Пoлеміка членів Польського Tовариства Геральдичного над походженням князя Федька Нecвізького (1911-1930)
Discussions of the Polish Heraldic Committee in 1911-1930 on the origin of Duke Fedek Nieświzki

Summary/Abstract: The article is dedicated to one of the biggest genealogical discussions in the first half of the 20th century, i.e. the one about the origin of Duke Fedek Nieświzki. Fedek Nieświzki (date of birth unknown, died ca. 1442), the starost of Kremenets and Bratslav, the progenitor of the princely dynasty of the House of Zbaraski, as well as of, originating from them, the House of Wiśniowiecki, Porycki and Woroniecki, was one of the bravest participants of Švitrigaila’s uprising. The discussion about his origin started in the late 19th century and still lasts. According to the tradition of the line of the House of Zbaraski, the founder of the line of Fedek Nieświzki was Dmitry Kaributas – a descendant of the son of Algirdas, Great Duke of Lithuania. However, the studies of historians from the second half of the 19th century (K. Stadnicki and J. Wolff) invalidated the official version of his origin. The greatest attention to the issue of Fedek Nieświzki’s origin was paid by members of the Polish Heraldic Committee, which was established in 1906 in Lviv (as the Heraldic Committee), and which became a Polish nationwide centre of studies on genealogy, heraldry and other auxiliary sciences of history. Among the Committee’s periodicals there was no one version of Fedek’s origin; in the Committee’s journals – “Heraldic Monthly” and “Heraldic Committee Yearbook” – each of the opponents showed his own schema of the genesis of the line. The greatest number of papers dedicated to the issue concerned were published by Józef Puzyna. This historian was an adherent of the old version of the origin of the Zbaraski princely family, identifying Fedek Nieświzki as Fedor Korybutowicz (Kaributas). This version of Puzyna’s was accepted by Antoni Prochaska and Oskar Halecki. However, among the members of the Committee there were also some opponents of this theory; Zygmunt Luba-Radzimiński, Władysław Semkowicz, Kazimierz Sochaniewicz proved that Fedko Nieświzki and Fedor Korybutowicz (Kaributas) were two different people. My article discusses essential evidence and arguments used by the representatives of both theories. A special attention is paid to the characteristic of the present research on this issue in the contemporary Polish and Ukrainian historiography.

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