The project of publishing a catalogue of testaments from the court registers of small Polish towns until 1525

Abstract

The editorial project described in the article is aimed at collecting information on the testaments which were recorded in the court registers of towns located in the Kingdom of Poland within its 1466 borders (i.e. excluding the Royal Prussia). The research concerned the archives of towns having a population of 4000 to 500 and embraced documents written up to 1525. These temporal and geographical criteria mean that, according to an initial estimate, we are going to explore more than 90 court registers from 45 towns, kept in a number of libraries and archives, catalogued in different collections of documents.Testaments were registered in municipal books in different forms, thus the catalogue will have to include varied records, ranging from copies made by notaries according to the ars dictandi rules, through documents issued by municipal authorities and minutes of court proceedings, to statements made by testators and witnesses in oral procedures. The records differ significantly in the formulation of titles and headings, which makes the research particularly diffi cult. The material collected will be arranged chronologically for each town; towns will be listed alphabetically. Each entry will include: the number of the record, the date of making the original will, information on the testator, information on the form of the record, the current signature of the book and page where the will was registered, information on the language(s) of the will, information on the edition of the will (if applicable). Particular items in the catalogue entry will be supplemented with footnotes. Finding particular entries will be facilitated by indexes: of people, of places (with contemporary place names), and of professions, offi ces and specifications of the social status. The catalogue and the indexes will be in Polish.Cataloguing the oldest testaments surviving in the records from particular towns will make it possible to explore last-will-making procedures and the role of municipal authorities as a supervising organ. It will also facilitate research on the role of notaries in that procedure (and generally in small towns) and on the professional standard of municipal clerks in different towns. Thus, it will contribute to investigating the development of the culture of writing and the role of written word in the life of the inhabitants of small towns.