initially forgotten, later – not evaluated

Even though it was (as they doubt), its obligations to Lithuanians are not affected, because " the true heirs of the land of Lithuania have always been only the predecessors of King Jogaila and Vytautas ". Meanwhile, Mindaugas was apparently one of the little dukes who tried to enter Lithuania with the help of the Order.

After a while, the Lithuanian side stated that "in no chronicle was Mindaugas so powerful that he would rule all lands in Lithuania. because the present tribal genius was always better known and powerful among all the princes of Lithuania. "

How to evaluate the following words of Jogaila and Vytautas the Prophet Is this another diplomatic trick of the Lithuanian dukes? Or perhaps for an ambiguous answer, is there a disturbance in the face of an unknown past and Forgotten? What do we know about Mindaugas (1200-1263), 150 years after his death?

The dynasty and the history of the history of the first management of Gediminas, written in the first Lithuanian historiographic book "The Grand Dukes of Lithuania" years ago, while for the first time in the Lithuanian historical tradition, the name Mindaugas disappeared only in the 16th century. 1990, in the last edition of the Lithuanian Chronicles (Bychovco Chronicle)

All this annotated "History of Mindaugas" was essentially reformulated in the 13th century.The Russian episode of the Galician-Volynian annals on the Lithuanian ruler, without no addition of

was not named and received the title of King because he did not know the author of the Russian chronicle. Also leaves all the negative writing descriptions of the Volynian chronicler, which is characteristic of Mindaugas.

XIV-XVI c. We searched for sources of mysteriously a sort of Lithuanian story about Mindaugas. Lithuanian society has forgotten the first and only King of Lithuania. How can this happen?

An illiterate society is rapidly losing roots

The traditions of narration on ancestral mushrooms are transmitted from generation to generation to different cultures

No form of culture who has preserved and transmitted specific knowledge of the past to future generations.

This type of knowledge is not lacking in the history of the eastern Baltic First Nations. XIII century In the Chronicle of Henry, in a chronicle of the early 19th century, the Latvian leader Rusyn spoke in his chronicle, where he boasted about the children of his children before the third and fourth generations of his works. And although the biblical motive of this text is obvious, the existence of legendary stories raises no doubts.

Another thing is the content and distribution of such stories. In the early history of Lithuania, no form of culture has been proven, which has preserved for a long time and transmit to future generations specific knowledge about the past of the person. The lack of written culture is particularly important because the ability of the verbal tradition to preserve knowledge of historical events is extremely limited.

Although it was reasonably believed that the ruling elite came from honorable ancestry, it was not possible to say more precisely. The genealogies of rulers and noble families reconstructed by contemporary historians lead to a misleading illusion of the historical traditions of long-standing parents. The genealogies of the original Lithuanian aristocracy, testifying to the interest in the historical roots of the family, have only been known since the sixteenth century, and have no credible knowledge for the next centuries XIV-XV.

Authors of Lithuanian chronicles did not write in the early 16th century, but created the stories of prominent princes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Pony tribes. Based on the notion of the nobility of the time, they translated in ancient times the recent hereditary names of the noble tribes and the political institutions of their current political life and created a vision of historical continuity

Originally forgotten , then unmarked

The ruler of Lithuania did not remember the history of the kingdom of Mindaugas in his political plans. 1429-1430 as political controversy on the coronation of Vytautas, where the historical tradition played an important role, and in the Roman Catholic Office of Ziegler, the cases of the marginalized cases of the kingdoms of Castile, Scotland and from Sicily were recalled.

The Lithuanian nobles, 1526, do not remember these stories. prepare a new project for the creation of the Kingdom of Lithuania. Thus, in writing, the Lithuanian society did not record its traditions if it understood that it was very vague about the king who lived in the 13th century

INTERVIEW: paradoxical but the memory of Mindaugas was preserved by the Order of the Order of Germans. He also regarded the kingdom of important possessions as the "doweller" and the heathen pagan who had been repatriated to Christianity.

Only in the sixteenth century In the noble society GDL, the diffusion of historical self-awareness has intensified and the history of interest has begun to develop. Refers to the sources, renamed forgotten names. About the XVI century The image of Mindaugas is already more developed in the works written by Augustinas Rotundas and Mykolas Lietuvis in the middle of the year.

The royal grandeur of Mindaugas on the basis of Russian, German and Polish sources in the 16th century. In the second half, Motiejus Stryjkovskis was rebuilt, naming Mindaugas "the first and last king of Lithuania". However, the brutal representation of Mindaugas, which was marked by apostasy – liberation, repentance, was not able to create a new historical vision.

In many historical stories, the King of Lithuania was considered quite critical. Unlike the first French-speaking king Chlodvig, with whom historians later liked to compare Mindaugas and which barbarian warriors eventually turned into a Christian knight in the historical Middle Ages, Mindaugas's painting did not experience such transformation

Lithuanian historical consciousness until the 19th century. it remained a kind of antipode for the brilliant memory of the Christian rulers Vytautas and Jogaila

Literature: R. Petrauskas, Forgotten King: Mindaugas in the Society of Consciousness of the Grand Duke of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. At the end of the sixteenth century, in: The King of Mindaugas, Vilnius, 2008.