Mindaugas - Legacy

Legacy

Mindaugas held a dubious position in Lithuanian historiography until the Lithuanian national revival of the 19th century. While pagan sympathizers held him in disregard for betraying his religion, Christians saw his support as lukewarm. He received only passing references from Grand Duke Gediminas and was not mentioned at all by Vytautas the Great. His known family relations end with his children; no historic records note any connections between his descendants and the Gediminids dynasty that ruled Lithuania and Poland until 1572. A 17th-century rector of Vilnius University held him responsible for the troubles then being experienced by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ("the seed of internal discord among the Lithuanians had been sown".) A 20th-century historian charged him with the "destruction of the organization of the Lithuanian state". The first academic study of his life by a Lithuanian scholar, Jonas Totoraitis (Die Litauer unter dem König Mindowe bis zum Jahre 1263) was not published until 1905. In the 1990s historian Edvardas Gudavičius published his findings pinpointing a coronation date, which became a national holiday. The 750th anniversary of his coronation was marked in 2003 by the dedication of the Mindaugas Bridge in Vilnius, numerous festivals and concerts, and visits from other heads of state.

Mindaugas is the primary subject of the 1829 drama Mindowe, by Juliusz Słowacki, one of the Three Bards. He has been portrayed in several 20th-century literary works: the Latvian author Mārtiņš Zīverts' tragedy Vara (Power, 1944), Justinas Marcinkevičius' drama-poem Mindaugas (1968), Romualdas Granauskas' Jaučio aukojimas (The Offering of the Bull, 1975), and Juozas Kralikauskas' Mindaugas (1995).