Elite families in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the late 15th - the early 16th centuries (the family structure of noblemen's council members' under Alexander's rule)

The article aims to analyse the matrimonies of the high rank politicians (members of the Noblemen's Council) in the period of Grand Duke Alexander's rule: to present the overall number of matrimonies, the descent of their spouses, and to reconstruct the family structure of the elite oligarchy in the period of 1492 to 1506. Out of the 19 Council members selected for the research 16 lived in matrimony, including their second and third marriages after their wives' deaths. 15 of them had children. Historical documents contain data about 56 adult descendants - 26 females and 30 males. The analysis of the politicians' children's families clearly shows certain social seclusion - old voivode families married their children even to close relatives, among Horodlo-ian noblemen and mid 15th century gentry families, obvious matrimonial convergences also existed - there were marriages between first and second cousins on both parents' sides, brothers married their sisters; when a wife died, the widower married her sister. So, social seclusion at the period is becoming ever more evident. The only answer to the essential question is as follows: an overall model of the family structure at the beginning of the 16th century cannot be reconstructed now nor will this be possible in the future because even an elite representative is difficult to identify. The genealogy of the elite can be reconstructed only intuitively, from privilege documents and proceedings of legacy court cases. Records of baptized, married and deceased persons appeared only after the christening of the GDL, and by the book writing tradition began in the 16th century. Even a century later, the situation had changed very little. Most of the early records never reached the present times because of church fires, war time robberies and improper storage conditions. The church registry records from 17th century are scarce too

Family conflicts over property among social elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The idea to start such research emerged in the process of digging into the protocols of proceedings o f legal cases contained in the Archives of the Chancellery o f the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lietuvos Metrika). Conflicts sparked over division of property between the closest relatives emerged in these documents like a recurrent problem. The concept of "familial conflicts" in the article defines a discord in the family between first-line relatives "made public" by taking them to legal institutions to claim material, moral or physical damage. The extant 16th-century documents - manifest that conflict situations involving relatives were no fewer in the 16th century than in present times. Such conflicts erupted in the process o f sharing, separation and handover of property, when offence against human honour and dignity was deemed to be committed. I n most cases the two factors concurred. Some of these conflicts were handled legally, that is, taken to court. Yet there also were instances of family drama occurring that caused gross physical violence, the destruction of the estate property and murder of the household members, later turning into drawn out litigations. Three main conflict sources recurring across different social strata are identified in the article: family conflicts over woman's dowry; conflicts among family members over parental inheritance; contestation of widows' right of disposition of property and limitations o f rights. Property was a routinely encountered bone o f contention in the family, as material concerns prevailed over the sentiment of unity of the family. The conflict was usually triggered b y a senior family male impinging on the interests o f other family members, who, in turn, were reluctant to make concessions

Residential estates of Kiškos family

The family of Kiškos had, at its disposal, one of the biggest land-ownerships in the Great Duchy of Lithuania during the 16th and 17th centuries. This family also belonged to the oligarchic core of the great officers of state, although this name is barely known to contemporary society. In this article, the main residential estates of the family are presented with specific focus placed on certain moments of the Kiškos family history, making reference to the surviving published and unpublished inventories of the estates of the Kiškos family and the documents of Lithuanian Metrics and other sources of the 16th and early 17th centuries. As far back as the beginning of the 16th century, the Kiškos family began to form two land-owning complexes: one from their patrimonial estate in Palenkė, and another from lands taken from the Mantigirdai, through marriage with the last member of this family, in the counties of Ašmena, Naugardukas and Minskas. During the 2nd half of the 16th century the two branches of the family became distinct: the one that originated from Palenkė (in its hands were the domains of the province of Palenkė), and the direct one which spread throughout the aforementioned districts. Making reference to family sources, the most representative estates of the Kiškos family can be considered to be Vija, Cholchla, Liubčia, Loska and Kamenis (the territory of contemporary Belaruss), the families of the side branch lived mostly on the Ciechanovičiai Estate (the contemporary territory of the Polish Republic).Because of the fragmentary nature of the information of that period, it is impossible to reconstruct the life of the estates. Moreover, the family had died off by the mid-17th century and its' property was sold on or passed to the hands of the families' side branches, while the relics and the portraits of family members were also dispersed. From the all residential estates of the 17th century, the fragments of the estate in Liubčia remained only

Istorijos žodynas

Vytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij