Lithuanian Metrica

The Lithuanian Metrica or the Metrica of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Latin: Acta Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae, Lithuanian: Lietuvos Metrika, or Lietuvos didžiosios kunigaikštystės metrika; Polish: Metryka Litewska, or Metryka Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego; Belarusian: Літоўская Метрыка, Ukrainian: Литовська метрика) is a collection of the 14–18th-century legal documents of the Chancellery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL).

Maintained systematically since the 2nd half of the 15th century, metrica consisted, initially and primarily, of the copies of the documents issued by the Grand Duke, Lithuanian Council of Lords, and Seimas.

The selection of the classes of the documents included in the Metrica had increased since the 2nd half 15th – 16th century and even more so in the 17–18th centuries, extending to include the copies of transcripts of diplomatic correspondence, charters of privileges, wills, verdicts, judicial decrees, even certain kinds of private correspondence, e.g., received by the official persons.

[2] The word metrica generates from Polish: metryka for archive, from Latin: matricula for office book.

[1] The dub Lithuanian Metrica had been occasionally used in the local office books (by analogy with the Crown Metrica of Poland), since the mid-17th century the dub had consolidated its position in the documents of the Warsaw Archives, later in the Archives of Moscow and St. Petersburg, then in the 19–20th centuries Russian, Polish, Belarusian, Lithuanian historiographies.

A growing need to reproduce these documents later, and the mounting number of edicts, wills, court verdicts etc., determined the evolution of the Lithuanian Metrica.

Due to the deterioration of the books, the State Grand Chancellor, Lew Sapieha, ordered the volumes of the Metrica to be recopied in 1594.

Only after the Treaty of Oliva (1660), did the Swedes return many books from the Metrica, but some of them were lost at sea, in the Baltic, during transport back to Lithuania.

After the Third Partition of Poland (1795), the Lithuanian Metrica was transferred from Warsow to Russia as a war trophy and was kept in Saint Petersburg.

Other notable publications of the period: In 1980s–1990s there had begun a new wave of the publishing of the Metrica materials, this time as an international, Belarusian–Lithuanian–Polish–Russian effort.

The Metrica had served as a basis for the works of the notable researchers of the GDL history, e.g., Lyubavskiy, Dovnar-Zapol’skiy, Maksimeyka, Lappo, Pichyeta, Malinovskiy, Lawmyanski and others.