History of Wills, Testators and Their Families in Late Medieval Krakow

Front matter

History of Wills,

Testators and Their Families in Late Medieval Krakow

Tools of Power

Contents

Acknowledgements 1x List of Figures, Graphs and Tables xı Abbreviations xiv

1 Definition of a Will’ 6

2 The Will—A Theoretical Perspective 9 3 Source Base n

Introduction

Run quickly to confession,

Bring priests into your house,

Cry for your sins, receive the sacrament, The body of Christ, consecrated oil!

Give to the children your land and house; For the soul, give what you gained;

Win friends with your possessions; They will put your soul in Heaven.

Gather the creditor and the angry,

Win them by pleas, pay all your debts; Lose not your soul for another's money And for this wrongly burn in hell.!

Lament of a Dying Man [Skarga umierajqcego], author unknown, trans. Thomas Anessi

The verses of the fifteenth-century poem Lament of a Dying Man, quoted in part above, include the late-medieval Catholic Church's prescriptions for a 'good death. The dying man was to summon a priest, before whom he would make his final confession, repent his sins and receive the final anointing. In accordance with the custom of the day, he would also dispose of his possessions on his deathbed. His property — his house and fields — was to be given to his children, while his remaining worldly goods — his money and other movables of value — were to be shared between the clergy and the poor, two groups of 'expert' in the medieval formula for salvation. Mention is also made of the dying man's obligation to settle his earthly debts to his creditors.

Lament of a Dying Man was probably written in the latter half of the fifteenth century and contains ideas that appear in many fifteenth-century

1 Thistranslation of Lament of a Dying Man (Skarga umierajqcego) is based on that of Michael Mikos, but has been slightly modified due to variations in the source text. The original is found in Medieval Literature of Poland: An Anthology, ed. & trans. Michael Mikos (New York: Garland Pub., 1992), 79-82. It can be found online at: http://staropolska.pl/ang/middleages/ sec poetry/Lament.php3 (accessed: 4 May 2019)

© JAKUB WYSMUEEK, 2021 | DOI:10.1163/9789004461444 002 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.

didactic works in the ars moriendi (the Art of Dying Well) genre.? Such works were addressed to people from a broad range of social strata in the Polish Kingdom, and used rhyming verses written in the Polish vernacular to provide religious and social instruction on how to properly prepare for death. It is worth noting that the poem’s protagonist is a man, a peasant, who as head of the family was the sole administrator of important hereditary immovable property - the family estate.

This act of last will was supposed to take place before an invited clergyman and the immediate family. If possible, debtors and creditors were also summoned and, often, friends and neighbours as well. The validity of this settling of accounts with one's worldly life was guaranteed by witnesses and the institutional authority of the Catholic Church, embodied by a member of the clergy. This act was performed orally and recorded in the memory of those present; when the donation to the Church was a large one, an entry was sometimes made in the parish records.

Based on the results of previous research, it can be assumed that despite the poem's didactic function, its description of the dying man's preparations accurately reflects what was then a preferred and widely disseminated model for preparing for death. Yet, it is worth noting that the word ‘testament’ is not mentioned anywhere in the above stanzas. There is no evidence that the dying man's resolutions were recorded in written form, or that among those present was a vogt? alderman,* notary or some other secular administrative guarantor of the legitimacy of the resolutions.

This 'art of dying' relates to a world that was largely traditional, agrarian and illiterate. Alongside this world, however, a new model of urban life was emerging, one that was growing in significance economically and culturally, and in which the written word and the institutions of municipal self-government were considered the best means of safeguarding people's rights and security, and of ensuring the fulfilment of contracts and dispositions. This emerging model was reflected in the way in which the last will was understood and in the forms it took in the urban milieu. This was the setting in which the concept of the written will spread most quickly, first becoming a common practice among city-dwellers and later a part of municipal law. While at first wills mainly served the needs of an increasingly influential merchant class, they were later adapted to address those of craftsmen and domestic servants as well.

2 Maciej Włodarski, Ars moriendi w literaturze polskiej XV i XVI w. (Krakow: Znak, 1987), 14-63, 157-160.

3 See the Glossary: Vogt

4 See the Glossary: Bench court

In my use of rural and urban milieus as categories, I treat them in some sense as ideal types. In doing so, my aim is not to deny the existence of a great wealth of diverse phenomena that testify to the ways in which these worlds were intertwined and the many intermediate forms of community life that lay between those found in a small village and a large city. I similarly juxtapose the ‘good death’ of a peasant and that of a merchant, and make comparisons between various legal institutions and social relations and practices. This allows us to discern — from among the diverse social practices discussed — the general direction and nature of the cultural changes that can be seen in historical sources.

In both the countryside and the city, death was largely defined by its religious aspects. Yet in Krakow, due to the presence of numerous clergy and religious orders, the range of pastoral offerings was much broader than was typical in a village, as was the level of knowledge among the city's inhabitants of the tenets of the Christian faith. Due to the evidence of general popularity of ars moriendi manuals in Poland and that time, it can be assumed that at least members of Krakow's elite were familiar with Christian teaching on the subject, either through rhymed poems that served a mnemonic function, or through sermons heard during Mass in one of the city's many churches.5 Those townsmen who had studied at a university may also have had the chance to read one of the - sometimes richly illustrated - scholarly treatises on the subject, such as that attributed to Matthew of Krakow entitled The Art of Dying, Collected from Various Scriptures, with Drawings, to Repel the Devil's Temptation to Every Christian's Death, Which Are Very Useful and Often Necessary.®

These teachings, disseminated in urban communities through numerous channels, depicted the final moments on the death bed as decisive in terms of a sinner's potential salvation or eternal damnation. The fate of the dying person's soul rested in his own hands. In cities, the means most commonly promoted for ensuring salvation was the drawing up of a written will in which one's earthly obligations were settled and generous donations made as an act of charity. Such an act of expressing one's last will came to be seen as a Christian's

5 Krzysztof Bracha, Nauczanie kaznodziejskie w Polsce pöznego $redniowiecza. Sermones dominicales et festivales z tzw. kolekcji Piotra z Mitoslawia (Kielce: Wydawnictwo Akademii $wietokrzyskiej w Kielcach, 2007), 162-165.

6 Authorship ofthe treatise, written around 1408-1410 and entitled Ars moriendi ex variis scripturatum sententiis collecta cum figuris ad resistendum in mortis agone diabolice sugestioni valens cuilibet christifideli utilis ac multum necessaria, is attributed to Matthew of Krakow, rector of Heidelberg University and a reformer of Jagiellonian University; cf. Włodarski, Ars moriendi, 23-24.

natural duty, which alongside the sacraments of confession, repentance and absolution, was to be fulfilled before death. Yet, if we look closely at the extant sources, we see that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when the ‘art of dying’ was being widely disseminated in late-medieval literature, wills were not yet a common phenomenon,’ and the form of the written bequests they contained varied greatly; moreover, it is sometimes difficult to find in their content any traces of religious motivation. So, what were late-medieval last wills? For what purpose and by whom were they written? And, what is the most important, what impact did they have on the social reality and religious practices of their time?

This book is intended to answer these questions and many others. Despite the growing literature on wills, there are still frequent misunderstandings about the evolution of these acts, and a tendency to underestimate the role they played in the history of Europe. While wills have long been used in historical research, and have been viewed from a variety of perspectives, they have usually been used as evidence for some other phenomenon, such as the nature of religiosity, everyday life, material culture or family relations during a given period. Only very rarely have wills themselves been the subject of a deeper analysis, which considered their hidden functions and impact on social reality. For this reason, changes in the nature of wills and their social role have remained largely unexamined, seemingly self-evident. It is the first such comprehensive analysis of medieval Krakow wills, which covers the subject of socio-cultural role of wills and discusses in-depth the legal, social and economic background on which they were formed in the city. It is also a book that offers an original interpretation of these acts, shifting the readers popular perspective of what people did with them to, metaphorically, what these acts did with people. This book seeks to change the perception of these testamentary acts by treating the testamentary act itself as an important agent of historical social change — a ‘tool of power’ The book's main thesis is that medieval testament was a legal instrument which on a macro level strongly influenced the process of expanding the scope of individual control over economic resources and on the micro level was used in order to expand the individual control on interpersonal relations with family members, friends, co-workers and fellow citizens.®

7 Hanna Zaremska, “Człowiek wobec śmierci. Wyobrazenia i rytuały in Kultura Polski średniowiecznej XIV-XV w., ed. Bronisław Geremek (Warszawa: Semper, 1997), 485-510.

8 AsMia Korpiola and Anu Lahtinen recently stressed: “Quickly, the individualistic potential of wills as a tool of crafting different property strategies became obvious. Within the boundaries of the law, the family became perceived more as “a descend group, a pool of potential heirs” to be moulded in accordance with the person's personal wishes. The will was thus a manifestation of power: the authoritative expression of the testator's last will (ultima voluntas).

The will as a phenomenon defies universal definition. While its history has been influenced by the Church and eschatological conceptions propagated by the clergy, it also reflects wider social and cultural transformations, such as the expansion of cities, trade and the wider money and goods economy, the establishment of municipal law, the spread of literacy and the changes taking place in the structure of the burgher family. Taking into account these complex, dynamically changing social and cultural contexts, in the following chapters I analysethe nature and role of wills and the mannerin which they functioned in the particular urban milieu of late-medieval Krakow. I relate the multidimensional history of the will, highlighting the diverse character of these legal acts, over a period of nearly two hundred years, from their appearance in medieval Krakow in the early fourteenth century, to the turn of the sixteenth century, by which time the form and legal foundations of the will were well established. In the book I also attempt to trace the evolution of the will from a purely religious actto one in which secular motives relating to family and property dominated, and from an act that required the presence of a clergyman and was part of the Canon law of the Catholic Church, to an act that took place in the presence of a city official and was regulated both by the laws and customs of a given urban centre and more generally by common law. In the first case, I propose using the term ‘canonical will; and in the second case, communal will:

Subsequently, I ask a range of questions regarding the social characteristics of the group of testators, burghers from Krakow and visitors to the city. I analyse their positions within the social structure through an estimation of their wealth and their relations to power elites (the municipal authorities) as well as their occupations and places of origin. This information not only provides us with a better understanding of the reasons behind the creation of wills, but also casts light on the structure of urban society from a new angle. I also demonstrate the importance of wills as a tool for managing family and property relations in two distinctly different life situations — that of a rich merchant and a middle-class trader or artisan. Moreover, I put forward a thesis about the major role played by wills in the spread of a whole range of religious practices that contributed to the richness of late-medieval urban piety.

Although focused on a single urban centre - the city of Krakow - this book presents a generalizable model of the development of testamentary practices in Central and Eastern Europe, in a part of the continent that was beyond the direct influence of ancient Roman legal traditions, but which drew upon

That a person's last wil was to be fulfilled in accordance with the true intent of the testator became a leading principle in learned law - rendering it even more potent"; “Introduction,” in Planning for Death. Wills and Death-Related Property Arrangements in Europe, 1200-1600, ed. Mia Korpiola, Anu Lahtinen (Brill, 2018), 18.

strong cultural and legal models that originated within the sphere of influence of the Holy Roman Empire. The relatively late urbanization of the eastern regions of Europe makes it possible to observe certain social phenomena through sources written in statu nascendi — i.e. at the moment these events occurred. Krakow seems to be extremely privileged in this respect because of the well-preserved state of its municipal books, including, in particular, the oldest known will, that of a burgess from Krakow, dating from 1303, for which, to the best of my knowledge, there is no equivalent in any other urban centre in Central and Eastern Europe.

The heart of the Kingdom of Poland was undoubtedly Krakow, with its royal court, bishopric, holy chapter, numerous monasteries and churches, and many visiting foreigners who influenced the dynamics of life in the city and contributed to its social and cultural diversity. Krakow was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in late-medieval Poland and an important trade centre for the entire Central European region.? The city's political, economic and religious importance spurred the intensive growth of its population and led to an associated increase in the level of wealth and occupational diversity among its inhabitants.!? Krakow's role as a regional centre also meant that new currents in culture arrived here first, and only then spread to smaller affiliated population centres. One such example of the city's role and importance can be seen in wills, of which the earliest and best-preserved examples come from Krakow.

1 Definition of a ‘Will’

The complexity of wills as sources is masked by their seemingly-straightforward purpose. Wills contain a wealth of details, and can be confusing, as it is

9 Jan Dąbrowski, “Krakow a Węgry w wiekach średnich,” Rocznik Krakowski 13 (1911): 187-250; Feliks Kiryk, “Etos pracy (podstawy gospodarcze formowania sie Krakowa lokacyjnego 1257-1333), in Krakow - dziedzictwo lokacji. Materiaty sesji naukowej odbytej 21 kwietnia 2007 roku, ed. Jan M. Małecki (Krakow: Towarzystwo Miłośników Historii i Zabytków Krakowa, 2008), 51-73; idem, “Związki Krakowa z Lwowem w późnym średniowieczu,” in Lwów. Miasto, społeczeństwo, kultura, vol. 2, ed. Kazimierz Karolczak (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Wyższej Szkoły Pedagogicznej, 1998), 9-39; Stanisław Kutrzeba, Finanse i handel średniowiecznego Krakowa, ed. Marcin Starzyński (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Avalon, 2009).

1o Maria Bogucka, Henryk Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczaństwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowej (Wroclaw-Warszawa-Krakow: Ossolineum, 1986) 114-118; Jerzy Wyrozumski, Dzieje Krakowa. Krakow do schyłku wieków średnich (Krakow: Wydawnictwo Lit., 1992),

314-396.

often not clear what objects they are referring to. Personal and genealogical data are often incomplete, and we thus often have no clues about the identity of those mentioned or information about their relationship to the testator or to one other. Moreover, the motives of the testator are often obscured by the conventional structure and form of the bequests. We even face problems in attempting to define the ‘testament’ in relation to distinct concepts found in canon, municipal and common law, and to the wide spectrum of local testamentary practices. Attempting to define these detailed bequests, which varied greatly in both form and purpose, Steven Epstein stated that “[t]he will was an act made by an individual at a specific time and place, for personal motives.” This definition, despite its undoubted technical accuracy, is nevertheless applicable to almost every form of human activity, and therefore does not bring us any closer to understanding the specificity and uniqueness of the will as a legal and social phenomenon. Rather, it reveals the helplessness of the researcher in the face of this document, which eludes simple definition.

Despite the difficulties associated with defining wills, in order to reveal its intrinsic character, I have adopted a broad definition of the will as a gift made by an individual to another person, group of persons or institution, resulting in the transfer of rights to the bequeathed property after the death of that individual (and therefore various types of donationes mortis causa — both individual posthumous donations and wills in their full, ‘mature’ form — are taken into account here). In adopting such a definition, we are forced to consider a wide range of gifts, ranging from short pious bequests and mutual donations made between spouses (mutuae donaciones) to various types of donations to relatives and non-relatives. An analysis of late-medieval wills from Krakow confirms that all of these types of mortis causa bequests were made, and that the Krakow burghers referred to them in a quite free and inconsistent manner using the word ‘testament.’

On the basis of the data contained in Table 1, it can be seen that the majority constitute different types of bequests which performed a function similar to that of wills in the full sense of the word (even when we take into account both all the surviving wills and references found in sources to ones that have not been preserved).!? Due to the volume of source materials collected and the complex processes that led to the development of the communal will (which in its mature form became widespread only towards the end of the period n Stephen Epstein, Wills and Wealth in Medieval Genoa, 1150-1250 (Cambridge (Mass.)- London: Harvard University Press, 1984), 38.

12 For more information on the variety of mortis causa and the ratio between them, see chapter 1, section 11, p. 104.

TABLE1 Records of mortis causa in Krakow sources from the years 1300-1500

Types of records Number of records Wills 537 Information about unpreserved wills 252 Single pious bequests 95 Individual donations to family members and other people 356 Mutual bequests of spouses 385 Records of dowers 79 Total 1704 being analysed here), our main focus will be on those bequests, considered as wills, with more complex provisions, which thereby reveal the most about the concept. The bequests considered as wills in the present book mainly include those, that indicate self-reflection on the part of the author and a desire to dispose of a significant portion of property for family or religious purposes.!? However, it was impossible to avoid a certain arbitrariness in classifying the bequests into one group or the other, as not all of them are referred to as ‘testaments’ in the source materials.!* This is especially true of bequests from the fourteenth century, when the concept of the will related primarily to religious donations, while 'secular' bequests were labelled with the Latin word donatio or the German term Gemechte or Geschefft (or similar terms that indicated their contractual nature).5

13 The present classification of collected wills was also guided by the opinion on the nature of wills expressed by Hanna Zaremska: “The thought of death prompts people to reflect on themselves in an orderly manner. This reflection induces them to go over the property they have acquired to date, to determine and hierarchically order the relationships with their relatives and loved ones, to establish heirs and to separate those they want to support from those they want to punish by disinheriting or disregarding them"; eadem, Czlowiek wobec &mierci, 489.

14 See chapter 1, section 5, p. 60.

15 Cf. Jakub Wysmutek, “Wills as Testimony of Marriage Contracts in Late Medieval Krakow,’ in Law and Marriage in Medieval and Early Modern Times, Proceedings of the Eight Carlsberg Academy Conference on Medieval Legal History 201, ed. Per Andersen, Kirsi Salonen, Helle Moller Sigh, Helle Vogt (Copenhagen: Djof Forlag, 2012, 181-190; Otto Loening, Das Testament im Gebiet des Magdeburger Stadtrechtes (Breslau: M&G Marcus, 1906), 34-35.

INTRODUCTION 9 2 The Will - A Theoretical Perspective

The socio-historical research perspective I have chosen to adopt is intended to allow for a broad analysis of the phenomenon of the late medieval will, revealing its specificity and the role it played in the profound social and cultural transformations that were taking place during the period in question. The most important of them is the process of individualisation of society also associated with the birth of early forms of capitalism in late medieval cities. I formulated a working thesis about the importance of the will in the cultural transformation of city life, thatis was an important factor in helping to bring about an increasingly individualised society. The use of wills and testaments related to, among other things, the expansion ofthe concept of private property, the formation of the nuclear family, and the increasingly widespread search for individual strategies of commemoration. The connection between these socio-cultural phenomena and the spread of the will as a concept in Poland suggests that it was an important factor in the historical process of individualisation, understood as a directed (though not linear) socio-historical progression towards “values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour[s] [that] are increasingly based on personal choice and are less dependent on tradition and social institutions." 6 At the same time, we are dealing here with an apparent paradox. The increasingly clear distinction between the individual and his or her community of blood' (traditional family line and kinship groups) did not occur as a result of individuals distancing themselves from their group affiliations as such. This was rather a gradual process, based on conscious and voluntary choices made on a daily basis, which, as a consequence, established a new hierarchy of relations on the individual, group and institutional level. These choices were not conditioned by formal obligations related to the traditional law of kinship (ius propinquitatis), but on the basis of real-life practices. Shared experiences created the grounds on which mutual bonds of an emotional nature took root. The wealthy showed most interest in shaping their social group by means of their own wills. Initially, the urban elite were quite willing to make individual decisions regarding the division of property, and thus transform family relationships. This relationship between one's social position and a willingness to individually reshape the bonds and mutual obligations in one's existing network of social relations is clearly visible in the collection of wills from Krakow, as well as in sources from other cities in Central and Eastern Europe.

16 Peter Ester, Loek Halman, Rood de Moor, “Introduction,” in The Individualizing Society. Value Change in Europe and North America, ed. Peter Ester, Loek Halman, Rood de Moor (Tilburg: Tilburg University Press, 1994), 7.

By extending an individual’s control over their material world (in terms of the legal alienation of goods both during the owner's lifetime and after death), the will also became an instrument of power over one's relatives, friends and co-workers, the clergy, and others. A voluntary testamentary bequest was a gift that by its very nature demanded reciprocity,!” even if only in some form of honouring or remembrance. It was also a disposition that could be revoked by the testator at any point during their lifetime. This meant that the potential future inheritance of property was often contingent on good relations being maintained between the testator and their friends and relatives. In this way, the assets accumulated by the testator became, through this unilateral disposition, a tool for the planning and shaping of both efforts to guarantee the welfare of one's soul, and the material and discursive commemoration of the testator among the living. It also became a powerful instrument for managing the testator's social relations with potential heirs later in life, and for ensuring one's influence on the lives of loved ones, even after death.!8

Using categories taken from the social sciences, it can be said that a will, as a means of extending the scope of one's control over material goods, was therefore a tool for the transformation of economic capital accumulated during one's lifetime into social, symbolic!? and ‘eschatological’ capital, involving, among other things, the guarantee of lifelong care by one's loved ones, the posthumous preservation of one's memory among the living, and the assurance of eternal life in heaven.

A will was likewise an instrument of power for institutions that sought to incorporate it into their rituals and cultural practices, and to place it under their exclusive legal jurisdiction. This was true, above all, of the Catholic Church, but later also of municipal authorities who competed with the Church hierarchy for control over the wills of members of the burgher estates.?? The authorities

17 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990 (1950)).

18 Worried about their family relations and the legitimacy of their actions, testators often tried to negotiate the content of their bequests with their heirs. In order to avoid future conflicts, the consent of their closest relatives to the testamentary dispositions was often required by the municipal authorities. However, a will could at least "potentially" be used asa tool against the "legal" heirs to property.

19 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Social Capital,’ in Education, Culture, Economy and Society, ed. A.H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown, Amy Stuart Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 46-58.

20 Jakub Wysmułek, “Last Wills as Tool of Power. Development of Testamentary Practice in Krakow during Late Middle Ages,” in Planning for Death. Wills and Death-Related Property Arrangements in Europe 1200—1600, ed. Mia Korpiola, Anu Lahtinen (Brill, 2018), 211—238.

felt entitled to custody of burgher wills, in light of their sovereignty over the city’s property and the legal acts of its citizens. The question of whether testamentary dispositions were to be implemented as part of canon or municipal law determined which institution would exercise control overthe huge (on the scale of the whole city) sums of money that were invested in various forms of charity, pious gifts and commemoration. Institutional control over wills can also be viewed as a means of building prestige, asymbolic presentation of the city council’s?! sovereign power over the life and death of other burghers. For the same reasons, up until the end of the Middle Ages, the church hierarchy pointed to the leading role of its bishops and even the Holy See itself as granting it greater authority, in the event any disputes or problems arose in the implementation of testamentary dispositions.

3 Source Base

The bequests contained in wills are extremely rich sources of information that is private in nature — something rarely found in documents preserved from medieval times.?? At the same time, in the case of Krakow (and other large medieval cities), these are what you might call ‘mass sources,?? in the sense that they are abundant and relatively similar in form. This allows us both to

21 See Glosary: City council

22 Regardless of the reasons for making last wills, whether alleged or stated by the testators themselves, wills express the wishes of townsmen from Krakow and as sources possess features that have led Winfried Schulze to label them "self-testimonies" (Selbstzeugnisse) or — following a well-known paper by the Dutch historian Jacques Presser — “ego-documents,” cf. “Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte,” Selbstzeugnisse der Neuzeit, vol., Winfried Schulze (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1996); Rudolf Dekker, "Jacques Presser's Heritage. Egodocuments in the Study of History,’ Memoria y Civilización 5 (2002), 13-37; Kaspar von Greyerz, “Ego-Documents. The Last Word?" German History 28, 2010, no. 3, 273-282; Mary Fulbrook, Ulinka Rublack, In Relation. The "Social Self" and Ego-Documents, "German History" 28, no. 3 (2010) 263-272; Agnieszka Rosa, "Testamenty fordonskie jako egodokumenty mieszczanskie,” Kronika Bydgoska 29 (2006), 41-72.

23 Martin Nodl did claim that testaments are not mass sources. While his arguments against the use of quantitative research methods on medieval wills to draw society-wide conclusions seem to me correct, the significant number of preserved wills from Krakow makes it possible to conduct quantitative research on the changing nature of the will itself, as well asits authors (i.e. testators). This was the aim of statistical studies in this paper; cf. Martin Nodl, “Středověký testament jako abnormalita,” in Pozdně středověké testamenty v českých městech. Prameny, metodologie a formy využití. Sbornik příspěvků z konference uspořádané 30. listopadu 2005 Archivem hlavního města Prahy a Historickým ústavem Akademie věd České republiky, ed. Kateřina Jíšová, Eva Doležalová (Praha: Scriptorium, 2006), 73-85.

conduct qualitative research and to analyse the collected data by means of statistical methods.

The primary group of sources, i.e. those that made it possible to conduct this research on Krakow's wills, include bench court?^ council and municipal books from 1301 to 1500. The initial period of the development of the willin the first half of the fourteenth century can be studied thanks to the preservation of the oldest known municipal book from Krakow, covering the years 1301-1375, in which cases heard by the bench court and the notes of the city council office were recorded.”5 Research on books from the fourteenth century was carried out on the basis of Franciszek Piekosinski’s 1878 edition of The Oldest Municipal Book [Najstarszaj księga miejskaj|?9 and books of the Krakow bench court from 1365-1376 and 1390-1397, published in 1904 by Stanisław Krzyzanowski.?"