The House of Puzyna is a Rurikid princely house, now already living in Poland for several centuries. Originally they were from Belarus and the region of Smolensk. Their most prominent members lived in the early 20th century. During the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, they were counted as Litvin princes, the highest nobility of Lithuania. Of Ruthenian origin. Mostly because the archival documentation of the 14th century is weak, thanks to Mongol depredations, their precise lineage from Rurik is under shroud. Their tradition, as well as that of the family of Oginskis, refer to them being descended from rulers of the principality of Kozelsk. Several versions of their precise Rurikid origins have been presented. The Rurikid dynasty's branch of Kozelsk flourished in the 14th century. As one of the Oka principalities in the region of Upper Oka, near Smolensk. These princes were said to be descended from Saint Michael of Chernihiv who was martyred in 1246. (It is generally in published family trees that their one forefather was St.Michael's descendant prince Tit - but nothing more is actually known of this Tit than merely his name, without even explicit attestation of his patronymic, and names of one or more of his historically attested sons, and that in those generations his family -branch- held Kozelsk and Karachev. We can be relatively certain of this Tit's existence because at least one son of his in mid-14th century carried the patronymic 'Titovich' in his near-contemporary documentation.) Better historical sources know the early forefathers of the Puzyna and Oginskis, princes bynamed Hlazyna and Gluszonek who were magnates in the region of Smolensk in the late 15th century. These princes Hlazyna would thus have been descendants of some branch of Dukes of Kozelsk. In 1408 the Duke of Kozelsk held Rzhev, had the town built. He was possibly merely a kinsman of the Oginski and Puzyna ancestors, and not their direct forefather, as the Kozelsk family seems to have developed several branches already prior to that date. There are historically weak beliefs that the Puzyna were branched from the Oginskis by the somewhat unhistorical brothers Grigor 'the fire' (for his hot temper) and Valadimir 'the bubble' (for being obese), allegedly respectively forefathers of the Oginski and the Puzyna, who would have been sons of a prince Tit or a prince Juri or a prince Tit-Juri, of Kozelsk, one allegedly in the 15th generation from Rurik. However, sources contemporary