Gdańskie testamenty reciproce i praktyka tworzenia inwentarzy mienia w XVII–XVIII w.

Abstract

The article focuses on two crucial issues connected with property inheritance in Gdansk (Danzig) in the 17th–18th c. First, it discusses spouses’ reciprocal last wills (reciproce testa-ments) as a form widely used in this city and its impact on the practice of establishing the net value of the inheritance. Second, it explains the origin of the probate inventory and the popularization of the particular formal characteristics of this document throughout Europe. On the basis of thousands of testaments and probate inventories of Gdansk burghers from the period between the last quarter of the 16th c. to the early 19th c. surviving in the State Archives in Gdansk it is possible to analyse in detail how those legal instruments developed in the early-modern era. In the light of the Kulm Law (ius culmense, Kulmer Recht), which was applied in Gdansk, a reciproce testament drawn up by spouses made it possible to enlarge the portion of the inher-itance due to the widow (or widower), or to another heir indicated, or to make a charity bequest. This legal instrument allowed to keep up to 7/8 of the worth of the spouses’ property and served to protect the integrity of their workshops. The Kulm Law, following the Flemish law, pro-tected the interests of widows, and did not exclude women — widows or daughters — from inheriting, treating them on a par with male heirs. A key issue in inheritance proceedings was the evaluation of property and of its portions due to particular heirs, some of whom were often minors. This required a socially accepted legal instrument, i.e. a reliable official probate inven-tory, which was the basis of evaluating the property and its portions going to individual heirs. On the basis of the documents surviving in the State Archives in Gdansk, and published comparative materials concerning various regions of early-modern Poland and Europe, the author claims that the widespread knowledge of the rules of drawing probate inventory, as well as the characteristic formal features of probate inventories (the subject order, the balance of values) had resulted from adopting the book-keeping techniques developed since the 14th c. by Italian merchants. Theoretical knowledge and practical tips about drawing an inventory and a balance sheet were systematized by Fra Luca Pacioli de Burgo (1445–1514?), a Franciscan and a mathematics professor, in 1494 in Summa de Arithmetica, Geometrica, Proportioni et Proportionalita. In treatise XI (Particularis de computis et scripturis) Pacioli described the Venetian method of drawing up an inventory and of keeping basic account books, also presenting the profit-and- oss account and the balance of accounts, which were the beginnings of the future balance sheet. Thanks to the development of printing, Pacioli’s ideas were quickly popularized throughout Europe. One of the best works devoted to book-keeping available in Gdansk at that time was Sebastian Gamersfelder’s Buchhalten durch zwei Bucher nach italianicher Art und Weise (published in 1570). The widely described rules of drawing up a probate inventory and a balance sheet were adopted by Dutch, English and German merchants, as well as book-keeping teachers and notaries all over Europe, who adapted them to local legal and social realities (including the level of literacy and arithmetic skills). This also had an impact on the standardization of probate inventories in the 17th and 18th c. This article is part of research related to the preparation of a monograph on early-modern probate inventories in Gdansk.