Czartoryski

Czartoryski [Ukrainian: Чарторийський or Чорторийський (Čartoryjs'kyj or Čortoryjs'kyj)]. Name of a Lithuanian-Ukrainian princely family that in 1433 received the title of Princes of the Holy Roman Empire. The family's founder, Vasyl, governed Chartoriiske in Volhynia from 1393. His sons Ivan, Oleksander, and Mykhailo held high posts in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Mykhailo (d ca 1489) was the vicegerent of the Bratslav region from 1463 and engaged in battles with the Tatars. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, which was supported by the Czartoryski family, its members received influential positions in the Polish government and expanded their estates in Volhynia. During the Cossack-Polish War Mykhailo Czartoryski (1621–92) fought against the Cossacks. The family became especially powerful in the Polish Kingdom of the 18th century, particularly during the reigns of Augustus III and Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski, whose mother was Princess Konstancja Czartoryska. Her brother, Prince Michał Fryderyk (1696–1775), became the grand chancellor of Lithuania in 1752. His younger brother, Prince Aleksander August, the voivode of the Rus’ voivodeship, inherited the immense estates of the Sieniawski family through his marriage with that family's last heir, Maria Zofia Sieniawska. Their grandson, Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (1770-1861), was the most renowned member of the Czartoryski family.

At the end of the 18th century Joseph Klemens, a Czartoryski prince and Lithuanian chamberlain, developed large manufacturing enterprises on his Volhynian and Podilian estates that produced woolen and linen cloth, leather goods, porcelain and faience (in Korets and Horodyshche [see Horodyshche (Khmelnytskyi oblast)]), and belts (in Medzhybizh).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]