Inventing the Grand Duchy of Finland in the 1580s: early modern state formation or medieval patterns of expressing the power

ABSTRACT In 1581 King John III of Sweden added Grand Duke of Finland to his royal title. Traditionally, this has been seen as marking the Swedish army”s victories in the Swedish-Russian war, as challenging the power and rule of Grand Duke of Muscovy Ivan IV or explained in the context of early modern state formation. This article seeks to understand the logic of taking the title of grand duke as a continuum of medieval patterns of thought about princely power and rule. Ruling lands, vassals, and people were still very much connected with the ruler’s person and princely and dynastic powers understood in the medieval way. Princely titles played a crucial role in this game of – sometimes even overlapping – powers.

the royal title. This territory extended from Novgorod to Ingria and to the shores and north of Lake Ladoga. The change made the title correspond better to the reality during the war. 3 Royal titles and their use in the most exact form were seen as very important in the early modern world. Sometimes mistakes made in the title of a ruler in correspondence or in negotiations caused serious diplomatic conflict. Yet in everyday use (for example, in domestic royal correspondence) the title could be shortened for practical reasons, and the rest of the title was replaced with the expression 'etc., etc., etc.' (for example, 'King of Sweden, Goths and Wends etc., etc., etc.'). 4 The practice of use and ranking of titles varied in Europe, and the list of different titles is almost endless. However, we must ask what the rank of the title of grand duke was that John III took in 1581. The pattern of use and ranking of the most central titles used in this study follows the practice expressed in Table 1.
The Grand Duchy of Finland was symbolically cemented with its own coat of arms when King Gustav I's (r. 1523-1560) tomb was completed in Uppsala Cathedral in 1583. The coats of arms of the provinces around the realm, now raised to the rank of duchies (dvcatus), surrounded the tomb. The coat of arms of the Grand Duchy of Finland (Arma Magni Dvcatvs Finlandiae), carved in Antwerp in marble in c. 1581, was given the most valued position at the head of the monument with the arms of Upland, the 'first' of the Swedish provinces. 5 The Peace Treaty of 1595 left Karelia, Ingria, and the Novgorodian fifths still under the rule of the Russian Tsar. A new somewhat more easterly border between the Russian and Finnish lands was defined. Although the Swedish king abandoned all his other new royal titles, the titles of Grand Duke of Finland and Duke of Estonians remained. The title of Grand Duke of Finland was then used by most Swedish rulers 6 until Queen Ulrika Eleonora renounced it in 1720. 7 However, although the Swedish kings used the title of grand duke, the documents do not mention a Grand Duchy of Finland as a territorial unit before the 1620s. During the following decades the concept of the Grand Duchy of Finland is regularly used in administrative documents and also appears in maps printed in the seventeenth century. 8 Table 1. Most important royal and noble titles used in early modern Europe.
Prince (L. Princeps, G. Prinz) is traditionally used as a general title for a male ruler of a monarchy, and his realm can be called a 'princedom' or 'principality'. Also used for a male non-ruling member of a monarch's family. Emperor (L: Imperator, Caesar, G: Kaiser, R: Царь, Tsar) is the highest rank of monarchical honour, a sovereign ruler of an imperial realm consisting of several principalities. King (L. Rex, G: König, R. Kniaz') is the ruler of a kingdom and the highest rank in the feudal order. A king may be subject only to the emperor. Grand duke or grand prince (L. Magnus dux, Magnus princeps, G. Grossherzog, Grossfurste, R. великий князь, Velikiy kniaz') is a rank of ruler below the emperor but equal to the king. These titles are synonyms in the English and Romance languages. Also sometimes used in the form of supreme duke (L. supremus dux). Duke (L. Dux, G: Herzog) is a title for either a monarch ruling over a duchy or a rank of a member of the nobility. In the rank of royal and noble titles dukes are below emperors, kings, and grand dukes, but above counts, earls and barons. Count (medieval L. Comes, British E. Earl, G. Graf) may be a possessor of a grand fief or a county, or it may be an honorary title without a given feudal fief or owned county.

Understanding of being a Grand Duke
Most of the facts about inventing the Grand Duchy of Finland presented above have been known since the latter half of the nineteenth century. The first interpretation in Finnish historiography was Yrjö Koskinen's influential work on the history of the Finnish nation (1881). Koskinen postulated that John III took the title of grand duke to take revenge on the proud Ivan IV (the Terrible, Tsar of Russia, r. as Grand Duke 1530-1547 and as Tsar 1547-1584). At the same time, according to Koskinen, being a grand duke satisfied the vanity of John, who found glorious titles alluring. 9 Historians adopted his interpretation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 10 The question of the Grand Duchy of Finland was next discussed after the Second World War, in the 1950s. The motivation may have been Finns' post-war trauma. With Finland's existence as a state under threat, the intention to underline the old roots of the Finnish state in history is understandable. In 1951 Einar W. Juva published a short monograph on the origins and nature of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Juva seeks to determine if the title of Grand Duke of Finland meant more than merely adding some glory to the king, and if an organized Grand Duchy of Finland existed at some level. He concludes that although the grand duchy did not gain any of its own administrative or military organizations, the title of grand duchy itself then played an important role in defining Finland's territory. 11 Eero Saarenheimo (1951) continued the discussion. He connected King John's title of grand duke to diplomatic practices with the Grand Duchy of Muscovy. Kauko Pirinen (1953) found Finland mentioned as a grand duchy as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century. 12 All these authors agreed that John III took the model for his new title from the Russian and Lithuanian courts, which were ruled by a grand duke.
The third debate about the Grand Duchy of Finland took place between Swedish scholars at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The 1970s and 1980s were decades of keen debate about the nature of the early modern Swedish state. 13 In the 1980s Harald Gustafsson brought the concept of the conglomerate state to the discussion. It was utilized in their dissertations by Jonas Nordin and Torbjörn Eng. They both connected the birth of the new grand duchy to the state formation process and to the discussion about the conglomerate state as an early modern state form. 14 To put it simply, the core idea of the conglomerate state in their works (although they disagree about many details) is that the making of the Grand Duchy of Finland was one part of state formation in which a territorial state took shape around a core area with several territorial additions governed by various principles. 15 The Finnish historians of the 1950s who tried to find stately structures in the Grand Duchy of Finland of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries failed. Yet in 2017 Kari Tarkiainen writes that the Grand Duchy of Finland was purely a fictive concept and pays no more attention to the issue. 16 Perhaps the lack of stately structures and supposition that the title of grand duke was therefore an 'empty' explains why Finnish historians have not been interested in the early modern Grand Duchy of Finland since the 1950s. In Finnish historiography the Grand Duchy of Finland period is always the nineteenth century, when Finland was an autonomous grand duchy in the Russian Empire. This was when Finland assumed its first stately shape: its own senate, state budget, customs borders, currency, and so on. Because the early modern Grand Duchy lacked all this, it is almost forgotten. The same is thus at least partly true of the Swedish discussion of the grand duchy. The idea of a conglomerate state refers strongly to the stately forms of the seventeenth century. So both interpretations of the early modern Grand Duchy of Finland anticipate the later state formation that was nascent in the sixteenth century.
It is obvious that taking the title of grand duke was connected with success in warfare in the east, and that it was challenging to John III's opponent, Ivan IV, Grand Duke of Muscovy. Miia Ijäs-Idrobo has underlined John III's intention to use a new title to impress the court of Poland-Lithuania. 17 However, neither this nor the nascent state building process explains why being a grand duke and symbolic presentations of the grand duchy were enough. Why was it so important to be a grand duke, even though there were no administrative organs in the grand duchy? Even the dukedom given to Duke John in Finland in the 1550s had at least had a fiscal structure. 18 This article therefore seeks to identify the sixteenth-century ideas and thought patterns that John III had in mind in adopting the new titles.
However, there is some truth in the often criticized custom of interpreting the sixteenth century as a period of transformation from the medieval to the early modern era. New ideas about rulership and the state emerged, but they were not generally accepted, and much in the era's political ideas was still based on medieval patterns. We must therefore not look forwards to the seventeenth-century development but back to the ideas and writings of the learned and ideological patterns of the rulership of the early sixteenth century and late medieval era.
In this study, first, we examine how Finland as a concept and territory was understood in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In sixteenth-century Europe there were four grand duchies -Muscovy, Lithuania, Finland, and Tuscany in Italy -when Cosimo I de' Medici was given the title of grand duke by the pope in 1569. The study's second part traces the origins and content of the title of grand duke in Russia and Lithuania. There is no room to discuss the Italian case further because it seems it was not the focus of John III. Instead, third, we examine the construction of realms and princely power, which differ greatly from today's sovereign territorial states, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to determine how princely power was understood, both in late medieval times and in the sixteenth century.

Finland, an old kingdom in the Swedish Realm
In his history of the Swedes and Goths (Chronica regni Gothorum, 1464), Ericus Olai, the 'father of Swedish historical writing' (d. 1486), postulated that the Swedish realm had been constructed from five kingdoms, of which Finland was the first, but Sweden the foremost. The other three kingdoms were Hälsingland, Gothia, and Värmland. 19 In the 1530s, in his 'Chronicle of Sweden' (En Svensk krönika), the Swedish reformer Olaus Petri (1492-1552), known for his strict source criticism, hesitates a little in the footsteps of Ericus Olai 20 : Alike have some had the meaning that what is now one Swedish realm has been five realms before. The 23 In his book on the history of the kings of Swedes and Goths, published ten years after his death (Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sveonumque regibus, 1554), Johannes Magnus goes even further than his contemporaries and postulates that the Goths had their origins in a king who had first ruled Finland. 24 History was an important subject for teaching the art of politics and rule at the European courts, and the Vasa court was no exception. Although from the modern perspective these stories about the ancient and biblical origins of peoples and age-old kingdoms appear fanciful, these tales formed the basic historical understanding in the sixteenth century and were the basis of John III's knowledge of Finland. 25 According to the Finnish historian Kauko Pirinen the first mention of Finland as a grand duchy can be found in a letter from Johannes Magnus to the Polish Matthias de Miechow, author of a book about the Sarmatian and European people (1517, second edition in 1521). In 1518 Johannes Magnus, who wanted to correct the information given in Miechow's book about the realm ruled by the Swedish king, wrote 'I can mention that the length of his realm extends to Gothia, the Grand Duchy of Finland and Svealand'. 26 Pirinen guesses that Johannes Magnus may merely have 'invented' the title of Grand Duchy of Finland to underline the might and glory of the King of Sweden for his Polish recipient. The Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania formed a personal union: the Polish king was simultaneously the Grand Duke of Lithuania. 27 Pirinen's reasoning about Johannes Magnus merely 'inventing' the Grand Duchy of Finland can be questioned. Perhaps Finland's glorious past, created in 'Gothicist' history writing, had prompted some discussion of Finland being still something more than just the Swedish realm's eastern half. Johannes Magnus's brother, Olaus Magnus, author of the famous 'A Description of the Northern Peoples' (Historia de gentibus septentrionalibvs, 1555), mentions Finland once as a grand duchy: 'This is chiefly true of those who cross the frontiers of Sweden and the Grand Duchy of Finland in search of strife or spoils . . . ' 28 Olaus Magnus refers to Finland twice as a duchy; Lithuania and Muscovy are regularly referred to as grand duchies. 29 Olaus Magnus's book was printed in Rome a year before King Gustav nominated his son, Prince John, to become King John III, Duke of Finland, in 1556. It may be no coincidence that both Olaus and Johannes Magnus occasionally referred to Finland as a grand duchy or duchy. This may have echoed the medieval titles of Duke of Finland (Dux Finlandiae) given with a donation from Southwest Finland to some men of high rank in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 30 One explanation of John III's nomination of himself as Grand Duke of Finland is that he was inspired by his father King Gustav in 1556. King Gustav's idea of giving duchies to his four sons, Eric, John, Magnus, and Charles, has often been explained in the context of the Russo-Swedish War of 1555 to 1557. The suggestion is that the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan IV, who had adopted the title of Tsar of Russia in 1547, followed in his diplomatic act the order of precedence whereby the Swedish king was ranked as a vassal of the Danish king (i.e. the king of the Scandinavian Union, although the union was dissolved in 1521).
According to this pattern of ranks followed from medieval times, the Swedish king was therefore to negotiate with the Tsar's vassal, the Governor of Novgorod. Nominating Prince John as a duke and giving him the Duchy of Finland was an attempt to bypass this diplomatic humiliation. In June 1556 Gustav wrote to the Tsar, advising him that the Governor of Novgorod should turn in his diplomatic deeds to Duke John as the highest ruler in Finland. 31 Although it is undeniable that raising his own rank belonged to the task of founding the Duchy of Finland for King Gustav, there are at least three weaknesses with the explanation that King John's title of Grand Duke of Finland in 1581 was based on his short-lived dukedom of twenty-five years earlier. First, King Gustav also gave dukedoms to his sons Eric, Magnus, and Charles in Sweden itself. Gustav's youngest son, Charles (reigned as King Charles IX, 1604-1611), became the Duke of Södermanland; Prince Magnus was the Duke of Östergötland. The oldest son, Eric (reigned as King Eric XIV, 1560-1568), obtained the title of duke and fief of the provinces of Kalmar, Kronoberg, and the isle of Öland. This act in principle created a typical feudal-like hierarchical construction of dukes and dukedoms under the Swedish king's dominion. 32 Although the Duchy of Finland given to Prince John had some of its own administrative organs, especially in state finances, 33 it was short-lived (1556-1563) and no longer relevant in the 1580s. Nor were the other dukedoms ever raised to the rank of grand duchy. John must not have been convinced that the self-made title of grand duke would convince Tsar Ivan, who in his letter claimed the Vasa dynasty originated from a village in Småland. The Grand Duke of Finland appears in the letters of King John like an ad hoc title alongside the grand duke titles associated with the territories of Ingria, Karelia, and the Votskaya fifth, already partly occupied and expected soon to be occupied by the Swedish army. It is understandable that John III wished to proclaim his supremacy over these newly occupied areas and anticipated conquests. However, one must ask why it was necessary to mention Finland, one of the old core lands of the realm, among the new 'grand duchies' in the conquered Russian lands.
The Finnish historian Pentti Renvall suggests a possible answer. The Grand Duke of Muscovy and King of Denmark had closely collaborated in the wars against the Swedes mutinying against the Scandinavian Union at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Tsar Ivan IV therefore still saw the Swedish King Gustav as a usurper of lowly birth and vassal of the King of Denmark in the 1550s disputes and war between Sweden and Russia. In trying to accord King Gustav the same rank as the Governor of Novgorod, the Grand Duke of Muscovy seems to have presented his claims of royal supremacy at least in relation to the Swedish crown. Now, following Renvall's reasoning, at the end of the 1570s John III shifted his goals in the war from defending his rule in Livonia (today's Northern Estonia) and Finland to enlarging the Swedish realm to the east. Adopting the title of Grand Duke of Finland and the already conquered and even larger territories in the east was therefore to proclaim John III's supremacy over these lands to the same degree as the Grand Duke of Muscovy ruled his lands. It was a proclamation of supremacy, but it was also a title challenging the Grand Duke of Muscovy's rule. 34

Grand Duchies of Muscovy and Lithuania -Feudal Conglomerate and Composite Realms
The Russian concept for grand duke is 'velikiy knyaz'. 'Velikiy' means 'big', 'great', or 'grand', and the word 'knyaz' has the same origin as the words 'king' or 'könig'. Moreover, the concept was even translated in some medieval texts in Latin as 'king' (rex), but the later practice was to translate it as 'prince' or 'duke' (dux). 35 In the treaties between Sweden and Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries velikiy knyaz is always translated in Swedish as 'storfurste' or in German as 'Grossfürst', grand duke. In historical research the translation 'grand prince' is also sometimes used.
The title of Grand Duke of Muscovy is said to have its origins in the medieval power of Kievan Rus'. Medieval Kievan Rus' can be described more as a 'power' than a 'state', because the Grand Duke of Kiev seems to have had little or no conception of a bounded territorial unit. Nor was the realm governed by a single sovereign but several local princes. Valerie Kivelson suggests 'the concept and title of "grand prince" of a unitary Kyivan realm entered Kievan vocabulary and political consciousness slowly as an import from Byzantium'. 36 Following Kivelson's reasoning, the politics of the grand duke indeed sought a unified sovereign territorial rule but remained personal and familial. Power was shared loosely and flexibly, and the first known laws did not extend the power of the grand duke to a population broader than his retinue and dependents. 37 The familial nature of the title of grand duke can be seen in the principle of succession, which in Kievan Rus was based on seniority: the eldest brother who had ruled a princedom in the realm as a duke followed the deceased grand duke to the throne, and the brother next in succession was appointed duke. After the last of the brothers the next in succession was the eldest son of the eldest of the brothers. Although this principle of seniority in succession was seldom followed, it illuminates well the nature of the grand duke's power as the supreme duke over other dukes. 38 In his classic work on Russian medieval history Robert Crummey describes fourteenthcentury Russia as consisting of several rival princedoms and 'city-states' and even 'republics' under the yoke of the Mongolian Golden Horde. The Mongols supported the Russian ruling princes, who showed their loyalty by collecting tribute for the Horde. One, the supreme leader of the Russian lands, was the grand duke, whose capital was moved to Vladimir after the devastation of Kiev in 1169. However, the grand prince did not bind the princedoms significantly for centuries. 39 Muscovy and the territories around it became a hereditary principality around 1300. 40 Muscovy soon begun to enlarge the lands, and it assumed the leading position in the struggle for power in the 1320s. Muscovy's rulers took the title of grand duke and used it almost continuously after 1331. However, as Crummey explains, the power of the princes and the grand duke was little more than what they could exert with their retinues' swords. The administration of these princedoms was merely the subjugation of their subjects, sometimes even violently, to the will of the prince and payment of taxes. 41 The grand duke was responsible for compelling the other dukes to pay the tribute to the Horde. Although the khan was the one to accept the new grand duke after the deceased, the tendency was to shift from the system of seniority to primogeniture -succession from father to son, which began to undergird the dynasty's role. 42 The succession to the throne had no written rule, but based on the power of custom, the grand dukes of Muscovy came from the ruling dynasty in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 43 However, the grand duke's power was based on the exploitation of other princedoms' ill-defined territories by raiding them and forcing them to pay tribute. 44 Therefore, suppressing the duchies under the dominion of Muscovy in the 14 th and 15 th centuries was rather 'gathering of power' than 'gathering of lands'. 45 The Grand Duchy of Muscovy threw off the yoke of the Golden Horde and subordinated many other princedoms during the fifteenth century. Dukes and governors continued to take care of remote lands in the dominion of Muscovy's princely power. However, because of Muscovy's extension of power to the west, the realm made of princedoms under the grand duke's dominion met the powers of Poland-Lithuania, the 'State' of the Teutonic Order, and the Kingdom of Sweden. Borders and boundaries became relevant.
Supremacy over the other dukes of Russian lands was no longer enough. The need to more directly control and govern both the internal life and the realm's external relationships was immense. Administrative structures were therefore rapidly created in the sixteenth century. The need for ideological bases for the practice of the grand duke's power significantly altered. The 'Tale of the Vladimir Princes', written in the early sixteenth century, created the narrative of the direct succession of the Muscovite ruler from the Grand Dukes of Kievan Rus'. 46 In January 1547 the Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan IV, was crowned Tsar of All Russia. The word 'tsar' had its origins in the title of Caesar and was often translated in contemporary diplomacy as 'emperor'. 47 The title of Tsar of All Russians was heavily opposed in some countries. In Poland-Lithuania it was seen as a threat to the Lithuanian eastern dominions, especially Kiev, which was then under the rule of the Lithuanian grand duke, the King of Poland. 48 Jaakko Lehtovirta, in his thorough study of Ivan IV's tsardom, writes of a grand duke's transformation into the Tsar. 49 In fact, this was not what happened. Ivan IV took the title of Tsar, but being the grand duke remained an essential part of his imperial title: the title of Tsar of All Russians was followed by a long list of all those peoples and realms of which he was the grand duke or emperor. In the 1561 agreement with the Swedish king (Eric XIV), the tsar's title is 'Ivan, by the grace of God Emperor of All Russians and the Grand Duke of Vladimirians, Muscovites, Novgorodians, Emperor of Kazan and Emperor of Astrakhan, etc'. 50 The title of grand duke is connected with peoples, not realms or territories. The title of emperor is first designated for all Russians but then for the realms of Kazan (conquered in 1552) and Astrakhan (conquered in 1556). The title of Emperor (or Tsar) of Kazan and Astrakhan was used only in connection with foreign diplomatic relations. 51 Unlike the grand duke's feudal power, which was traditionally the personal power over dukes, the power of the tsar, or emperor, was the supreme power over a new protomodern state of all Russians. The realms and princedoms, now under the dominion of the Muscovite grand prince, had no self-government but were under the direct rule of the tsar. The Russian ruler, a grand duke or a tsar, was presented as the viceroy of God on earth, and his commandments reflected the will of God. 52 Although the tradition of using the medieval title of grand duke remained in the ruler's imperial title until the twentieth century, rule through the supremacy over the dukes had already altered to rule with provincial administration and governors in the sixteenth century. 53 It is perhaps impossible briefly to describe the nature of the sixteenth-century Russian state. 54 Strong traces of medieval and even oriental ruling patterns coexisted with a bureaucratic state structure resembling the centralization processes in the states emerging in the West. In 1549 the chancellery in Muscovy justified and legitimized the new title of their ruler for the Polish-Lithuanian king. In their letter they wrote " . . . now, with God, our sovereign came to his realm according to custom as the grand prince in the states of the Rus' tsardom . . . " As Lehtovirta observes, the chancellery refers to the Russian states in the plural 'as the evidence of the old semi-independent principalities'. 55 The composition of sixteenth-century Russia was thus quite close to that of a conglomerate state. Retaining the titles of grand duke of several medieval princedoms alongside the title of tsar shows that patterns of understanding the nature of power were slowly changing. Abstract modern and personal feudal layers of power existed simultaneously and were complementary.
According to the Lithuanian national histories the state was founded in the midthirteenth century. The Duke of Lithuania, Gediminas (r. 1315/16-1341), began to extend his territories to today's Belarus and Ukraine through conquest and marriage alliances. These Ruthenian territories were ruled by Slavonic dukes under the Lithuanian duke's supremacy. 56 This may be why Lithuania appeared out of the blue in historical writings as a grand duchy on the medieval stage. Another argument is that Lithuania was now presented as the successor of Kievan Rus', which came under the rule of the Lithuanian duke after 1362.
In 1385 the 'Supreme Duke' (supremus dux) of Lithuania Jogaila (Jagiełło) married Jadwiga, the ten-year-old heiress to Poland's crown. He ruled Poland as king until 1434. Thereafter the King of Poland was chosen from the Lithuanian Jagiellonian dynasty of Grand Dukes of Lithuania until 1572. However, the Grand Duke of Lithuania did not always sit on the throne of Poland, as is often repeated in simplifying historical presentations. While Jogaila was the King of Poland and Supreme Duke of Lithuania, the highest power in Lithuania lay in the hands of the Grand Duke Vytautas (magnus dux, reigned as grand duke between 1392 and 1430). King Jogaila and Grand Duke Vytautas ultimately contracted an act of union in Horodło in 1413. 57 It was agreed that matters concerning both countries be settled in joint assemblies. Thereafter the Polish estates could also participate in the election of the Lithuanian grand duke. 58 This agreement gave the Polish party a supreme role in the union. The relationship between these two realms can be compared with the situation in the coeval Scandinavian Union. In this northern union, created in 1397, the King of Denmark also held the crowns of the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden. However, the Swedes quickly began to work themselves loose of the union. During the fifteenth century the Swedes occasionally elected their own kings; at the end of the century the realm was ruled by a regent and was at war with the Danes.
The act of union between the Kingdom of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania was also in force in principle. In practice the Lithuanian boyars and the grand duke, if someone other than the King of Poland, questioned the role and influence of the Poles in the grand duchy. The agreement was soon renegotiated, and the Lithuanians were again free to choose their grand duke independently of the Poles. Kings of Poland like Casimir (Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1442 and King of Poland, 1447-1492) and his predecessor Grand Duke Sigismund (1434-1440) even fought a war against the Polish King Jogaila. After the death of Casimir in 1492 two separate rulers were again chosen: the Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander and Polish King John I Albert. The latter died in 1501, and Alexander was elected to the Polish throne. 59 The sixteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian union consisted of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the old Duchy of Mazovia, parts of Prussia and Ruthenia extending to the Ukrainian and Belorussian lands, the Duchy of Courland, the Duchy of Semigallia, and parts of Livonia. 60 Alexander's royal title was 'Alexander, the elected king of the Poles by the grace of God, Grand Duke of Lithuanians, Samogitians, Russians, Kievans, etc., Lord and heir'. 61 Indeed, being a medieval or early modern king or grand duke was above all to rule peoples: land came by association with people and the reach of the king's activities. 62 The titles of the previous and later Polish kings and Lithuanian grand dukes of the sixteenth century followed the same pattern. An exception is made when describing the previous lands of Kievan Rus' under the rule of the Lithuanian grand duchy. In some cases these are mentioned in the royal titles differently as 'Russian lands' (terrarum Russie), 63 because the Grand Duke of Lithuania was certainly not a ruler of all Russians. Alexander was followed as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania by his younger brother Sigismund I 'the Old' (r. 1506-1548) and the latter's son, the last ruler belonging to the Jagiellonian dynasty, Sigismund II Augustus (r. 1548-1572).
The late medieval and early modern Polish kingdom was not a homogenous unity either. The kingdom consisted of two main provinces, Great and Little Poland. Mazovia was then an independent duchy but was closely linked with the Polish crown. Meanwhile, Silesia belonged to the Bohemian kingdom from 1339 but remained under the diocese of the Polish archbishop. Indeed, the Poles considered Silesia part of the Polish kingdom. 64 Although this personal union of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is often referred to as Poland-Lithuania in the historical literature, it was not until the 1569 Union of Lublin that a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was created. In this treaty it was agreed that the Polish king would be elected first by the estates of both countries, and then the same person would be recognized as Grand Duke of Lithuania. These two early modern realms were in principle equal in the union but, as mentioned above, the tables had turned, with Poland taking the lead and the majority in the representative organ, the Sejm. 65 Again, the reference can be taken from the Scandinavian Union of three kingdoms, which had split into two realms in the 1520s: Sweden (including Finland) and union of Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, where the latter lost its political organs and was subordinate.
Thus, in medieval and early modern realms the ruler had varying relations with different parts of their realm. Given that the ruler's power extended to two or several kingdoms or dukedoms are labelled as 'composite states' or 'composite monarchies'. 66 A composite monarchy consists of two or several countries ruled by the same monarch. However, in a composite monarchy the countries or states usually had separate representative assemblies, laws, and administrative institutions. 67 Sometimes there is confusion between the concepts of the composite and conglomerate states presented above. Sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Sweden was not a composite state of two or more countries like Poland-Lithuania, but a conglomerate of differently ruled territories under its sphere of dominion (välde) around the core lands (rike). The core lands were Sweden and Finland, but Finland cannot be considered here as a 'country' because it lacked its own administration, legislation, or military organization to distinguish it from Sweden 'proper'. Yet a composite state of two or more countries may have some character of a conglomerate when territories with differing administrative, legal, or military systems were annexed to one or more of the countries of the composite state. 68 In using these concepts, one must bear in mind that they are analytical tools created by contemporary historians. Although around 1500 Europe included about five hundred more or less independent political units, 69 the historical reality of different state forms has always been more complicated than any model can cover. For example, such a composition, in which the ruler's power encompassed two or more sometimes overlapping realms, was quite common in late medieval and early modern Europe. 70

Realms with overlapping powers and territories
The example of Russia affords a good depiction of the medieval and feudal idea of being a grand duke. The title was not tied to any political or administrative organizations; it was an expression of the ruler's personal power and supremacy over princes, dukes, governors, subjects, and later over territories, as state formation proceeded. The Russian tsar's use of the title is very illustrative: he was the Grand Duke of Muscovites, Novgorodians, etc., a reference more to his subjects than to territorial organizations. This refers to the idea that although feudal domination was exercised in a specific area, a political space, the feudal structure itself was not spatially defined but a network of personal ties. In other words, the territory was not a determining factor in the medieval network of rulership and loyalties. 71 As Torbjörn Eng puts it, the individual's rights and responsibilities were determined by their place in the feudal matrix of personal bonds, not by their physical location. Power could therefore be exercised in the same region by more than one authority, which could be competing, intersecting, or overlapping. 72 However, the first signs of territorial ideas of rulership appear quite early in the titles of European princes, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The change from personal domination to territorial rulership starts in the thirteenth century, when, for example, the 'King of the French' (Rex Francorum) begins to use the title 'King of France' (Rex Franciae) and the King of the English (Rex Anglorum) adopts the title 'King of England' (Rex Angliae). 73 The title of King of Sweden makes no exception to this general rule. In Sweden the change from a non-regional (Rex Sverorum et Gothorum) to a territorial title takes place under Magnus Eriksson (in the fourteenth century), when he begins to use the title King of Sweden (Rex Sveciae). However, in both Europe and Sweden territorialization is a long process, not only in terms of the region's geographical understanding but also in the formation of ideas such as taxation, administrative organization, and the formation of a general law of the realm (first Law of the Land in Sweden c. 1350), as one might expect in the case of Magnus Eriksson. However, there were always princes whose titles mixed both personal and territorial attributes. This was also the case with the King of Sweden, who until King Gustav was also king of the medieval Swedish tribe or folk, the 'Goths' (also 'Geats'). Around 1540 Gustav added 'King of the Wends' (rex Vandalorum) to the Swedish king's title; it remained until 1973. 74 The feudal ideas of princely power presented above are visible in the title John III assumed during the war with Russia in the 1580s, when he begun to sign his letters as the Grand Duke of Finland, Karelia, Ingria, and the Solonski fifth in Russia. However, with his declaration as grand duke of these territories John III did not mean that these territories, which his army had just conquered -or was going to conquer soon in Russia -were now incorporated into the Swedish realm. Instead, they were still presented as conceptually Russian regions, but he proclaimed that he now ruled over them as grand duke. 75 A prince's personal rule was not necessarily the same as or equal to the territory of the realm of which he or she was the king or queen. An illuminating example of this is King Charles X Gustav (1654-1660), who was not only the King of Sweden, the Goths and Wends, Grand Duke of Finland, Duke of Scania, Estonia, Livonia, Karelia, Bremen, Stettin, Pomerania, the Kashubes, the Wends, Prince of Rugen, Lord of Ingria, Wismar, Count-Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, of Julich, Berg, etc . . . 76 Although his rulership over these lands was mentioned in the Swedish royal title, no one thought that his counties in Rhine Bavaria or Julich belonged to the Swedish realm (rike). They belonged to the prince's personal dominion in the Holy Roman Empire. The Solonski and Votskaya fifths were parts of the Novgorod Grand Duchy, of which the Tsar was the grand duke. This practice of John III using the title of grand duke over foreign lands closely resembles how the Grand Duke of Lithuania expressed his dominion over the lands of Kievan Rus' (terrarum Russie) in his royal title.
The idea of being a grand duke of territories beyond the limits of one's own state, that is, in another state, may sound odd to modern ears. However, power within the limits of a territorial state alone is how a modern state and power is understood in a 'Weberian' manner. Instead, the realms of medieval kings and emperors were constructed of numerous different territories -provinces, dukedoms, earldoms, dioceses, and so on -with overlapping powers through vassalage relationships. For example, in medieval Europe King Henry II of English (r. 1154-1181) was Duke of Normandy and as such a vassal of Louis VII, the King of French. 77 The continuity of these medieval patterns of understanding rulership remained visible in early modern Europe. An example of such a medieval-like solution is the case of the Pomeranian territories annexed to Sweden in the Westphalia Treaty of 1648. With these new dominions the King of Sweden became a vassal of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. He ruled his Pomeranian enclaves as Duke of Pomerania, Duke of Bremen-Werden, and Lord of Wismar. These Swedish enclaves on the Baltic Sea formally remained under the power of the Holy Roman Empire. Swedish law, its judicial system, and representation in the Diet were never implemented in these dominions. 78 Like the Catholic Church, the Holy Roman Empire was universal in nature. The empire did not define its power territorially. It was therefore not a primarily geographical entity but a mixture of military and spiritual power structures. 79 The fact that these concepts of political organizations were not spatially defined did not prevent them having an internal territorial structure. In early medieval Europe feudal lords, the emperor, and the church therefore operated in a system of overlapping domination. 80 In the seventeenth century the King of Denmark was likewise the duke of both dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein. The first was a fief of the Danish Crown, so the king was also his own vassal, and his contemporaries did not find this exceptional. The latter dukedom was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and as Duke of Holstein the King of Denmark was also in principle a vassal of the emperor. 81 In 1544 Schleswig-Holstein was divided between the King of Denmark and his brother form the so-called cadet Gottorp branch of the Oldenburg family. The duchies were now ruled by the heads of both branches taking it in turns annually to serve as the head of the administration. These two dukedoms were not territorially united but consisted of numerous parts, one belonging to Schleswig, the other to Holstein, like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. 82 So there were two duchies in Schleswig-Holstein, belonging to separate early modern composite states ruled by two persons as dukes, but there was only one title, that of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein.
Although seventeenth-century European states were already quite centralized, standardized, and relatively well territorialized modern-like entities, the medieval and 'feudal' ideas about sometimes overlapping and non-territorial princely powers continued to guide ideas of princely power. According to Harald Gustafsson early modern states like Denmark, Sweden, or Russia did not actually have any official names but were still understood in the medieval way through the person of the ruler. According to Otto Brunner the power of authority was a private property in the feudal state (Lehnstaat). 83 These medieval ideas slowly began to disappear during the eighteenth century, when the idea of a 'nation state' began to take shape, and unity of territory, people, government, language, and political culture became a 'norm' of the 'natural' state in political debate. 84 At the beginning of the 1580s the new situation with the Swedish army's victories in the east made the proclamation of the Swedish ruler's supremacy over these territories, and especially his new subjects, urgent. However, taking the title of duke over these Russian lands, for example, would have meant that the Grand Duke of Muscovy would have supremacy over a prince of lower rank. Because it was necessary for John III to use the title of grand duke of the conquered Russian territories, it was impossible to mention Finland, in John's historical knowledge an ancient realm and age-old part of his kingdom,-85 as a territory of lower rank, a dukedom. The feudal idea of the power of the grand duke was used as an immaterial resource in proclaiming the supremacy of the Swedish king over Finland and the newly conquered territories. Finland was not made a grand duchy because it needed political, administrative, or military organization. The opposite was the case: when the Swedish provinces in northern Estonia became a dukedom in 1582, the result was the creation of political (the Diet) and military (the Livonian flag) organizations, as we shall see later. As an integral part of the Swedish realm the Grand Duchy of Finland gained no separate organizations like the Duchy of Estonia.
We may therefore ask why Finland was not made a kingdom. In the medieval and early modern periods a kingdom could not formally be included in another; it could only be combined with it, as was the case with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway after the Scandinavian Union broke up in the 1520s. Making Finland a kingdom would have split the Swedish realm into two parts, a 'composite state' like Poland-Lithuania or Denmark-Norway. This principle meant that medieval and early modern princes collected endless lists of titles expressing the dominions under their rule. They were not only expressions of vanity or declarations of their might but formal proofs of their domination of subjects and lands. 86 Because of its medieval underlining of the ruler's supremacy, adding new parts to royal titles can be labelled, according to Torbjörn Eng, 'realm building' (riksbildningsprocess) 87 instead of state building. The former expresses the personal rule and heterogeneous nature of the medieval and early modern realms; the latter refers to the deeds resulting in the formation of the centralized and territorially defined modern state.
In the early modern states foreign relations were still strongly attached to princely power, while power in domestic affairs was often shared between the ruler and the estates. 88 The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the spread of the doctrine of the king's two bodies: natural and political bodies. While the natural body of the monarch was mortal, the royal political body was regarded as immortal and eternal. According to the doctrine the political eternal body of the king was present in the continuity of kingship, the royal titles being part of this 'eternal' political body and in the concept of the Crown represented in stately institutions and offices. 89 However, in the 1580s neither Sweden nor John III was ready for these new ideas about time-limited personal princely power and the eternal state. Erik Sparre, who presented such ideas in Sweden in 1585, was found guilty of treason and executed fifteen years later. 90 According to Otto Brunner the medieval feudal state did not lead directly to the state form of modern times but was first replaced by the administrative state. Brunner borrows Theodor Mayer's concepts in describing the process of moving from 'person associated states' (Personenverbandstaat) to 'institutional territorial states' (institutionellem Flächenstaat). 91 The medieval personal realm of the prince and the modern abstract bureaucratic state were overlapping structures for a very long time.

From Personal to Territorial Rule
However, we must address at least one further problem connected with the title John III adopted in 1581. He proclaimed he was the Grand Duke of Finland, not Finns. Moreover, the Grand Duchies of Karelia, Ingria, and the Solonski fifth were clearly territorial attributes. This seems to contradict the feudal origins of the title of grand duke, in which political authority was treated as a private possession over vassals and subjects. 92 However, this medieval pattern was followed when John III took the title of Duke of Estonians (. . . över de ester i Livland hertig 93 ) in 1582. Torbjörn Eng's reasoning concerning how the Duke of Estonians became the Duke of Estonia in 1604 aptly exemplifies the conceptual territorialization taking place at the turn of the seventeenth century.
During the Russian attack on Livonia in 1558 the State of the Teutonic Order's structure collapsed. The Livonian lands were rapidly divided between Russia, Denmark, Poland, and Sweden. 94 Reval (Tallinn) and its surrounding counties of Harien, Wierland, and Järva sought the Swedish crown's protection from the Russians in 1561. The Russian tsar and the Polish king demanded rights over the whole of Livonia, the first as his patrimony, the latter because the last Master of the Livonian Order had become the Polish king's vassal. Both rulers used the title 'Lord of Livonia' (. . . herre tho Liffland 95 ). King Eric XIV of Sweden called himself 'Lord in Livonia' (herre i Livland). 'In' did not refer to the whole of Livonia but to an undefined part of it. He thus avoided treading too much on the toes of the Tsar and King of Poland. 96 However, in 1582 John III began to use the title of Duke of Estonians. This formulation was chosen because the lordship over the Livonian regions had not come to the king through inheritance, purchase, or the transfer of a state but through a personal declaration of allegiance from a group who could be called 'Estonians'. Through this feudal loyalty relationship Sweden could make a legitimate claim to the region. Although the Reval bourgeoisie and Livonian knighthoods, who had sworn their oaths, were not spatially defined, the lands they controlled were known. This gave the Swedish king the territorial basis for the rulership. 'Estonian' in the title was not an ethnic attribute meaning peasants who spoke Estonian but covered all the territory's ethnic groups. Those who had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Swedish king were burghers of Reval and leaders of the knightly flags of the Estonian counties. Most spoke German, and many of these families were of German origin. 97 Torbjörn Eng writes that the Harien and Wierland counties that joined Sweden had formed the Danish Duchy (hertigdöme) between 1220 and 1346. It was therefore traditional to confer on these Estonian lands the title of duchy to represent that the supremacy the Swedish king chose in the 1580s was attributed to the medieval feudal personal rule over subjects. When Charles IX was crowned King of Sweden in 1604, his son Gustav (later King Gustav II Adolph) gained the title Duke of Estonia. The attribute now became territorial. This was due to the process in which both lands controlled by Sweden in Livonia became conceptually territorialized, and the grounds for its domination changed. The local nobility began to use the concept of the Duchy of Estonia. The second process was that in the treaty of 1595 Russia recognized Sweden's control of these annexed areas of Livonia. Torbjörn Eng's conclusion is that the royal title was changed from Duke of Estonians to Duke of Estonia because the legitimacy of domination was no longer based on oaths of loyalty alone but on an internationally brokered and confirmed territorial treaty. 98 To test Eng's reasoning above, we must compare and briefly examine how relations between King John III and Finland were defined, and how Finland was conceptually territorialized at the beginning of the early modern period. Swearing oaths of allegiance remained a living and meaningful political practice at the end of the sixteenth century. When John III ascended the throne in 1569, he sent two delegates to Finland to take oaths from his subjects. The oaths were sometimes given by parishes and confirmed by the vicar; sometimes gatherings of larger estate entities were organized at which oaths were sworn. Sometimes local noblemen swore oaths separately. 99 Therefore, if the relationship between the king and Finland had only been based on these oaths of allegiance, according to the logic followed in northern Estonia the title John III took in 1581 should have been the Duke of Finns, not Finland. Choosing the alternative 'Finland' suggests Finland was understood as a territorial unity, though without any of its own political organizations as the Estonian lands had in their Diet tradition (landttag).
We must therefore return to the question: how was the concept of Finland understood in the sixteenth century? In his 1464 book on the history of the Swedes and Goths the Swedish scholar Ericus Olai defines Finland thus: The first realm (Första Rijket) closest to Russia was Finland with its counties, namely Tavastia, Karelia, Lapland, Nyland, Ostrobothnia, and Åland, as well as some other smaller parts and engagements (härader) located between the Russian border and the Gulf of the Baltic Sea and bordered from south to north. 100 For Ericus Olai the idea of Finland was clearly territorialized within the frames of its counties. Finland was framed by the (disputed) border with Russia and the Gulf of Bothnia. There were no overlapping demands over her territory, and as Ericus Olai's description shows, the lands belonging to Finland were at least conceptually defined. Carl von Bonsdorff lists examples from the correspondence of Swedish kings Gustav I and Eric XIV, in which 'Finland' means all the Swedish lands east of the Gulf of Bothnia. Bonsdorff refers to the armistice between Ivan IV and John III from 1575, when the warfare between the grand duke's Novgorodian realm and the Swedish king's land of Finland ceased. 101 Seemingly, Finland was self-evidently a territorial concept for John III, and in learned writings it was an age-old kingdom. Ericus Olai calls it a 'realm' (rijke) in the 1460s. In 1555 Olaus Magnus described Finland's size: 'But the duchy of Finland is not a small one under the King of Sweden, [. . .] being three hundred German or Gothic miles in length and sixty in breadth'. 102 Understanding the territorial character of realms and kingdoms was progressing rapidly at the end of the sixteenth century. 103 Given that Finland for King John was self-evidently understood as having accurate territorial attributes, which the lands of the Estonians, divided between the knightly orders and contested by Russians and Poles, lacked. The titles of Grand Duke of Finland and Duke of Estonians were therefore obvious choices in 1581.
Finally, we must attempt to explain why Ingria, Karelia, and those two Russian 'pyatins' were mentioned as territorial units in King John III's new title. I believe the answer lies in how these occupied provinces' local populations were understood. The 'ethnic' groups living in Ingria were in modern terms Izorians and Votes (speaking a Finno-Ugrian language close to Finnish) and Russian-speaking Russians. They were all Orthodox; the Lutheran settlement came to Ingria from the Finnish regions during the seventeenth century. In the sixteenth-century conceptual reality this population of Ingria was not called 'Ingrian' but 'Russian' because of its Orthodoxy. In the sixteenth century the oath of allegiance was not only a promise of loyalty given by subjects to the ruler but was also based on a religious contract with God. Religion connected the people living in Ingria and Karelia to the Russian Orthodox Church and thus to the Russian tsar. 104 Taking the oath of allegiance was therefore out of the question in these regions. 105 Unlike the Livonian lands, where the Swedes were able to call the inhabitants 'Estonians' (although not in ethnic terms) and take the title of Duke of Estonians, sixteenth-century Ingria lacked any organizational structures that could accord the population a single label like 'Ingrian' at the end of the sixteenth century. The known territorial concept of Ingria was therefore usable for the Swedish king's title.
The same applies to Karelia, which was inhabited by a Finno-Ugrian-speaking (which posterity has called Karelian) and Russian-speaking entirely Orthodox population. Without exception and with no distinction made according to the language spoken, these people were all labelled 'Russian' in Swedish sixteenth-and seventeenth-century documents because they confessed the 'Russian faith'. In 1580, when the Swedes conquered the Karelian town and citadel of Korela (Swedish Kexholm), the local inhabitants were very unwilling to accept the new Swedish authority. Throughout the Swedish occupation (1580-1597) there was in practice guerrilla warfare between local peasants and the invader. Taking the oath of allegiance from an Orthodox population that was never even called 'Karelian' and being the Grand Duke of Karelians was out of the question.
Using these known territorial concepts in John III's new royal title was a logical solution because concepts like 'Ingrian' and 'Karelian' were not used, and because these people were not bound by an oath to the Swedish crown.

Conclusions -exercising medieval princely power in early modern realms
During the sixteenth century power relations in northern Europe underwent enormous change. The Scandinavian Union was dissolved in the 1520s. Two realms emerged from this union of the three kingdoms: the Kingdom of Sweden, with Finland as its eastern half; and the personal union of the Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway. The latter's power centre lay in Denmark. Another important process was the dissolution of the State of the Teutonic Order of Livonia and the annexation of its parts by Sweden, Russia, Denmark, and Poland in the 1550s and 1560s. However, the struggle for Livonia, Ingria, and Karelia continued in the Swedish-Russian war, which began in 1570. During the war, having achieved significant victories, King John III of Sweden began to use Grand Duke of Finland as part of his royal title in 1581.
This study examines why John III took the title of Grand Duke of Finland, starting from the premise that the act reflected a medieval understanding of the personal characteristics of the prince's power. This greatly differs from the idea of a modern, sovereign, territorially defined and abstract 'Weberian' state concept. An examination of the characteristics of the power of both the Russian and Polish-Lithuanian medieval and early modern grand dukes shows that in principle the concept of grand duke was to be a prince of princes. The grand duke's rank was comparable to that of king, but his title directly referred to the feudal network of power of which he was the apex.
When power was personal and targeted the network of vassals and subjects, and spatial territory was defined through them alone, it could also overlap regionally and at least at the level of proclamation extend the grand duke's power to areas over which he still lacked domination. In the sixteenth century the concept of grand duke associated with the personal networks of power in no way required the grand duke's own administrative organizations. Although the symbolic representation, the coats of arms of the Grand Duchy of Finland, was created almost at the same time as the title of grand duke was taken, it was the grand duke and his power, not the territory, which were important.
The Finnish historians Juva, Renvall, and Pirinen attempted but failed to find administrative, military, or other organizational structures within the framework of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Their gaze was fixed on the Grand Duchy of Finland established in 1809 by the Russian Emperor Alexander I, during which the key institutions of the Finnish state took shape: its senate, parliament, state budget, customs borders, and currency. Because they found nothing like this in the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Grand Duchy of Finland, they concluded that the concept of the Grand Duchy of Finland and the title of the Grand Duke of Finland were merely 'empty'.
The Swedes Torbjörn Eng and Jonas Nordin link the Grand Duchy of Finland to the formation of the early modern state (or, as Eng points out, the formation of the realm). Both take the concept of a conglomerate state that Harald Gustafsson introduced to the discussion of Nordic state formation as the premise for their analysis. This premise makes sense when analysing the seventeenth-century perception of the Grand Duchy of Finland, when the Swedish conglomerate was formed. The conglomerate's idea that in addition to the core regions of the kingdom it included several territories governed under different conditions is strongly linked to the state's territoriality, ignoring the premise that the concept of grand duke itself was not spatial, but that its essence was the prince's personal power. When the title of Grand Duke of Finland first became established, the concept of the Grand Duchy of Finland began to take territorial shape at the beginning of the seventeenth century.