Studies on Family and Household in Preindustrial Poland
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Studies on family and household in preindustrial Poland edited by Piotr Guzowski, Cezary Kuklo 12 Prace Centrum Badań Struktur Demograficznych i Gospodarczych Przednowoczesnej Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej Tom III Studies on family and household in preindustrial Poland edited by Piotr Guzowski, Cezary Kuklo Białystok 2015 Seria: DISSERTATIONES, t. 12 Reviewers Prof. Teresa Chynczewska-Hennel (University of Bialystok) Prof. Jan Snopko (University of Bialystok) Proof-reading Stefan Kubiak Translated by Julia Szołtysek and Stefan Kubiak Volume editor Wojciech Walczak General editors Karol Łopatecki, Wojciech Walczak Cover illustration Anna and Ananiasz Rodziewicz with son Adam, Mińsk 1865, Archiwum Fotografii Ośrodka KARTA, sygn. OK_1056_002 Książka współfinansowana przez Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (nr umowy 714/P-DUN/2014) | Book co-financed by the Minister of Science and Higher Education (agreement no. 714/P-DUN/2014) Translation and proof-reading co-financed by Faculty of History and Sociology and Institute of History and Political Sciences of University of Bialystok ISBN 978-83-64103-49-0 Printed in Poland © Copyright by Institute for Research of European Cultural Heritage Białystok 2015 Publisher Typesetting and text makeup Janusz Świnarski Printed by TOTEM s.c. Spis treści 7 Preface 11 Jan Tęgowski The Polish dynastic family of the 10th–15th centuries 39 Piotr Guzowski Demographic representation of the late medieval noble family in the light of the latest genealogical research 57 Piotr Łozowski Demography of the burgher family in Old Warsaw in the first half of the 15th century 75 Marzena Liedke Procreative Attitudes of the Magnates of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th–18th Centuries: Selected Issues 97 Iwona Kulesza-Woroniecka Disintegration of the noble family elite in the 17th–18th centuries 117 Cezary Kuklo Marriage, children and family in Polish cities and towns in the 16th–18th centuries 145 Radosław Poniat The age of entering the service in Polish lands in the second half of the 18th century: In pursuit of life-cycle servants 163 Mikołaj Szołtysek Age heaping and digit preference in eighteenth-century Poland-Lithuania: who was rounding off their age, and why? 197 Konrad Wnęk Sociotopography of Cracow families at the end of the 18th century 233 Lidia A. Zyblikiewicz The Cracow family in the times of Franz Josef Preface It seems that family, understood as a unit consisting of parents and children, and sometimes also other close relatives living together in one household, has been so common and natural since the dawn of our civilization that our knowl- edge of its origins, development (size, structure) and breakdown in the more and less distant past ought to be not only profound but also comprehensive. It remains obscure why this has not been so, especially that the institution of family in popular social consciousness was, at least until the Second World War, very highly regarded. According to recently deceased French historian, Jean-Louis Flandrin, our gaps of knowledge of the family’s past may be explained by the fact that writing the history of family life has been left in the hands of ethnol- ogists, sociologists and lawyers. The last twenty five years witnessed some progress with regard to the number as well as quality of studies into families and households of the past. Howev- er, in spite of greater intensity of historical research into the changes in family structures in Poland, our current knowledge of family demography, economy and social context is still incomplete. The present study initiated by the Centre for the Study of Demographic and Economic Structures in Preindustrial Central and Eastern Europe (Centrum Badań Struktur Demograficznych i Gospodarczych Przednowoczesnej Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej) at the University of Bialystok originated from the need to systematize existing research on the development of family structures in the Polish lands in the past. The idea was to create an interdisciplinary project in which past Polish society could be viewed from the anthropological, demo- graphic and sociological perspectives allowing new, important questions to be asked. Prominence given to the demographic analysis stems from the fact that until the end of the preindustrial era, i.e. late 19th century in Poland, family size and structure had a considerable influence on many economic decisions and actions of people. On the other hand, family’s biological potential resulted from specific economic processes. 8 Studies on family and household in preindustrial Poland The project has become a platform for a discussion about (if not a revision of?) the view that there was a close relationship between industrialization and modernization processes in Polish lands in the 19th century and alleged changes in family forms from joint to nuclear families. A separate question addressed by the contributors to this volume concerned factors responsible for the emergence of specific family structures. Was it geographical location and cultural specific- ity of communities that led to the formation of particular family structures or were specific family structures the ways of adjusting to the natural environment and the methods of gaining resources? The aim of the authors was, therefore, to determine the scale of influence of such local factors as ecology, economy, customs and laws (e.g. marriage patterns, feudal matrimonial restrictions, in- divisible inheritance and divisibility of land), demography (gender, age, and marital status population structures), and culture on the size, structure and character of families and households in the past. Some scholars have already suggested that even over a relatively short pe- riods of time or across small communities changes in family patterns did take place. Hence, we find it crucial to examine developmental cycles of family life in the past along with the stages in the lives of individual family members (life- course approach). It is also essential to emphasize the diversity and complexity of internal relations between various household members. Our study on the family in the past is also to be a voice in the discussion about kinship and consanguinity, which, with the exception of a few works focusing on the quantitative analysis of blood relations, has been largely absent from Polish historiography. We address issues of blood relations existing beyond individual household units, with the aim of drawing a bigger picture of kinship ties between individuals and between households within the framework of local communities. It appears that in the pre- and early industrial society most household members were surrounded by relatives, who in spite of living separately, might have active- ly participated in their family members’ everyday life or provided help in times of crisis. We think it is important to ask questions about the changing roles of relatives in urban and rural contexts, with special attention given to the problem of widowhood and the influence of industrialization and modernization on kin- ship ties. In our attempt to raise these research questions we refer to the opinion of Andrzej Wyczański, an authority in the field of socio-economic history, who emphasized that Polish scholars must not conduct their studies in isolation from, but in continuous communication with leading researchers abroad. Inspired by the achievements of western social history and other disciplines, we feel encour- aged to ask further-reaching questions and to undertake new research. Preface 9 The first article in this volume is Jan Tęgowski’s study of Polish dynastic family in the Middle Ages. The decision to place this text at the beginning of the volume was dictated not only by practical considerations of chronology, but also by the fact that this study of the Piast and Jagiellonian dynasties opens broader methodological perspectives for further research into family functioning. It is important primarily because heretofore scholars have concentrated on recon- structing royal families’ genealogies, tracing political careers of their members, examining naming patterns, and analyzing dynastic policies. The questions of elite family formation, existence and breakdown in early modern Poland are discussed by Piotr Guzowski, Marzena Liedke and Iwona Kulesza-Woroniecka. In his article, Piotr Guzowski offers a revised picture of the demographic condition of gentry families in the light of recent genealogi- cal publications. Marzena Liedke explores the archives of Lithuanian magnate families in order to reconstruct their marriage and procreation patterns and her study, it must be emphasized, is concerned with several rather than only one individual magnate family. The third author, Iwona Kulesza-Woroniecka, discusses the issue which has not been thoroughly studied in Poland so far, i.e. marriage annulments granted to Polish magnates by the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th–18th centuries. The third thematic group of articles consists of four texts focusing on the struc- ture of urban families and the place of their members within and outside of their family units. The character of the texts in this group is varied. Piotr Łozowski uses late medieval legal records to determine the size of patriciate and plebeian families in Old Warsaw in the first half of the 15th century. Studying a sample group of the inhabitants of civitas Antiquae Varsoviae, the author finds out that over 70% of families were nuclear, with no more than two children. Cezary Kuklo offers a syn- thetic overview of his own and