Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The article focuses on problems of chronology and textual development in the Ruthenian translation of the Czech Lucidarius. This translation is known from five published and one unpublished Cyrillic manuscript copies written between the second quarter of the 16th and the early 19th century. A new explanation of the information contained in these manuscripts regarding the time of the translation and the dating of the Czech original is proposed. Particular attention is paid to establishing the initial structure and sequence of the texts in the Ruthenian translation, which reflect its non-extant Czech printed source.

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Žemaitija (Samogitia) was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, known for the especially harsh political and military conflicts that afflicted the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at that time. The hegemony of the Sapieha magnate family, established in Lithuania in the 1680s, was not in the interest of the other most influential magnate families. On the eve of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), the internal struggle between different magnate factions in Lithuania was taking extremely radical forms, which overstepped the framework of routine political competition. Open violence was increasingly resorted to, especially during sessions of the sejmiks (local parliaments). This article aims to show the reasons for the active involvement of the Žemaitijan nobility in the anti-Sapieha movement. The author attempts to find answers to the questions why Žemaitija became an arena for the exceptionally active struggle between magnate factions, and whether the supporters of the anti-Sapieha movement actually prevailed in Žemaitija at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In 1589, the Sejm of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations established the royal holdings (Crown lands), called Economijas, of Šiauliai, Hrodna, Alytus, Brest, Kobrin and Mahilioŭ in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, Šiauliai started to function as a royal Economija only in 1619. At this time, it was the largest and richest royal holding in the grand duchy. The article deals with the relatively closed community of the Šiauliai Economija in the second half of the 17th century. Its unusual administrative system, with its relatively abundant community records, makes it possible to trace and discuss the following issues: how the local government had functioned and how it maintained relations with the community; how the local community and individual members used and dealt with decisions by the Lithuanian central government; what rules of communication applied between different actors, the Lithuanian central government, the Šiauliai Economija government, and the local community.

The article examines the political relations between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, especially Žemaitija as a constituent part, and Žemgala (Semigallia), from the beginning of the 1279 Žemgalian uprising against the Teutonic Order until the rule of Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania. The author tries to explain why Gediminas used the title of Duke of Žemgala in his letters of 1323, although in other cases, the title of the Lithuanian rulers does not include the name of Žemgala, and neither do other sources describing the territorial structure of the grand duchy mention Žemgala as part of it. Some historians have already argued that Žemgala was joined to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1279. The article re-examines this argument, and tries to validate it. The cooperation of Lithuania (especially Žemaitija) with the Žemgalians during the war of 1279–1290 shows that the integration of Žemgala into the Lithuanian state was in fact its integration into Žemaitija during the war. The author concludes that this integration was not denied by the time Gediminas took power, despite the fact that the Teutonic Order had already initiated a new phase in the invasion of Žemgala. Gediminas used the title of Duke of Žemgala because he actually controlled most of Žemgala. A substantial part of it remained permanently within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

The paper deals with the relationship between Christianisation and the pastoral care in the first Christian Balt communities on the east Baltic coast during the period of the Crusades. It has to be noted that at the turn of and throughout the 13th century, Christian missions were influenced by the attitudes of the new religious movements of the 12th and 13th centuries proclaiming the ‘humanisation’ of the idea of God, and the efforts of the human soul to seek the ‘individualisation’ of salvation. Given these ideas, the paper analyses the forms in which Christianity spread in the Baltic communities, and the impact the inception of the Crusades had on these communities. The research proves that the spread of Christianity took place not only in a ‘theologised’ and therefore ‘difficult’ to understand form, but also in common, knightly (during the Crusades), and other forms of piety. These forms unfolded through the Christian missions and the pastoral care that were carried out in parallel, so that they functioned in the first Christian Balt communities in the 13th century.