Institutionalization of the Lithuanian Council of Lords

The article deals with the problem of the Lithuanian Council of Lords institutionalization on the basis of the analysis of legal documents and everyday office work of the principality. The work used such documents as privilege (law), judicial records, statutes, documents of the Grand Duchy Chancellery (metrics), etc. Special attention is paid to the study of the practical institutionalization of the Council, i.e. its transformation into a real functioning authority. The author examined this process in various aspects, questioned the framework of the Council formation as state power institution adopted in historiography. The author argues for the complexity of institutionalization, which depended on a number of domestic and foreign policy circumstances and factors, as well as the peculiarities of the state system, the political situation, administrative-territorial division, interaction between the central and local political elites of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.