Oral last wills made in the presence of municipal officials in Knyszyn at the turn of the 18th c. - Texts authored by Testators or by Clerks?

Abstract

Last years have seen increased interest in Old-Polish testaments, with research touching upon varied issues. One of the major advantages of using last wills as sources is that they were the only recorded texts produced by a great many people representing all the social classes. Still, historians also notice difficulties resulting from interpreting last wills. A major problem is whether all the formulas used in a testament really come from the testator. This issue is discussed in the present article with regard to last wills expressed orally by burghers in the presence of municipal officials — representatives of the town council. This form of making a last will was practiced mostly in small towns, in contrast to larger ones, where testaments written down by the testator or to their dictation prevailed. The analysis is based on burghers’ testaments from Knyszyn, a town in the Podlasie region, from the end of the 17th and the early 18th century, available in book 1 of the “Municipal books of Knyszyn” in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw. The testaments were compared with published testaments of the inhabitants of other towns of the Commonwealth, comparable in size and significance, mostly Wojnicz and Merecz. The analysis also takes into account conclusions of studies relevant to this type of sources. The procedure consisted in the testator expressing his will orally in the presence of municipal officials; later the will was recorded by a municipal clerk. Unlike in the case of privately-made testaments, which were sometimes witnessed or written down by the testator’s friends, in this procedure a major role was assigned to officials, who acted according to the law. It seems that this might have contributed to testaments of this category being purely statements concerning estate. The documents from Knyszyn show far-reaching similarities in the formulaic parts, which were undoubtedly written according to official patterns. The usage of those patterns was facilitated by clerks, who tended to include information important from the legal perspective, applying fixed unambiguous wording. The official character of the testament did not encourage testators to include religious or eschatological reflections and made them focus on their estate. A similar tendency is visible in other documents analyzed, including testaments from Merecz, Mohylew and Wojnicz. Although it is difficult to determine whether it was testators themselves that formulated the parts of testaments which had no legal significance, the author concludes that municipal clerks had discernible influence on the wording of last wills. They used patterns they were familiar with, modifying them slightly depending on the circumstances. This does not mean that they broke the rules of their profession and distorted testators’ will; the effects of their work had to be approved by testators’ relatives and whole local communities. Even though testaments do not always directly record testators’ words, they reflect values and attitudes accepted by burghers.