This article is devoted to the science of international law at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University of Kyiv, a major centre for the teaching and study of international law in Tsarist Russia. It examines the international legal views propounded by Vasilii Andreevich Nezabitovskii (1824–1883), Roman Ivanovich Baziner (1841–?), Nikolai Karlovich Rennenkampf (1832–1899), Otton Ottonovich Eikhel’man (1854–1943), and Petr Mikhailovich Bogayevskii (1866–1929). Scientists working at the Saint Volodymyr Imperial University contributed considerably to the development of the science of international law, although their work is not widely known due to the fact they did not produce many works in “western” languages. The large majority of these scholars’ writings represent a perfect development of international legal theory. These works advanced the concepts of the legal nature of international law (Nezabitovskii, Eikhel’man); proposed a new spatial concept of territory that was further developed in international legal science (Nezabitovskii); and explored the laws and customs of war and the role of the Red Cross in the development of humanitarian norms in international law (Baziner, Rennenkampf, Bogayevskii).

The article examines the problem of the historicity of Jesus Christ – the incarnate God, in Cyprian Norwid’s Album Orbis, a personal collection of cultural texts of mostly visual nature. The artist uses the material to present his own vision of the history of the world. He thinks about it symbolically, every fact and historical vestige becomes a sign, which allows reading the fate of humanity as a book about the human salvation. Its central figure is Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnate Ideal and the most perfect man. The artist accumulates the cultural texts that refer to Him the most in the second book. He shows the importance of Christ in history, both directly and indirectly. He presents the views of the Holy Land and Sinai as well as the ancient artefacts such as the Titulus Crucis and the Bezetha Vase. Norwid sees them as evidence of the naturalness, rationality and universality of Christianity, which combines valuable elements of all cultures, especially the Greco-Roman and Jewish one. Norwid also collects portraits of Jesus, mainly in profile, supposedly copied from an emerald gem made for the Emperor Tiberius (in fact, the tradition only goes back to the Renaissance). These images are related to Norwid’s own theory of art and his definition of beauty, as the shape/profile of Love – that of the loving God, Jesus Christ. The Saviour is also a model of humanity, and the best image of the Father, which everyone should imitate. The portraits in profile illustrate the conception of the entire Album Orbis, the profile of the human history, and point to its most important figure.

Jerzy Topolski was one of the most outstanding Polish historians of the late 20th century. He wrote numerous works, including a synthesis of the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Com-monwealth in the 16-18th centuries, which is the object of the analyses presented in this article.