History
Ruthenian duchies of Polatsk, Turau and Pinsk, Drutsk and others have been incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ruthenian gentry became the largest part of the common Lithuanian nobility.
At the same time, the Baltic nobility of Lithuania Propria actively adopted Ruthenian culture, language and traditions. The Lithuanian higher nobility largely embraced Slavic customs and Orthodox Christianity.Much of the upper class of the Grand Duchy called themselves Lithuanians (Litviny), yet spoke the Ruthenian language (also referred to as Old Belarusian language) In the effect of the processes, Lithuanian higher nobility became largely Ruthenian, while the lesser nobility in the ethnic Baltic lands of what is now Republic of Lithuania continued to use native spoken Lithuanian language. The adapted Old Church Slavonic and later the Ruthenian language, acquired a status of a main chancery language in the local matters and relations with other Orthodox principalities as lingua franca, and Latin was used in relations with the Western Europe.
Read more about this topic: Belarusian Nobility
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)