An unknown document of King Stephen Báthory from the collection of K. V. Bazilevich

Abstract

The article is devoted to an unknown document of Stephen Báthory, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, from the collection of historian Konstantin Vasil’evich Bazilevich (1892-1950). The Bazilevich collection contains a little more than 300 items, among which there are rare European and Russian printed books that fell into the hands of the historian in a variety of ways between the First and Second World Wars and after the end of the latter. The collection also contains a number of parchment documents, almost unknown until recently. They mainly come from Leipzig and date back to the 15th-16th centuries. The only document not written in Latin and not in German is the decision of the royal court in Vilnius on March 24, 1584 on the land dispute between a nobleman, named Ivan Sholukha, or Ivan Puzyna, and the Polotsk Jesuit Collegium over the village of Mezhdchichi in the Polotsk Voivodeship. Part of the lands of the Polotsk Spaso-Evfrosinievsky monastery, which were transferred to the Collegium after its formation, turned out to be privately owned. The royal decree confirms the incomplete legitimacy of land ownership by Ivan Sholukha. However, taking into account the fact that the nobleman took part in the hostilities near Polotsk, and the lands were granted to him by the predecessor of Stephen Báthory, King Sigismund Augustus II, a decision is made on a special procedure for transferring land to the Polotsk Jesuit Collegium. The text of the document is published with commentaries, conclusions are drawn that the document came into the collection of the historian from the archives of the Commission for National Education of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.