The world of material objects in testaments of Polish and Czech nobilityin the 17th century

Abstract

The author’s inspiration to research the topic specified in the title was two-fold. The first motive were historians’ divergent opinions on the usefulness of last wills in researching the material culture of nobility. Researchers from Poland, the Czech Republic and German-speak-ing countries are divided, some being enthusiastic and some highly sceptical about using last wills as sources, with the sceptics stressing that unlike in inventories, in last wills movables are of secondary importance. Such opinions have usually been formulated incidentally in connection with some other topics. Secondly, recent decades have seen the editing of nobility testament from Polish archives on an unprecedented scale (e.g. c. 600 testaments of nobility from Greater Poland and c. 100 from Royal Prussia have been published). Furthermore, the end of the 20th c. was marked with an increased interest in nobility among Czech historians. This has created an opportunity of comparing the usefulness of testaments in exploring the material world of nobility in the two countries, taking into account that in terms of the social and economic structure the two men-tioned provinces (Greater Poland and Royal Prussia) were not as different from Bohemia as the eastern parts of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The analysis of data on movables (the world of material objects) contained in testaments is preceded with a survey of legal texts from the 17th–early 19th c., which in the case of Poland and Bohemia included very few guidelines concerning descriptions of movables and even fewer model documents. More helpful in this respect are publications from southern and west-ern Germany, which were used in the practice of last-will making in Bohemia, and possibly in the Crown of Poland. The analysis of nobility testaments from the Crown of Poland and Bohemia led to the fol-lowing conclusions. In both countries many last wills mentioned widely understood movables, ranging from cash and investments in estates through bills of exchange, valuables, clothes, furniture, tableware, dishes, tapestries, books, paintings, clocks, devotional items, battle gear, hunting equipment and dogs, carriages, horses and other livestock, to harvested and unhar-vested crops and even buildings that could be dismantled and re-erected elsewhere. Sometimes movables were classified according to the material (e.g. gold, silver, tin, copper, brass). The documents that were analysed usually mentioned the movables bequeathed very en-igmatically (e.g. as ‘all the things’) and rarely included information on the structure of the be-queathed movable property in terms of the aforementioned categories of objects. Most of the testaments (almost all from Bohemia, about a half from Royal Prussia and about 1/3 from Greater Poland) listed money bequests. Fewer testators bequeathed particular objects, usually of significant material or emotional value. Data on them can be found among bequests to relatives, friends, clients or servants. A separate category are bequests to Church institutions. It is in them, and in dispositions concerning debts, liabilities and pledges, that most data can be found on the value, size, decoration or provenance of particular objects. Testaments normally lacked descriptions of the whole movable property — this was the function of probate inventories, which rarely were integral parts of or appendices to last wills. Due to such limitations the picture of the world of objects arising from testaments is necessarily fragmentary.A separate analysis concerning luxury items was made (on the basis of documents from different periods within the century in question, from 1/5 to 1/2 of the testaments from Greater Poland and Royal Prussia, and from 1/4 to 1/3 of the testaments from Bohemia). It confirmed that, as predicted, much more of such items were owned by aristocrats and magnates than by low-status nobles. It also showed the range of bequeathed jewellery, clothing and tableware. It revealed the special role of large ornamental buttons, which increased the value of garments or, when cut off, were treated on a par with jewellery and gems. A similar double role, of devotional items and jewellery, was characteristic of crosses and rosaries made of noble metals and decorated with precious stones or pearls. The analysis also confirmed the importance of silver-ware, especially spoons, which served as security (e.g. as legacy or pledge). The most fre-quently listed pieces of silverware were cans, mugs and goblets. Silver plates and bowls were less commonly encountered but this is not a sufficient basis to conclude that they were not used. Some testaments indicate that they were replaced by tin dishes, bequeathed in whole sets deco-rated with coats of arms, which means they were treated as family heirlooms. In both countries an important attribute of luxury were garments sewn of different kinds of silk lined with expen-sive furs, e.g. sable. The Polish testaments clearly reflect changes in men’s fashion: delia, ferezja and dolman, overcoats typical of the first half of the 17th c., in the second half are replaced by kontusz and żupan. Only a few testaments within the whole corpus mention garments made according to the Western fashion (French or German). The Czech testaments do not contain enough information on clothes to draw any conclusions about their relationship to Western fashion or about the changes in the 1600–1650 period. In both countries testators were emotionally attached to weapons and some everyday objects. In Bohemia such an item could be one’s father’s rapier, in Poland — a sabre. A silver beer-mug owned by a nobleman from Royal Prussia testified to his relationship with senator families. The Czech magnate Jan Litvin of Řičany was particularly concerned about a goblet made by one of his ancestors. Reconstructing a full picture of the material surroundings of Polish, let alone Czech, nobility on the basis of last wills does not seem feasible. Testators from both countries gradually limited their bequests to money, thus eliminating descriptions of objects from testaments. Nevertheless, last wills can be treated as a valuable supplement of the basic source type, i.e. probate inventories. Very few last wills contain data on objects of high material, emotional or prestige-related value: on their provenance, makers, price, functions, aesthetics (gifts, pledges). Such data can potentially be obtained by researching similar types of sources, poorly explored so far: records of estate distribution, prenuptial agreements, or dowry registers.