Ten documents from the collections of the National Historical Archives of Belarus recognized unique
On 28 June 2022, a meeting of the Central Expert and Methodological Commission of the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus was held, during which 10 archival documents of the 15th-18th centuries were approved and recognized as unique. The first two unique documents, including the oldest document of 1391, were approved by the Commission on 8 June 2018. Thus, today 12 documents are officially recognized as unique in Belarus, and all of them are all kept in the collections of the National Historical Archive of Belarus.
The presented 10 documents are royal privileges, grants, gift, exchange and sale charters of magnates and nobles of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The well-known historical figures appear in the documents Grand Duke Svidrigailo of Lithuania, Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania Kazimir and Alexander Yagellonchik, Prince Alexander (Olelko) Vladimirovich of Slutsk, Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky of Zaporozhye, Princes Drutsky-Sokolinsky, representatives of the Khreptovich and Kezgaylo families, etc.
Six documents are related to the history of one of the earliest male monasteries in Belarus, the Lavrishevsky Monastery, which for several centuries was the most important spiritual center of the Novogrudok land.
The main part of the documents is written in the Old Belarusian language, 2 in the Old Ukrainian. 5 parchment documents, 5 on paper. The geography of the documents covers the whole Belarus – Novogorod (Novogrudok) voivodeship, Vitebsk land, Davyd-Gorodok, Slutsk, and also partially Ukraine: Volyn and the capital of the Hetmanate Chigirin.
The documents were identified as a result of the painstaking work of the archive staff and described according to the “Methodological Recommendations for the Procedure of Identification, Registration and Storage of Unique Documents”. They meet most of the eight criteria for uniqueness: antiquity (documents created before the beginning of the 18th century), relation of the document to a historical person, artistic features of the document, paleographic and linguistic features, authenticity, and an absolute historical, scientific, social, economic, political and cultural value.