Стратегії та ритуали конфлікту: шляхетський соціум Волині зламу XVI і XVII ст. Джерела та інтерпретації

ENThe present publication collates the sources, namely, court records of the Volhynian Voivodeship, that highlight communication strategies during conflicts in the Volhynian szlachta milieu of the last 3rd of the 16th through the early 17th century. Court materials ostensibly attest to the constant presence of violence in the quotidian lives of szlachta, happy to turn to revenge in response to any action, word or gesture that could have been interpreted as offensive. This view of the past is largely dictated by the nature of the sources, which are not a reflection of reality, but a construct that serves various actors, including the accusers, the accused, their friends, and society at large. Under the adversarial judicial system, each trial turned into a rhetorical war where a lot hinged on the mode of representation of the accused. The complainant presented himself as an embodiment of all virtues valued by the community while painting his adversary’s actions as criminal, even if they stayed within the boundaries of acceptable (quasi-legitimate) ways of restoring justice. The accused were always described as violating “the common peace,” and the peace in the community relied on all its members respecting laws and commonly accepted conventions. Counter-claims lodged by both parties almost simultaneously prove that this narrative was rhetorically constructed. These claims usually presented the events differently, sometimes unrecognizably so, or described various episodes of the conflict where victims and abusers switched roles. The present edition offers several such examples. Making sure that complaints conformed to accepted genres by introducing clichéd formula, the scribes also affected their contents. We can glean the extent of their interventions from the jokes of clerks, who often made fun of the scribes that exaggerated the opponents’ aggressive actions, damages or the number of attackers to the point of absurdity.And yet, the specificity of the szlachta milieu might be the most important factor that shaped court sources. The community dictated how its representatives should act and describe their actions, which emotions could be expressed, how they should represent themselves, which communicative models they could use as a conflict unfolded, and how they could resolve a conflict. The community defined the range of acceptable actions and punished those who crossed the line by stripping them of a fraction of their “good glory,” which was only restored after the injured party’s interests were accommodated. Szlachta corporations of each voivodeship were among the power institutions that had the right to violence and legislative initiatives. Therefore, the major part of this selection of sources demonstrates the conventions and rituals that regulated the conflict-ridden quotidian life. We are dealing primarily with cases that focus on the importance of honor and “good glory” for a szlachta member, who was ready to draw his sword at the least suspicion of offence. At the same time, sources demonstrate that a szlachta member was invested in one’s reputation, and was thus forced to conform to the accepted norms of coexistence. Sources describe rituals that helped to deescalate armed hostilities to the level of a verbal confrontation, where revenge was enacted rhetorically rather than played out. At the forefront are the sources dealing with public announcements of revenge (odpovid): a compulsory ritual each honorable szlachta member had to enact before violently attacking his opponent.As the sources included in this publication attest, odpovid served many functions in the szlachta community: it could be a response to an offence, an announcement of tensions between members of the community, a defense against accusations, a power display intended to dishonor the opponent, a threat and an attempt to cower the opponent into making concessions, and a canalization of aggression. The sources displayed here allow us to analyze the variants and specificity of this ritual; texts of written announcements of revenge are included. Challenges to a duel are typologically similar to an odpovid, and were often combined with announcements of revenge, serving as a demonstration of hostility or a threat. The publication features cases that included challenges to a duel: complaints about attacks, written challenges, and court trials regarding such challenges. Records describing the conflicts where violence could not be kept within the limits of public verbal declarations or loss of property, and led to loss of life, comprise a separate bloc of documents. Cases include manslaughter as a predictable, if unwanted result of a prolonged conflict involving revenge; unpremeditated manslaughter at a family banquet; servants committing premeditated murder of their lord’s opponent; the clash between two clans struggling for power that led to many deaths. The sources detailing these and other cases demonstrate the conventions for describing murder by the accusers and the accused (especially evident in the cases when, as it turned out, the complainant knew neither the identity of the murderer, nor the circumstances of the crime), which socially meaningful values the complaints emphasized, how szlachta perceived various modes of murder, which legal punishments could be chosen, and how such cases usually ended. [...].