page_title: History of Belarus
section_title: Grand Duchy of Lithuania
hierarchical_section_title: History of Belarus / Early history / Grand Duchy of Lithuania
caption_attribution_description: English: Historical map of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' (Ukraine) and Samogitia until 1434. From collection of historical maps of Ukraine.
context_page_description: The Belarusian ethnos is traced at least as far in time as other East Slavs.
  After an initial period of independent feudal consolidation, Belarusian lands were incorporated into the Kingdom of Lithuania, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Russian Empire and eventually the Soviet Union. Belarus became an independent country in 1991 after declaring itself free from the Soviet Union.
context_section_description: In the 13th century, the fragile unity of Kievan Rus' disintegrated due to nomadic incursions from Asia, which climaxed with the Mongol sacking of Kiev (1240), leaving a geopolitical vacuum in the region. The East Slavs splintered into a number of independent and competing principalities. Due to military conquest and dynastic marriages the West Ruthenian (Belarusian) principalities were acquired by the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania, beginning with the rule of Lithuanian King Mindaugas (1240–1263). From the 13th to 15th century, principalities were annexed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, with its initial capital unknown, but which presumably could have been Voruta, later capital was moved to Kernavė then Trakai and finally to Vilnius. Since the 14th century, Vilnius had been the only official capital of the state.
  The Lithuanians' smaller numbers in this medieval state gave the Ruthenians (present-day Belarusians and Ukrainians) an important role in the everyday cultural life of the state. Owing to the prevalence of East Slavs and the Eastern Orthodox faith among the population in eastern and southern regions of the state, the Ruthenian language was a widely used colloquial language.
  An East Slavic variety (rus'ka mova, Old Belarusian or West Russian Chancellery language), gradually influenced by Polish, was the language of administration in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at least since Vytautas' reign until the late 17th century when it was eventually replaced by Polish language.
  This period of political breakdown and reorganization also saw the rise of written local vernaculars in place of the literary and liturgical Church Slavonic language, a further stage in the evolving differentiation between the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian languages.
  Several Lithuanian monarchs — the last being Švitrigaila in 1432–36 — relied on the Eastern Orthodox Ruthenian majority, while most monarchs and magnates increasingly came to reflect the opinions of the Roman Catholics.
  Construction of Orthodox churches in some parts of present-day Belarus had been initially prohibited, as was the case of Vitebsk in 1480. On the other hand, further unification of the, mostly Orthodox, Grand Duchy with mostly Catholic Poland led to liberalization and partial solving of the religious problem. In 1511, King and Grand Duke Sigismund I the Old granted the Orthodox clergy an autonomy enjoyed previously only by Catholic clergy. The privilege was enhanced in 1531, when the Orthodox church was no longer responsible to the Catholic bishop and instead the Metropolite was responsible only to the sobor of eight Orthodox bishops, the Grand Duke and the Patriarch of Constantinople. The privilege also extended the jurisdiction of the Orthodox hierarchy over all Orthodox people.
  In such circumstances, a vibrant Ruthenian culture flourished, mostly in major present-day Belarusian cities.
  Despite the legal usage of the Old Ruthenian language (the predecessor of both modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages) which was used as a chancellery language in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the literature was mostly non-existent, outside of several chronicles. The first Belarusian book printed with the first printing press in the Cyrillic alphabet was published in Prague in 1517, by Francysk Skaryna, a leading representative of the renaissance Belarusian culture. Soon afterwards he founded a similar printing press in Polatsk and started an extensive undertaking of publishing the Bible and other religious works there. Apart from the Bible itself, before his death in 1551 he published 22 other books, thus laying the foundations for the evolution of the Ruthenian language into the modern Belarusian language.
caption: Position of Grand Duchy of Lithuania in Eastern Europe until 1434.
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