Download PDF | Jūratė Kiaupienė - Between Rome and Byzantium_ The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture. Second half of the fifteenth century to first half of the seventeenth century-Academic, 2020.
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Preface
he idea of writing a book that would tell the story of the creation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s political culture and its manifestations between the second half of the fifteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century had a long incubation period.
The restoration of an independent Lithuanian state and the study of its history as a discipline in 1990 found political culture as a new and poorly cultivated field of research. The impetus to begin researching the political culture of Lithuania specifically arose from the fact that, after a gap many decades long, the opportunity appeared in Lithuania to become acquainted with research theories and methodology on the issue as well as research on the political culture of other European countries in direct ways and not through rumor or snippets of information.
The international context of historiography showed that the time had come to integrate the history of, and research on, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the field of European-scale comparative studies. The republication of older sources and the appearance of works of historians who specialized in ancient Lithuanian literature and culture whetted the desire to take on this task.
Everyday political life in the restored Lithuanian state and its society strengthened the belief that there was a purpose in going deeper into the political culture of the ancient Grand Duchy of Lithuania and asking whether links could be found between the political culture of today’s Lithuania and the political values created and fostered by the society of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The search for conceptual solutions to many issues began in 2013 and lasted several years. Much time for discussion and contemplation was needed to fulfill the wish to formulate a different, more contemporary interpretation based on research as opposed to the kind of interpretation that was entrenched in historiography. International history conferences became a forum where many of the new views toward the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s political nation and culture, expressed in this book, were born and tested in constant flows of ideas as well as regular discussion.
What sticks in my mind are the first reactions of fellow historians from Poland and their surprise upon hearing adifferent way of speaking about the union between the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the political values of the Lithuanian boyars. After all, historians made it clear long ago that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s political culture had matured in the womb of the Kingdom of Poland’s political culture and adopted the Polish nobility’s values and attitudes toward the union of these countries.
It is also agreed among historians that the independent-minded position of the magnates, led by the Radziwilt! family, which defended the making of special efforts to distinguish the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a state when the 1569 Union of Lublin was executed, was determined by their personal ambitions and interests—which the average boyar in the country did not support.
The dialogue that was needed on these points took much effort to launch and proceeded slowly. However, it did begin. Today it is easy to laugh when I remember the spirited debates that took place in Warsaw, Lublin, Krakéw, Poznan, Vilnius, and elsewhere. Often the conversations that followed a presentation lasted long into the evening. Also, friendships and working relationships were developed with many of the participants. Today I wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of my fellow historians in different countries who have been researching the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. You did much to make this book possible.
Ialso wish to thank my colleagues and coworkers at the Lithuanian Institute of History for your constant financial and moral support. My colleagues at the Department of the History of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania often became the first readers and reviewers of my texts; they were also willing advisors who, on several occasions, showed me important sources for my research.
Yet another group of people aided me in my efforts: my colleagues, doctoral students, and students at the Department of History at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, where I taught an MA-level history course on Lithuania’s political culture for many years.
In my seminars, we examined sources, explained their importance, debated, looked for traces of the Grand Duchy’s political culture in the political life of society in our modern Republic of Lithuania, and discussed what tied us to the society and culture of the past. It was a lively forum of contact with a new generation of future historians and, for me, a wonderful opportunity to see whether intergenerational dialogue among historians was possible. I give them all a heartfelt thank-you.
I cannot list all the names of those who supported and advised me and those who challenged my work with their doubts and criticism. Believe me, I am extremely grateful to all of you for making my work that much better.
This study was financed under two programs: European Social Fund under the Global Grant Initiative and The Phenomenon of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Early Modern Europe (VP1-3.1-SMM-07-K-02-049). The project was administered by the Lithuanian Council of Science. I thank every-one who helped to bring this idea to fruition.
The year 2015 marks the quincentennial of the birth of Duke Mikotaj Radziwill the Black, one of the most prominent politicians in fostering defending the state of Lithuania in the sixteenth—century. I dedicate this book to the memory of this eminent representative of the political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Allow me to quote several lines from the heroic epic “Radviliada,’written 423 years ago by the old bard of Lithuanian magnates, the poet Jan Radwan, in which he requests help from goddesses:
CALLIOPE, atque ERATO veftras advertite métes, Et date quam virtus ingentem ad fydera vexit Ductorem Litautim, dum pace, & Marte fecundo Siftit rem patriam, qualisue effufa per Vle Tempelftas ierit campos, per Evanfcia rura.
Illius immenfis ut laus attonfa Livonum
Confiliis, veluti Scythiamque reprefserit héros,
O memorate DEA: tum vos date candida cives Omina, na tibi furgit opus LITVANIA PRASTANS.
Jonas Radvanas, “Radviliada” (Vilnius: Bibliotheca Baltica, 1997), 6.
This book is a translation of my monograph Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian’s Political Culture (Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to First Half of the Seventeenth Century), originally written in Lithuanian in 2015, without any additional material.
Introduction
t the turn of the early modern period, new rules began to form in Europe Arecnccrnine the co-existence of states and societies, political behaviors and communication, and the foundations of a new political system. Contemporary historiography describes this time of great change by invoking the concept of the “long sixteenth century.’
This period, from the middle of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618—or even up to 1650—is understood as one of transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. The “long sixteenth century” concept gives us an opportunity to see the entire spectrum of events during this time in a way that deftly interweaves signs of the end of the Middle Ages and the birth of the early modern period without contrasting these two epochs.
This particular periodization allows us to create a somewhat different picture of European history at the time under discussion than is traditionally depicted. In this tableau, the difference between Western Europe, the instigator of innovation, and the laggard regions that merely adopt and repeat innovation is not accentuated.
What is emphasized is that the proto-modernist processes had common roots, from which Early Modern Europe grew.! In a Europe that is understood in this way, one may also examine the boyar nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—hereinafter, the GDL—illuminate its participation in sociopolitical and sociocultural processes of the epoch, discuss the formation of its political culture, and investigate a broader spectrum of the change that took place within these processes in a European context.
The aim of the study that follows is to show evidence and substantiate the premise that the sociopolitical and sociocultural society of the GDL created and fostered its own unique political culture from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century—a political culture that I describe as a European phenomenon. This study examines the political views and attitudes of the fully fledged Lithuanian boyar class that preceded the period under discussion, the values created and disseminated within the state and beyond its borders in various ways that depicted the state, its rule, representation, law, and other links within the sociopolitical system, and the results of the real-life implementation of these values.
I look for and develop theoretical and source-based arguments that show that the GDL’ political culture played the role of a sociopolitical and sociocultural connector and mediator between the geopolitical and geocultural regions of the Roman West and the Byzantine East, and that it formed an ethnically diverse, multilingual, multi-confessional, and multicultural state that became an integral part of the West's political system in the early modern period. This is a geopolitical area where the national identities of different ethnoses formed alongside one another and where a pluralistic sociopolitical community formed a unique form of state identity. I will highlight the long-term effect of this political culture on the formation of the geopolitical and geocultural political mentality of all of Central Eastern Europe.
Contemporary historians believe that the GDL’s former eastern border area (made up of the Duchy’s eastern territories), which seceded from the lands of Muscovy, is today the dividing line between Eastern Europe and Central Eastern Europe. It is also thought that the political mentality of the Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians who inhabited the lands of the GDL is different even today as a result.
For this research, I invoke two concepts that researchers of sociopolitical and sociocultural processes coined in order to mark and describe these processes: political culture and political nation.
The expression political culture was developed by the sociologists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba on the basis of their research on the political attitudes of the inhabitants of five countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Mexico) in the second half of the twentieth century.” It first came into use in sociology and political science in debates over Almond’s and Verba’s conclusions; later it was adopted and began to be used in research by historians as well. How it is interpreted in contemporary historiography varies, different methods of research concerning political culture having taken shape. There is a debate over the propriety of searching for methods and forms of the manifestation of political culture in research of historical periods—antiquity, the Middle Ages, the early modern period—or of societies in those eras, or whether political culture is simply a phenomenon of modern times. I will not reenact these theoretical discussions. Instead, I will relate to Stephen Chiloton’s discussion of the various ways the term political culture is understood, the possibilities of its usage, and its importance for understanding political processes.? Ialso refer to the work ofa group of scientists led by Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, which examined the concept of political culture and looked for new theoretical approaches from the perspective of research on cultural history. These and other theoretical and methodological discussions have expanded the initial meaning of political culture and opened the door to possibilities of not only using it in research on contemporary political processes but also of adapting it to various historical periods. A historian who deals with the medieval and early modern eras, however, understands that the concept cannot be invoked without exceptions. Sociologists can carry out a survey among living members of a society and perform empirical research. A historian who examines the political culture of past times cannot do the same; he or she has to work with information encoded in sundry written sources or artifacts that yield various levels of informativeness. A historian must decode this source material and convey the information hidden in it in a scientific language that the modern reader can understand. This is why not only facts, but also the historian’s interpretation, are important in this kind of research.
In modern scientific language, the concept of political culture is not understood in the same way by all researchers. Debates take place as to where politics ends and political culture begins and how political culture is tied to political thought. Also debated is whether the concept covers only the realm of the spiritual life of society and the individual, or whether political culture can also be understood as a collection of symbolic actions, with the help of which individuals and groups in society form and implement their goals. Another aspect to consider is whether this concept may be adapted for use in examining the structure and order of the state, its organizational principles, its institutions and their work, and relations between rulers and ruled. Historians may make a significant contribution to the broadening of these theoretical discussions by creating, through their research, a necessary foundation for theoretical insight as well as interpretation, that is, sources. The more such sources appear that researchers can use, the more diverse they will be and the clearer the concept of political culture will become. New opportunities will arise for understanding the mechanisms behind the spreading of political culture in society and ascertaining how political culture is created, identifying the link between political culture and the value systems of classes, groups, and individuals in society, and understanding the formation of political behavior, historical self-understanding, self-awareness, and identity. All of these things will help us to understand what the methods and forms of expressing political culture were. The way a concept is understood is most often determined by the aims of the particular research being done.
In recent years, the concept of political culture has also been increasingly used in the Lithuanian scientific language and public sphere. The theoretical aspects of this issue, however, have not yet been fully discussed. This also goes for the state of research concerning the political culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In this book, political culture is understood in its broad sense, as the full array of theoretical premises that were formed, and practical actions taken, by the country’s sociopolitical and sociocultural society in the early modern period.
The concept of the political nation, like that of the political culture, has no roots in history and is a construct of modern political philosophy. Historians question the validity of this concept and its use in research on the sociopolitical and sociocultural history of the medieval and early modern periods. Some accept the concept and use it; others reject it as an unfounded modernization of historical events. These two poles can also be seen in contemporary Lithuanian historiography. The views of Alvydas Nikzentaitis and Ingé Lukéaiteé stand out in this context due to their emphasis on using the term in their work. Both historians tie the issue of the political nation/community to the problem of national identity, but arrive at different conclusions. Nikzentaitis uses the concept to show that the latest research on political nations considers the political nation an ethno-political structure that encompasses politically active representatives of the magnate class, who were characterized by a clearly expressed national self-awareness. He highlights the fact that the most recent literature on the subject emphasizes, in particular, the importance of national self-awareness. Namely, the existence or absence of such awareness is considered the most important criterion of a political nation in the medieval or early modern period.* LukSaité, discussing the accuracy of the concept of the political nation and the practicality ofits use, emphasizes that though this term has spread in works that investigate GDL history, there are other views about its suitability in both of its components. In lieu of “political nation” (politiné tauta in Lithuanian), she proposes the term “state nation” (valstybiné tauta in Lithuanian) as developed by Anna Ktoskowska, a Polish researcher of sociological theories and concepts relating to the development of society. If so, the term would denote two things: political and state consolidation, and ethnic (national) processes. To skirt the ambiguity of the concept in Lithuanian, it would be worth forgoing the term tauta (nation) when one wishes to describe a community that has jelled to create a state in cases where its ethnic consolidation is not being examined. This would lessen the confusion that stalks these concepts. LukSaité suggests that we call a community that is created or that unites by belonging to a state a political community or a state community, because political communities and national traits are not one and the same.°
In each case, historians determine the primary concepts that they place in their theoretical toolkits on the basis of their research priorities and strategies. The terms political nation and political culture are chosen by those who favor a strategy of constructivism—who in talking about the past strive to not repeat the language of their sources and instead to create their own conceptual scientific language that is understandable to the modern reader.’ Having chosen the theoretical concept of constructivism as our preference, I invoke concepts in this study that currently are widely accepted and most often used by historians.
Were I to create new terms in this case, I would only introduce additional confusion. Furthermore, it would be unhelpful in clarifying the concepts and allowing for the discovery of a language acceptable to everyone.
For the topic of this study, I choose the term political nation to describe the full-fledged multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-confessional, and multi-cultural boyar community that developed in the GDL, which sat at the geopolitical and geocultural crossroads between Western (Roman) civilization and Eastern (Byzantine) civilization. This term best captures the nature of the sociopolitical and sociocultural demos that was brought together by the ancient Lithuanian state and its policies, which created and fostered a unique political culture at the beginning of the early modern period. Sources bear witness to the fact that during the time under discussion, this community would affirm its belonging to the state with the words “We, Lithuania,’ and “We, the nation of Lithuania.”® When modified by the adjective political, the word nation takes on a meaning that is broader than the modern understanding of the nation. In the context of Lithuanian historiographical research, I discuss the concept of the political nation more comprehensively in the chapter titled “A Sociopolitical and Sociocultural Portrait of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”
The metaphor golden age in the title of this book was chosen to emphasize that the period at issue—from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth—was an uninterrupted term in which the political nation of the GDL developed, creating and fostering a unique culture of state rule and the defense and representation of itself. It was a time when the political nation first adopted the political values created by the medieval Lithuanian ducal monarchy and then breathed into them a spirit formed by the Renaissance and Early Baroque cultures. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these values underwent modifications that were determined largely by a new epoch and that became intellectual wealth in the hands of the heirs of the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the modern nations of Central Eastern Europe. They used this intellectual wealth in creating their nation states, the manifestation of which can be seen in the mentality of the modern nations in that region. By acquainting ourselves with political culture, we may see the mental ties that link contemporary societies with the world of values fostered in the past.
This study covers the period from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century. The date chosen for the beginning of this era was the election of the youngest son of the Polish King and Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila, Casimir, as the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1440. The choice of Casimir was coordinated neither with King Wladyslaw III of Poland, Casimir’s older brother, nor with the magnates of the Kingdom of Poland. It reflected the political will of Lithuania's political elite, which represented the still-forming political nation. The election of Casimir as Grand Duke violated the 1413 Union of Horodlo? and bore witness to the process of consolidation that was occurring among Lithuania’s magnates and the new relationship that was being created with Casimir and the magnates of the Kingdom of Poland, with whom they were bound together by the tethers of a dynastic union.!° A new trait that united this embryonic political community was the understanding that the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the state not only of the Grand Duke but also of themselves, meaning, it was their political homeland. According to Stephen C. Rowell, the concept of this state as the homeland of this political nation is key to understanding the pluralistic Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well as Lithuanian-Polish relations in the mid-fifteenth century.'!
Perhaps the most important event in the creation of the Lithuanian political nation and the political and social life of the state was the privilege of May 2, 1447, issued by Lithuanian Grand Duke Casimir in response to the concrete political situation in which the ruler of the country resided elsewhere. With Casimir taking the Polish throne, the privilege emphasized his relationship with the sovereign political nation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as the heir to the Lithuanian state and to the Gediminids’ dynastic rights. Casimir promised in this document that he would give estates, castles, and secular and ecclesiastical positions only to local nobility and not decide upon issues of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian without the consent of the land’s magnates. Thus the principle of ius indigenatus, which had become entrenched in many European countries at the time—reserving offices and positions for the nobility of the country—was extended to the Lithuanian case. Boyars wishing to improve their knightly skills were allowed to leave the country, unhindered, to all foreign lands except those that were enemies. This opened up cultural and political contacts with Renaissance Europe.
The 1447 privilege, couched in legal jargon, recorded the foundations of the independence of the GDL boyar class and launched a new period for the still-formative political nation to participate in ruling the state. The privilege was not the act of a medieval ruler who applied it in reflection of his good will and grace as before, but a formalized agreement with his subjects that created social ties based on the concepts of laws and obligations. The character and spirit of the 1447 act is proof of the changes that were going on in the GDL’s early period of modernization.
Alexander, succeeding Casimir as Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1492, issued a privilege of his own the same year. The document did more than reconfirm all the obligations of earlier rulers to the Lithuanian state and its political community; it included new articles. The most important of them in terms of political culture was the enshrining in law of a political institution that had grown out of the Grand Duke’s council—the Council of Lords—and the prerogatives of its work. In the privilege, Alexander promised to refrain from amending resolutions taken by the Grand Duke together with the Council of Lords. From then on, GDL officials had to be appointed and dismissed, as well as foreign policy agreed upon, with the knowledge and consent of the Council of Lords.!”
A new situation arose at the end of the fifteenth century, the most important trait of which was that the Council of Lords, which was made up of representatives of the political nation—high ecclesiastical and secular officials—treceived political rights and assumed political obligations in tandem with the ruler as a “collective” monarch or, alternatively, a “corporative” dynasty.!> In a 1506 privilege declared by Sigismund the Old and a 1529 privilege proclaimed by Sigismund Augustus, the rights of the Council were reconfirmed and extended.
This study ends with the beginning of the military and political crisis that struck the Commonwealth of the Two Nations and all of Central Eastern Europe in the middle of the seventeenth century. Although the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as a political and state entity withstood these upheavals, its society emerged from the crisis having experienced massive demographic, material, and spiritual losses. The Union of Kédainiai—the agreement executed between the GDL and the Kingdom of Sweden on October 20, 1655 in Kédainiai—is chosen as the symbolic event that marks the end of this stage of the country’s political culture. With this act, the GDL’s 1569 union with the Kingdom of Poland was terminated and the Duchy seceded from the Commonwealth of the Two Nations. The Union was signed by more than 1,100 representatives of the GDLs political nation, who, in their own name and that of their successors, renounced their loyalty to King John (II) Casimir Vasa of Poland, abolished all rights of the Lithuanian state, and declared Swedish King Charles X Gustav!* the Grand Duke of Lithuania. This, the Lithuanian historian Gintautas Sliesoritinas states with emphasis, was the only true attempt to break the ties between Lithuania and Poland ever since 1569 Union of Lublin brought the Commonwealth into being.
The 1655 Union of Kédainiai did not create a political entity. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania renewed state ties with the Kingdom of Poland and the Commonwealth of the Two Nations remained on Europe’s geopolitical map. It did, however, change. The preconditions for change in its political culture emerged during the years of war and occupation in the mid-seventeenth century. What we see in this political culture are traits of a different nature, marked by crisis at the geopolitical and statehood levels. The attitudes and behavior of the Commonwealth's political communities also changed—a topic that can be viewed more deeply only through separate research.
The political culture of the GDL from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century has not been fully examined in Lithuanian historiography as a separate subject of research. The first observations on the unique traits of this culture in the sixteenth century, which taken and introduced to an international audience more than a decade ago, did not provoke discussion.!5 More recently in his first volume!® of a three-part series, the Lithuanian historian Darius Kuolys focuses most of his attention on certain forms of expression of political culture in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the fifteenth century to the seventeenth century. Kuolys emphasizes that the still-extant division between ancient Lithuania and modern Lithuania and the GDL’s fragmented narrative were among the most important aspects that spurred him to do more in-depth research on this story and try to shed more light on the core ideas, symbolic meanings, images, and commonalities of this narrative. The cultural issues that he examines, as well as his sources, often intersect with those of our study. I will be taking a look at Kuolys’s ideas and observations frequently and either use them as a predicate for my own observations or discuss them in greater detail.
Polish historiography understands and treats the GDL’s political culture differently. Its long-standing view is dominated by the belief that the PolishLithuanian union created in 1386 gave rise to the beginning of the integration of the Lithuanian state and Lithuanian boyar class into their Polish equivalents, culminating in the sixteenth century with the total integration of the two political bodies and the creation of an undivided Poland. This tradition of incorporation does not recognize the independent sociopolitical and sociocultural role of the GDL’ political community.
It is in this spirit of Polish historiography that the Polish historian Edward Opaliriski produced his study on political culture, which translates into English as “The political culture of the Polish Szlachta 1587-1652: Parliamentary system and civic culture.”!” If we take this title verbatim, we could put the book aside in the belief that it covers only the political culture of Poland. In explaining his aim, however, Opalinski states his intent to reveal as fully as possible the understanding of the meaning of political culture for the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian szlachta’ at the end of the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth. His topics of research are the attitudes of the szlachta toward the Republic’s political system and its constituent institutions; the szlachta’s value system and political identity; its reaction to central government’s decisions, and its demands of and aims vis-a-vis the creators of the political system. Finally, as Opaliriski writes, the research also covers the ties between political order and political culture. This kind of inquiry, he hopes and states with emphasis, will allow him to determine whether the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian political culture [sic Opaliriski] truly showed traits of civic culture characteristic of societies that have an understanding of political responsibility.
If so, the primary subject of Opaliriski’s research is the civic attitude of the szlachta of the Commonwealth of the Two Nations. Opaliriski defines the szlachta as a demos of boyars united by class that fostered identical political values and agreed on the tools with which to achieve their goals. Opalinski does not consider when and how this integrated political group arose and of what it was composed. He does address himself to the last-mentioned question in his own way, however, by examining the historical identity of the Commonwealth's szlachta. He has no doubts that the szlachta of Poland, Lithuania, and Rus’, the land of the Ruthenians, knew that their forefathers had lived in separate state organisms and that living traditions of their own statehood persisted at the time under discussion. However, the existence of this identity did not hinder the forming of a common szlachta tradition. The creation of the Commonwealth’s political system and the process of the szlachta’s acquisition of political rights, which began in the late fourteenth century and lasted several hundred years, created the conditions for the formation not only of an integrated szlachta but also of a common historical identity. In Opalinski’s opinion, several factors influenced this process powerfully, foremost the long-term nature of the integration process, the gradual inclusion of Ruthenians and Lithuanians in it, and recognition of the szlachta’s languages and religions as equal under the law. It is also important that Poland’s szlachta gave preference to the traditions of the Jagiellonian dynasty, which were shared by Poles, Lithuanians, and Ruthenians, and not to those of the Piast dynasty.”° Through this understanding, Opaliriski sees the GDLs political nation and its culture as integral parts of the political culture of a joint state—the Commonwealth of the Two Nations, which in his study he most often calls Poland.
Another distinguishing trait of Opalinski’s concept of political culture is his particular focus on the values of the boyars’ civic culture (spoteczeristwo obywatelskie) and the way those of this class expressed them in the public sphere of the Commonwealth. Civic culture, Opaliriski states, fully matured and was adopted by most of Poland’s szlachta and the Lithuanian and Ruthenian boyars during the second interregnum (1574-1576), which ensued upon the death of Sigismund Augustus, the last ruler of the Jagiellonian dynasty (the first interregnum having occurred in 1572).*! By the middle of the sixteenth century, Opaliriski emphasizes, the boyars already clearly understood that they were living in a “free Commonwealth” (libera Respublica), were “free citizens” (liberi cives), had the right to freely express their opinions on public matters to officials and the monarch, and considered synonymous the concepts of “free Poles,” “free noblemen,” and “free citizens?”
Andrzej Sulima Kaminski presents his own picture of political culture of the Commonwealth in his study entitled “The History of Many of the Nations of the Republic, 1505-1795. Citizens, their States, Society, Culture.” A.S. Kaminski centers not on the state and political history of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy but on civic society and the political culture that evolved in these countries between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
In his book,”’ he portrays sixteenth-century Central Eastern Europe as a region of states that fell under the dictates neither of the political or national orders that had developed in Western Europe nor of those in Eastern Europe. Neither Absolutism nor even strong monarchical rule prevailed there. On the contrary, for two hundred years as absolute monarchs ruled much of Europe, parliamentarism and democracy flourished in Central Eastern Europe. The political culture that sprang into being in sixteenth-century Poland created a particular climate for this culture, infused the population with love of freedom, a sense of personal dignity, attachment to self-rule institutions, and pride in its ability to use these institutions to rein in the state‘s power. Kaminski attempts to reveal systematically how, starting with the Nihil Novi constitution that the Polish Sejm adopted in 1505S, igniting the process of creating a new civic state, a period of three hundred years followed that brought with it complex, multi-leveled, and often conflicting state-level and social processes.
One who reads Kamiriski’s book might suspect, at first glance, that Kaminski is perhaps too much in love with his proverbial child, that is, the Executionist movement of the Polish szlachta in the first half of the sixteenth century, attempting to highlight only the positive sides and achievements of what he calls civic society and unduly criticizing the boyars of the GDL, who, in his opinion, never managed to overcome the imbalance of a handful of magnate families at the state level and the sejms. This impression is strengthened by Kamiriski’s belief that Poland’s Executionist movement, which in the sixteenth century demanded the strengthening of union ties with Lithuania, was not a Trojan horse that sought to reduce the Grand Duchy into something akin to a Polish colony. It was simply a vehicle with which they wanted to restructure the Lithuanian state, that is, the formerly strong hereditary monarchy that collaborated with the Grand Duke to wield power in conjunction with a small group of powerful aristocrats. The GDL's governmental and political structure, says Kaminski, was more similar to the structure of Muscovy than to that of Poland after reforms in the middle of the sixteenth century. The Lithuanian Grand Duke, like the ruler of Muscovy, beheaded his highest officials, and ruled, imagining that it was he who created the law. The members of the Grand Duke’s council, although directly subordinate to Duke de jure, ruled the numerous boyars on whom they were dependent. Until the 1660s, Lithuania was a monarchy, its parliament dependent on the state’s ruler and a powerful council. Its political system was closer to that of Henry VIII in England and Vasily III in Russia than to that of Poland. This is why, as Kaminski writes, it is no surprise that it was feared in Poland that the Jagiellonians, using their powerful ally, the ruler of Lithuania—might imperil Polish freedoms. This, he emphasizes, is why Lithuania's broad boyar masses, which strove for such freedoms, hurried to create a new union with Poland.”+
The image presented by Polish historians, of an integrated political culture that was broadly determined by ties between the ideology of boyar freedoms and a union, obscures the full spectrum of variety among the boyar societies of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. What is more, the two political nations that merged in the 1569 Union of Lublin, Poland and Lithuania, remained extremely different and had different aims that arose from different understandings of the union itself and of the Commonwealth. While pursuing coexistence, the GDL made perceptible efforts to create a separate political space and their own state institutions within the composite state.”°
In her article on the political ideology of Lithuania’s Evangelical Lutherans during the rule of the Vasas, which falls within the period discussed in this monograph,” the Polish historian Urszula Augustyniak discusses aspects particular to the GDL’ political culture. Emphasizing the dearth of substantial changes either in Poland or in Lithuania in research of political culture in recent years, she calls for greater clarity as to whether the political culture of seventeenth-century Lithuania preserved the uniquenesses that it had established in the fifteenth century and demonstrates research methods that may be used to address the point. In terms of political culture, Augustyniak’s observation deserves serious attention in that one should seek out the special traits of the GDL’ political ideology and historical tradition not only by examining the most important theoretical works known in research (including those of Andreas Volanus and Adomas Rasijus) but also by probing what she calls “pragmatic written works” (polemics, panegyrics, and orators’ speeches) in search of the Lithuanian contribution to the Commonwealth's political culture. These works affected society’s attitudes somewhat more than academic tracts did and had an impact on practical political decisions as well.
In this monograph, I will try to broaden the scope of what we know of the GDLs political culture. My underlying premise is that the 1569 Union of Lublin declared the joining of two states, the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, into a composite monarchy but did not create a unified boyar society and culture; instead, it merely created the conditions for such a society and culture to form. I will not apply to society in the GDL the model of Polish society, in which, starting from the first half of the sixteenth century, one can clearly see the active position and the independent political endeavors of the szlachta. Were I to do this, I would risk heaping traits and attitudes upon GDL society that are not characteristic of it.
The GDL’ political culture took shape and prospered in the geopolitical and geocultural space of Central Eastern Europe. In the past few years, research on the political culture of this region has begun to insert themes pertaining to Lithuania in the discussion. This opens the door to comparision of the culture of Lithuania's political nation with the cultures of other political societies in the region.
A recent collection of articles that examine the interaction between political culture and the rise of the state in Europe in 1300-1900 provides a new opportunity to rethink the contribution of the GDL political culture to the creation of the Lithuanian state.?” The contributors to that collection, however, did not research the political culture of the GDL from this perspective. Instead, they examined the topic by centering on the special traits of the development of statehood “from below,’ revealing the contributions of classes, corporations, societies, and citizens.
The authors choseas the starting point of the discussion the confederation of Switzerland as a model for the creation of a state. The historiography in this collection follows additional avenues to explain the processes behind the creation of states in Europe. The scope of that book is supplemented by André Holenstein’s introduction, which provides a comprehensive bibliography on the role of political culture in the creation of states. This important book, however, while elucidating the nexus of political culture and the state, overlooks the political culture of the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Commonwealth of the Two Nations, even though its second part, “Central and Eastern Europe” might lead us to believe otherwise.
New views on the culture of Central Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages are enunciated from various perspectives in a recent collection of scientific essays.”8 This volume, the cooperative product of researchers from different academic cultures, opened up unexpected and innovative avenues for research on culture. Notably, however, these new observations on the region's culture are presented through the traditional paradigm of the three core states—Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia—making the cultural history of medieval Lithuania an integral part of the culture of Poland.
There is also a comparative view of the region’s political culture, presented in a similar fashion in a collection of articles that summarize the results of a joint research project carried out by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and its counterpart in Poland. This collection bases its contents on the same three core states.”? In their introductory article, Stanislaw Bylina and Jaroslav Panek do note that two political nations, each fostering a different tradition, were adjoined and began to co-inhabit a Polish-Lithuanian state that was created in 1569.3°
However, Marcel Kosman and Edward Opaliriski, who contributed articles on the political culture of the GDL and the Commonwealth of the Two Nations, did not overshoot the boundaries of traditional interpretation in Polish historiography. They focus their attention on the ever-closer ties of the political cultures of societies that were tethered in the union, which brought about integration and the adoption of the thinking and behavior of Poland’s boyar class.*!
In terms of its contribution to historiography, this study presents the GDL political culture as an independent phenomenon within European culture and shows how it concurrently unified and divided the political societies and political cultures of the two states, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. By uncovering the development of the GDL’: political culture and explaining how it matured, it produces a picture that, I hope, will
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