Lituanistica

Title

Lietuvos mokslų akademija — 2026-01-11

Warrior’s Grave with a Sword from the Jurgionys cemetery of the Late Fourteenth–Early Sixteenth Century

Manvydas Vitkūnas — 2026-01-11

The article presents information about grave no. 16 (Fig. 1) discovered in 2010 during the archaeological excavations at the Jurgionys cemetery located in the Aukštadvaris Eldership of Trakai District and dated to the late fourteenth–early sixteenth century. This inhumation grave contained remains of a 45–50-year-old man equipped with abundant burial goods, namely, a sword (Figs. 3–5), a knife (Fig. 2), a belt buckle (Fig. 8), a belt pouch (Fig. 9; containing an iron razor (Fig. 10), an iron flint striker, and a flint), a spur (Fig. 12), and a buckle (Fig. 11) from the spur fastening strap.
This is an exceptional assemblage of burial goods not only in Lithuania but also among the medieval burial monuments of the whole of Europe. In Lithuania, it is only the second investigated grave of this period containing a sword, and the first in which the sword was discovered together with a spur. The article presents the results of chemical composition analyses of the metal artifacts (Tables 1–5), their radiographic examinations (Fig. 5), morphological analysis of the leather items, and includes the drawing of the reconstructed clothing and armament of the said man buried in grave no. 16 (Fig. 15).
The man of fairly mature age, namely, 45–50 years old, was buried in the same manner as most members of the medieval Jurgionys community: with his head oriented to the south-east, at an angle of 150°, which does not conform to the Christian burial requirement of placing the deceased with the head toward the west. This suggests that the man and his relatives, although almost certainly baptised, still neglected Christian burial customs.
The grave contained abundant burial goods: a steel sword with a bronze pommel and elements of the fastening system; an iron hafted knife; an iron belt buckle; remnants of a belt pouch made of goat and bovine leather decorated with bronze fittings and containing an iron razor, a flint striker and a piece of flint; a tin-plated iron spur with a rowel; and an iron buckle from the spur fastening system. No elements of body armour were found in the grave, but it can be assumed that the deceased could have owned or worn body armour during battles.
X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis was performed to determine the metal composition of the sword (Tables 1–2), the belt pouch fitting (Table 3), the spur bow (Table 4), and the spur strap hook (Table 5). The blade of the sword from grave no. 16 of the Jurgionys cemetery was made of steel (Table 1), while the pommel decorated with a stamped shield-shaped ornament was made of bronze (Table 2).
X-radiographic examination (Fig. 5) revealed traces of markings on the blade. The marks were engraved and therefore very shallow and illegible in the radiograph. The blade was manufactured from at least three steel strips: the central part, namely, the core with a fuller, was forge-welded to two outer strips forming the cutting edges. This manufacturing method was quite common in Europe and is classified as the EC type (according to Jiří Hošek, Jiří Košta, and Petr Žákovský).
According to Ewart Oakeshott’s typology, the pommel of the Jurgionys sword corresponds to Type I1. The sword dates to the late fourteenth–early fifteenth century and has close analogues in Western and Northern Europe (Germany, England, Denmark, etc.). A similar sword is depicted on the tomb monument of Bishop Gerhard von Schwarzburg (1359–1400) in Würzburg Cathedral, Germany (Fig. 13). The sword attributed to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order Konrad von Thüringen (d. 1240), originating from Königsberg and now preserved in the German Historical Museum in Berlin (Fig. 14) is an even closer analogue. It is possible that the sword found at Jurgionys was a trophy taken by the Lithuanians during their fights against the Teutonic Order and its allies.
The belt pouch was crafted from bovine and goat leather and decorated with brass fittings (Table 3). The iron spur had a spike with a star-shaped rowel and was coated with tin (Table 4–5). It was dated to the late fourteenth century–the first half of the fifteenth century. This type of spur has close analogues in Lithuania (Vilnius Lower Castle) and in London.
Based on the grave goods and the broader context of the Jurgionys cemetery, grave No. 16 has been dated to the late fourteenth century–the first quarter of the fifteenth century.

Women’s Heraldry in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the Late Fourteenth to the Eighteenth Century

Oleg Odnorozhenko — 2026-01-11

The heraldic practices of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania pertaining to the use of female coats of arms were distinguished by considerable diversity against the backdrop of the heraldic traditions of the neighbouring countries in Central Europe. From the late Middle Ages, female representatives of the Lithuanian-Ruthenian aristocracy used not only their fathers’ coats of arms but also those of their husbands, and inherited heraldic symbols through the female line from their mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. Similar patterns persisted in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the early modern period, both among members of the titled aristocracy and among the untitled knighthood and semi-privileged classes, in particular among the bourgeoisie and the Tatars and Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The most common practice during the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries was for daughters to use their fathers’ coats of arms. At the same time, there were quite a few examples of women inheriting coats of arms from their mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. There were also cases of women using their husbands’ coats of arms. However, examples of men using the coats of arms of their mothers and wives are quite exceptional in Lithuanian-Ruthenian heraldry.

Attorneys-at-Law in Ukmergė District Courts in the Early Seventeenth Century

Darius Vilimas — 2026-01-11

The study discusses litigants’ attorneys-at-law of in the courts of the Ukmergė district in the early seventeenth century. The land court books from that period have not survived, while the castle court books, from which these individuals could be identified, have survived only fragmentarily and not all are accessible or contain judicial records. Most often, the disputing parties litigated through representatives authorised orally (arriving with the litigants) or in writing (without the litigants’ participation). Although only few of the examined court books have survived and the representatives can be traced in detail only from the beginning of the third decade of the seventeenth century, it can be stated that there were 5–7 permanent pre-advocates (proto-lawyers) in Ukmergė, and in total nearly thirty such individuals were identified. Since the most informative are two castle court books from the third decade of the seventeenth century, the chronologically ‘emptier’ first decades of that century are supplemented with information from the books of neighbouring (Kaunas, Upytė) or more distant (Samogitia) courts. The early-seventeenth-century court books of the Ukmergė district were not yet divided into separate series by the type of records, but they already feature a classification into notarial, pre-procedural, and judicial process groups. The most active representatives of litigants represented several or a dozen cases during one session. Such work intensity suggests that they must have had several assistants, but the lack of sources does not yet allow this claim to be proven or refuted.
All groups of the district’s landowners, from magnates to petty nobility, made use of attorneys’ services. The clergy, merchants, or foreigners also used them, and most often the same individuals as in the cases of the nobility. The interests of subordinates were represented by their lord or a servant, who also had attorneys. Since this study on attorneys-at-law is an ongoing one, by summarising data from several regions we can identify individuals who managed to work as attorneys in the courts of 2–4 districts during their lifetime. Without delving into their biographies, it is difficult to assert whether this proves their high competence or merely human resourcefulness in caring for their financial well-being.
The material from the court books of the Ukmergė district in the early seventeenth century provides data almost exclusively from the castle court books, which in principle does not change the conclusions of the study, to the effect that in this district, like in others, the nobility/landowners were well-versed in legal norms and actively used the services of more educated attorneys. Representatives of the noble ‘nation’ were highly sensitive to any procedural or formal record-keeping violations. A slightest suspicion of procedural infringement would provoke their stormy protests and disputes, demonstrating the growing legal erudition of the nobility.

Family Policy: Aristotelian Ideas and the Role of Women in Jesuit Thought of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Dovilė Čitavičiūtė — 2026-01-11

The article examines how Jesuit Aristotelianism in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania linked household governance to civic order, focusing on Aaron Alexander Olizarovius’s work De politica hominum societate (1651) and a Jesuit funeral oration Classicum publici doloris (1695) written on the occasion of the funeral of Catherine Sobieska-Radziwill. Olizarovius adapts Aristotle’s practical philosophy to argue that the family is a ‘small state’ and the moral foundation of the polity: while he distinguishes royal from civil authority, he frames marriage as a civilis (constitutional) partnership in which the wife freely consents and serves as the husband’s partner (socia), advising him in the matters of conscience and the household. In this scheme, domestic happiness aggregates into public happiness, so wives’ virtues – prudence, justice, piety, fortitude, beneficence – carry political weight by stabilising the social fabric. The Jesuit oration for Catherine dramatize this model: they elevate her domestic virtues into civic exemplarity, liken her to renowned women from classical and Christian tradition, and recast her as a dynastic and public figure (‘the Radziwill Eagle’, ‘the heart of the people’). Read together, the treatise and the panegyric show ideas circulating across scholastic philosophy and baroque rhetoric: household discipline becomes a template for public order, and the noble woman emerges as a civis domestica – a domestic citizen whose moral authority undergirds the state. The result is a gendered vision of citizenship that preserves patriarchal hierarchy yet demands mutual accountability and, through the household, grants women a constitutive, politically meaningful role.

Reception of Philipp Ruhig’s Works on Lithuanian Studies in Lithuania Proper in the Early Nineteenth Century

Aldona Prašmantaitė — 2026-01-11

Based on historiography and primary sources, the study examines the dissemination of the ideas of Philipp Ruhig (1675–1749), a Lutheran priest from Lithuanian Minor mostly known as a philologist, on the Lithuanian language and the history of the nation that uses it in Lithuania proper during the first decades after the dissolution of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The author reaches a conclusion that with his treatise O początkach narodu i języka litewskiego (1808; On the Origins of the Lithuanian Nation and Language) dedicated to the history of the Lithuanian nation and language, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Franciszek Ksawery Michał Bohusz (1746–1820) became the spiritus movens in the reception of Philipp Ruhig’s works on Lithuanian studies in Lithuania proper. This work emerged from the coincidence of the author’s aspirations in Lithuanian studies with the plans of the Warsaw Society of Friends of Science (Towarzystwo Warszawskie Przyjaciół Nauk) to provide reliable information on this subject to scholars researching the history of languages and to the enlightened the public of the time interested in the history of nations and the languages they use.
In early-nineteenth-century Lithuanian writings, Philipp Ruhig’s considerations about the Lithuanian language and the history of the nation that uses it spread through Bohusz’s study devoted to this issue. Thanks to the information presented in it, Bohusz’s work provided contemporaries in Lithuania with the opportunity to study Philipp Ruhig’s works in Lithuanian studies. It is not known whether this opportunity was taken advantage of. In the works of the participants of the movement of Lithuanian studies in Samogitia (Józef Arnulf Giedroyć, 1757–1838; Dionizas Poška, 1764–1830), the quotes Philipp Ruhig are based on the quotations provided by Bohusz.

On the Origin of the Oikonym Joskildai

Laimutis Bilkis — 2026-01-11

The history of the village of Joskildai, located in the Ramygala eldership of the Panevėžys District Municipality, and the origin of its name have so far received little attention from historians and toponymists. Historical research has noted that this settlement was long part of the Ramygala parish. In the 1784 visitation documents, it is documented as the property of Straševičius. It is also mentioned that Joskildai formerly functioned as a filia of the Ramygala parish and possessed a wooden chapel, which was relocated to Anciškis in 1846, as the Straševičius family was no longer able to maintain it. In explaining the origin of the village name, only general considerations have been offered concerning its connection with the possible compound personal name *Jos-kildas. The available fragmentary facts suggest the need for a more detailed investigation and a more substantiated interpretation of the etymology of this oikonym, which displays an interesting structural composition.
Data recorded from local inhabitants quite reliably confirm the authenticity of the form Joskildai, as no alternative phonetic variants have been provided. The only variation observed concerns accentuation: in the early twentieth century and in 1973, the stress fell on the first syllable, whereas around 1935 it was placed on the ending. An analysis of records in historical sources shows that this name was already in use in the second half of the seventeenth century, as evidenced in the Upytė Land Court Book (w jednym siolku nazwanym Jeskiłdach, ze wsi Jaskildow). Subsequently, it was frequently recorded in the registers of Ramygala Church from the second half of the eighteenth century (De Jaskiłdy, de Jaskiłdy, Jaskiłdy, Joskiłdy, de Joskiłdy) as well as in other (non-religious) documents (Wies Jaskiłdy, Jaskildy, Jaskiłdzie, Jaskiłdy, Jaskiłdany, Яскилды). A study of the early and later records indicates that they reflect the present-day form, which can be regarded as authentic and not subject to any graphic, phonetic, or structural transformations. It should not be ruled out that in the second half of the nineteenth century a suffixal variant of this onym may have developed: *Joskildonys or *Joskildoniai.
A structural analysis of the village name, the anthroponymic context of the area, and the trends in the formation of Lithuanian settlement names allow for the formulation of a hypothesis that the name originated from an unattested, no longer used, compound personal name *Jos-kildas in the plural form. The stem Jos- is widely recognised and unquestionable (cf. Jós-butas, Jós-vydas, Jós-vilas, etc.) and was historically used within the territory of occurrence of the oikonym Joskildai (Ясвилович, Ясвиланис, Ясвилаитис, Ясвилонис). In this area, surnames containing the element kild- (Kildà, Kildišas) and historical personal names (Миколая Килдишя) have also been recorded. Therefore, anthroponyms with Kild- may not be appellative in origin, but rather may be derived from the shortened forms *Kilda and *Kildis of the compound personal name *Jos-kildas. The hypothesis that the oikonym originated from a compound personal name is further supported by the Old Prussian onomastic context: the recorded settlement name Pol. Kildajny, Ger. Kildhenen ← OPr. *Kildain-ai, which may have derived from an anthroponym with the root Kild-.
The available data on the development of the oikonym Joskildai do not indicate any essential changes in its form. Therefore, it would be difficult to propose an alternative version for its origin, i.e., one not deriving from a compound personal name. Consequently, this may represent yet another Lithuanian settlement name from which a no-longer-attested compound personal name can be reconstructed.