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7 unusual facts about Grand Duchy of Lithuania


Braslaw

In the 14th century, Braslaw was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, in fact, became an important fortification near the disturbing line with the Livonian Order in the 14 – 15th centuries.

Kamyanyets

In 1366, it was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in 1376 it was burnt by Teutonic Crusaders but rapidly rebuilt.

Litvin

Others, to the contrary, propose the idea of a unification with the modern Republic of Lithuania basing on common roots of the Belarusian and modern Lithuanian statehood in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Today the term “Litvin” is enjoying a revival, in some quarters, in Belarus, since many Belarusians prefer to be called “Litvins” and to affiliate themselves with the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and believe that Belarusians contributed greatly to its culture.

According to Belarusian historian Anatol Hrytskievich, lands of modern north-western Belarus constituted the major part of historical Lithuania and one should therefore not associate the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania exclusively with the modern Republic of Lithuania.

In other contexts it can also refer to Slavic people identifying themselves with the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania in present-day Lithuania and Belarus, as well in Ukraine, western Russia and parts of Poland.

Lytvyn

Lytvyn is a Ukrainian surname that derived from word Litvin, a resident of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.


Administrative divisions of Lithuania

Just before the Union of Lublin (1569), the four voivodeships of (Kiev, Podlaskie, Bracław, and Wołyń) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were transferred to the Polish Crown by direct order of Sigismund II Augustus while the Duchy of Livonia, acquired in 1561, became a condominium (joint domain) of both Lithuania and Poland.

Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin

He was regarded as the only Russian statesman of the day with sufficient foresight to grasp the fact that the Baltic seaboard, or even a part of it, was worth more to Russia than ten times the same amount of territory in Lithuania, and, despite opposition from a number of his colleagues, in December 1658 he succeeded in concluding a three-year Treaty of Valiesari whereby the Russians were left in possession of all their conquests in Livonia.

Alexander Tumansky

Tumanskiy, Aleksandr Grigor’evich (Russian: Туманский, Александр Григорьевич) (1861–1920) – Russian orientalist, military interpreter, Major General of Imperial Russian Army, belonging to an ancient aristocratic family, which had originated from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Battle of Orsha

The Battle of Orsha was fought on 8 September 1514, between the allied forces of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kingdom of Poland, under the command of Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski, and the army of Grand Duchy of Moscow under Konyushy Ivan Chelyadnin and Kniaz Mikhail Golitsin.

Battle of Ula

The Battle of Ula or Battle of Chashniki was fought during the Livonian War on 26 January 1564 between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Tsardom of Russia on the Ula River (tributary of the Daugava River) north of Chashniki in the Vitebsk Region.

Brest Litovsk Voivodeship

Brest Litovsk Voivodeship (Belarusian: Берасьцейскае ваяводзтва, Polish: Województwo brzesko-litewskie ,) was a unit of administrative territorial division and a seat of local government (voivode) within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) since 1566 until the May Constitution in 1791, and from 1791 to 1795 (partitions of Poland) as a voivodeship in Poland.

Catherine Willoughby, 12th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby

During this period Sigismund II Augustus, the King of Poland and Duke of Lithuania appointed them as administrators of Lithuania, based at Kražiai.

Cyprian, Metropolitan of Moscow

In 1373, the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheus Kokkinos picked him for his devout lifestyle and excellent education and sent him to Lithuania and Muscovy on a mission to reconcile the princes of Lithuania and Tver with Metropolitan Alexius.

De moribus tartarorum, lituanorum et moscorum

The work is neither a chronicle nor a travel book, but is rather a political essay which is critical of the author's motherland (Grand Duchy of Lithuania) and overly praises Muscovy and the Crimean Khanate for their centralized governments and united subjects.

Dmitry Shemyaka

In the aftermath of Shemyaka's murder, his wife and son fled Novgorod to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where they were given Rylsk and Novgorod-Seversky in appanage.

Golden age of Belarusian history

This is sometimes related to certain relaxation, and even partial and temporary reversion, of the Polish and Catholic cultural-religious expansion (end of the 14th–17th centuries) to Ruthenian Lands (so, Eastern Slavic and Orthodox) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 1500s–1570s, esp. in the 1550s–1570s.

Grodno Sejm

The Grodno Sejm, held in fall of 1793 in Grodno, Grand Duchy of Lithuania (now Hrodna, Belarus) is infamous because its deputies, bribed or coerced by the Russian Empire, passed the act of Second Partition of Poland.

Jerzy Nos

Originally a starost of Drohiczyn and Mielnik, he also held numerous posts in the administration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Jonathan ben Joseph

Jonathan ben Joseph was a Lithuanian rabbi and astronomer who lived in Risenoi, Grodno in the late 17th century and early 18th century.

Kazimierz Siemienowicz

Born in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he served the armies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a federation of Poland and the Grand Duchy, and in the armies of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a ruler of the Netherlands.

Lithuanians in the Chicago area

Like Chicago's Polish Cathedral's, these churches were statements meant to recall an era when the Grand Duchy of Lithuania spanned from the Baltic to the Black Sea, having been built at a time when Lithuania was under Russian occupation and incorporating Lithuanian imagery in its decor such as the Vytis to invoke pride in Lithuanian culture.

Marcin Odlanicki Poczobutt

Poczobutt observed solar and lunar eclipses, comets and asteroids (including Ceres, Pallas, Juno), and calculated geographic coordinates of settlements in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (including Vilnius and Hrodna).

Peace of Raciąż

Peace of Raciąż was a treaty signed on 22 May 1404 between Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Teutonic Knights, regarding the control of the Dobrzyń Land and Samogitia.

Teofila Ludwika Zasławska

Teofila Ludwika Zasławska was an heiress of the Ostrogski family, one of the great Ruthenian princely families of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Treaty of Labiau

In addition to these terms, the treaty also included secret articles: therein, Frederick William I accepted Swedish claims to the Baltic coastal areas between Prussia and Swedish Livonia, namely Courland, Lithuania, Samogitia and Semigallia.

Tverai

The castle was the fortress where Vykintas, Duke of Samogitia and victorious leader of the Battle of Saule, defended himself against Mindaugas, crowned as King of Lithuania in 1253, during a civil war for power in the early Grand Duchy of Lithuania.


see also

Eustachy

Eustachy Tyszkiewicz (1814–1874), Polish–Lithuanian noble, archaeologist and historian from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Kmicic

Samuel Kmicic - a nobleman (szlachcic) from Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Lithuanian Metrica

By 1569, when the regions of Podlaskie, Volhynia, Podolia and the Kiev were separated from Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and incorporated into Kingdom of Poland, the books which concerned these regions, were removed from the Lithuanian Metrica, and merged into the Polish Metrica.

Old Ruthenian language

Ruthenian language, varieties of Eastern Slavonic spoken in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Pogon

Pogoń, a Knight-in-pursuit coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Polish Livonia

Duchy of Livonia, a dominion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth