The Portrayal of Jews in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century Monastery Chronicles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the Basis of Selected Examples

Abstract

Monastery chronicles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth provide valuable insight not only into the history of individual orders and the Polish clergy in general, but also into the history of mentality, daily life and religious and ethnic minorities. Although references to Jews are rather sporadic in such chronicles, they are nevertheless quite diverse and concern almost all aspects of Jewish activity in Poland and abroad. Therefore, they can serve as an excellent complement to other sources in the field, including Jewish ones, and those of various secular institutions and offices. It should be noted, however, that the credibility of the information contained in monastery chronicles is always dependent on the distance in time and space between the chronicler and the described events and should—if possible—be verified against other documentary sources from the same period.