"Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne" T. 13 (17)/2021

"Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne" T. 13 (17)/2021

"Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne" 13 (17)/2021

Mariusz Bartnicki’s article is devoted to an aspect of the formation of the community identity of the inhabitants of medieval Rus’, namely the role played in this respect by hagiographic works. On the example of his analysis of the texts included in the Kievan Cave Patericon, Bartnicki seeks to determine the attitude of church authors to ethnic groups inhabiting the territory ruled by the Rurik dynasty. He also addresses the issue of the role of such texts in the formation of a sense of unity among the inhabitants of the Ruthenian lands.
Bartnicki’s examination of the Kiev community of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through the prism of ethnic motifs present in Patericon reveals that even in the mid-twelfth century, the Kiev community was a multi-colored mosaic of various ethnic identities. Numerous references in the texts of the stories to ethnic themes allow us to believe that the memory of the origin of ancestors played an important role in determining identity on both the personal and the social levels. The main pillar on which the communal sense of identity was built was the ruling dynasty and the common faith, which regulated customs and social relations.

In this article, Marcin Klemenski discusses the problem of the failed attempt to found a monastery of the Poor Clare nuns in Świdnica in the years 1358—1360. In the four extant documents from this period, kept in the Wrocław State Archives and the Archdiocesan Archives, issued by Bolko II the Small, Duke of Świdnica-Jawor, and Bishop Przecław of Pogorzela, one can find information about this attempt. Klemenski conjectures that Bolko II could have been planning to found a monastery for his sister Constance, Duchess of Głogów, who was a Poor Clare nun in Stary Sącz. However, the foundation did not take place due to the death of Constance in 1360. Another reason for the failure was the epidemic in Świdnica that year and the outbreak of the conflict between Duke Bolko II and the Wrocław chapter related to the invasion of the city of Grodków.

This article makes supplement regarding the closest family circle of Jan Radlica, an outstanding figure of the Polish political scene during the reign of Louis I of Hungary and the initial period in the reign of Władysław Jagiełło. Radlica was chancellor of the Kingdom of Poland, a member of the college of governors of the Kingdom of Poland, and the bishop of Kraków. Sobiesław Szybkowski points out that, besides Wojciech of Krowica and Łask (the ancestor of the Łaski family of the Korab coat of arms), the castellan of Ląd, Mojek-Mojżesz (1381—1390), the castellan of Biechów, was most certainly also Radlica’s brother. Szybkowski also reconstructs the circle of Mojka-Moses’s direct descendants. Bogusław of Rajsko (1386) and Tomek of Rajsko (1400) could also have been Radlica’s brothers. These additions to the genealogy of this family circle make possible a better reconstruction of the bishop’s property base, which at the beginning of the fifteenth century, consisted of 20 estates. A significant part of these estates must have been purchased by Jan Radlica personally or with his money, which confirms the opinions of medieval biographers about the bishop as the founder of estates for
his poor relatives. However, Radlica made sure not only that the welfare of his family would increase, but also that his brothers would pursue careers in the administration. There is no doubt that both the castellan of Biechów Mojek-Mojżesz and the castellan of Ląd Wojciech from Krowica and Łask owed their positions as castellans to him.

Archival research in modern sources often brings discoveries of copies of known and unknown medieval documents. Wacław Gojniczek’s research conducted in the State Archives in Bielsko-Biała found an oblata (i.e., the entry of a legal act in court books) of a diploma from 1380. The owner of the document received its widymat (a vidimus, an attested copy) in 1603, and in the same year submitted it to the chancellery of the Bielsko-Biała state lord in order to have it entered in the book of protocols of the Bielsko state country. The document was issued by Przemysław I Noszak, Duke of Cieszyn and Wielki Głogów. The diploma shows that the duke confirmed all of the previously established privileges for the owners of the village of Mazańcowice, located near Bielsko: knights Lenart, Paszek, and Miczek, sons of Wilhelm known as Swidoniczer. The original was written in German on parchment on May 8th 1380 in Skoczów. Wacław Gojniczek submits the hypothesis that the knights from Mazańcowice from the end of the fourteenth century could have been the ancestors of the Lhotski nobility family from Lhota, who in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century were the owners of Mazańcowice.

In his article, Maciej Woźny presents the registers of seventeen lost diplomas of the Dukes of Opole: Bolko IV and his son Bolko V. Information about these sources comes from urbaria, copiers, land books, and inventories. Particularly important is the information from the inventory in the private archive of Count Wilhelm August Pückler in Szydłów Śląski, for this source has not been used by researchers before. This edition of the sources has been prepared according to the rules adopted by the authors of Regesty dokumentów przechowywanych na Górnym Śląsku [The Registers of Documents Stored in Upper Silesia]. Maciej Woźny explains in detail where a given diploma is known from and where it was stored.

In his article, Karol Nabiałek is concerned with the documentation of craft guilds from the city of Proszowice in the Kraków area (Małopolska or Lesser Poland). He examines two manuscripts — the blacksmiths’ and the tailors’. Both books were probably started in the 1480s and were kept through the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The appropriate method of dating of such books must be based identifying the paper on which they are written. Nabiałek has prepared codicological descriptions and carried out an overview of the contents of both manuscripts. He has made an attempt to determine the status of these corporations. The blacksmiths’ manuscript was probably both a guild and a confraternity book. The tailors’ files initially contained a list of members of the religious confraternity, and, from the sixteenth century on, matters of the guild were entered in them. These manuscripts are rare examples of extant landmark works of medieval writing of professional craft corporations preserved in Poland.

Karol Krajewski takes up the subject of the activity of Piotr and Mikołaj Komorowski of the Korczak coat of arms in the northern part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the fifteenth century. Their activity is closely related to the topic of Upper Hungary in this period, a topic that has been discussed many times since the beginning of modern historiography, especially in Slovak and Polish historiography. Krajewski’s article is an attempt to assess the value of this research.
Krajewski focuses on the activity of Piotr and Mikołaj Komorowski in the Hungarian territories in the years from c. 1440 to c. 1480. Describing the activity of Mikołaj Komorowski, Krajewski points to, among other things, his active participation, in the capacity of a military commander, in the civil war in Hungary on the side of Władysław III of Poland (Władysław Jagiellończyk) and his conflict with the bishop of Kraków Zbigniew Oleśnicki for the Spiš starostwo (county). Among the activities of Piotr Komorowski, Krajewski discusses the gradual building of his position in the area of Upper Hungary during the life of Władysław III and in the period after this king’s death, his rivalry and cooperation with other powerful nobles in this region, his involvement in the events related to the activity of the so-called bratrzyks, and his participation in the conflicts between Casimir IV Jagiellon (Kazimierz Jagiellończyk) and Maciej Korwin.

Despite the fact that it was common practice for medieval law chancelleries to put into legal circulation documents with missing initials, this phenomenon has been neglected by research. Iwona Pietrzyk’s article partially fills this gap by examining a collection of medieval documents issued by Silesian chancelleries. Her choice of this material has been determined by the specificity of Silesia itself, with its numerous territorial authorities subject to changes over time, its economic, ethnic and cultural diversity, and its rich diplomatic material. Pietrzyk’s research indicates that documents without initials were in circulation in Silesia throughout the Middle Ages. They were issued by various chancelleries, both lay and ecclesiastical, and they came from both the issuer and the recipient. Pietrzyk argues that we are dealing here with the common practice of medieval chancelleries, rather than with an individual oversight or negligence of a clerk. On the basis of her analysis, Pietrzyk concludes that the decision to leave an empty space in place of an initial was not that of the issuer of the document or the chancelleries staff, but that of the recipient, who, bearing the costs of drawing up the diploma, had the right to decide on its more or less elaborate graphic form. Also, it was for the recipient to decide to leave an empty space in order to fill the gap in the future with an initial appropriate to the rank of the document.

In this article, Magdalena Biniaś-Szkopek raises issues related to the situation of illegitimate offspring in the Middle Ages. In the introductory part of the text, Biniaś-Szkopek summarizes the current research and shows that in this period “bastards” were treated as inferior to legitimate offspring. The literature on this points out that an illegitimate child was not only socially disadvantaged, but that, moreover, this kind of person was deprived of all privileges, including the right to inherit from the father and to occupy higher positions — secular or ecclesiastical — in the state administration. Biniaś-Szkopek also draws attention to the fact that in late medieval Poland, which was a state monarchy, different laws were applied to different social strata, which, however, in the context of the issue discussed in this article, did not find an adequate reflection in historiography. Further in her article, Biniaś-Szkopek presents the results of her analysis of a source that has been neglected by historiography so far: books kept by consistory courts. Biniaś-Szkopek has scrutinized a group of files created by a Poznań official in the first half of the fifteenth century. She focuses on the cases in which conflicting couples came to the court to solve their problems and referred to the offspring born from their relationships. An analysis of the clerk’s decisions and verdicts concerning these children shows that they were usually treated with care and that their parents were obliged provide for them even when there was no clear legal basis for their relationship. Summing up the source material, Biniaś-Szkopek shows that the medieval “bastard” was treated very differently in a knightly family and among the lower social classes.

Stanisław Sroka’s article presents the career of (Lawrence) of Słupca, with particular emphasis on his obtaining a doctorate in canon law in Bologna in 1517. The Bologna doctorate opened a way for Wawrzyniec to a university career, because earlier he was a public notary and he also accepted the minor orders (acolyte). In 1521, he became a member of the law college of the University of Kraków. He also obtained church benefices in the form of the Kielce scholastery (scholasteria) and the Sandomierz canonry. Due to his imminent death in 1528, the university career of Wawrzyniec of Słupca was short. During the doctoral exam, he was accompanied in Bologna by his fellow students or other Poles who were there at the time and wanted to witness the doctoral proceedings. This group included: Jan Rybieński, provost of Kruszwica and canon of Gniezno and Poznań, Jan Łącki, canon of Poznań, as well as Jan Międzyrzecki, Jan Łaski, Maciej Śliwnicki and Stanisław Szczawiński. In the sources at the University of Bologna, they were referred to as students of Bologna and seminarians of the Dioceses of Gniezno, Poznań and Olomouc. Sroka discusses their intellectual paths, often omitted in historiography, and briefly describes their subsequent careers.

Wróbel Dariusz: Na pierwszym planie. Możni i szlachta polska wobec bezkrólewia po śmierci Ludwika Andegaweńskiego. Lublin, Wydawnictwo UMCS, 2020, ss. 586

Masculinities in Old Norse Literature. Eds. Gareth Lloyd Evans, Jessica Clare Hancock. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 2020, ss. 285

Andrzej Radzimiński: Kontakty duchowieństwa ze Stolicą Apostolską. Obraz życia średniowiecznego kleru w dokumentach Penitencjarii Apostolskiej. Toruń, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Toruńskiego, 2020, ss. 244

Agnieszka Teterycz-Puzio: Konrad I Mazowiecki. Kniaź wielki lacki (1187/89—31 sierpnia 1247). Kraków, Avalon, 2019, ss. 267

David Radek: Bolek V. Opolský (okolo 1400—1460). Život a legenda. Opava, Slezská univerzita v Opavě, 2018, ss. 310

"Średniowiecze Polskie i Powszechne" T. 13 (17)/2021