Legislative initiatives in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of the late 16th — early 17th century as strengthening the state monopoly on legitimate violence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2024.02.056Keywords:
law, sejm, constitutions, Statutes of Lithuania, VolynAbstract
The goal is to explore the changes in the perception of crimes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late 16th — early 17th century based on a wide range of sources, including legal norms (the 2nd and 3rd Statutes of Lithuania and diet constitutions) and court records of the Volynian Voivodeship. The research is focused not only on the legal norms adopted in the center and mandatory for the entire noble estate, which symbolized change but also on the response of the nobility from one voivodeship, which was analysed based on a wide array of court records.
The multifaceted research material requires an appropriate methodology developed primarily in regard to the new social history and historical anthropology. The research focus shift s from stable objects and structures to the process of their construction and constant transformation, from the top view (the perspective of the power / culture that enforces its will) to the view from below (the perspective of the subjects whose role was not limited to submitting to the will of the authorities: they resisted and adapted the projects enforced by those in power and the surrounding reality to their needs); lastly, from conflicts authorities — people to their cooperation.
Conclusions. Several phenomena analysed in the article signify changes in crimes interpretations. They were no longer seen as an offense against the victim and, therefore, an essentially private matter but as a violation of the basic rights of the Szlachta and an attack on the public order, therefore, as a crime against the public. These processes in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were generally analogous to similar processes in Western Europe. Some scholars of state formation treat them as the state affirming its monopoly on legitimate violence and, therefore, as the strengthening of the power of the state and the king. Despite that, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, these trends were initiated by the Szlachta communities themselves, at least in part; the materials from the Volynian Voivodeship demonstrate that local nobility transformed the legal norms to fit their cultural needs. The legal sphere was the space of active negotiations on the intersection of interests of various players, individual, corporate, and national. This aspect demands a significant reconsideration of our understanding of the early modern state and its role in curbing violence.
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