Sir Paul Gavrilovitch Vinogradoff (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. He was a leading thinker in the development of historical jurisprudence and legal history as disciplines.
Contents
Life and career
Early years and education
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.
Career
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. 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.
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.
Vinogradoff was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1897.
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. 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.), was made a member of several foreign academies and was appointed honorary professor of history at Moscow.
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. Vinogradoff was knighted in 1917, and he and his children were naturalized as British subjects in 1918.
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.
Writing
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."
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.
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.
Works
Books
Происхождение феодальных отношений в Лангобардской Италии [The Origins of Feudal Relations in Lombard Italy] (in Russian). Санкт Петербург: Типография В. С. Балашева. 1880.
Исследования по социальной истории Англии в средние века (in Russian). Санкт Петербург: Типография В. С. Балашева. 1887.
Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1892.
Виноградов, Павел (1893). Учебник Всеобщей истории. Vol. 1 Древний мир. Москва: Johan Deubner.
Виноградов, Павел (1894). Учебник Всеобщей истории. Vol. 2 Средние века. Москва: Johan Deubner.
Виноградов, Павел (1896). Учебник Всеобщей истории. Vol. 3 Новое время. Москва: Johan Deubner.
The Teaching of Sir Henry Maine: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered in Corpus Christi College Hall on March 1, 1904. London: Henry Frowde. 1904 – via Internet Archive.
Виноградов, П. В. (1904). "Учение сэра Генри Мэна". Научное Слово (in Russian) (8). Translated by Орлова, Е. Н.: 59-75 – via Wikimedia Commons.
Vinogradow, Paul (1904). "L'Enseignement de Sir Henry Maine". Revue internationale de sociologie (in French). 12 (11). Translated by Weil, Fernard: 797-813 – via Gallica.
"Sur quelques aspects de l'évolution historique du colonat". Atti del Congresso Internazionale di scienze storiche (Roma, 1-9 aprile 1903). Vol. IX (atti della sezione V: storia del diritto, storia delle scienze economiche e sociali). Roma: Tipografia del R. Accademia dei Lincei. 1904. pp. 393-401 – via Internet Archive.
The Growth of the Manor (2nd ed.). George Allen & Company. 1911.
Other
Kirkpatrick, F. A., ed. (1902). "The Reforming Work of Tzar Alexander II". Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. pp. 237-256 – via Internet Archive.
Kirkpatrick, F. A., ed. (1902). "The Meaning of the Present Development in Russia". Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge University Press. pp. 257-276. Retrieved 2 February 2026.
Gwatkin, H. M., ed. (1911). "Social and Economic Conditions of the Roman Empire in the Fourth Century". The Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. I. The MacMillan Company. pp. 543-567. Retrieved 23 March 2026 – via Internet Archive.
Gwatkin, H. H., ed. (1913). "Foundations of Society (Origins of Feudalism)". The Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. II. The MacMillan Company. pp. 630 -654. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
Bingham, Alfred, ed. (1914). "Russian Culture". Handbook of the European War. Vol. II. H. W. Wilson Company. pp. 160-165. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
"Russia: The Psychology of a Nation". Oxford Pamphlets. Oxford University Press. 1914.
The Russian Problem. New York: George H. Doran Co. 1914.
Stephens, Winifred, ed. (1916). "The Task of Russia". The Soul of Russia. Macmillan & Co. pp. 249-260. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
Malden, Henry Elliot, ed. (1917). "Magna Carta, C. 39. Nullus Liber Homo, etc.". Magna Carta Commemoration Essays. Royal Historical Society. pp. 78-95.
"Western and Eastern Ideals in Russia". Fortnightly Review. New Series (DCXXIX): 670-677. 1 May 1919. Retrieved 15 May 2025 – via Internet Archive.
"The Situation in Russia". The Reconstruction of Russia. Oxford University Press. 1919. pp. 7-25. Retrieved 23 March 2026.
As editor
Дайси, А. В. (1891). Основы государственного права Англии. Введение к изучению английской конституции [Basics of English state law. An introduction to the studies of English constitution]. Translated by Полторацкая, О. В. Москва: Л. Ф. Пантелеев. Retrieved 8 October 2025.; via DIGITAL COLLECTIONS OF SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY
Книга для чтения по истории Средних веков. Vol. 1–3. Москва: Просвещение. 1896–1899.
Tоквиль, Алексис (1896). Старый порядок и революция (L'Ancien régime et la Révolution). Москва: Тип. А.Г. Кольчугина. Retrieved 6 November 2025 – via Google Books.
Essays in Legal History Read Before the International Congress of Historical Studies, held in London in 1913. Oxford University Press. 1913 – via Internet Archive.
Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. 1909 – via Internet Archive. vol. 4
The Reconstruction of Russia. London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Toronto, New York: Oxford University Press. 1919 – via Internet Archive.
As translator
Гизо, Ф. (1877). Истории цивилизации во Франции. Vol. 1. Translated by Виноградов, П. Г. Москва: К. Т. Солдатёнкова.
Articles
Vinogradoff, Paul (1876). "Die Freilassung zur voller Unabhängigseit in den deutschen Volksrechten". Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte. 16: 599-608. Retrieved 16 June 2025 – via Internet Archive.
Vinogradoff, Paul (19 July 1884). "A Note-Book of Bracton". Athenaeum (2960): 81-82. hdl:2027/uc1.c3470752. Retrieved 15 May 2025 – via HathiTrust.
Vinogradoff, Paul (1 June 1885). "Oxford and Cambridge through Foreign Spectacles". The Fortnightly Review. 37 (CCXXII): 862-868. Retrieved 13 June 2025 – via Internet Archive.
Vinogradoff, Paul (April 1885). Pollock, Frederick (ed.). "The text of Bracton". The Law Quarterly Review. I (II): 189-200. Retrieved 16 June 2025 – via Google Books.
Vinogradoff, Paul (October 1886). "Molmen and Molland". The English Historical Review. 1 (4): 734–737. JSTOR 546726.
Vinogradoff, Paul (October 1888). Pollock, Frederick (ed.). "Bracton's Notebook". The Law Quarterly Review. IV (XVI): 436-441. Retrieved 15 June 2025 – via Google Books.
Виноградов, Павел (November 1890). "Американская демократия (American Commonwealth by J. Bryce 3 vol., London, 1888 - Американская республика Джемса Брайса, пер. В. Н. Неведомского, Москва, 1889-1890 г., 3 тома)" (PDF). Русская Мысль: 62–82 – via wikisource.
Виноградов, Павел (December 1890). "Американская демократия (American Commonwealth by J. Bryce 3 vol., London, 1888 - Американская республика Джемса Брайса, пер. В. Н. Неведомского, Москва, 1889-1890 г., 3 тома)" (PDF). Русская Мысль: 53–79 – via wikisource.
Vinogradoff, Paul (January 1893). "Folkland". The English Historical Review. 8 (29): 1–17. JSTOR 548312.
Vinogradoff, Paul (1905). Pollock, Frederick (ed.). "The Customs of Ragusa". The Law Quarterly Review. XXI. London: Stevens & Sons: 179-183.