Genealogy of Mongirdai Nobility

In the middle of the second millennium AD, Crimea became an outpost of Islamic civilization in south-eastern Europe. Muslim values, Islamic law, morality and aesthetics were at the heart of medieval Crimea: in the system of government, military organization, business, art and culture. However, the relationship between Muslim Crimea and Christian Europe did not deteriorate into opposition, military conflict and religious confrontation. Crimea found allies in eastern and central Europe. These allies were primarily Lithuania and Poland (after the Union of Lublin, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland - Rzeczpospolita of both nations, otherwise known as, ‘the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’). The alliance of the Crimean Khanate with the Polish-Lithuanian state was motivated by the strategic objective of countering Moscovite expansion, which had been aggressively focused towards the east and west ever since the 16th century. This may be seen in the conquest of the Kazan and the Astrakhan Khanates by Ivan the Terrible, his foray into the Nogai prairie and Moscow’s participation in the Livonian War. These strategic objectives resulted in an alliance between Crimea and Turkey. Crimea’s status as a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire was the most important factor in safeguarding the Crimean Tatar state from the Moscovite threat. At the same time, the fact that the Crimean Khanate became a vassal of Porte (the Ottoman Empire) did not result in its losing its political independence and neither did it interfere with the authentic nature and development of Crimean Tatar culture.

Grodno as a city in the Republic of Belarus, with its rich and diverse culture, is almost 1000 years old. It arose as one of the political and administrative centers of ancient Rus. In the middle of the thirteenth century it stood at the beginning of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which formed in the Neman region. The Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas received the city from his father Kestutis and from that moment on Grodno became the residence of the great dukes of Lithuania, and later Polish kings. At the end of the eighteenth century, after the partition of Poland, Grodno was seized by the Russian authorities. As a provincial town of the Russian empire it suffered a violent Russification, which was continued in the times of the Soviet Union. On receiving independence in 1991, the Republic of Belarus began an independent political life. However, the election in 1994 of A. Lukashenko for President shattered the independent Belarusian state development trend and started a restoration of Soviet institutions of power and traditions. Instead of Belarusian national symbols in public life, Soviet symbols reappeared, which blurred the traces of the rich and varied history of the country. Grodno is perhaps the most interesting city of Belarus because of its multiculturalism.

Apart from the Constitution of May 3, the achievement of the Four-Year Sejm, or the Great Sejm of 1788-1792 included a group of laws which, together with the Constitution, were to form the principal framework of the legal system of the reformed Republic. These laws concerned the legal situation of the townspeople, the range of the direct democracy (the law on sejmiki, or local parliaments), the functioning of the Sejm, the relation between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (uniform state), the administration of justice, the army, the police, and the tax system. The outbreak of the Polish-Russian war caused the suspension of the Sejm proceedings, and the King’s joining the Targowica Confederation, as well as the subsequent defeat, squandered the legislative efforts of the Great Sejm and its attempt at a general reform of the political system and law of Poland.

The lifetime of the Kingdom of Poland – a state connected with the Russian Empire by a union – has not been unequivocally assessed in Polish historiography. On the one hand, the Kingdom had its own army, administration and a very liberal constitution, and had quickly achieved economic prosperity. On the other hand, within a few years of its creation, there occurred the fi rst violations of the Constitution and the persecutions of those who opposed these infringements. A significant event was the revolt of the Cadets of 29 November 1830, which turned into a uprising, today referred to as the November Uprising. This article is the analysis of the legal aspects of the Polish-Russian union created in 1815. It is then compared with the Union of Lublin and the drafts of planned unions between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Tsardom of Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries. The circumstances which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Poland and its union with the Russian Empire, as well as the earlier attempts to create one state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire, as well as the principles of a union of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are presented. The principles upon which these unions were to be based are subsequently compared and analysed. A particular emphasis has been placed on the issues related to the international legal status of the Kingdom of Poland. In this context questions such as: the treaty-making power and jus legationis have also been asked. Another important issue discussed in the paper is also the role of the king in matters concerning foreign policy and a possible role of Russia in these matters. The results of this analysis allow to formulate a more objective assessment of the period of the Kingdom of Poland, focusing on its legal status and position, and in particular on the relation with the Russian Empire.

The history of publishing in Lithuania begins with the early formation of the Lithuanian state in the 13th century. As the state was taking shape over many centuries, its name, government, and territory kept changing along with its culture and the prevailing language of writing and printing. Geographically spread across Central and Eastern Europe, the state was multinational, its multilayered culture shaped by the synthesis of the Latin and Greek civilizations. Furthermore, the state was multiconfessional: both Latin and Orthodox Christianity were evolving in its territory. These historical circumstances led to the emergence of a unique book culture at the end of the manuscript book period (the late 15th and the early 16th century). In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), writing centers were formed that later frequently became printing houses; books were written in Latin, Church Slavonic, and Ruthenian, with two writing systems (Latin and Cyrillic) coexisting, and their texts and artistic design reflected the interaction of Western and Eastern Christianity in the GDL. During the period of the printed book, the GDL, though remote from the most important Western European publishing centers, was affected by the general tendencies of the Renaissance, Reformation, Baroque, and Enlightenment culture through the Roman Catholic Church and integration processes. During the 16th–18th centuries, publications in Latin, Ruthenian, and Polish prevailed in the GDL. In the 16th–17th centuries, about half of the press production were Latin books that spread along with Renaissance ideas and the Europeanization of the state, while the Ruthenian written language (one of the official state languages) was developed. After the Union of Lublin was signed in 1569, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth promoted the integration processes in public life, manifested by the emergence of the Polish language and the spread of Polish books as well as the growth of publishing in the 18th century. In the 16th century, several Lithuanian writers emerged in Prussian Lithuania (or Lithuania Minor), the region of the Prussian state populated by Lithuanians. A unique tradition of writing and publishing had flourished there until the start of World War II. In 1795, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth disappeared from the map of Europe and a larger part of the GDL lands was annexed to the Russian Empire. However, Vilnius, a seat of old printing and book culture traditions, managed to survive as an important publishing center of the eastern periphery of Central Europe, and as a city fostering publishing in the Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish languages. In the early 19th century, the main forces of authors, publishers, book producers, and distributors of Lithuanian books began to concentrate in Lithuania. In 1918, after the restoration of an independent state of Lithuania, new conditions arose to benefit the development of book publishing. The Lithuanian tradition of publishing, owing to a renewed printing industry and the expansion of a publishing house and bookstore network, significantly strengthened. Between 1940 and 1990, the country suffered a half-century occupation (the occupation of the Nazi Germans in 1941–1945; the rest was the Soviet occupation) during which the Jewish national minority was destroyed, the Poles were evicted from the Vilnius region, the Germans were expelled from the Klaipėda region, and Sovietization and Russification were enforced in the sphere of civic thought. In Soviet Lithuania, although all the publishing houses belonged to the state and were ideologically controlled, a core of publishing professionals emerged who, after Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, readily joined the publishing industry developing under free market conditions.

Marjan Bendrij’s monograph was devoted to “kopa” courts, which were non-professional local bodies that were empowered to settle disputes arising in rural communities in Ukraine in the 14th – 18th centuries. The research concerned the origin and development of “kopa” courts as well as their activities in the aforementioned period. Bendrij analysed the process of the transformation of “werwa” courts into “kopa” courts (14th century). The legal status of “kopa” courts within the territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland was also thoroughly analysed. What is more, Bendrij presented the status and jurisdiction of those courts under the regime of Cossack Hetmanate. Court procedure was taken into consideration as well.

In the Land of the Philomats is the first academic monograph devoted to secret youth organisations in the Belarusian lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the years 1806–1826. It describes associations, groups and unions of university and school students, and young people (civilian and military), most of whom were of Belarusian origin (who at that time referred to themselves as Lithuanians). They operated under the leadership of the Philomats, engaging in activities ranging from education to armed struggle for the revival of their former homeland – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (possibly united with the Polish Crown into a single Commonwealth). The fate of all these underground organisations turned out to be tragic – their plans were thwarted by arrests, unfair trials before biased judges, and then sentences to police supervision, imprisonment, exile to Russia or expulsion from the Russian Empire. The author recounts these events based on archival materials, library manuscripts and literature from Belarus, Lithuania and Poland.

SUMMARY: The subject of Alexander Filjushkin’s research is the discourses of Russian Historiography and political studies about the place of Great Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) in Russian history. The author describes four discourses. First – “Russian lands were the victim of the Lithuanian occupation”. Second – “The absorption of lands of the Great Limitroph as Western project of the Russian empire”. Third – “The lands of the GDL from most ancient times were Russian lands, the hereditary possession of the Moscow princes. The author in detail studies the development of concept “Vseja Rusi” (“of All Russia”) and the genesis of its contents from the end of the 15 th till the end of the 16 th centuries. A separate subject of study is a role of Livonian war (1558–1583) in the development of the idea “Vseja Rusi”. Fourth discourse – “The GDL was the model of democratic alternative of the Authoritarian type of power in Russia”. In the conclusion the author describes the low level of modern investigations of GDL in Russian. Therefore he names the image of GDL in historiographies and political doctrines of East-European countries as “The Kingship of curve mirrors”: each of the countries sees the image GDL, which frequently is rather far from a reality, but depends from the political discourses of the 19 th and 20 th centuries.

The article examines the historical genesis of national criminal legislation in terms of regulating liability for interference with the judiciary. The author analyzes the legal monuments of Kievan Rus, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Commonwealth of Poland, the Russian Empire, the Soviet era and independent Ukraine – the current Criminal Code of 2001 and its current draft created in the course of reforming criminal legislation. In the process of developing a model for periodization of criminal law protection of judicial independence and judicial activity in Ukraine, the author proposes to apply a mixed criterion based on the validity, legal force and level of codification of a legal instrument containing criminal law provisions on interference with the activities of judicial bodies, and also takes into account the historical stages of formation of Ukrainian Statehood. The author identifies the stages of development of criminal legislation in this area: Stage I (XI - XV centuries) – the origins of criminal law policy in the field of protection against interference with the activities of judicial authorities and persons entrusted with the administration of justice; Stage II (XVI - XIX centuries) – the formation of criminal law policy in the field of protection against interference with the activities of judicial authorities and persons entrusted with the administration of justice; III stage (early twentieth century - adoption of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in 2001) – fixation of the content of unlawful behavior within the criminal law policy of ensuring protection against interference with the activities of judicial authorities and persons entrusted with the administration of justice, which corresponds to the current provision of Article 376 of the Criminal Code; IV stage (late twentieth century - to the present) – further improvement of the criminal law policy in the area of ensuring protection against interference with the activities of judicial authorities and persons entrusted with the administration of justice.

This article attempts to show the emergence and development of epic poetry in the Latin language literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th century-the first third of the 17th century with regard to the art history and sociological concept by Pierre Bourdieu (theory of fields). From such point of view the work of the authors at that time can be seen as the specific ways of positioning in the literature of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Latin culture (Latinitas) was significant in forming cultural capital in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and works in Latin were the main means for transmitting social capital, which was also symbolic capital under the influence of certain habitus. Among such works are first of all the public and political ideas that were essential at that time (translatio imperii, “Jagellonian” patriotism), as well as the Polemon Legend. The herois perfecti idea became a significant part of symbolic capital at that time. This idea provided legitimate access to the Consecration process and was embodied in the idealized images of the agents in the field of temporal authority (that of a grand prince, a king or a magnate). The axiological potential of this symbolic capital at the point where the fields of literature and authority intersect was so great and acceptable within the European context that not only local but also foreign authors where actively integrated into the field of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which was also closely linked to the respective literature of the Polish Crown).

The article deals with the collections of printed music dedicated to the distinguished nobles, statesmen and military commanders of the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, brothers Jan Karol and Aleksander Chodkiewicz. These collections were printed in Venice in the beginning of the 17th century and dedicated to the Lithuanian magnates by Italian composers Giovanni Valentini and Giulio Osculati. However, it was not in their home country where composers became acquainted with the above-mentioned noblemen who had studied and travelled extensively in Italy but in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In fact, both composers had served for certain periods of time as musicians in the Polish court chapel under Sigismund III Vasa. The said collections of motets are being examined here with an emphasis on publicity and international representation. The author notes that besides the reasonable expectations of both Italian composers to raise their public profiles, to publish and disseminate their work in Europe, these personal aspirations also resonated with the interests of other public figures. They both represent Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, as a generous patron and a leading social figure. The dedications were intended to glorify the Chodkiewicz and raise their profile within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and beyond. They account for the magnates’ victories in major military campaigns of the time, such as those achieved during the Polish–Swedish war of 1600–1611, as well as Chodkiewicz’s merits in defence of the state. Within the context of shifting confessional identities at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries (i.e. the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation movements) these notated sources should be considered as a reflection of the magnates’ confessional identity. The very genre of printed works – motets for Catholic church service – reflects Chodkiewicz’s firm self-determination as Roman Catholics.

In 1784 King Stanisław August Poniatowski undertook a splendid progress across the south-western parts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The official account of the journey prompts the reflection that even in this linguistically and confessionally mixed part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the precedence over other confessions of the Catholic Church of both rites, Latin and Ruthenian, was axiomatic. By the mid-eighteenth century, about five-sixths of the Commonwealth’s population, the vast majority of the noble citizenry, and the entire legislature were Catholic. However, Catholics of the Latin rite constituted only about half of the population. Most Catholics of the Ruthenian rite (Uniates) were in only nominal obedience to Rome; they were the object of a struggle for the allegiance and salvation of souls, conducted between an advancing Catholic Church and a retreating Orthodox Church. The fault line between Eastern and Western Christendom ran through both the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania; Orthodoxy retained strongholds in both parts of the Commonwealth. However, the position of the ‘Latin’ Church was, in most ways, significantly weaker in the Grand Duchy, where the majority of the inhabitants were Uniates. Adapting recent mutations in ‘confessionalization theory’, this paper first reviews the confessional balance, and the privileges, structures, educational institutions, and missionary work of the Catholic Church (of both rites) in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the second half of the eighteenth century. It then asks how the dramatic events of Stanisław August’s reign (1764–95) affected Catholic supremacy. These changes included the enforced removal of the Catholic monopoly of the legislature in 1768, the impact of the first partition of the Commonwealth in 1772, the Orthodox revivals under Bishops Georgii Konisskii and Viktor Sadkovskii, as well as the formulation of new policies intended to promote loyalty to the Commonwealth and social cohesion during the Four Years’ Sejm (1788–92). It concludes that the partial ‘deconfessionalization’ of the polity had (or might have had) a proportionately greater impact on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania than on the Polish Crown.

A deep understanding of the modern institution of advocacy, as well as the search for effective ways to solve its problems, is impossible without addressing issues of the history of the development of the defense function. The purpose of the paper is a historical and comparative analysis of the organizational design and development of the Institute of Advocacy in the Ukrainian territories in the Middle Ages and under the empires. We highlighted and researched two global periods of formation and development of the legal profession in Ukrainian territories: the Middle Ages and the imperial period. The first - the period of existence of ancient statehood on Ukrainian territories - is characterized by the absence of professional protection in the process. Certain features of protection can be traced in the actions that were inherent in "listening". The second is the imperial period. The state entities, which included the modern Ukrainian territories, developed their own approaches in the direction of introducing the function of protection into the process and developing the status of persons who, on a professional basis, performed the defense of the accused. Thus, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the function of protection was entrusted to the deputy and procurator. With the development of legislation, the former acts as an authorized person of the defendant, and the latter as her professional representative. Prosecutors' offices in form and especially in terms of activity were lawyers, in their modern understanding, who were entrusted with the function of defending defendants. In various editions of the Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: the range of cases that could be under the jurisdiction of prosecutors is fixed and expanded; activities of private and public defenders, etc. are organized. After the unification of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the existing institution of defenders also operated on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the Archduchy of Austria, and later in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, lawyers had the right to speak in court. Throughout the existence of these states, special attention was paid to the quality of the legal profession, issues related to organizational and professional requirements for applicants who wanted to become lawyers were clearly regulated. In the Russian Empire, the institute of sworn attorneys (lawyers) was introduced into the court system during the judicial reform of 1864, which introduced professional corporate advocacy. Before the reform, the status of attorneys was equated to the status of hired servants, their participation in the process was insignificant, which was explained by objective reasons - the dominance of the investigative form of the court process.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore the features of the evolution of legal custom in Ukrainian lands up to the 18th century. It also aims to define the scope and directions of its influence on the development of Ukrainian law during the specified period. Methodology. The article employs a modern methodology of historical-legal research, based on which sources and literature are analyzed. In particular, the following methods are used: historical-legal, formal-dogmatic, synergetic, system-structural, hermeneutic, among others. Results. The research confirms the leading role of custom in the formation of Ukrainian law up to the end of the 18th century. In the pre-state era, law on Ukrainian lands was formed as the customs of tribal and clan communities. Legislative acts of the princes of Kyivan Rus and the Halician-Volynian state supplemented and systematized the norms of the existing customary law. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania allowed the preservation of most of the local customary law and adopted a significant portion of it. In the Kingdom of Poland and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Ukrainian legal customs interacted and blended with Polish law as well as German, Vlach, Jewish, and other laws. The Cossack customs of the Zaporizhian Sich gave new impetus to the development of Ukrainian customary law, which continued its evolution under the Hetmanate. Originality. The article reveals the significance of legal custom in the pre-state society of the Eastern Slavs, Kyivan Rus, the Нalician-Volynian state, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Zaporizhian Sich, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Cossack-Hetman state. Archival sources were used for the analysis of this scholarly issue. Practical significance. The results of the research may be applied for academic and educational purposes and taken into account in the course of contemporary law-making and law enforcement.

Backgroun: In editions on history of the Reformation, a significant place is occupied biographical studios devoted not only to outstanding figures but also to those who until recently, it was as if in the shadows of its main characters. For some time, such a person of the “second plan” was Czech humanist Jerome of Prague, although he played a significant role in the formation of the Czech reform movement. From the second half of the 20th century, and especially in the 2010s, appeared a lot of research that made it possible to seriously study the social and religious activities of Jerome of Prague and his contribution to the philosophical thought of the late Middle Ages. Studies dedicated to Jerome are yet absent in Ukrainian historical science. Purpose: The author of the article pursues several tasks. First is the desire to introduce Ukrainian readers with historical sources, old and modern editions, which allowed to comprehensively disclosing of the activity and creations of Jerome of Prague. An important aim is also to reveal a portrait of the Czech humanist as a thinker, an educator, and a public figure who has had a significant impact on the theological and political views of early Hussism. A separate place is given to the participation of Jerome in Czech-Polish relations and his trip to the western lands of the Kyivan Metropolia. Results: The author supports the opinion of many researchers, according to which Jerome of Praguewas a prominent figure of Czech history. On the one hand, in his person we see an ordinary person – an idealist and a romantic, an erudite and a wrestler, cheeky and brave debater, and man who refusing his convictions and, at the same time, a martyr ready to give for ideas own life. His thoughts and actions help to understand the causes birthand key ideas of the Hussite movement. On the other hand, Jerome was one of the leaders of the Czech national-cultural revival: a profound thinker who developed the idea of returning the Church to its biblical image, and a practiker who formulated the program principles of the national Church, based on the spiritual and social aspirations of the Czech people. His views, like the teachings of John Wicklif and Jan Hus, reflected the ideological drama of the era of the late Renaissance in its transition to Early Modern times, and laid the ideological foundations of the Reformation. Jerom of Prague is interesting in the context of political and intercultural relations. His trip to the Slavic lands opens the little-known pages of the diplomatic history of early Hussism. It remains mystery the trip of Jerome in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rus’, which causes constant interest from the side of historians and Slavists. They seek to find sources that can bring to the disclosure of the reasons for this trip and reconstruct its circumstances. Not without sense is the assumption that Jeronim was searched for the Hussite spiritual allies in the Orthodox lands, although it acquired a more pragmatic interpretation in modern historiography associated with the political plans of the Hussites. An ecumenical vision of the Jerom’s mission to Lithuania and Russia, which was in line with the ideological principles of the Czech Reformation, could also be interesting. Its program for the restoration of early Christian ecclesiology and the ideals of catholicity of the Church, the presentation of the bowl to the laity and the elevation of their role in Church life reflected that common that could unite the Western and Eastern Churches. Key words : Reformation, Hussite movement, Jerome of Prague, Council of Constantce, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.