Źródła dochodów klasztoru klarysek w Gnieźnie pod koniec XVI wieku na podstawie rękopisu „Regestrum 1593”

Abstract

The article surveys rents, dues in kind and other revenues of the convent of Poor Clares in Gniezno from their country and town estates in the late 16th c. The analysis was based on the oldest register of income kept in the convent, preserved in the manuscript entitled “Regestrum censuum de bonis de bonis Monialium S[anctae] Clarae Gnesnensis 1593”. The manuscript registered dues from serfs from the country estates with which the convent had been endowed upon its foundation by Duke Przemysl II in the last decades on the 13th c., and from several other villages granted to the convent by King Sigismundus the Old in 1546. The register also noted dues from the inhabitants of Kostrzyn, a town owned by the convent since the end of the 13th c. by the privilege of Duke Ladislaus the Elbow-high, and the convent’s income from the town of Gniezno. This document, however, is not sufficient to estimate the convent’s real proceeds or the sisters’ living standard, since the data in tables (1–4), representing dues in cash and in kind, cover only one of the many sources of the community’s revenue. It may have been the most significant source, nevertheless, the Poor Clares, as any other religious community, had others, e.g. bequests, legacies, mass funds, donations and dowries. It seems that the income from the country and town estates was used to support the nuns and the whole convent community. Judging from its scale, sheep breeding may have been an additional source of income from the convent’s farms, since the demand for wool grew in Greater Poland in the 2nd half of the 16th c. Still, the lack of accounts from that period precludes any estimation of proceeds from that source. Similarly, it is impossible to conclude whether rents and dues in kind were enough to support the community. By analogy to the model of functioning of other orders at that time it can be supposed that the convent in question was primarily supported by income from its landed estate, but due to the lack of other documents from the 2nd half of the 16th c. it is impossible to describe in full the structure of the convent’s revenues or the costs of supporting the community, including the servants, which at that time probably consisted of 30–40 people counting the servants.