Iurii Zazuliak

June 2008 – Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval Studies, Medieval Studies Department, Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). Title of thesis: “Enmity, Dispute, and Noble Community in the Late Medieval Kingdom of Poland: Evidence from the Rus’ palatinate, 15th – beginning of 16th centuries”. (Defense held on June 18, 2008).

June 2004 – Candidate of Historical Sciences’ degree, History of Ukraine; Title of thesis: “The Nobility of Rus’ palatinate in the 15th century”.

June 1999 – M. A. in Medieval Studies, Medieval Studies Department, Central European University (Budapest, Hungary)

Current research interests: Violence, Lordship and the Origin of Serfdom in late medieval and early modern Poland-Lithuania; Property borders, legal process and oral tradition in late medieval and early modern Poland-Lithuania; Current state and theoretical debates in the present-day historiography

Selected Writings:

“Rebaptism, Name-giving and Identity among Nobles of Ruthenian Origin in Late Medieval Galicia”, On the Frontier of Latin Europe. Integration and Segregation in Red Ruthenia, 1350-1600 / An der Grenze des Lateinischen Europa. Integration und Segregation in Rotreußland, 1350-1600, eds. Th. Wünsch and A. Janeczek (Warsaw, 2004), 47-60.
“Knowledge of Law and the Administration of Justice in Late Medieval Galicia,” RUTHENICA 8 (2009), 97-119.
“A Discipline without a Past: Medieval Studies in Ukraine,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU, ed. J. A. Rasson and B. Zsolt Szakács, vol. 15 (2009), 339-353.
„The Frontier Society, Violence and the Crisis of Public Order in the Fifteenth-Century Kingdom of Poland (The Case of Red Ruthenia),” Questiones Medii Aevi Novi vol. 26 (2011), 179-202.

Projects

Landscape, Law and Memory: Forging the Local Tradition and the Perambulations of Estates’ Boundaries in the Kingdom of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries

Gerda Henkel Fellowships

In my project I would like to deal with the perambulations of and disputes over the boundaries of the village communities and noble estates in the Kingdom of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. The aim is to investigate how the perambulations of estate boundaries evolved into a complex process of conceiving of and transforming the physical space through the procedures and norms of law and to highlight the role they played in forging and reshaping the local tradition.As fundamental element of the lordship rights, the establishment of the boundaries of noble and royal estates emerged in the close interconnection with the uses of writing and local oral knowledge. I start with the premise of the special role that the interplay of literacy and oral communication had in the process of constituting and reshaping the local traditions in the context of the border perambulations. I suggest that the local tradition, embedded in the specific features and histories of the landscape, landownership and borders, emerged as a result of the complex process of the encounter and interaction between the writing and oral culture. From the late 15th century onwards, the system of proof and a set of procedures employed in the border disputes and perambulations became depended on the uses of writing and written instruments. Moreover, "the game of tradition", in which the border disputes and its perambulations were implicated, was inextricably interwoven with and affected by the relations of power, which were manifested in the rights of lordship claimed by local noblemen and kings over the peasant-subjects, land property and production. The objective of the study is therefore to demonstrate how various forms of the local knowledge which were transmitted mostly through oral communication were not only exploited in the course of border disputes and perambulations, but also were adjusted, reshaped and stabilized due to the complex influence of the institutions and practices of lordship and royal governance based on the new kind of pragmatic and administrative literacy, which became widespread in the Kingdom of Poland during the later Middle Ages.

Former Fellows

Projects