Metadata: Archive of the Town of Kleparz (Records of Kleparz)
Collection
- Country:
- Poland
- Holding institution:
- The National Archives in Krakow
- Holding institution (official language):
- Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie
- Postal address:
- Oddział III, 30-960 Kraków, ul. Sienna 16
- Phone number:
- +48 (12) 422 40 94
- Web address:
- http://ank.gov.pl/
- Email:
- sekretariat@ank.gov.pl
- Reference number:
- 29/36/0
- Title:
- Archive of the Town of Kleparz (Records of Kleparz)
- Title (official language):
- Archiwum miasta Kleparza (Akta miasta Kleparza)
- Creator/accumulator:
- Authorities of the town of Kleparz
- Date(s):
- 1440/1843
- Language:
- Polish
- Latin
- German
- Extent:
- 6.3 linear metres (162 units, volumes, folders) and an additional 46 non-Jewish parchment documents
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The fonds of the Records of the Town of Kleparz includes records produced by the municipality of Kleparz between 1428 and 1794 and consists of several sections, mainly comprising councillors’, vogt and aldermen’s, and burgomaster’s records (the latest such records are dated 1799) and private records of burghers (until 1799). The broadest chronology (until 1843) encompasses records of local churches. A particularly noticeable gap appears with a considerable portion of files from the first half of the 17th century. Apart from Kleparz, the fonds’ territorial reach includes the adjacent jurydykas [i.e. privately owned tracts of land within a larger municipality] of Błonie, Biskupie, Pędzichów, and Szlak (today within northern Krakow). Due to the town’s commercial character, a considerable part of information refers to business contacts of local burghers with other towns or cities, mainly in the south of Poland, such as Krakow, Kazimierz and Wieliczka as well as Lublin and Sandomierz.
Jewish-related material appears in a fraction of the units and includes, in particular, aldermen’s registers (scabinalia), vogt office’s registers (advocatialia), vogt and aldermen’s records (advocatialia et scabinalia), miscellaneous vogt and aldermen’s files, registers and files of the Council’s office (acta consularia) - including court and administrative records - and (extremely rarely) mentions related to Jews in files of Kleparz-based guilds and in private letters of local burghers. Civil entries and records prevail, including information contained in last wills and testaments of Kleparz burghers regarding the obligations incurred by inheritors with respect to Jewish creditors, information on trade contacts, prices of goods imported by Jewish merchants, (scarce) manifests of Jews against local burghers, resolutions of the Town Council re. Jewish residents, contracts for taprooms for Jews, complaints lodged against Jewish bunglers, inn keepers in particular. In light of the surviving files, the Jewish activity in Kleparz is documented mainly in the eighteenth century. Due to the condition of the files, the fonds is of virtually no use for research into the Jewish population in the 16th and 17th centuries. The parchment documents contain no information on Jews whatsoever. The vogt and aldermen’s terminaria registers contain inquisitions (interrogations) and testimonies of Christian offenders (mainly, thieves) indicative of their relations with Jews.
Most of the Jewish-related records are in three sections of the fonds – mostly single (and rare) mentions of Kazimierz Jews:
1. Records and files of the aldermen’s court and vogt office’s court (inscriptions, litigious cases) (KL. 1-23) [29/36/0/1.1/1-29/36/0/1.5/23]
2. Records and files of the Council’s office (litigious/non-litigious cases, quittances, last wills and testaments, transactions, terminaria, burgomaster’s court; ref. no. Kl. 24-114) [29/36/0/2.1/24-29/36/0/2.2/126]
3. Records of supreme authorities re. the Town of Kleparz (supplications and applications to the king, ‘universal’ proclamations of treasury commissions, actions of/regarding the royal governor of Krakow, commissioner’s courts, chamberlain’s court, consistorial court; ref. no. Kl. 142-147) [29/36/0/3/142-29/36/0/3/147].
However, their importance is not as high as that of the documents from the corresponding period for the neighbouring towns of Kazimierz and Kleparz.
- Archival history:
- Due to some destructive fires, the Kleparz archive is very incomplete. The records were partly been kept at the town hall, some of them were kept at burghers’ houses (where they tended to perish); scribes did not care much about keeping the records appropriately. In 1787, the Commission for Good Order took an effort to set this archival resource in order. Three ‘summary registries’ of documents – from 1722, 1788, and (most importantly) 1794 – survive. 1794 marks the removal of the archive to the Krakow City Hall, where it was kept until 1869 before being moved again, to the Mortgage Registry Office. In 1890 most of the Kleparz records were transferred to the Archives of Historical Records of the City of Krakow. Since the 1890s there have been numerous accruals to the fonds. It was rearranged in 1929-30 and 1957-8. The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences/Polish Academy of Sciences [PAU/PAN] Library in Krakow presently keeps two manuscripts from Kleparz, nos. 437 and 480. The registers related to Krakow royal governors offer more information on Kleparz and the activities of Jews locally.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Presently an area within Krakow (part of District I – Stare Miasto [Old Town]), situated north of the historical Old Town area, Kleparz was between 1366 and 1792 an autonomous royal town (its alternative name having been Florencja [‘Florence’]). In the Old Polish period, Kleparz was a royal town that was granted self-governance under the Magdeburg Law in 1366. The town’s main governing body was the Town Council whose members were municipal councillors. There was also a court and an office of the vogt [wójt] and the aldermen (the Town Council bought out the vogtship in c. 1421), the offices of burgomaster, the municipal scribe, and under-vogt [podwójci]. The jurisdiction over Kleparz was exercised on behalf of the monarch by the royal governor [wielkorządca] of Krakow. The local guilds were self-governed. Kleparz had no stacking right or town weight house.
A systemic change took place in 1792 as, resulting from the Four Years’ Sejm’s reforms, Kleparz merged with Krakow, becoming the city’s Circuit [cyrkuł] IV. A local court of first instance was set up, which only survived to September 1792; during the Targowica Confederation, 1793, the traditional municipal system, modelled after the German law, was resumed for a short time. Following the Third Partition of Poland-Lithuania, Kleparz was incorporated into Krakow for good. It did however preserve some autonomy in the years 1794-7 as the burgomaster or Kleparz exercised his jurisdiction in a quotidian manner (i.e. settling minor but urgent matters of the everyday life).
Not surrounded by ramparts, Kleparz was an economic – mainly, commercial and artisanal – hinterland for Krakow. The daily life of the town’s fairly poor burghers focused around the parish church of St. Florian and the large fairground. Centrally situated was the marketplace with the town hall, stalls, and a well. Kleparz reached the climax of its development in the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century; the trend was interrupted by the Swedish invasion (‘the Deluge’). The Jews from the nearby Kazimierz visited Kleparz mainly for economic purposes. In the eighteenth century, resulting from the Northern War and the calamities of epidemics and fires, the town fell into considerable decay.
- Subject terms:
- Legal matters
- Legal status of Jews
- Trade and commerce
- Wills
- System of arrangement:
-
Until 1795, a system of chronological entries in the registers was predominant.
The fonds is arranged as follows:
1 Registers and files of the aldermen’s and vogt office’s court (acta scabinalia et advocatialia)
1.1 Aldermen’s registers (scabinalia) 1499-1612
1.2 Vogt office’s registers (advocatialia) 1551-1653
1.3 Vogt and aldermen’s registers (advocatialia et scabinalia) 1649-1794
1.4 Vogt and aldermen’s files, miscellaneous 1514-1794
1.5 Vogt and aldermen’s registers (terminaria) 1693-1738
2 Registers and files of the Council’s office (acta consularia)
2.1 Court records 1539-1802
2.2 Administrative records 1579-1843
2.3 Accounting records 1558-1790
3 Records of supreme authorities re. the Town of Kleparz 1561-1795
4 Records of the guilds of Kleparz (acta contuberniorum) 1586-1796
5 Records of the hospitals and churches of Kleparz (acta hospitalium et ecclesiarum) 1440-1823
6 Burghers’ private records (acta variarum personarum) 1579-1796
- Access, restrictions:
- If copies (microfilms, scans, photocopies) are available, these will be provided to the researcher. Access to original documents requires the Director’s consent.
- Finding aids:
- Inwentarz archiwum miasta Kleparza pod Krakowem 1366-1794, ed. by Z. Wenzel-Homecka and Z. Wojas, Warszawa 1968.
- Yerusha Network member:
- The Taube Department of Jewish Studies of the University of Wrocław
- Author of the description:
- Przemysław Zarubin, Kraków, 2017