Metadata: Registers and files of the Council office (acta consularia) – Administrative records
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:
- 29/36/0/2.2
- Title:
- Registers and files of the Council office (acta consularia) – Administrative records
- Title (official language):
- Księgi i akta urzędu rady (acta consularia) Akta administracyjne
- Creator/accumulator:
- Council of the town of Kleparz
- Date(s):
- 1579/1843
- Date note:
- 1618-1785; 1765-1776; 1773-1793; 1783-1794; 1782-1783; 1792-1793; 1774; 1711-1796; 1579-1843; 1791; 1645-1780
- Language:
- Polish
- Latin
- German
- Extent:
- 12 units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Graphic material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The administrative records of the Town Council and the commonalty of Kleparz form part of the fonds of the Archive of the Town of Kleparz. They are contained in fonds no. 2 – ‘Registers of the office of the Council, so-called consularia’. The territorial reach encompasses Kleparz, incl. the jurydykas [i.e. privately owned tracts of land within a larger municipality] of Szlak and Wesoła. The fonds of administrative records of the Council is quite diverse. Some of the records might have been part of the royal governor’s [wielkorządca] or vogt and aldermen’s records of Kleparz, if not of the City of Krakow (those related to the Four Years’ Sejm period).
The fonds comprises tax registers and fees for the szos [schoss] tax, capitation, and czopowe (liquor excise) for 1731 and 1739–63; individual decrees of the royal governor’s court of Krakow; copies of verdicts of the commissioner’s court session held at the Kleparz town hall in 1739; records of the fustian and cloth manufacturers’ guild, notes of loners (city builders) and of clerks responsible for municipal income and taxes, for 1735-9 and 1757; records of the chamberlain’s court, 1710-12; records of the vogt and aldermen’s office and of the under-vogt [deputy magistrate] office (contestable/incontestable cases), 1784-5; ‘conscription’ (breakdown) of the houses burnt in Kleparz during the Confederation of Bar, 1768; oaths sworn by local officials; lists of houses; property transactions; list of of house owners in Kleparz and in the jurydykas of Szlak and Wesoła (so-called registers of municipal owners/non-owners); revisions of burgher houses; municipal privileges/charters.
In terms of Jewish-related material, of primary importance are the minutes of sessions of the Town Council and of the local commonalty, i.e. 29/36/0/2.2/116 to 29/36/0/2.2/120 (KL116-KL120), dated 1765-93 (i.e. King Stanislaus Augustus’s reign). These contain brief information on chambers and tap-room houses leased by local burghers to Jews of Kazimierz, complaints against Jewish eating establishments, requests to Jews from the municipal lonar ([sic] city builder) to set up a cook shop, resolutions of the Town Council re. a fire threat caused by the Jews, resolutions of the commonalty, ‘responsories’ (responses) of the Town Council re. the Jewish tap-rooms in Kleparz, complaints of local burghers against wholesale of alcohol by the Jews of Kleparz and in the jurydykas of the latter; and, conflicts among burghers resulting from the Jews having been permitted to import, sell and manufacture alcoholic beverages.
- Archival history:
-
Kleparz had one shared chancellery for the vogt, the aldermen and the Council, run by one scribe who had one or more deputies. Reforms at the Kleparz Chancellery were carried out in 1777, resulting from the King’s stamp-paper ordinance which directed the municipalities to have their municipal records standardised. In practice, this brought about chaos in the series of registers kept, as the municipal authorities only partly obeyed the regulation. It was probably in the eighteen century that the Kleparz chancellery introduced a new type of administrative registers; before then, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, administrative records were entered in the Council’s court registers.
The earliest administrative registers date to 1731. They contain reports on sessions of the Council, joint sessions of the Council and the municipal court (aldermen), or joint meetings of the Council and commonalty. The minutes included resolutions of the municipality, decrees of top-level authorities (royal rescripts, inter alia), and ‘ordinances’ [instructions] of the royal governor of Krakow.
In general, the Council-related administrative records primarily include minutes of the municipality sessions and of the commonalty’s deliberations, and those of joint commonalty and municipality sessions. Compared to councillors’ court records, these particular records were kept in a careless and inconsistent manner, leaving the pages unnumbered; at times, two parallel protocols (minutes) were kept; some pages have been torn out. Some registers have probably been lost (particularly, resolutions of the commonalty), whilst passages of the session minutes are missing in the surviving ones. There are four surviving municipality session registers, and one separate for the sessions of Kleparz commonalty from 1782-3, plus one for the conclusions of the Kleparz office.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- The Town Council was a collegial body consisting of twelve members and responsible for town-related affairs. The life councillors were probably appointed by the royal governor of Krakow. Six of them acted on an annual basis as ‘sitting councillors’, the other six forming the consulting body. The Council members had appropriate seniority, having served in other offices, they were Roman Catholic, and mostly craftsmen or artisans by profession. In the aftermath of the deprivations suffered by Kleparz in the eighteenth century, the number of councillors was limited to five. The function of burgomaster (mayor) was performed, in turns, by each of the councillors for six months each; the burgomaster presided over the Council’s deliberations. The citizens holding municipal rights were referred to as ‘commonalty’ (pospólstwo). They had an important role in shaping the town’s policy; they gathered at their own sessions to adopt resolutions subsequently debated by the Town Council. The commonalty was in control of the municipal finance and economy. The commonalty was represented by eight to twelve ‘sworn men’, appointed tax enforcement officers and controlled the town’s builder (loner).
- Access points: locations:
- Kleparz
- System of arrangement:
-
The fonds is arranged as follows:
29/36/0/2.2/115 – [ Minutes of the sessions and resolutions of the municipal council and of the commonalty] 9 January 1618 - 2 May 1785
29/36/0/2.2/116 – [ Minutes of the sessions and resolutions of the municipal council, oftentimes as attended by the commonalty] 20 April 1765 - 30 December 1776
29/36/0/2.2/117 – Register of the sessions of the town of Kleparz 1 March 1773 - 25 September 1793
29/36/0/2.2/118 – [ Minutes of the sessions and resolutions of the municipal council and of the commonalty] 2 June 1783 - 13 February 1794
29/36/0/2.2/119 – Register of the sessions of the commonalty of the town of Kleparz 8 February 1782 - 4 January 1783
29/36/0/2.2/120 – Book of conclusions of the councillors’ office of the town of Kleparz and of the office of the under-vogt and of the municipal court [aldermen] September 1792 - 19 June 1793
29/36/0/2.2/121 – Iuramenta nobilium et spectabilium dominorum proconsulis, consulum, advocati, scabinorum, dignitariorum officialium, tum civium, operariorum, ministrorum et famulorum civitatis SRM Clepardiae ad Cracoviam per me Valentinum Zieliński SRM secretarium actorumque civitatis Clepardiensis iuratum notarium ... 1774
29/36/0/2.2/122 – [Revisions of the houses carried-out in the town of Kleparz upon instruction of the councillors’ office] 1 October 1711 - 16 April 1796
29/36/0/2.2/123 – [Records regarding the houses in the town of Kleparz (lists of houses, purchase-sale transactions, quittances) and records concerning the streets and roads] 1579-1843
29/36/0/2.2/124-29/36/0/2.2/125 – Protocol of the town of Kleparz 1791-92
29/36/0/2.2/126 – [Records regarding the town’s rights, copies of charts/privileges (excerpts)] 1645-1780
- 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