Formy pobożności w mieście późnośredniowiecznym w świetle zapisów na rzecz kościoła i biednych w testamentach elbląskich (XV–początek XVI wieku)

• Authors: Rafał Kubicki

Title variants

EN

Forms of piety in the late medieval town in the light of legacies devised for the Church and the poor in Elbląg (Elbing) testaments (the 15th and the beginning of the 16th centuries)

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

The interest in burghers’ last wills as a source of research on religiousness results from their considerable informative value. Generally, all the documents had a uniform structure and consisted of two parts. The first part included legacies for religious purposes (ad pias causas), the other contained instructions concerning inheritors. The basis for the analyses conducted in the article is the collection of almost 150 Elbing testaments mostly from the 15th century, now kept in the State Archive in Gdańsk. The records concern predominantly the highest class of burghers. The analysis of their content may serve to reconstruct the manner in which burghers’ religious needs were fulfilled and to show their preferred forms of piety. An essential issue is the attempt to examine the way of realizing religiousness, the manifestation of which were testaments. The detailed examination of a number of records and their global sums for religious institutions in Elbing shows the primacy of the parish church of St. Nicolas. The second position is held by the church and monastery of the Dominicans. The remaining ones are: the church of St. James and the Bridgettine order. As far as churches in the New Town are concerned, the biggest support was received by the Church of St. George, although the parish church of the Three Kings got legacies more frequently. The information with the amount of money to be given to the poor constituted an important part of the testament. Money was given mainly to town hospitals. Moreover, the most affluent town inhabitants devised legacies for institutions situated outside the town (churches and monasteries). Legacies concerning pilgrimages were another form of manifesting personal piety and the way to ensure prayers necessary for the salvation. They referred to the custom of financing pilgrimages carried out by a substitute pilgrim. In total, all the legacies for piety purposes and for the poor in the testaments of Elbing inhabitants amounted to 5300 mark. The total sum of cash legacies included in the discussed documents may be estimated at at least 25 700 mark. As can be seen, more than 20% of money from legacies went to religious purposes. The biggest sums were received by the parish church of St. Nicolas (33%), the poor (17%), pilgrimages (13%), the order and the church of the Dominicans (9%) and hospitals (8%). All the legacies devised for religious institutions or for the poor reveal a complicated network of relations of burghers with the church and their attempts to ensure salvation. The last will became the ultimate contract concluded in earthly life – a specific trade agreement for eternal life.

Keywords

EN

Elbing (Elbląg); testaments (last wills); burghers; forms of piety; the history of the Church in the Middle Ages

• Publisher: Towarzystwo Naukowe w Toruniu
• Journal: Zapiski Historyczne
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 76
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 7-27

Contributors

author

Rafał Kubicki

• Instytut Historii, Uniwersytet Gdański