Golden age of Belarusian history

As the Golden Age, the Belarusian national historiography refers to the period of membership of the Belarusian principalities to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th and 15th century to the Union of Lublin ( 1569 ).

This rule structure under the leadership of the ruling family of Gediminiden introduced in the 14th century temporarily the geographically largest state formations of Europe, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

The office or official language of the Grand Duchy was the Belarusian variant of Altostslawischen, most of the inhabitants were Orthodox East Slavs. The ruling class of the derived set of the princes of Kievan Rus nobility dar. During this time, the Belorussian cities (Minsk, Vitebsk, Polotsk, Gomel, Pinsk ) and the Belarusian culture flourished.

The Belarusian Nationalhistoriographie therefore rated the Lithuanian Grand Duchy as Belarusian state structure. In fact, it seemed possible at this time, that is not the then relatively insignificant Moscow, but the Grand Duchy would be the new East Slavonic Orthodox leadership. Some representatives of the then pagan Lithuanians such as Grand Duke Olgerd ( Algirdas ) favored this option. Even after the marriage of Olgerds son Jagiello with the Polish queen Jadwiga in 1386 the Grand Duchy consisted initially as an independent, East Slavonic Orthodox dominated great power on. Finally, under Grand Duke Vytautas (1392-1430) it reached its greatest territorial extent. This era was ended by the centralization of the original double the State in favor of the Polish half of the empire, which was sealed in 1569 by the Union of Lublin.

Since the Union of Horodło (1415 ) of the Catholic nobility ( szlachta ) in the Grand Duchy enjoyed the same rights as in the Kingdom of Poland. In the Orthodox nobility but they were transferred until the founding of Rzeczpospolita in 1569, which lead to that until the mid- 16th century held a wide Polonization of the Belarusian great nobles and partly also of the middle nobility. Thus, the East Slavic, Orthodox citizenry lost their medium term social and cultural elites and Catholicism was the religion of the upper classes. This orthodox Catholic or Belarusian- Polish opposition was maintained until the early 20th century.