The Zamoyski ladies: Anna Franciszka nee Gnińska, Teresa nee Potocka and Urszula nee Kalińska - biographical details in the light of letters and last wills

Abstract

Autobiographical sources, also called egodocuments, among which Old-Polish letters and last wills can be counted, reveal a variety of important details that can help in constructing an image of the past world. Still, researchers are rarely attracted by family relations, dependencies and emotions, which are blurred by the everyday scrum. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate this portion of Old-Polish documents, which after a closer analysis provide us with unusual and sometimes unique data on the life and mentality of the people of that epoch. A last will, as an example of egodocuments, refl ects the personality of the testator as well as their values, emotions and moral attitude, but also unveils their privacy, everyday life and family sphere, which are the main subject of anthropological research. Such sources also include vital information on the economic, social and cultural activity of women. Thus, in the present article the surviving last wills of three women of the Zamoyski family, Anna Franciszka née Gnińska, Teresa née Potocka and Urszula née Kalińska, together with their letters, are used as the basis for reconstructing a picture of a magnate house, which included a number of children, closer and more distant relatives, clients and servants, being interconnected by varied dependencies and emotional links. The three women featuring in the present article were not relatives but in-laws; all married into the old magnate family of Zamoyski, which at the end of the 17th c. was starting to lose its elevated position. Two of them, Anna Franciszka née Gnińska (c. 1655–1704) and Urszula née Kalińska (d. 1705), married two brothers, sons of Anna Zofia Lanckorońska and Zdzisław Jan Zamoyski, castellan of Czernihow (d. 1670), while Teresa née Potocka (d. 1713) fi rst became Anna Franciszka’s sister-in-law and then her daughter-in-law. The relationships within the Zamoyski family reflected the customs and hierarchies of the epoch; priority was given to maintaining the power and unity of the house. Emotions and confl ict were natural and diffi cult to avoid when huge fortunes were involved.