This volume marks the first in a series of source publications which the Lithuanian Institute of History intends to issue under the rubric „Lithuanian Diplomatic Documents, XIII–XVIII centuries“.
       The Krėva Act of August 14 1385 was chosen as the subject for our first publication. It is not the oldest known international treaty concluded by the Lithuanian state, but there are few other ancient witnesses to events in Lithuanian history that have caused as much controversy as has this text in the six hundred and more years since it was committed to parchment. Few Lithuanian mediaeval documents have provoked such long lasting and emotional debate among historians. For two centuries scholars have been trying to probe the enigma posed by this document and the meaning imparted to it by the political agents who issued it at the end of the fourteenth century. Over the past two hundred years a rich array of studies in various languages and on diverse themes has been produced in connection with this text. In Poland this document has been published many times both in its Latin original and in Polish translation. In Lithuania the controversial Krėva Act has not appeared in full in either its original Latin or in vernacular translation. Until the end of the twentieth century Lithuanian scholars were unable to see this manuscript, preserved as it is in the Cracow Chapter Archive, which for political reasons was inaccessible to them both before and after World War Two. Thus, for a many years Lithuanian historians were unable to engage in equal discussion with their fellow specialists on this matter in Poland.
       In the 1970s claims were made that the Krėva Act does not date from August 14 1385 but is a later forgery. These claims provoked a wave of renewed emotional discussion. It became necessary to investigate alleged problems surrounding the text's authenticity.
       Another matter connected with the present publication is what exactly happened in Krėva Castle on August 14 1385? Did Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania and other representatives of the Gediminid dynasty form a union with the Kingdom of Poland or is the „Krėva Union“ merely a concept based on the 1385 document and formulated as such only by historians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is a question concerning Lithuanian statehood which is still up for scholarly discussion.
       This publication consists of two parts, „Texts“ and „Studies“. In the first part we publish the Latin text of the Act in its 1385 original and its 1445 copy together with a Lithuanian translation. Further mediaeval texts are supplied in extract form, with appropriate translation, to aid our understanding of this document and events associated with Jogaila's accession to the Polish throne in 1386. In the study section attention is paid to past interpretations of the Krėva Act, new research topics are formulated and basic conceptual viewpoints are presented (Jūratė Kiaupienė, „Krėva, 1385: Lost between myth and reality“), diplomatics and diplomatic practice are called upon to explore doubts over the text's authenticity (S. C. Rowell, „The Krėva Act: a review of diplomacy and diplomatics“), sphragistic analysis is made by Edmundas Rimša („The Krėva Seals, 1385“) and Rūta Čapaitė presents a palaeographic study of the surviving manuscripts („The handwriting of the 1385 original and 1445 copy of the Krėva Act“). This text's place in Lithuanian history is also assessed.
       This publication was made possible through the kind support of Sister Klara, Senior Archivist of the Cracow Chapter Archive, and the photographer Stanislovas Michta. Thanks are expressed to them for permitting access to the Cracow Archive and providing valuable consultation and illustrative material.
       We are grateful to researchers from Jogaila's foundation, the University of Cracow, Dr Lidia Korczak and Dr Stanisław Szczur for presenting important unpublished material concerning past investigations of this text which enabled us to assess theories put forward in historical scholarship related to specialist external analysis of the document.
       Thanks are expressed to the Directorate at the Office of the President of the republic of Lithuania Co-ordinating the Activities to Mark Lithuania's Millennium for moral and financial support to make research in Cracow and the preparation and publication of this work possible.

Questions, searches and findings

The 1385 Krėva Act comprises 26 lines and 560 Latin words. It was written in (what is now) dark brown ink on unimpressive, medium quality parchment. The fold at the base of the parchment with its incisions and the remains of one parchment tag bear witness to where at one time the seals of Grand Duke Jogaila, and Princes Skirgaila, Kaributas, Vytautas and Lengvenis (mentioned in the document's eschatocol) were attached to the text. Today no seals are affixed to the document and their fate remains a mystery.
       E. Rimša stresses that there are many unanswered questions connected with the history of the seals used in Krėva and that the presence of Vytautas' seal on the text is questioned in recent literature and remains part of the evidence against the document's authenticity (J. Dainauskas, Lietuvos bei lietuvių krikštas ir 1387 metai [Chicago, 1991], 69–70). He discusses which seals could have been fixed to the parchment and provides illustrative material. Sphragistic aid is enlisted to analyse the seals of Grand Duke Jogaila and his brother Prince Skirgaila. These disappeared before 1834 and their appearance is not discussed in scholarship. It is stressed that before he became king of Poland, Jogaila used at least two seals during his thitherto brief reign in Lithuania. At first, like other sons of Algirdas he used a Byzantine-type doubled sided seal with a Cyrillic inscription in Russian, and after 1382 he acquired a new western-type seal with a Gothic minuscule inscription in Latin. We can state that this reflects a change in Jogaila's cultural outlook. It would have been this seal, according to Rimša, that hung on the Krėva document (see ill. 4). The oldest known seal belonging to Skirgaila survives on its parchment tag attached to the 1382 Dubysa Peace Accord between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Teutonic Order. In style it is very similar to Jogaila's 1382 seal and may have been made by the same craftsman. Because this seal was definitely used by Skirgaila in the period 1382–87 Rimša believes that it is most likely to be this seal that hung on the Krėva Act too.
       The other three seals (of Vytautas, Kaributas and Lengvenis) discussed by scholars disappeared some time between 1834–41 and 1876. Writing of the Vytautas seal that has caused such debate, Rimša concludes that it seems likely that Vytautas would have affixed to this document the type of seal which he adopted during his conflict with Jogaila and exile in the Teutonic Order's Prussian territories that bore the suspicious inscription „SIGILUM WITAWTI DVCIS TRACKEN“. When Jogaila entered negotiations with Vytautas in 1384 concerning the latter's return to Lithuania, the grand duke promised to return Trakai to him, and although in 1385 this pledge had still not been enforced, Jogaila would not have had a moral right to oppose the use of this „Trakai“ seal by a man supporting his attempts to gain the Polish crown. No final conclusion can be drawn about Kaributas's seal. However, it is clear that in 1385–88 Jogaila's brother Kaributas had two double-sided seals (bulla) with identical Cyrillic inscriptions. At first his seal featured a horseman with a spear and then with a sword. These differences in iconography are most probably connected with ideological changes in Lithuanian heraldry after the horseman with raised sword („vytis“, „pogoń“) became the most important blazon of the ruling Gediminid dynasty and its state. Prince Lengvenis's seal is known only from Kielisinski's 1834 drawing which does not permit more detailed analysis of its content. Now we can dismiss as unfounded M. Gumowski's hypothesis that Lengvenis's seal as depicted by Kielisinski was also attached to the 1379 Treaty concluded by Jogaila and other Lithuanian princes with the Teutonic Order, because a completely different double-sided seal was affixed by Lengvenis to that document (M. Gumowski, „Pieczęcie książąt litewskich“, Ateneum wileńskie, 7, z. 3/4 (1930), 705).
       The 1385 dating of the Krėva Act is further confirmed by the use of green wax in seals belonging to the Gediminids which is known from the mid-fourteenth century. This was repleced at the end of the century by red wax which became typical of the ruling dynasty. The parchment tabs whereby the seals were attached to the document (that are seen on the document itself and nineteenth-century depictions of it) were also used most frequently in the grand-ducal chancery in the fourteenth century and appear more rarely in the fifteenth and later centuries. The Gothic lettering on Vytautas's seal is clearly common to the fourteenth century and is not found on Lithuanian rulers' seals in the fifteenth century. Cyrillic inscriptions on Gediminid seals are also more common to the fourteenth than to later centuries.
       Results of seal analysis, which illustrate the use of seals of such material and means of attachment, along with epigraphical analysis of seal inscriptions allow us to confirm that the seals of Kaributas, Lengvenis and Vytautas, as published by Wiszniewski, really did hang on the Krėva Act and that there can be no serious talk of forgery here.
       The document's provenance is shown in its internal data topica as Krėva (Krewo) which was one of Jogaila's patrimonial castles in the later fourteenth century. This is all we know of the document's provenance. We do not know where the text was drafted or who formulated and dictated it to the scribe (also unknown). We have no information ipsisissimis verbis as to where the text was written down. Was it at Krėva or was it brought ready prepared to the meeting of Jogaila, his kinsmen and servants and representatives of the Polish Crown just for confirmation and publication at Krėva?
       Historians have written in some detail about a presumed meeting in Krėva castle in August 1385 between representatives of the Kingdom of Poland, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Queen of Hungary. However, despite long searches for corroborative evidence, there are no sources, other than this Act, which confirm such a theory. Researchers make various further deductions as to how this could have happened, but the lack of source material diminishes the credibility of such deductions. There is no external supplementary information as to what really happened in Krėva Castle during those fateful August days of 1385. No chronicle or annal in any of the countries with an interest in the results of this event - in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria, the Teutonic Order or the Papacy refer to this event. No mention is made of this event and its concomitant documentary confirmation in any later Lithuano-Polish treaty from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, starting with the 1401 Vilnius-Radom Agreement and ending with the Lublin Act of Union of 1569. There is no unquestionable evidence that politicians involved in union debates in the sixteenth century in the run up to 1569 were familiar with this text.
       A modern researcher of Polish-Lithuanian relations, Grzegorz Błaszczyk, alleges that the Krėva Act was known in 1448 (Idem, Dzieje stosunków polsko-litewskich od czasów najdawniejszych do współczesności, I: Trudne początki [Poznań,1998], 238). However, this is no new discovery. The evidence for this is a „1448 Register“ described by Jan Długosz and is well known to scholarship. Henryk Łowmiański wrote in detail about this alleged „source“ in the first half of the twentieth century (Idem, „Wcielenie Litwy do Polski w 1386 r.“, Ateneum Wileńskie XII (1937), 43-55). The Krėva Act is not directly mentioned in the alleged „1448 Register“ or Długosz's account of events of 1448. Hitherto researchers have formed no universally accepted view of this. Some deduce from reference to the non-extant Register's contents that it could have been a shortened version of Długosz's account of the Krėva Act, while others object and claim that it is an extract from a different, no longer extant document issued by Jogaila in 1386. At best Błaszczyk presents us with an old deduction that perhaps in 1446 during negotiations over the election of Grand Duke Casimir as king of Poland attention was drawn to the promises made by Jogaila during his wooing of Queen Jadwiga. So far we have no evidence that fifteenth-century or later politicians made use of the Krėva Act.
       The document's further fate has presented historians with many mysteries connected with Poland. However, once more we must say that we do not know, we cannot tell who placed the parchment in the keeping of the Cracow Chapter, and when, why and under what circumstances he did this. We have only deductions made by historians.
       Lithuanian and Polish historical tradition does not know of the 1385 Krėva document and instead links the beginning of the two countries' united history with Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania becoming king of Poland in 1386 and the 1413 Agreement reached at Horodło between the rulers of Poland, and Lithuania, Jogaila and Vytautas, and noblemen from both realms.
       Why do no sources mention an event which, according to proponents of the „Krėva“ Union concept, saw the issue of an inter-state treaty defining the conditions of a union? The fate of a huge area on Europe's political map was linked to this decision. Proponents of the „Krėva“ Union do not provide a direct answer to this question, merely deductions based on deduction.
       While original sources remain silent, historians have spoken out freely about what Lithuanian envoys said in Hungary to Queen Elisabeth. How do we know of Jogaila's pre-nuptial pledges? From one source: the Krėva Act of August 14 1385.
       However, it would be untrue to assert that the document has left no traces at all in our sources. The earliest known copy of the original document survives in a register in the Cracow Chapter Archive, the so-called „Liber privilegiorum II“ or „Liber Antiquus“.
       This register of documents has still not been fully researched or described. The first to publish and discuss the copy of the Krėva Act preserved in the „Liber Antiquus“ and compare it with the original parchment and offer an explanation for textual variants was Maria Koczerska (Idem, „Autentycznośc dokumentu Unii krewskiej 1385 roku“, Kwartalnik Historyczny XCIX (1992), 59–79).
       The first interpretation of this document based on the texts of the original manuscript and the 1445 copy was provided by A. Naruszewicz (Idem. Historya Narodu Polskiego od początku chrzescianstwa, t. VII, Panowanie Węgrow: Warszawa, 1786, s. 284–285). Copies were made from these two manuscripts in Naruszewicz's workshop in the second half of the eighteenth century, but later historians took no notice of this work by the most famous Polish eighteenth-century scholar for a long time. One might draw the conclusion that Naruszewicz's interpretation was unacceptable to followers of the „Krėva“ Union school.
       A further major step in the document's history was made by M. Wiszniewski's 1837 publication of the text in his „Pomniki historii i literatury polskiej“ (vol. IV, [Cracow, 1837], 92–94). Following this publication Polish historians dubbed the 1385 text „the Krėva Act“ and gave it pride of place at the beginning of the history of the Lithuano-Polish Union.
       The 1385 text was made the cornerstone of a complete concept of Lithuania's Union with Poland, claiming that at the end of the fourteenth century Lithuania was joined to and incorporated within the Kingdom of Poland. This viewpoint has been propagated by the most renowned Polish historians over the past two centuries, including Oskar Halecki, Henryk Lowmianski. However, not all historians have fallen under the enchanted spell of this viewpoint. Some continue the interpretation set down first by Naruszewicz by treating the document as a confirmation of Jogaila's pre-nuptial promises and make the assumption that in 1386 another document should or could have been composed as the final version of the treaty with the terms which Jogaila was obliged to respect.
       However, as the „Krėva“ Union theory gained ground in twentieth-century scholarship, commentators narrowed their attention on only one of several promises made in the document to discern whether the word applicare that is used in the document represents the complete incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Kingdom of Poland or not. Fate has not permitted historians to rest after their linguistic and political labours. In 1975 the Lithuanian American lawyer Jonas Dainauskas asserted that „the Kriavo Act is in fact a later forgery made after Jogaila's reign“ (Idem, Kriavo akto autentiškumas, Lituanistikos instituto 1975 metų suvažiavimo darbai [Chicago, 1976], 51-71). The present editors of the document, therefore, enlisted the aid of palaeography to assess the Act's authenticity alongside analysis of its seals.
       R. Čapaitė's study of the manuscripts' hand, aesthetic presentation and graphic style (its duetus, and the form of its majuscule and minuscule lettering) allows us to conclude that the document is written in the Gothic script current in the second half of the fourteenth century. The modest appearance of the text and its parchment fit the context of documents from the final quarter of the fourteenth century. At the same time Čapaitė draws attention to the corrections in the manuscript that are not a feature of inter-state and inter-dynastic treaties. Comparative contemporary material published here in the form of documents issued close in time to the Krėva text shows that most graphological analogies (multilayered writing, the mix of old and new graphic tendencies and letter forms) can be found by comparing the Krėva manuscript with entries in the Cracow Chapter Calendar which were recorded in a variety of Gothic cursive styles during the second half of the fourteenth century. Paleographic analysis allows us to assert that the scribe responsible for the Krėva manuscript could have been connected with Cracow Chapter scribes and their milieu. Perhaps in the future this conclusion will provide for further research into who was the true author of the text, who wrote it down and why it was placed in the Chapter Archive and not the Crown Archive where major state documents were preserved at that time.
       Technological means exist that would aid a physical examination of the document and confirm or deny its material 'authenticity'. However, the information we have gleaned concerning expert technical examination of the manuscript is very contradictory. Historians report that such investigations have been carried out but no concrete data is presented as to the examining institution's identity and conclusions. The present editors see no sense in subjecting the manuscript to further invasive physical examination. There are very solid grounds for believing that the document is authentic and was written, as it claims, in 1385. Such investigations would be an important part of the text's own history, but is not essential to its authenticity.
       An answer to the question, is the Act of Krėva an inter-state treaty between Poland and Lithuania is offered by S. C. Rowell brief diplomatic analysis of the text. From this it seems clear that the text is a document (a „memorial“) whereby the principal, Jogaila, records and recalls his confirmation of an agreement made in his name by his representatives. The grand duke ratifies negotiations concerning his marriage with Queen Jadwiga of Poland made by his representatives, the Queen-mother, Elisabeth of Hungary and nobles of Małopolska (Lesser Poland). What was negotiated here, i.e. a marriage, was put into effect in 1386 and the Krėva document lost its significance. Not all clauses recorded as being part of the ratified agreement were put into effect immediately and the document (like any other) could not dictate future relations immutably. The point of this pedantry is to counter two scholarly claims connected with this text. Namely, it is a memoriale of what was treated, and therefore cannot be decried as a forgery for not fulfilling all the criteria of an official treaty document; and it has no power of itself (obviously) to dictate political actions in later centuries. What was decided in Krėva led to the official conversion of Lithuania to Christianity (1387–1417) and the grounds for a wider union of the political communities of both states (the Horodło Union of 1413). However, the main object of the Krėva agreement remains a marriage (whatever consequences that might imply) not a union of two states (ipso verbo). This document bears comparison with other ratification acts, especially those concerned with a marriage between the heads of two separate states, such as the 1469 Act of Cervera between Castille and Aragon, rather than treaties of political union such as the Kalmar Treaty of 1397. The 1413 Horodło Treaty is more like the act uniting the Scandinavian monarchies.
       In terms of diplomatics, the Krėva Act poses no problems as to its authenticity. Internal and external analysis of the text confirm this beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt. After Jogaila's baptism, marriage and coronation and especially after Queen Elisabeth „adopted“ him and the citizenry of Cracow recognised him as legal heir to the throne, this text lost its relevance to anything other than the historical record of the process as a whole. It was for this reason, historical confirmation and justification, that it was copied during the Polish succession crisis of 1444-46.
       The infamous word „applicare“ is a neutral term which has no limited meaning of „incorporation“ and it reflects the broad promises „neс eos [the king and queen] aut coronam regni Polonie deserere“ made by Lithuanian princes in the wake of Jogaila's coronation or „adhaerere“ used in acts of fealty sworn by Jogaila and Jadwiga's Lithuanian vassals in chief. This vague but clear word, deliberately chosen for its broad sense, has given historians the opportunity to create a profession non-problem for themselves to argue over without real fruit. Incorporare appears for the first time in documents associated with Polish-Lithuanian relations in 1413 where its specificity (Lithuania is part of Poland and Poland is Catholic [in the face of arguments from the Teutonic Order that Lithuania really was still pagan and not just in Žemaitija], Lithuania like Poland belongs to Jogaila [in the face of pretensions from Grand Duke Vytautas]) suited internal and external political developments. In the mid-fifteenth century the now politically-literate and self-defending Lithuanian nobility objected not to applicare, but to incorporare. When he described the 1385 negotiations Długosz deliberately placed 1413 terminology in accounts of what happened [in Krėva] and deliberately removed reference to Jogaila's requiring that his future mother-in-law adopt him as her son [for purposes of inheritance, a common Lithuanian practice in cases of marriage to a female heir]. Długosz was the first, but not the last historian to „age“ the Horodło terms.
       Continuing Rowell's line of argument, we can say that historical study has been dominated by the question as to whether the Cracow canon, politician and historian Jan Długosz was familiar with the Krėva text when he wrote his „History of Poland" in the late fifteenth century. Undoubtedly Długosz knew this text, although he does not mention it in his account of the 1385 negotiations. He was not to know that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries historians would grant this manuscript the status of an official act of union, conceive the Union of „Krėva“ theory and look for confirmation of this scholarly convention in Długosz's own text. He was not to know that his accounts of events in 1446-1448 would be viewed as evidence for the Krėva Act's being known in 1448.
       Scholarship is beginning to bid farewell to the Union of „Krėva“ (ipsis verbis) theory, which is now regarded as open for discussion and re-evaluation. Scholars in various countries are beginning to omit this phrase from their accounts of Grand Duke Jogaila's accession to the Polish throne and the link that was created thereby between the two states.
       In his final study of Jogaila's marriage to Jadwiga and the importance of the grand duke's accession to the Polish throne in the development of Central Europe, Halecki stresses that all accept the importance of this event for the region as a whole. It has been investigated many times in various ways and that the Krėva Act was not a an act Lithuano-Polish union, but a one-sided marriage agreement proposed by Jogaila, whereby he confirmed promises made on his behalf in Buda and conditions for his becoming king of Poland after acceptance of Christian baptism and marriage to Jadwiga. Halecki considered that this agreement confirmed by four dynastic witnesses was the only form such promises on Jogaila's part could take, since Lithuanian nobles still lacked political-civil rights at that time (O. Halecki, translated by Maria Borowska-Sobotka as: Jadwiga Andegaweńska i kształtowanie się Europy środkowowschodniej [Cracow, 2000], 151. English version: Idem, Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe, edited with a Foreword by Thaddeuss V. Gromada [1991]). Bidding farewell to this historiographical topos is difficult and even painful. This is illustrated by the way Błaszczyk concludes his analysis of the „Union of Krėva“ concept. He does not make any serious objection to the view that in a formal sense the Krėva Act does not represent a „Union of Krėva“ but just a summary of the first in a series of important Lithuanian and Polish negotiations and one of several preparatory documents associated with agreements made between the two countries in 1385–1386. Despite the specific nature of the text, Btaszczyk suggests historians continue to refer to the „Union of 'Krėva'“ and attempts to convince his readers that however one refers to the union, either as a union or a treaty and, whether or not one chooses to pay pedantic attention to its particular nature, the Act represents one of the most important events in Polish-Lithuanian relations and in East-central European history as a whole. He concludes that the concept of a „Union of 'Krėva'“ is useful and has become well-embedded into Polish and foreign scholarship and the Polish historical consciousness. Rejection of the term represents merely attempts at escaping from reality (Błaszczyk, Dzieje stosunków, 195–98).
       In fine, the present editors draw two main conclusions, namely that the Krėva Act of August 14 1385 is an authentic document. It is a „memorial“ of the ratification of negotiations over Jogaila's marriage carried out in 1385. There is no basis for calling this document an interstate or inter-dynastic treaty or an Act of Lithuano-Polish Union, sensu strictu. Lithuanian history has no interstate agreement that could be called „the 1385 Union of Krėva“. On the invitation of the political elite of the Kingdom of Poland, Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania went to Poland, accepted baptism, married Jadwiga and, having safeguarded his patrimonial right to rule the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, he was crowned King of Poland. Via marriage a personal or dynastic union was created which was to have a lasting effect on East-central European regional life for several centuries.

(Text by J. Kiaupienė, translation by S. C. Rowell)

[1385 m. rugpjūčio 14 d. Krėvos aktas]