53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.153

Two original acts of late 1782 on twenty-six pages, sewn into a book of the castle court of Konin kept in the State Archive in Poznań (Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu). The first is the decree that marked the boundary between Trąbczyn and Łukomia on the ground and so ended the dispute; it contains the full text of the Crown Tribunal’s decree that ordered it. The second delivers one Olęder settler to Antoni Prusimski. They are in Latin and are two documents.

Historical background

The commission of 1775 had ended in two decrees: one by the parliament’s commissioners, for Antoni Prusimski of Trąbczyn, and one by commissioners whom Stanisław Ścibor Chełmski of Łukomia had brought, for Chełmski: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145, 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.116. A law of 1776 sent causes left in that state to the Crown Tribunal. The Tribunal’s first decree in this cause is not in the edition; what it decided is told in the decree copied here. An attempt to carry it out in May and June 1782 failed, as the Konin register shows from the protests of both sides: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.118.

Three kinds of boundary mound are named. The “corner” mounds stand where the lands of Trąbczyn, Łukom and the abbey of Ląd’s village of Drzewce meet. The mounds the Latin calls “aciales” stand at the other end of the line, where Trąbczyn and Łukom meet Biskupice. “Wall” mounds mark the line between the two points.

Contents

The Tribunal’s decree of 17 October 1782. The Tribunal first recalls its decree of 23 January 1782. That decree had taken the two end points of the boundary as the map of 1775 showed them, confirming on that point the decree of Prusimski’s commissioners, and had drawn a straight line between them on the map, signed by the Tribunal’s President and Marshal. It had ordered wall mounds raised along the line and the mounds of Chełmski’s commissioners levelled. It had also ordered that the Olęder settlers whom Chełmski had taken into possession be given back to Prusimski, all but one, Martin Hunt, whose house the map showed on Chełmski’s side of the line [1].

When the two boundary officers came to the ground in May, the sworn surveyor drew the line, and Hunt was not on Chełmski’s side of it. The officer Chełmski had engaged sent the cause back to the Tribunal. The officer Prusimski had engaged proposed to bend the line so that the site of an Olęder holding that had burnt down four years earlier would fall to Chełmski, and Chełmski refused that [1].

The Tribunal now rules that the line stands as drawn. A sworn surveyor, it says, measures boundary lines and boundary signs; houses he marks only by their position, so the place of a house on the map proves nothing. The first decree is final under the law of 1776. The acts of both officers are quashed. Within six weeks a sub-chamberlain or chamberlain, with a sworn surveyor, is to raise wall mounds along the straight line: what lies to the right belongs to Łukom, what lies to the left to Trąbczyn or Nowa Wieś. Hunt, since he does not sit on the right of the line, goes to Prusimski. Chełmski is to pay the sum already adjudged for the revenue he drew from the settlers. Both officers are punished: Prusimski’s with a week in the tower of Radziejów castle and a money penalty, Chełmski’s with a money penalty. The abbey of Ląd, which had entered a precautionary protest and withdrawn it, is freed from the penalty Prusimski claimed [1].

The execution, 28 November to 3 December 1782. Franciszek Ksawery Jasiński, boundary chamberlain of the palatinate of Gniezno, opened his court at the three corner mounds on 28 November. Chełmski met the court on the forest road and asked that his appearance be recorded; he was told it would be if he came the next day, and he did not come. Prusimski produced the map with the signed line. The sworn surveyor, Benedykt Woronowski, a canon of Łęczyca, who had made the map, set the line out with poles, and the court compared it with the map. On 30 November and on 2 and 3 December the court raised forty-one wall mounds along the line, twenty perches apart, and drove thirty-one stakes of alder and oak where the line crosses the marsh called Stawisko. The prior of Ląd attended for the abbey; Chełmski appeared in person on 2 December. Each mound holds five stones laid as a cross, pieces of brick, broken glass and charcoal. The court then had the older mounds levelled [1].

The entry at Konin. Leon Maszewski, Prusimski’s steward at Trąbczyn, brought the decree to the castle office at Konin on 7 December 1782, and the original was sewn into the book [1].

Martin Hunt. On 28 November 1782, at Hunt’s house in the Olęder settlement of Trąbczyn, Józef Łukaszewicz, general commissioner of the palatinate of Greater Poland, delivered Hunt into the possession of Prusimski, who was present, and bound him to obedience to Prusimski [2].

The Konin register for the same weeks has one-line notes of both acts being brought in, and a report and a protest of 7 December on 221 pines that Chełmski’s people cut on the Trąbczyn side of the new line on 28 November, the day the court opened: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.118.

Form and language

Both acts are originals on stamped paper, signed by the officers who made them, and were bound into the court’s book instead of being copied into it. The Latin is formulaic and abbreviated. The Tribunal’s decree is one long period in indirect speech, in which each party’s case is set out before the court’s findings. A blank page between the two acts is not shown.

Related holdings

The commission’s decree of 1775: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.145. The Konin register for 1780 to 1782, with the protests of May and June 1782 and the notes of December: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.118. The registers for 1775 to 1779: 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.116, 53/17/0/-/Konin Gr.117.

Scans

The folder has fourteen images from the archive: one single page and thirteen openings of two facing pages. Each opening was cut at the fold. Twenty-six pages are shown whole; one blank page is left out.

Transcription

The editor transcribed both acts and supplied them by paragraph, with the Latin written out.

Check against the scans

An AI model (Claude) read every page word for word against the scans, in two passes, and corrected 173 readings. The first pass was a light one: eight of the twenty-six pages and parts of seven more, 67 readings. At the editor’s word the rest was then read through, and 106 more readings were corrected, most of them in the Tribunal’s decree.

Five abbreviations had been written out wrongly throughout. The surveyor and the court messenger are “sworn” (“jurato”), where the transcription had “jurisdiction”. The sittings on the ground are “condescensio”, where it had “conditio”, a condition. The officers of Inowrocław and Dobrzyń, and their two field offices, are those of boundary chamberlains (“Camerarium”, “camerarialia”), where it had “commissioner” and “commissarial”. The clerk’s sign for “-us” after a “b” had been written out as “-busque” in about twenty places. And the boundary chamberlain of Inowrocław is “Gorski”, not “Gerski”; the transcription keeps the name as the clerk wrote it, and the English gives it its Polish form, Górski. A word the editor had marked as unread, for what is done with the mounds, is “sipatio”, their raising.

Other corrections that change the sense: what Chełmski had objected against Prusimski from the sitting at Grab was a “condemnation”, not a field inspection; Chełmski alone appeared in person before the Tribunal; the court messenger proclaimed the chamberlain’s court “by his voice”; the Marshal of the Tribunal is “castellan” of Gniezno; and in the act for Martin Hunt Prusimski “was present in person”, Hunt was delivered “into actual possession”, and “obedience” to Prusimski was laid on him.

The second pass changed the sense in four places of the Tribunal’s decree. Orłowski is sentenced to pay Prusimski; the transcription had the name in a case that made Prusimski the one who pays. Words had been passed over in the ruling on Martin Hunt: he “cannot belong to Chełmski; yet Chełmski has possessed him until now”. At the head of the decree the statements about the burnt holding and the map are Prusimski’s pleading, not findings of the court. And Górski is to enter the tower on the Monday after Invocavit Sunday. Each change is logged with its reason.

Division and dating

The chamberlain’s decree, with the Tribunal’s decree inside it and the note of its entry at Konin, is one document, dated by its opening line to 28 November 1782; it sat until 3 December. The delivery of Martin Hunt is an act of another officer and is a document of its own, of the same day.

Translation

The English is the editor’s own translation and was not made again. It was changed in 59 places where the text had been corrected, and the words corrected throughout were changed with it. Thirteen of the editor’s forty-two notes are kept, in square brackets; twenty-nine that discuss readings now corrected are left out.

Summaries

The summaries were written in German from the Latin and translated into English. Each of their 22 statements was then checked against its document. All held.