Testament jako źródło do badań nad piśmiennością mieszczańską w późnym średniowieczu

• Authors: Agnieszka Bartoszewicz

Title variants

EN

THE TESTAMENT AS A SOURCE IN RESEARCHING URBAN LITERACY IN THE LAST MIDDLE AGES

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

A testament is by its very nature an evidence of a literate culture. Regardless of the social and legal factors that shaped the custom of recording one’s last will in writing, its emergence was only possible in those communities in which writing was a tool of everyday communication and work. Therefore, registering and cataloguing surviving testaments, as well as analysing their content, is very important for research on the literacy of burghers. Vital information can be inferred from studying the ways of authenticating burgher testaments and the institutions that were involved in that process, since there is much variety in this area. Burghers’ last wills could be written down as notarial deeds; they could also be private documents or documents issued by the town council. They could be authorised by being recorded in the town council register or in the consistory register. Bigger town kept separate records of testaments. On the one hand, testaments show the increased role of writing in burghers’ life, on the other – writing down a testament and dividing the legacy started bureaucratic procedures, necessitated decisions and settlements made before municipal offices, bringing in contact with them people who had never needed their services. It is particularly interesting to observe contacts between burghers and municipal offices from various towns. Records from the oldest surviving municipal registers of small and medium towns (from the beginning of the 15th c.) indicate that the custom of writing down one’s last will contributed to the development of literacy among burghers. The most interesting data on the literacy of the community represented by testators can be drawn from the content of particular testaments. The analysis primarily concerns the forms used for testaments. Very valuable information can also be inferred from the type and character of documents kept in burgher archives. Significant clues are also found in all, even very laconic, mentions about burghers’ libraries. Equally important are those testaments that testify to burghers’ financial, family and social contacts with people earning their living through mental work (clerks, notaries, teachers, etc.). Very interesting for a historian of literacy are testaments written down by municipal clerks. The testament is undoubtedly an important element of burghers’ literacy, with the word ‘element’ playing a key role. While reading a particular last will, we always have to consider whether and to what extent it is a part of a larger output; we also have to ask whether the source analysed is really the final settlement of one’s worldly affairs or only a part of it. Such a reflection is necessary especially when we deal with testaments of representatives of burgher élite, who had wide family and business connections and who used writing in their everyday life: merchants, officials, notaries and clerks.

Keywords

EN

TESTAMENTS; WRITTEN SOURCES; BURGHERS

• Publisher: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 59
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 293-303

Contributors

author

Agnieszka Bartoszewicz

• Instytut Historyczny Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warszawa