Metadata: Collection of Royal Privileges, documents of craftsmen's workshops and of courts
Collection
- Country:
- Lithuania
- Holding institution:
- Lithuanian State Historical Archives
- Holding institution (official language):
- Lietuvos valstybės istorijos archyvas
- Postal address:
- Mindaugo g. 8, 03107 Vilnius
- Phone number:
- +370 5 219 5320
- Email:
- istorijos.archyvas@lvia.lt
- Reference number:
- 1
- Title:
- Collection of Royal Privileges, documents of craftsmen's workshops and of courts
- Title (official language):
- Karalių privilegijų, amatininkų cechų ir teismų dokumentų kolekcija
- Creator/accumulator:
- Chancellery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
- Date(s):
- 1552/1861
- Language:
- Polish
- German
- Latin
- Russian
- Extent:
- 26 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
- This collection contains royal privileges as well as documents relating to craftsmen's workshops and the courts in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. This includes privileges and charters issued by Polish kings and Grand Dukes of Lithuania to magistrates, merchants and burghers, craftsmen’s workshops, and several Jewish communities, etc. Materials of the craftsmen's workshops include descriptions of their statutes, minutes of meetings and financial documents. Documents from various judicial and state institutions regarding property describe the activities of the Kovno magistrate, craft workshops, state officials, etc. A file from 1555 contains a letter from Sigismund Augustus, the Polish King and the Grand Duke of Lithuania, to Razmus Dovgird, the Trakai governor, in which Augustus advised Dovgird not to issue death threats to the Jews of Zhosli. According to the charter, the life of each Jew in the town was estimated and guaranteed to the amount of 300 kop. of Lithuanian groschen (inventory 1, file 3). King Sigismund Augustus also issued a royal charter in 1555 to Alytus and Nemunaitis vicar Stanislav Raisky instructing him not to measure or divide land plots and vegetable gardens belonging to Christian and Jewish residents of Trakai. Stanislav Raisky was also ordered by the king to allocate land for pasture for the townspeople’s livestock (inventory 1, file 5). In 1568 Sigismund Augustus issued a charter which stated that after not receiving payment for the head tax for the first half of 1568 from the Jews of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (12 groschen per person), the monarch appointed his nobleman Matys Bydlinsky to collect this tax not only for the first, but also for the second half of the year. The collection of the tax would be carried out, even if force was needed (inventory 1, file 4). The royal charter from 1579 by Stephen Bathory, the Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania, to Kovna burghers stated that after the end of the war they should appear at the royal court to consider the case of the Trakai townspeople (Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Tatars) against the officials of the Kovna self-government body. The officials were accused of creating obstacles to impede the engagement of Trakai merchants in free trade. King Stephen Bathory restored the privilege of engaging in trade in Kovna for visiting merchants until the trial (inventory 1, file 6). A royal charter granted in 1589 by Sigismund III Vasa to Prince Albrecht Radziwill, the marshal of Lithuania and Kovna Starosta, obliged him to ensure that burghers in Kovna would not create obstacles to impede Trakai’s Jews from engaging in free trade in Kovna. The charter indicated that such obstacles contradict previously given royal privileges (inventory 1, file 8).
- Archival history:
- In 1853 documents of the collection were handed over to the Vilnius Central Archives of Ancient Acts from the archives of the Lithuanian Tribunal. At the end of World War II, materials of the Vilnius Central Archives of Ancient Acts were transferred to the Central State Archives of the Lithuanian SSR. In 1957, together with other pre-revolutionary materials, these records were included in the Central State Historical Archive of the Lithuanian SSR, predecessor of the current State Historical Archive. Until 2019, the collection was called Genuine Royal Privileges.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Royal privilege was a special exclusive right given by the monarch to individuals, class, ethnic or confessional groups, localities, cities or regions. Until the middle of the 15th century, only the Grand Duke of Lithuania issued these privileges. Thereafter and until the first quarter of the 16th century, he coordinated the granting of privileges with the Seimas of the Lithuanian nobility. After the conclusion of the Union of Lublin in 1569 the preparation of privileges and laws became the main prerogative of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth’s Sejm. However, the monarch’s approval was necessary for adoption of these privileges and laws. It was customary for the newly elected rulers of the Crown of the Kingdom of the Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to confirm the privileges adopted by the kings who ruled before them. The privileges and many other documents were drawn up, recorded and kept in the Chancellery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The chancellery was established in the 13th century and was ratified in the 15th century. The position of the chancellor as head of the chancellery was created in 1441. Between the 13th and 18th centuries the chancellery’s archives, known as the Lithuanian Metrica, operated.
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Privileges
- Taxation
- Trade and commerce
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of two inventories.
- Finding aids:
- Detailed inventories are available on the website on the Lithuanian Chief Archivist Service.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Ilya Vovshin; Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People; 2020
