| Abstract [eng] |
This thesis examines what was termed the “genealogics of lordship” – an interaction between lineage, nobility, and lordship in the late 15th to early 17th centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It puts forward the hypothesis that during this period, a discourse on the nobility’s alleged natural excellence, claiming superiority over commoners due to a more virtuous lineage and creating a basis for authority in the state, had emerged. By focusing on the formation of the nobility and the criteria for membership in this group, emphasis on lineage was interpreted in the context of concurrent ideas about the heredity of human nature and virtue. The thesis also identifies a counter-discourse stating that nobility is a result of virtue rather than lineage. Considering the question of collective identity and habitus, the indignity of being called a dog was analyzed. This particular slur had a range of negative meanings – religious, mental, cultural, etc. – which were interpreted as a set of oppositions describing the differences between nobles and commoners. Regarding the question of whether and in what way the previously analyzed ideas found their way into contemporaneous historical works, namely the Bychowiec Chronicle, the treatise of Michalo Lituanus (~1550) and O początkach by Maciej Stryjkowski (1577) revealed the coexistence of different historical visions, corresponding to the simultaneous views on what constituted nobility and whence its authority should come from. |
