Mykolas Lietuvis ir Teodoras Jevlaševskis: du požiūriai į1564-1566 metų Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės teismų reformą

LTStraipsnyje a) siekiama nustatyti, kaip įsivaizduota 1504-1566 m. LDK teismų reforma; b) apžvelgiama teismų sistemos padėtis XVII a. pradžioje pagal T. Jevlaševskio dienoraštį; c) įvertinamas teismų sistemos funkcionavimo efektyvumas per asmeninę T. Jevlaševskio patirtį (jo vestos bylos bei incidentas su jo sūnaus žudiko nubaudimu); d) pabandyta sulyginti lūkesčių bei realybės santykį praėjus keliems dešimtmečiams po reformų įgyvendinimo [p. 161].

ENThe second half of the 16th century was a period of great reforms in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The personal union with Poland considerably affected the political orientation of Lithuania over a century and a half. The rapprochement with Poland was stimulated by a decade-long and permanently unsuccessful war with Moscow. These military failures threatened the very existence of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Thus in the middle of the 16th century the ruling elite of the Duchy had conceived the idea that the further existence of the state was possible only in a closer union with Poland. On the other hand, with the approach of the union the Lithuanian nobility realized that their country had to enter the union in a sufficiently “good order”, i.e., both states had to have their structures of government more or less unified. The majority of the Lithuanian gentry perceived the reform of the courts not only as a Polish example to be followed, but also as a means of stripping the nobility of their legal immunities. The failures in the Livonian war quickened the pace of the reforms. The nobility at least formally surrendered its privileges. The territorial division of the country was effected. The Second Lithuanian Statute was adopted. The union with Poland removed the threat of a defeat in the war with Moscow. This paper presents a comparison of two texts. In the first a well-known Lithuanian diplomat gives advice to the sovereign on how best to run the state. He cordially recommends him to follow the good example of his neighbours and to get rid of his own vices. It is a treatise by Michalo Lituanus De Moribus Tariaronim, Lituanorum et Moschorum (On the Customs of Tartars, Lithuanians and Moscowians), written ca. 1560.It is impossible to learn whether the treatise had any effect on Sigismundus Augustus. However, the very course of events shows that the administrative and judicial reforms of the 1560s were the fulfilment of the author's expectations. An answer to the question whether the real situation justified the aspirations of the gentry might be contained in the second text - the memoirs of Teodor Jewlaszewski? (1546-1619), a distinguished lawyer. These memoirs, written in the early 17th century, deal with the period of 1564-1604. Jewlaszevski practice at the bar (he acted as a solicitor for distinguished noble families, and later became an official in a land court) enabled him to be well acquainted with the new court system. His opinion is all the more interesting, as by origin he belonged to the middle-class gentry - his views on the courts could be a reflection of the majority of his social layer. It is quite clear that these two cases present personal subjective stand points of the two writers. Jewlaszewski’ pessimism might have been enhanced by his son’s death and by the plague epidemic. There is also a hierarchical difference in the status of the two authors. Direct comparison is impossible here, however it can be done on the theoretical plane of ‘expectation - result’. It is worth presenting here in greater detail the pattern/outline of culturological changes, taken from Dynamics of Culturological Change by G. P. Murdock (1897-1985), a well-known American sociologist and culturologist.This pattern consists of four take-over stages of cultural borrowing: (1) stimulus (necessity or inclination for the take-over of the borrowing); (2) social approval of the novelty; (3) selective elimination of the novelty (its ‘struggle for existence’); (4) the integration of the change into that particular culture (adaptation in the merger into cultural entirety ). In which stage were the new courts in the early 17th century? Forty years had passed since the start of the reforms, enforced by the stimuli of the majority of the ruling estate and approved by the society. The political apex of the state, i.e., the secular and clerical elite, supported them, too, albeit unwillingly. Nevertheless, the nobility preserved its dominating situation in the state. The society remained somewhere between the third and fourth stages of the cultural change. In reality the innovations, introduced in the reforms, were either ineffective or distorted. Teodor Jewlaszewski? showed the deformed society in his twilight years (he still had about 15 years to live). The law-based reform, degenerating in its essence, tried to adapt itself to the changes of the society. There were certain symptoms of integration, too. The nobility, realizing the inevitability of reforms, had to reconcile themselves to the existing situation, controlled by their stooges from the gentry. The widely publicized and formally perceived equality was replaced by economic and political coercion. The comparison of the two texts shows that the court reform did not live up to the expectations - and that once again testifies to the fact that the slowest changes in the history are those of people’s thinking and value judgements. The reform of state institution can be considered only as an introduction into a decade- and century-long change in the interpretation of values in society.