VITAL QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE EDITING OF OLD-POLISH TESTAMENTS OF THE CLERGY
Editions of Old-Polish testaments made in the last two decades include relatively few wills of clergymen of different denominations. This disproportion does not result from the scarcity of sources as many testaments of clergymen survive in various archives. Catholic priests were the best-educated group of Old-Polish society; moreover, they were obliged by Church regula-tions to make last wills. This obligation was aimed not only at securing the personal property of every priest but also at separating church property from private property, which could be disposed of by the testator. Testaments had to be registered in the offi cial books of the diocese, therefore many have survived until today in Acta Offi cialia or Acta Episcopalia.Testaments are nowadays increasingly interesting for historians, who appreciate them as a source of data on the material conditions, social links, mentality, customs and religiousness characteristic of previous epochs. Thus, it seems advisable to explore clergymen’s testaments, since they provide us with valuable data on the important social group which was almost a separate estate in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. An analysis of this type of sources requires a good understanding of how that social class functioned in Old-Polish society. The recruitment, education and everyday life of the clergy, originating in mediaeval practice, differed considerably from our contemporary experience. In order to grasp those issues it is necessary to explore the life of Old-Polish society, which makes all research projects more diffi cult. Another diffi culty may lie in the Old-Polish language, especially as regards specialised Church terminology which has now gone out of use. Thus, it is highly useful to append publications of the type considered here with glossaries of specialised terms, which help the reader to understand the testator’s circumstances. Another invaluable tool is a whole range of indexes, which facilitate the exploration of the published material. It would also be advisable to establish rules of translating Latin inserts, which are common in testaments. Perhaps it is time to recon-sider the principles of editing applied to Old-Polish texts, which partly originate in the 1950s, since the contemporary practice is often very different.Testaments are valuable historical sources, although when using them in research one has to be aware of all the limitations imposed by the characteristics of this type of documents. Still, their analysis is worth the effort, since it extends our knowledge of the past world.
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