№22-23, 2014-2015

The article considers the practices of tolerance and coexistence of different religious and ethnic communities of Vilnius in the seventeenth century. Through the analysis of social practices and comparison with other European cities, it maps Vilnius on the scale of early modern urban tolerance.

The article studies the work of the Hrodna magistrate court on the basis of the 1639-1642 court book. It analyzes how legal practice corresponded to Magdeburg law, how the court was composed and how qualified officials handled both documentation and litigation.

The article focuses on the importance of the Bible in the formation of the law of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It traces how biblical values, Renaissance thought and the Reformation contributed to the legal culture and long-term relevance of the Statutes of the GDL.

The text summarizes the author’s long-term research into ancient East Slavic literature, its corpus, the problem of influences and the political history of Slavic studies as a discipline. It reflects on how the very category of old Russian literature was historically constructed.

The article discusses major controversial issues in the study of the Union of Brest of 1596 and separates scholarly problems from broader socio-political memory disputes. It outlines the main historiographical achievements and the most contested questions in current research.

The article is devoted to Bernhard Prittwitz, one of the organizers of the defense of the Polish Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from Tatar raids. It places his activity within the broader military and political processes on the steppe frontier of Eastern Europe in the sixteenth century.

The article examines Albert Krantz, his work Wandalia and the way this humanist text became entangled with later political conflict between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Muscovy. It also reflects on early modern European perceptions of Russia.