Seals of the Lands of Kyiv and Chernihiv in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries: Between Law, Tradition, and Historical Memory

Abstract

The development of territorial sphragistics in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was based on a legal framework documented in relevant statutes, privileges, and Sejm resolutions. These acts regulated both the procedure for using land seals and their iconographic features. In practice, however, there are numerous examples of significant deviations from these provisions. Sometimes this can be explained by imprecise wording in the decisions, but more often it was due to the broad rights of local self-governing institutions that had the final say on the iconographic content of the respective seals. Despite the very clear provisions of Volhynia and Kyiv incorporation privileges of 1569, according to which the Crown eagle was to be depicted on land seals, local sphragistics continued to use heraldic motifs created before the Union of Lublin for a long time.
In the Volhynian Voivodeship, this situation changed only with the Sejm resolution of 1589: from then, various combinations of the old Volhynian cross symbol and the Crown’s single-headed eagle replaced the Lithuanian Vytis (Pogonia) on land seals. At the same time, Kyiv’s seals continued to use the image of the Lithuanian Vytis. It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that it was finally replaced by the symbols of the Kyiv land – an angel and a bear combined with the coat of arms of the Crown. Despite all political realities and direct legal decisions, such a prolonged use of the coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania on the seals of the self-governing institutions of Kyiv nobility, indicates not only the continuity of the heraldic tradition but also the long-term political loyalty of the Kyiv nobility to their old homeland.
However, even this heraldic-sphragistic conflict between law and tradition in Kyiv, which lasted for over a century, cannot compare to the unexpected iconography of the land seal of the Chernihiv Voivodeship, newly established in 1635. The depiction of the Lithuanian Vytis in its field occurred contrary to the actual political situation: the incorporation of the voivodeship into the Crown of Poland and not into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It is true that a state-political connection existed between Lithuanian and Chernihiv lands in the second half of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, which most likely influenced the decision of the local nobility to use the Vytis motif to represent their region.