Filon Kmita Czarnobylski: gente Ruthenus natione Lithuanus? disertacija

ENThe PhD dissertation researches the personality of Filon Kmita Czarnobylski (before 1527–1587), Smolensk Palatine (1579) and Orsha’s Captain (1566). The main objective of the dissertation was to explore his career path and look into an identity of a representative of Ruthenian Nobility at the time of the Union of Lublin. The choice of that particular historical figure for this research was determined by his vast, well-preserved correspondence, which helped to answer to the scope of questions connected to the history of Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its relations with Muscovy. This correspondence also served as a primary source for the research. Earlier research on Kmita’s letters includes mainly his military service and some aspects of his writing style. Intelligence and diplomatic activities supervised by Kmita were discussed to some extent in several works on the history of Livonian war and relations of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with Muscovy. However, Kmita’s activity on those fields was never addressed in separate research. Also, there is still a need for a new biography of Filon Kmita.The first chapter focuses on the reconstruction of Filon Kmita’s ancestry, his marriages and principal affinities, which demonstrate his main connections with families of Chodkiewicz, Hornostaj, Sapieha, Kapusta, and large scope of his relatives in Kyiv and Bratslav lands. The second and third chapters describe Kmita’s military, diplomatic and border service, as well as the change of role of Orsha’s captain before Livonian war and during Kmita’s holding of this office. In this part, I also discuss Kmita’s responsibilities towards diplomatic missions, crossing the border in Orsha. The study of the correspondence made it possible to understand the changes in the hierarchy of Lithuanian intelligence during the Livonian war. In the last chapter, I analysed Kmita’s correspondence as a part of the public culture of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and at the same time, as a part of Ruthenian written and oral literary tradition. His letters were studied from the perspective of the idea of “imagined communities”. The dissertation contributed to studies of that period by restoring the history of the original manuscript of Kmita’s letters from 1573-1574 and locating another, previously unknown copy of those letters. [Repozytorium UW]