and the Teutonic Order was of little interest to the Council participants, and hence he comes to the conclusion that military activities were a much more effective weapon in the defense of Polish-Lithuanian interests.Although without a doubt, Jagiello and Witold overestimated the significance of the Council in respect of solving the conflict with the Teutonic Order, yet they achieved a tangible success which consisted in a change of perception of their states as well as subjects by the contemporary European elites. Therefore, the author puts forward a hypothesis that the mission of the delegation of the Ja-giellon monarchy to the Council of Constance was one of those episodes in the history of Poland and Lithuania, which constitutes a permanent legacy of common historical identity
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The aim of the article is to carry out a review of Ruthenian annals, particularly with the view of finding entries relating to the Grand Lithuanian Duchy and the Kingdom of Poland, during the rule of Ladislaus Jagiello. The author also analyzes the issue of the degree of interest of various chronicle-writing centers in problems relating to the Polish-Lithuanian union and the image of the two rulers – Jagiello and Witold that had been created by them. From the analyzed data one can clearly see that the events in the Grand Lithuanian Duchy had been carefully followed by various Ruthenian centers which testifies to the fact that good-neighborly relations with the Duchy had been treated with due attention. On the other hand, the information conveyed by them had not always been precise. The way of presenting Lithuanian topics in Ruthenian annals was closely associated with the traditional image of Lithuania and Lithuanians, as well as with the image of religious dissenters, including among others Catholics, as it had functioned in the social awareness of Ruthenian residents. At the turn of the 14th and at the beginning of the 15th century, on the territory of north-eastern and north-western Ruthenia there already circulated an image of Northern Ruthenia or its part as an “entirely Ruthenian land”. In the effect of this way of reasoning, Witold is presented in the annals as the leader of a tight-knit “Lithuania”, “Lithuanian land”, and Ruthenians are referred to as his subjects only indirectly. The annals devote a lot of attention to the rule of Witold and there is much less information in them about Jagiello. All annals fail to even mention his death in the year 1434. However, their authors were well aware of the fact that Ladislaus Jagiello was a Polish king, ally and sovereign of Witold.
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The article raises the issue of craft guilds judiciary in the medieval Cracow. Earlier historians studying the articles of guild law, claimed that guilds judged mainly the cases of infringements of guild law, as well as minor civil and criminal cases of corporation members. This study is based on judicial notes from two late medieval guild books – the book of Kleparz clothiers and the book of Cracow goldsmiths. The analysis of source material, however, has revised previous statements. The presence of major criminal causes in guild records revealed that the scope of craft corporations’ jurisdiction was more extensive than it had been thought. The comparison between preserved guild statutes and guild law related causes showed coincidence of judicial practice with the wording of articles. Furthermore, the content of those records showed similarities between judicial proceedings of guilds and municipal court. Those statements prove that craft corporations were in fact the courts of first instance for their members and important part of municipal judiciary in Cracow.
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