- Upytė
Upytė is a small village in
Panevėžys district municipality in northernLithuania . It is situated some 12 km southwest ofPanevėžys on the banks of Vešeta Creek. It is now the capital of anelderate . In 1987 it had 580 residents. In theLithuanian language , Upytė is adiminutive form of the word, "upė", which means river.In 2004 Upytė celebrated its 750th anniversary by holding a conference "Upytė Land: History and Culture".
History
The name Upytė was first mentioned in 1254 in a
Livonia n chronicle dealing with the divisions of the Upmala region. Upytė had a wooden castle built on an island which later became ahillfort when Lake Vešeta was drained. The castle was an important northern defence post against numerous incursions of theLivonian Order . Between 1353 and 1379 alone, it repelled ten such attacks. The castle was further expanded and fortified in the 15th century, when it served as the seat of theStarost of Upytė. It is believed that the abandoned castle collapsed in the 17th century after the seat of the starost was moved toPanevėžys . The remnants of the castle survived into the 18th century.Upytė was a capital of the Upytė region ( _lt. Upytės žemė) in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania . The area was later made into an eldership, part of the Principality of Trakai. A document from 1556 states thatPanevėžys , along with 57 other towns and 359 villages was part of this eldership. In the 1500's, Upytė began to lose its prominence when the defensive castle became obsolete, andKrekenava became the capital of the Upytė Eldership in 1548. At that time,Panevėžys grew to become a center of economic importance and Upytė became eclipsed by this rival. Nevertheless, Upytė is one of the longest surviving regional capitals from earlier times.The elders of Upytė included
Konstanty Ostrogski ,Stanislovas Goštautas ,Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł andJanusz Radziwiłł . In 1653, one of its elders, a delegate toWarsaw Sejm ,Władysław Siciński (Polish name, in Lithuanian known as "Čičinskas"), bribed by Janusz Radziwiłł, was the first person to execute his "Liberum veto " rights in order to disrupt Sejm convention. The "Liberum veto" was believed to be one of the factors leading to the collapse of Polish-Lithuanian democracy, and eventually to the partition of the commonwealth by foreign powers. The incident was prominently mentioned in "The Deluge", one of the best known Polishhistorical novel s byHenryk Sienkiewicz .According to a local legend the evil master Čičinskas was struck by thunder god
Perkūnas for all his sins, and his estate sank in asinkhole located near the Upytė hillfort, called now the "Hill of Čičinskas". The legend has it that his dead body appeared since and haunted theRussians in the neighbourhood. Eventually, Mikhail Muravyov the Hanger ordered it to be exhumed and buried under the floor of the church in 1865. According to the legend this led to Muravyov's death soon after. The legend was reproduced by poetsAdam Mickiewicz in his ballad "The Stay in Upita" andMaironis in his poem "Čičinskas". It was also mentioned by a number of other Lithuanian and Polish authors.In 1938 archeologists excavated a graveyard near Upytė, dating from the 3-5th centuries, containing 51 graves of women, men, and children. The graves provided a number of findings: men's graves had iron tools and guns (
bridle s, axes, knives, etc.) and women's had bronze jewellery (bracelets, pins,pedant s, beads, etc.)References
* | pages = 599-600
* " [http://www.panrs.lt/seniun/upytes.htm Upytė seniūnija] ," "Panevėžys district municipality". Accessed 7 October 2006.
* cite encyclopedia | editor = Jonas Zinkus, et. al | encyclopedia = Tarybų Lietuvos enciklopedija | title = Upytė | year = 1988 | publisher = Vyriausioji enciklopedijų redakcija | volume = IV | location = Vilnius, Lithuania | pages = 382-383
*Tomas Baranauskas , " [http://www.voruta.lt/article.php?article=649 Seniausios žinios apie Upytę] ," "Voruta", No. 20 (566), 2 October 2004. Accessed 7 October 2006.
* Dalia Greviškienė, " [http://www.voruta.lt/article.php?article=610 Upytės žemės 750 metų jubiliejus] ," "Voruta", No. 13 (559), 9 July 2004. Accessed 7 October 2006.
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