ABSTRACT
During the early modern period, it became increasingly difficult for European nobles to uphold in their traditional medieval role as the defenders of society; they farmed landed estates, resided in cities, served other nobles or took up public service (such as judges). This tendency affected the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as early as the sixteenth century. Educated persons who can be referred to as civil or public servants formed the pillar of the developing system of judicial, political, diplomatic and educational administration through the eighteenth century. Their importance gained gradually at the expense of traditional patron-client relations. The reforms of public administration in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the eighteenth century were related to social change. The establishment of permanent fiscal and military administrative commissions—in both the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—in 1764 opened the ladder of public service to nobles of middling fortune, while the creation of the Permanent Council of the Commonwealth in 1775 facilitated the formation of a group of public servants within the nobility. Further reforms during the Four-Year Sejm included the opening of some offices to townsmen. This chapter asks: can the emergent community of public servants in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania be considered a separate social group? It is addressed on the basis of prosopographical research, using the criteria of interaction, membership and identity.
