Probate inventories of the nobility from the Sandomierz region in the 17th-18th c. - the perspectives and methodological problems of editing

Abstract

The article concerns the project of editing a collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century probate inventories of the nobility from the Sandomierz region, which is going to be another volume in the series of publications “Źródła i materiały do dziejów szlachty województwa sandomierskiego w XVI–XVIII wieku” [Sources and materials on the history of Sandomierz nobility in the 16th–18th c.], initiated in 2009 by Jan Kochanowski University Press (Kielce). The series consists of successive editions of various types of sources concerning the nobility of the Sandomierz region in the early-modern period. Since probate inventories can be the basis for investigating a wide spectrum of topics, their edition will be particularly relevant to studying varied aspects of the everyday life in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the early-modern period. .Previous editions of sources include some probate inventories, which were sometimes published as integral parts of last wills. As many sources concerning the Sandomierz region in the Old-Polish era (for example records of nobility courts) have been destroyed, the editors have made every effort to survey an extended source basis, including municipal records from the neighbouring regions and documents from private archives. The publication that is being worked on will include 35–40 probate inventories and when further documents are found they will be published in its subsequent volumes. It will provide samples of probate inventories of various groups of the privileged class, men and women, and gentry officials.Since probate inventories, like testaments, were written down according to certain formulas, the article stresses that it is necessary to preserve these formulas in the publication. The volume will follow the widely-applied 1953 instruction for editing sources from the 16th – mid-19th c. (ed. by Kazimierz Lepszy), with some modifications.