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 This translation is known from five published and one unpublished Cyrillic manuscript copies written between the second quarter of the 16th and the early 19th century.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.

The paper deals with a new Regulation No. 1215/2012, having come into force on 10 January 2015, on jurisdiction and recognition and enforcement of judgements in civil and commercial matters. Since the rules on those matters were included in the previous Regulation at the EU level, the article reveals the proposals made for its amendment, as well as the accepted proposals. It also attempts to evaluate whether the new rules that came into force shall guarantee the effective recognition and enforcement of judgements. The paper identifies the problems which shall not be solved by the newly adopted rules.

Although war refugees are mostly a subject of research involving war and military conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries, forced migration also accompanied many earlier military conflicts. This article focuses on war refugees during the Deluge period in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, when the Commonwealth was simultaneously at war with Muscovy (1654–1667) and Sweden (1665–1660). At that time, the idea of offering temporary shelter for refugees was increasingly recognised, and relief for refugees gradually became a concern of the nascent modern state. In the Commonwealth, the Cossack uprising and the aforementioned wars of the mid-17th century made the issue of war refugees particularly relevant. The article first clarifies the terms that were used to refer to migration and war refugees (zbieg, advenus, profugus, exul and wygnaniec). Later, it examines whether state institutions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), a constituent part of the Commonwealth, attempted to deal with refugees’ problems. Finally, on the basis of scarce and fragmentary sources, the author makes an attempt to trace the fate of women refugees from different parts of the GDL in Žemaitija (Samogitia) in 1654–1667, and their behavioural strategies, and to answer the question to what extent the decisions of the women refugees were independent, or dependent on the will of their spouse or their family.

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 article is devoted to the historical studies of a princely landownership concentration in Volhyn lands in the 16th century. This landownership was the highest in all the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. According to historical materials, in first third of the 16th century Volhynian princes owned 44% of all landed fund of Volhyn (in correlation with ‘pans’ and ‘zemiane’ landownership; the royal and church was insignificant), in the last third it slightly grew up to 45 %. In the end of century these indexes remained unchanging. In Lutsk district of the Volhynian province a level of concentration of princely landownership was a few other. In last third of the 16th century princes owned 40 % lands, and on the end of century it percent correlation diminished to 38 %. Such calculations are conducted by author on materials of Lutsk deed books, and it allowed to trace and to analyze the specificity of the landed circulation of Volhynian princes in details.