Lawyers in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Legal entities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ( Polish jurydyka , from Latin iuridicus - judicial, ius [ iuris ] - right and dicere - to speak) - administratively independent, isolated parts of cities and suburbs in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which were not subject to administrative and judicial authority local government .

Typically, such territories belonged to large tycoons - landowners or monasteries, eventually becoming centers of handicraft and trade.

They arose in Western Europe in the 15th century as a result of the forced relocation of serfs to the sovereign and monastery lands or the voluntary resettlement of citizens on them. The landowner acquired land in urban areas or on the outskirts. This property fell outside the control of royal and city administration.

In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the lordly suburbs often acquired the character of small towns with their own forms of self-government.

The first information about law in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania belonged to the 15th century. in letters to the city of Brest ^[1] .

After the Union of Lublin in 1569, juridists promoted the expansion of monastic possessions in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and, consequently, the greater influence of the Catholic Church.

Sometimes local authorities, using lawyers, allowed arbitrariness in relation to the townspeople. So, in 1615, part of the inhabitants of Mozyr obeyed the castle, which began to levy illegal taxes from the townspeople. The indignant townspeople rebelled, broke into the castle, and killed several officials. They elected Voight , expanded the benefits of Magdeburg law to all philistines. Power in Mozyr passed to the city magistrate. In 1622, the royal court recognized the individual claims of the Mozyr people ^[2] .

Residents of Krichev appealed to the King of the Commonwealth, Vladislav IV Vase, on the elimination of jurisprudence and obtaining Magdeburg law. In August 1633 the city ​​received a privilege , according to which all legal entities, both private and monastic, were canceled.

According to the inventory of 1641 in Vitebsk , for example, there were 28 lawyers. The largest of them by the number of houses: the lawyer of the Uniate Metropolitan of Kiev and Polotsk Anthony Selyava (180 houses throughout Vitebsk), the lawyer of the Vitebsk Zemsky judge Samuil Staroselsky (112 houses), the lawyer of Mr. Andrei Ramshi (50 houses), the lawyer of Vilnius chapter (27 houses) , lawyer of the Vitebsk captain Christopher Khrapovitsky (21 houses). Thus, in the private jurisdiction of Vitebsk there were 62% of houses ^[3] .

In the second half of the 17th century , in the part of the Kiev region that went to Poland , magnate and monastery cities accounted for almost 90%, and about 88% of all cities in Volyn .

Kiev, for example, administratively generally divided almost all into juridics until the end of the 18th century, the territorial unit of which was a church parish . For example, in the parish of the Biskup region, under the jurisdiction of a Catholic biskup, hundreds of artisans and merchants lived, paying taxes not to the city, but to the biskup. Nor did they pay a tax to the city treasury and 4 taverns in the Biskup region, bringing 1,200 zlotys of annual income. Possessed jurists and Orthodox Kiev-Pechersk , Sofia , Assumption Monasteries ^[4] .

In the history of Grodno, there are also well-known large juridics belonging to two Uniate monasteries ^[5] .

The Zhirovitsky Monastery received from Lev Sapega legal entities and several villages with peasants ^[6] .

For the townspeople and residents of the towns, juridics had a number of positive aspects. First of all, since the houses and lands of tycoons were exempted from taxation, it was more profitable for the tradesman to transfer ownership of his house and land to the tycoon, while remaining the owner of the transferred real estate, to have gardens and mowing grounds. Since the population of lawyers was mainly comprised of artisans and merchants (and only to a lesser extent gardeners), their inability to royal and local tax laws became even more important. Moreover, in the ON, juridics did not grow into self-isolation, into independent markets, as happened in some cities in Poland.

Since juridics, in the opinion of the authorities, impeded economic development and a unified management order, prevented the class consolidation of citizens, the Polish parliament of 1764 eliminated them.

In ON, juridics were canceled after joining the Russian Empire , according to the letter of award to the cities of 1785 . Private cities were bought out by the Russian government, and city jurists who were pledged by the tycoons went to the treasury. The juridics were finally liquidated in 1791 .

Juridics are an essential element of the social and economic life of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. They largely determined the structure of the urban and small-town population of Ukraine and Belarus , the further development of cities.