Introduction

LTReikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos Didžioji Kunigaikštystė (LDK; Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL); Lietuvos istorija; Socialinė istorija; Kasdienybė; The Lithuanian history; Social history; Trivial round.

ENThe first mention of Lithuania is in the early twelfth-century annals of Quedlinburg Abbey. It locates the martyrdom of St Bruno of Querfurt in 1009 ‘in confinio Lituae et Rusciae’. This linkage proved significant. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania emerged out of the Baltic forests in the mid-thirteenth century, just as the Teutonic Order was moving in. As it extended its sway across Rus', Europe’s last pagan polity soon became its largest. It expanded still further, briefly stretching from the shores of the Black Sea to the Baltic, after its rulers adopted Christianity in the 1380s. Their conversion inaugurated an evolving union with the Kingdom of Poland, which became much closer with the formation in 1569 of a joint political community or Commonwealth (Respublica, Rzeczpospolita). Despite its sixteenth-century territorial losses, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania remained one of the largest and most diverse polities in early modern Europe. Here eastern and western Christendom overlapped, the Protestant Reformation made significant inroads, one of the most numerous Jewish communities in the world grew to maturity, while Muslims, Karaites, Old Believers and others found their niches. Integrated into a predominantly agrarian and boreal economy and society were several hundred urban communities, many of whom flourished for centuries. [Extract, p. 1 ]