Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės konfederacinių teismų kanceliarijų notarinės funkcijos 1792–1793 metais

ENIn the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the 18th century is reasonably considered as the period of the associations of sworn nobles, otherwise known as confederations. Having established their rule across the whole state and formed the general confederation, the confederates would also take the administration of justice into their hands. By the example of traditional judicial authorities, the courts of two instances – district and the general confederation – used to be set up. However, the notarial functions of the confederate courts, as well as the activities of the chancelleries of local and general confederations in general, have not been the subject of in-depth studies. This article focuses on the activities of the chancelleries of the Lithuanian general confederation, as well as the local confederations, of the period of 1792–1793 in performing the functions that would be considered notarial from the present-day perspective. Through the complex analysis of the surviving documentation of the Lithuanian general and district confederations and the discussion on the changes in the activities of the chancelleries of the district courts of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) under the circumstances of confederate rule, the study seeks to answer how much the notarial functions, performed by the confederation chancelleries, corresponded with the regulations for keeping records on documents applied by district courts and the chancellery of the Supreme Tribunal of Lithuania.The sources of the research comprised the operational documents of confederations: record books, protocol books, court activity journals and other material stored in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives and the National Historical Archives of Belarus in Minsk. The research has led to the following conclusions: 1) After the confederation established itself in the GDL in June 1792, the activities of the chancelleries of the traditional noble courts were resumed in certain districts only. The network of the chancelleries of local and general confederation courts was set up in the GDL; 2) In addition to their principal function of case hearing, confederate courts also undertook consistent notarial functions. The uncontested documents of the public and private types used to be recorded in the court chancellery record books; they were dominated by records on the damage caused by the Russian army as well as the receipts issued for the food and forage, which were taken away; 3) Not all the chancelleries of the GDL district confederations complied with the requirements for keeping records on documents; nevertheless, the notarial functions, performed by the chancellery of the general confederation, were consistent with the regulations for record-keeping applied by the chancellery of the Supreme Tribunal of Lithuania. [From the publication]