10. Pragmatic Literacy of Church institutions in the Late Middle Ages
In the Late Middle Ages, actually all aspects of administrative, pastoral, judicial and economic activities of the Roman Church were associated with the use of the written word. The proposed panels are intended to encourage discussion on chronology and dynamics of pragmatic literacy of the Polish Church in the context of continuously growing knowledge of the mechanisms of this kind of literacy in Western Christianity. We wish to discuss more in-depth approaches to the late medieval ecclesiastical bureaucracy in the provinces of Gniezno, Lviv and Riga which growth enabled the production of registers recording activities of bishops and their officials, in particular deputy judges and vicars-general in spiritualibus. We hope that our discussion on the extant ecclesiastical records will serve to analyse technologies of their production and to study methods they were kept and revised. We also intend to examine – in a broadest possible conext – the functions of these records and their role in making the Church administration and ministry more effective.
The handwritten codex known as the Wilanów Form is composed of various types of writings, with a predominance of documents and episcopal mandates from the period of the pontificates of two bishops of Kraków: Zbigniew Oleśnicki and Tomasz Strzępiński, as well as from the years 1461-1463, i.e. the period of conflict over the filling of this diocese between Jakub Sienieński and his supporters and King Casimir IV Jagiellon. Many of the writings contained in this codex have never been published in print and can therefore be the subject of analysis, showing the pragmatic literacy of the era in the service of the Church in fifteenth-century Poland.
The date and place of the paper will be announced soon, along with the detailed schedule of the Congress.
A natural starting-point for the discussion of the chronology and rhythm of development of ecclesiastical pragmatic literacy in medieval East Central Europe is the investigation of the institutions which produced the written records, and the documents they produced as the results of their work. However, a well-balanced assessment of the role and various functions of the written word in the ecclesiastical administration and judiciary and in pastoral care requires placing local phenomena in a broad comparative perspective. This prevents one from thoughtlessly labelling regional developments as ‘exceptional’ or ‘delayed’ compared to those in the medieval West. The purpose of the paper is to present various parallel rhythms in the development of pragmatic literacy in medieval Latin Europe, in the context of the interaction between cultural centres and peripheries.
This paper examines the formation of various series of university registers belonging to the genre of pragmatic literature. The university was a complex entity—a corporation of corporations—combining hierarchy and collegiality with significant autonomy, drawing on both ecclesiastical and secular models. The institution’s financial support was based on direct revenues—including fees from students and graduates—as well as grants and endowments from secular, ecclesiastical, municipal authorities, and private individuals. How did the registers reflect the development of the institution and address the evolving needs for documenting successive aspects of the university’s operations and its affiliated institutions? How can the typology of these registers be characterized? The presentation also explores attempts to establish uniform chancellery rules within various university institutions, along with the influence of customary practices and collective memory on the documented content.
The aim of this presentation is to show the untapped research potential of church court records in terms of conducting research on ordinary town and country dwellers. The source material will be the books of the Lublin consistory from the 15th century. The first part of the presentation will characterize the types of cases heard by the ecclesiastical court in which representatives of these social groups appeared. This discussion will be set in the context of the judicial powers of the official of Lublin, but also taking into account the legal awareness of the townspeople and peasants who brought cases. In the second part, the collected material will be analyzed in terms of its potential use for research on the everyday life of the lower strata of the population. Particular attention will be paid to identifying research topics and issues formulated on the basis of this type of source.
In my presentation, I intend to discuss the records of the Kalisz consistory from the first half of the 16th century. Ecclesiastical court books are widely regarded as the most important source for understanding medieval Polish society, particularly its lower and middle classes, which are less accessible in other types of sources. At the same time, the vast corpus of surviving court records remains poorly studied from a source-critical perspective. Using the example of the records of the Kalisz foral officialate, I aim to explore the mechanisms and conditions that shaped the content of these institution's court books as we know them today. I will describe the institutional origins of the entries found in the records (which were not limited to those of the Kalisz official's court and its associated notarial office) and evaluate the completeness of these books in documenting judicial processes. The presentation will include statistical analyses conducted on over 6,500 entries.
From around the mid-15th century the court of the archbishop of Gniezno (and his official) served as an instance of appeal against the judgments of the ecclesiastical courts of the Lwów metropolis. For the purposes of research on the prerogatives of the Primate of Poland Fr. Józef Nowacki once made a preliminary andby design incomplete list of such appeals from 1449 (the date of the oldest surviving record) to 1518. He collected about 30 cases of appeals against first and second instance decisions from the archdiocese of Lwów and the dioceses of Przemyśl, Chełm, Kamieniec and Łuck.His inventory– requiring verification andsupplementation – contains little detail. The documentationof two- or three-instance appeal proceedings, which is evidence of the extensive church bureaucracy of the late Middle Ages, deserves a more thorough examination.The subject of the speech will be not only the characteristics of the cases of this type (up to the beginning of the 16th century), but also the analy
For some time, in diplomatic studies there has been a call to examine more fully the ‘entire life’ of a charter - not only its issuance, but also its preservation and usage. My study of the 13th-century cartulary of Płock Cathedral has demonstrated that its creation was preceded by the process of ‘inventorying’ of charters in the cathedral's possession, during which numerous series of dorsal notes were produced. Further inquiries revealed the presence of such notes in other Polish cathedrals’ collections. This paper aims to shed light on these largely overlooked practices of pragmatic literacy, recorded on the reverse of the charters. The discovered notes offer insight into old charters from the perspective of their medieval users. As I will try to argue, the study of dorsal notes is crucial to broader discussions on the reception of document and its role in wide strategies of memory – the process of formation of its repositories (archives) and shaping of institutional identity.
The study of medieval miracle stories has gained much popularity in the last two decades. In Poland, since the research of A. Witkowska in the 1970s and 80s, the subject has remained somewhat neglected. This paper will present the research project ‘Medieval collections of miracles of Polish saints in a synchronic and diachronic context’ (NCN 2023/51/B/HS1/00397), conducted at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, which aims to study the medieval literature on miracles in Poland. The project involves the preparation of a digital database of medieval Polish records of miracles, as well as examining them from both statistical and literary perspectives. Furthermore, the project includes comparative analyses - both synchronic, comparing the Polish corpus miraculorum with its Central and Western European counterparts, and diachronic, looking for patterns of change over time. The paper will focus on miracles from the late Middle Ages, which constitute the most numerous group of them.
The date and place of the paper will be announced soon, along with the detailed schedule of the Congress.
The aim od the paper is to present both the seats of the officialate and the general vicariate of Gniezno (a court and office at the same time) in the first half of 15th century (e.g. in the first two decades of the 15th century sessions were hold in the house of the official Mikołaj Strzeszkowic) and the dates of the consistory meetings (postponed e.g. due to the plague). The paper will also present the profiles of the writers of the Gniezno consistory: public notaries, recruited most often from the lower cathedral clergy; their further ecclesiastical career, and above all the products of their clerical work: the books of Gniezno consistory (together with an attempt to characterize the form of court protocols in selected periods).
The general principles of organization and functioning of the Studium Generale were defined by the statutes. They included, among other things, the rights and obligations of students, as well as general program assumptions. However, they lacked detailed information on how the teaching process was organized. They did not regulate how (orally or in writing) topics and dates for lectures, exercises, discussions, and other university events were to be announced. They did not describe how to verify whether a student attended lectures and completed exercises required for obtaining a degree. The few preserved copies of university announcements confirm that written communication was implemented very early in the daily internal communication at the University of Cracow.
The accounts of the parish priest from Brodnica (1439–1445) serve as a valuable example of the pragmatic literacy of the parish clergy. These records detail the priest’s income from mass offerings, funeral fees, and fraternity dues, providing insight into the daily life of the parish and the priest’s liturgical and pastoral duties. Despite their private nature, the accounts reflect the practical administration of a local church institution. The source text is a rare example of meticulously maintained financial records from a small-town parish. This paper attempts to offer a unique perspective on the writings of lesser clergy in medieval Prussia based on the source text, examining the broader context of parish accounting, including records kept by churchwardens.
A corpus of accounting books has been preserved for the parish of St. James in Nysa, with the earliest entries dating back to the 1480s. Sources of this kind from that period are exceptionally rare, and no similar records is known from the territory of the Gniezno metropolis. The Nysa parish was one of the large urban parishes in late medieval Silesia, encompassing not only the entire town but also several nearby villages. The number of parishioners in the year 1500 is estimated at approximately 6,500 individuals. The oldest accounting book contains entries related to various types of revenues as well as lists of expenses within the parish estate. Its analysis provides valuable insights into the role of record-keeping in the management of parish finances.
The late medieval consistory court of Gniezno was undoubtedly one of the largest and most important ecclesiastical tribunals of the Polish ecclesiastical province at that time. Despite the preservation of rich and diverse documentation related to its activities, the complex system of making court records has not yet been fully analised. The paper will briefly discuss a series of act books kept by the consistory chancery, documents and mandates of officials, and finally, cause papers submitted by the parties to ongoing disputes. Then, using the example of several case studies, in which all records created in given cases will be examined (entries in the registers, mandates and libelli), an attempt will be made to initially sketch a model of recording litigations in the consistory court of Gniezno in the second half of the 15th century.
The aim of the paper is to present the figure of Johann Thies, a Samland canon and ducal official, through the lens of his chancellery activities and the documents he produced. His period of activity coincided with a crucial moment in the history of the Teutonic Order’s Prussia—the political and religious transformation associated with the secularization of the Teutonic state in 1525 and its conversion into the secular Ducal Prussia. This documentation includes both official acts issued within the structures of the Teutonic Order before 1525 and texts produced in the service of Duke Albert of Hohenzollern after the secularization of Prussia.
The earliest records of diocesan administrator ‘sede vacante’ from the Gniezno archdiocese come from Kraków. They were started a few days after the death of bishop of Kraków Jan Lutek of Brzezie (24 May 1471). Their author was administrator of the diocese – Jan Rzeszowski (d. 1488). The registration of his activities lasted until 15 August 1471, when he was elected the new bishop of Kraków. The result of the registration is a 16-page scroll preserved in the Archives of the Kraków Metropolitan Court. It contains more than 120 entries concerning Rzeszowski's activities, mainly in judicial and economic matters. The purpose of the paper will be to present the role of Rzeszowski's records in the management processes of the diocese when he was its administrator. I will present the content of the records, how they were managed and who was responsible for it. The paper is a contributor to the discussion about two problems: the series "acta administratorialia" and the administrator's chancery.
