Space and time in the district land court

Based on the surviving books of the district land court of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the paper is an attempt to address a new culturological problem of the perception of space and time by the nobles. It covers this perception as it is revealed by the information recorded in court books. It is a mental category pointing to the understanding of the surrounding world, space and time, which is characteristic of the parties in the land court (mostly minor and middle-class nobility as the lords are deliberately excluded from the study). Though the information itself is predominantly indirect (there are very few statements in the first person) but it is highly informative. It is concluded that both in space and time dimensions the nobility had two circles, the small and the great. From the perspective of space, it is their micro-world that does not cross the boundaries of a native district – house, village, manor, township, etc. The great circle of space comprises larger units – the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, its more remote districts, neighbouring or even more remote European and Asian countries (Poland, Prussia, Livonia, Moscow, Turkey, Sweden, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.). The micro-circle of time limits itself to the cycle of the year, which in its turn is linked to agricultural activities as reflected in the work of the land court itself, which is organised in sessions (winter-summer-autumn), with the exception of spring. The perception of macro-time grasps a decade or several decades and is usually employed for the purpose of reviving the family memory (disputes over family connections, verification of the nobility, estates, etc.). The depth of such memory rarely dates back further than the turn of the sixteenth century. Of course, the emphasis on the concept of the Eternity in the last wills and testaments of the nobility is the maximum degree of perception of such time, but it is not explored separately in this study