Michalo Lituanus

Michalo Lituanus 

(Mikhalon Litvin in Russian). Years of birth and death unknown. Author of On the Mores of the Tatars, Lithuanians, and Muscovites (c. 1550), of which fragments published in Basel in 1615 have survived. It is supposed that Michalo Lituanus was the pseudonym of the Lithuanian nobleman Tiskevidiaus, who was dispatched in 1537 as an envoy to the Crimea and detained there for more than two years. The work of Michalo Lituanus had as its goal the reforming of the mores of Lithuanian society. His account of the daily life and occupations of the Crimean Tatars and slaveholding and the slave trade in the Crimea is of great interest. His depiction of the Muscovites, whom Michalo Lituanus did not know directly, is less valuable.

WORKS

In the book Memuary, otnosiashchiesia k istorii luzhnoi Rusi, fasc. 1. Kiev, 1890.