ALGIRDAS

'Algirdas', (approximate English transcription [algərda:s], simplified Lithuanian transcription [a'l''girdas]; known as 'Olgierd' in Polish, ''Альгерд'' in Belarusian, ''Ольгерд'' in Russian), b. c. 1296, d. end of May, 1377, was a monarch of medieval Lithuania. He ruled the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 1345–1377, which chiefly meant monarch of Lithuanians and Ruthenians. With the help of his brother Kestutis, who defended western border of Duchy he created a vast empire stretching from the Baltics to the Black Sea and reaching within fifty miles of Moscow.

Contents

Background

Expansion of Lithuania

Religion and death

Assessment

Family

See also

References

Background

Algirdas was one of the seven sons of the Grand Duke Gediminas. Before his death in 1341 Gediminas divided his domains, leaving the youngest son Jaunutis in possession of the capital Vilnius, with a nominal priority. With the aid of his brother Kęstutis, Algirdas drove out the incapable Jaunutis and declared himself a Grand Prince in 1345. Thirty two years of his reign (1345-1377) were devoted to the development and expansion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Algirdas has managed to make it one of the greatest states in Europe and the largest in the continent.
Two factors are supposed to have contributed to achieve this result; the extraordinary political sagacity of Algirdas and the life-long devotion of his brother Kęstutis. A neat division of their dominions is illustrated by the fact, that Algirdas appears almost only in East Slavic sources, whereas the Western chronicles are aware of mostly Kęstutis. The Teutonic knights in the north and the Tatar hordes in the south were equally bent on the subjection of Lithuania, while Algirdas' eastern and western neighbors Muscovy and Poland generally were hostile competitors.

Expansion of Lithuania

Algirdas not only succeeded in holding his own, but acquired influence and territory at the expense of 1:0 to Muscovy and the Golden Horde, and extended the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the northern shore of the Black Sea. Principal efforts of Algirdas were directed to securing the Slavonic lands which had been a part of the former Kievan Rus. He procured the election of his son Andrew as the Prince of Pskov, and a powerful minority of the citizens of the Republic of Novgorod held the balance in his favor against the Muscovite influence, however his ascendancy in both these commercial centres was at the best precarious.
Algirdas occupied the important principalities of Smolensk and Bryansk in the western Russia. Although his relations with the grand dukes of Muscovy were friendly on the whole, as he has married two Orthodox Russian princesses, this did not prevent him from besieging Moscow in 1368 and again in 1372, both times unsuccessfully.
An important feat of Algirdas was his victory over the Tatars at the Blue Waters of the Southern Bug in 1362. It resulted in breaking up of the powerful Kipchak horde and compelled the khan to migrate still farther south and establish his headquarters for the future in the Crimea.

Religion and death

"For Gediminas and Algirdas, retention of paganism provided a useful diplomatic tool and weapon... that allowed them to use promises of conversion as a means of preserving their power and independence".^[1] According to Hermann von Wartberge and Jan Dlugosz, Algirdas remained a pagan until his death in summer 1377. Contemporary Byzantine accounts also support the Western sources: Patriarch Neilos described Algirdas as ''fire-worshipping prince''^[2]; another Patriarch Philotheos excommunicated all Ruthenian noblemen, who helped ''impious'' Algirdas^[3]. Algirdas' pagan faith also went into the 14th Byzantine historian's Nicephorus Gregoras' accounts^[4].
Algirdas was burned on a ceremonial pyre together with 18 horses and many of his possessions in a wood near Maišiagala.^[5] His descendants include the noble families of Troubetzkoys, Czartoryskis, and Sanguszkos.
In retrospect Algirdas appeared to the Orthodox faithful of Ukraine and Belarus as a champion of Orthodoxy. The 16th-century Bychowiec Chronicle and 17th-century maintain that he converted to Orthodox Christianity at some point prior to his marriage to Maria of Vitebsk in 1318. Although several Orthodox churches were indeed built in Vilnius during his reign, later assertions about his baptism find no corroboration in sources dating from Algirdas' life, leading most scholars to reject them as spurious. Despite the contemporary accounts, as well as modern studies^[6] Was Grand Prince Algirdas a Greek Orthodox Christian?, , Rasa, Mažeika, Lituanus, , some Russian historians, such as Batiushikov, claim that Algirdas had been an Orthodox ruler.
Nevertheless, the dubious tradition about Algirdas' Orthodox conversion lived on. The commemoration book of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves, underwritten by Algirdas' descendants, recorded his baptismal name as "Demetrius" as early as 1460s. Following and Macarius I, Volodymyr Antonovych writes that Algirdas took monastic vows several days before his death and was interred at the Cathedral of the Theotokos, Vilnius under the monastic name Alexius.

Assessment

Unlike his descendants, Algirdas wisely vacillated between Muscovy and Poland, spoke Lithuanian and amongst others the Ruthenian language, and was more inclined to follow the majority of his pagan and Orthodox subjects rather than to alienate them by promoting Roman Catholicism. His son Jogaila, however, ascended the Polish throne, converted to Roman Catholicism and founded the dynasty which ruled Lithuania and Poland for nearly 200 years.

Family

;Parents

★ Gediminas (ca. 1275 – winter of 1341 in Veliuona), Grand Prince of Lithuania, King of Lithuanians and Ruthenians (1316 – 1341)

★ Jewna, daughter of Prince Ivan of Polotsk (? – 1344)
;Wives

★ Maria of Vitebsk (died in 1346), married in 1318

★ Uliana of Tver (1325 – 1392), married in 1350
; Brothers

★ Manvydas (ca. 1288 – ca. 1348), Prince of Kernavė and Slonim

★ Narymunt (baptized Gleb; ca. 1295 – 2 February 1348), Prince of Pinsk (until 1348), Polock (in the 1340s), Navahradak (1333-1336)

★ Jaunutis (baptized Iwan; ca. 1300 – after 1366), Grand Prince of Lithuania (1341 – 1345, Prince of Duchy of Zasłaŭje (1346 – 1366)

★ Kęstutis (1297 – 15 August 1382 in Kreva), Prince of Trakai, Grand Prince of Lithuania (1381 – 1382)

★ Koriat (baptized Michal; ca. 1300 – ca. 1362), Prince of Navahradak (1341 – 1347)

★ Lubart (baptized Dymitr; ca. 1300 – 1384), Prince of Polock (until 1342), Wlodzimierz, Luck (1340 – 138?), Volynia (1340 – 1349, 1350 – 1366, 1371 – 1383), King of Galicia (1340 – 1349)
; Sisters

★ Maria (ca. 1300 – 1349), Princess of Lithuania

★ Aldona Ona (baptized Anna; after 1309 – 26 May 1339), Princess of Lithuania, wife of Casimir III the Great Queen of Poland (1333 – 1339), mother-in-law of Louis VI the Roman, son of Louis IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

★ Damilla (baptized Elzbieta; died in 1364), Princess of Płock

★ Eufemia (died on 5 February 1342), Princess of Halicz and Wlodzimierz-Halicz

★ Augusta (baptized Anastazja; died on 11 March 1345), Grand Princess of Vladimir-Moscow
; Sons

★ Demetrius I Starszy (1327 – 12 August 1399 in the Battle of the Vorskla River), Prince of Trubetsk (1357 – 1399), Bryansk (1357 – 1379), Starodub (1370 – 1399), Druck

★ Andrew (Wigund; 1325 – 12 August 1399; baptized in Moscow in 1342), Prince of Polock (1342 – 1387), Pskov (1341 – 1343, 134? – 1348, 1377 – 1379, 1394 – 1396)

★ Constantine (died before 30 October 1390), Prince of Czartorysk

★ Vladymir (died after October 1398), Prince of Kiev, Kopyl, Sluck

★ Fiodor (Theodore; died in 1399), Prince of Rylsk (1370 – 1399), Ratnie (1387 – 1394), Bryansk (1393)

★ Jogaila (ca. 1351 – 1 June 1434), Grand Prince of Lithuania (1377 – 1381, 1382 – 1392), King of Poland (1386 – 1434)

★ Skirgaila (baptized Ivan; ca 1354 – 11 January 1397 in Kiev), Prince of Trakai (1382 – 1395), Kiev (1395 – 1397), regent of Lithuania

★ Dymitr Korybut (after 1350 – after 1404), Prince of Novgorod-Seversky (1386 – 1392/93)

★ Lengvenis (baptised Simon; died after 19 June 1431), Prince of Mstislavl, regent of Great Novgorod

★ Karigaila (baptized Cassimir; after 1350 – 1390), Prince of Mstislavl

★ Vygantas (baptized Alexander; after 1350 – 28 June 1392), Prince of Kernavė

★ Švitrigaila (baptized Boleslaw; ca. 1370 – 10 February 1452 in Lutsk), Prince of Vitebsk (1392 – 1393, 1430 – 1436), Podolia (1400 – 1402), Novgorod-Seversky (1404 – 1408, 1420 – 1438), Chernigov (1419 – 1430), Grand Prince of Lithuania (1430 – 1432), ruler of Volynia (1437 – 1452)
; Daughters

★ Fiedora

★ Agrypina (baptized Mary; died in 1393)

★ Kenna (baptized Joan; ca. 1350 – 27 April 1368), Princess of Słupsk

★ Helen (after 1350 – 15 September 1438), wife of Vladimir the Bold

★ Mary (after 1350 - ?), Princess of Lithuania

★ Wilheida (baptized Catherine; after 1350 – after 4 April 1422), Princess of Lithuania

★ Alexandra (after 1350 – 19 June 1434), Princess of Czersk, Rawa, Sochaczew, Plock, Gostynin, Plonsk, and Kujawy

★ Jadwiga (after 1350 – after 1407), Princess of Oświęcim (1395/96 – 1405)

See also

★ Gediminids

★ List of Lithuanian rulers

★ List of Belarusian rulers

★ Lida

References

;General

★
;Inline
1. Muldoon, James. ''Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages''. University Press of Florida, 1997. Page 140.
2. F. Miklosich, J. Mūller. Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitan. Vienna, 1862, Vol. 2, p.12
3. F. Miklosich, J. Mūller. Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitan. Vienna, 1862, Vol. 1, pp. 523-524
4. I. Bekker. ''Nicephori Gregorae Historiae Byzantinae''. Bonn, 1829, Vol. 3 pp. 517-520
5. "He was cremated with the best horses, clothes, resplendent in gold and girdled with a gilted silver belt and was covered with a gown woven of beads and gems", Marija Gimbutas has observed.
6. Contributed by Antoni Prochaska, Jan Ochmanski, Gotthold Rhode, Marija Gimbutas, Edvardas Gudavičius etc.