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Paul Vinogradoff

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sir
Paul Vinogradoff
FBA
Born30 November [O.S. 18 November] 1854
Kostroma, Russian Empire
Died19 December 1925(1925-12-19) (aged 71)
Paris, France
Resting place
Holywell Cemetery, England
CitizenshipRussian (to 1918); British (from 1918)
TitleCorpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University
Predecessor Frederick Pollock
SuccessorWalter Ashburner
Spouse
Louise Stang
​
​
(m. 1897, died)​
[1]
Childrena step-daughter and a daughter and a son
HonorsДоктор наук (Moscow, 1887)
D.C.L. (Oxford, Durham)
LLD. (Cambridge, Harvard, Liverpool, Calcutta, Michigan)
Dr. juris (Berlin)
Doctor honoris causa (Paris)
Academic background
EducationImperial Moscow University
Academic work
DisciplineHistory of Medieval Europe
Notable works
Villainage in England: Essays in English Medieval History

Sir Paul Gavrilovitch Vinogradoff FBA (Russian: Павел Гаврилович Виноградов, romanized: Pavel Gavrilovich Vinogradov; 30 November [O.S. 18 November] 1854 – 19 December 1925) was a Russian-British historian and medievalist.[2] He was a leading thinker in the development of historical jurisprudence and legal history as disciplines.[3]

Life and career

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Early years and education

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Vinogradoff was born in Kostroma and was educated at the local gymnasium and Moscow University, where he studied history under Vasily Klyuchevsky. After graduating in 1875, he obtained a scholarship to continue his studies in Berlin, where he studied under Theodor Mommsen and Heinrich Brunner.[4]

Career

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Vinogradoff became professor of history at the University of Moscow, but his zeal for the spread of education brought him into conflict with the authorities, and consequently he was obliged to leave Russia.[5] Having settled in England, Vinogradoff brought a powerful and original mind to bear upon the social and economic conditions of early England, a subject which he had already begun to study in Moscow.[6]

Vinogradoff visited Britain for the first time in 1883, working on records in the Public Records Office and meeting leading English scholars such as Sir Henry Maine and Sir Frederick Pollock. He also met Frederic William Maitland, who was heavily influenced by their meeting.[7]

Vinogradoff was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1897.[8]

In 1903, he was elected to the position of Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, and held this position until he died in 1925.[9] He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1905. He received honorary degrees from the principal universities (including D.C.L. from the University of Oxford in October 1902, in connection with the tercentenary of the Bodleian Library.[10]), was made a member of several foreign academies and was appointed honorary professor of history at Moscow.[6]

Upon the death of Maitland, Vinogradoff became the literary director of the Selden Society with Sir Frederick Pollock, a position he held until 1920. During World War I he gave valuable assistance to the British Foreign Office in connection with Russian affairs.[11] Vinogradoff was knighted in 1917,[12] and he and his children were naturalized as British subjects in 1918.[13][14]

In 1925, Vinogradoff traveled to Paris to receive an honorary degree from the Sorbonne; while in Paris, he developed pneumonia and died in a hospital there on 19 December. Аfter a funeral service at the Russian Church in Paris, his body was cremated, his ashes were transferred, and on 24 December 1925 he was buried in the Holywell Cemetery, Oxford. The epitaph on his tombstone was chosen by himself: Hospitae Britanniae gratus advena.[15][16]

Writing

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According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, published in 1911, Vinogradoff's Villainage in England (1892) was "perhaps the most important book written on the peasantry of the feudal age and the village community in England; it can only be compared for value with FW Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond. In masterly fashion Vinogradoff here shows that the villein of Norman times was the direct descendant of the Anglo-Saxon freeman, and that the typical Anglo-Saxon settlement was a free community, not a manor, the position of the freeman having steadily deteriorated in the centuries just around the Norman Conquest. The status of the villein and the conditions of the manor in the 12th and 13th centuries are set forth with a legal precision and a wealth of detail which shows its author, not only as a very capable historian, but also as a brilliant and learned jurist."[6]

The article considered that almost equally valuable was Vinogradoff's essay on “Folkland” in vol. viii. of the English Historical Review (1893), which proved for the first time the real nature of this kind of land. Vinogradoff followed up his Villainage in England with The Growth of the Manor (1905) and English Society in the Eleventh Century (1908), works on the lines of his earlier book.[6]

In Outlines in Historical Jurisprudence (1920–22), Vinogradoff traces the development of basic themes of jurisprudence, including marriage, property, and succession, in six different types of society: the totemistic, the tribal, the ancient city state, the medieval system of feudalism and canon law, and modern industrial society.[17]

Works

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Books

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Other

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As editor

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As translator

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  • Гизо, Ф. (1877). Истории цивилизации во Франции. Vol. 1. Translated by Виноградов, П. Г. Москва: К. Т. Солдатёнкова.

Articles

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Further reading

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Notes

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  1. ↑ "No. 34101". The London Gazette. 2 November 1934. p. 7050.
  2. ↑ "VINOGRADOFF, (Prof. Paul)". The International Who's Who: Who's Who in the World 1912. New York: The International Who's Who Publishing. 1912. pp. 1052-1053. Retrieved 9 February 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  3. ↑ Stein, Peter (23 September 2004). "Vinogradoff, Sir Paul Gavrilovich [Pavel Gavrilovich Vinogradov] (1854–1925)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36664. Retrieved 2 July 2024. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ↑ Vinogradoff, Paul (1876). "Die Freilassung zur voller Unabhängigseit in den deutschen Volksrechten". Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte. 16: 599-608. Retrieved 17 June 2025 – via Internet Archive.
  5. ↑ "VINOGRADOFF, PAUL (1854 -)". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1911. p. 100. Retrieved 24 June 2025 – via Internet Archive.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Chisholm 1911.
  7. ↑ Frederic Maitland dedicated one of his first published books to Paul Vinogradoff, Professor of History in the University of Moscow: Frederic Maitland, ed. (1884). Pleas of the Crown for the County of Gloucester before the Abbot of Reading and his Fellows Justices Itinerant in the fifth year of the reign of king Henry the Third and the year of Grace 1221. Macmillan & Co. Retrieved 19 June 2025 – via Internet Archive. In 1922, another legal historian and philosopher Sir Frederick Pollock included the following dedication in his book Essays in the Law: "To my friend and fellow-worker Paul Vinogradoff". See Pollock, Frederick (1922). Essays in the Law. London: Macmillan and CO., Limited. Retrieved 23 March 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  8. ↑ American Antiquarian Society Members Directory
  9. ↑ "Sir P. Vinogradoff: Lawyer and Historian". The Times: 18. 21 December 1925.
  10. ↑ "University intelligence". The Times. No. 36893. London. 8 October 1902. p. 4.
  11. ↑  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922). "Vinogradoff, Sir Paul". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 32 (12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company. p. 927.
  12. ↑ "No. 30138". The London Gazette. 19 June 1917. p. 6047.
  13. ↑ "No. 30505". The London Gazette. 1 February 1918. p. 1546.
  14. ↑ "No. 30505". The London Gazette. 1 February 1918. p. 1547.
  15. ↑ Paul Vinogradoff at Find a Grave
  16. ↑ Fisher, H.A.L. (1928). "Memoir". The Collected Papers of Paul Vinogradoff. Vol. 1 (Historical). Oxford: The Clarendon Press. p. 69.
  17. ↑ Vinogradoff planned the work to be in at least three volumes, as Vol. III, centered around "The Mediaeval Jurisprudence of Western Christendom", was listed as "in preparation". See Outlines in Historical Jurisprudence (The Jurisprudence of the Greek City). Oxford University Press. 1922.
  18. ↑ Kovalevsky, Maxime (1888). Pollock, Frederick (ed.). "Early English Land Tenures: Mr. Vinogradoff's Work". Law Quarterly Review. IV (XV): 266-275 – via Google Books.
  19. ↑ Seebohm, F. (July 1892). "Villainage in England". The English Historical Review. 7 (27): 444–465. JSTOR 546510.
  20. ↑ Leadam, I.S. (December 1893). "Villainage in England". Political Science Quarterly. 8 (4): 653–676. doi:10.2307/2140102. JSTOR 2140102.
  21. ↑ W.J. Ashley (1900). "The History of English Serfdom". Surveys: historic and economic. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. pp. 39-60 – via Internet Archive.
  22. ↑ Pound, Roscoe (1922). "Outlines of Historical Jurisprudence. Volume I by Paul Vinogradoff". Harvard Law Review. 35 (6): 774–783. doi:10.2307/1328923. JSTOR 1328923.
  23. ↑ John Philip Dawson (April 1928). "Paul Vinogradoff-A Memoir by H. A. L. Fisher". Michigan Law Review. 26 (6): 711–712. doi:10.2307/1278820. JSTOR 1278820.
  24. ↑ G. E. Woodbine (May 1928). "Paul Vinogradoff-A Memoir by H. A. L. Fisher". Yale Law Journal. 37 (7): 1015. doi:10.2307/790068. JSTOR 790068.
  25. ↑ Michael T. Florinsky (March 1928). "Paul Vinogradoff-A Memoir by H. A. L. Fisher". Political Science Quarterly. 43 (1): 113-117. doi:10.2307/2143070. JSTOR 2143070.
  26. ↑ B.P. (December 1927). "Paul Vinogradoff-A Memoir by H. A. L. Fisher". The Slavonic Review. 6 (17): 462–464. JSTOR 4202193.

References

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