Golden Age (Belarus)

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As a golden age which designates Belarusian national history, the era of the affiliation of the Belarusian principalities the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th and 15th century to the Union of Lublin (1569).

history

The epoch began in the first half of the 13th century with the annexation of the Belarusian principal principalities into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by the Lithuanian prince Mindaugas . This ruling structure under the leadership of the ruling family of the Gediminids was temporarily the largest state structure in Europe in terms of area in the 14th century , stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea.

The chancellery or official language of the Grand Duchy was the Belarusian variant of Old East Slavonic , most of the residents were Eastern Orthodox Slavs. The ruling class was represented by the nobility descended from the princes of the Kievan Rus . During this time, many Belarusian cities ( Minsk , Vitebsk , Polatsk , Homel , Pinsk ) became important craft and trade centers and contributed significantly to the economic development of Belarus. Belarusian culture also flourished. After the unification of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland in 1385, Belarus broke away from Russian influences and oriented itself to the west.

The Belarusian national historiography therefore rates the Lithuanian Grand Duchy as a Belarusian state structure. In fact, at this point in time it seemed possible that it was not Moscow , which was then relatively insignificant , but the Grand Duchy that would be the new Eastern Slavic Orthodox leading power. Some representatives of the then pagan Lithuanians such as Grand Duke Olgerd ( Algirdas ) favored this option. Even after Olgerd's son Jogaila ( Jagiełło in Polish ) married the Polish Queen Jadwiga in 1386, the Grand Duchy initially continued to exist as an independent, Eastern Slavic-Orthodox-dominated great power . Under Grand Duke Vytautas (1392–1430) it finally reached its greatest territorial extent. This era ended with the centralization of the original dual state in favor of the Polish half of the empire, which was sealed by the Union of Lublin in 1569 .

Since the Union of Horodło (1415), the nobility in the Grand Duchy enjoyed the same rights as in the Kingdom of Poland . However, they were only transferred to the Orthodox nobility with the establishment of the Rzeczpospolita in 1569, which led to the fact that from the middle of the 16th century, over the centuries, a creeping Polonization of the Belarusian high nobility and partly also of the middle nobility took place. As a result, the Eastern Slavic, Orthodox population lost its social and cultural elite in the medium term and Catholicism became the religion of the upper class. This orthodox-catholic or Belarusian-Polish antagonism was maintained until the early 20th century.

Belarusian historians point out the special importance that the Belarusians had in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in the Rzeczpospolita. Even if the political leadership and the prince dynasty of the Gedimines were Lithuanian in the male line , the Belarusians formed the majority of the population. The Belarusian language served as the official language of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania until 1697 , and the three Lithuanian statutes of 1529, 1566 and 1588 were also written in Belarusian.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d Dirk Holtbrügge : Belarus. 2nd ed., Munich, Beck, 2002. p. 34.