Kith, kin, and neighbors: communities and confessions in seventeenth-century Wilno 9780801451287, 9780801467530, 9780801467523

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Kith, Kin, and Neighbors

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Kith, Kin, and Neighbors Communities and Confessions in Seventeenth-Century Wilno

David Frick

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Copyright © 2013 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2013 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frick, David A.

Kith, kin, and neighbors : communities and confessions in seventeenth-century Wilno / David Frick.

p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-5128-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Vilnius (Lithuania)—History—17th century. 2. Vilnius (Lithuania)—Social life and customs— 17th century. 3. Vilnius (Lithuania)—Religion—17th century. I. Title.

DK505.935.F75 2013

947.93—dc23 2012041071 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, lowVOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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Contents

Maps 1X Introduction I

Acknowledgments Vil A Note on Usage XXIil

2. The Neighbors 59 3. One Roof, Four Walls 69 1. Over the Quartermaster’s Shoulder 20

4. The Bells of Wilno 77 5. Stereotyping, Writing, Speaking 99 6. Birth, Baptism, Godparenting 117 7. Education and Apprenticeship 138

8. Courtship and Marriage 173 g. Marital Discontents 218

10. Guild House, Workshop, Brotherhood Altar 249 11. Going to Law: The Language of Litigation 274 12. War, Occupation, Exile, Liberation (1655-1661) 290

13. Old Age and Poor Relief 322

14. Death in Wilno 356 Epilogue: Conflict and Coexistence 400

Notes 427 Works Cited 485 Index 507 Appendix A: Selected Streets and Areas Treated in the Text 41Q

Abbreviations 425

Appendix B: Genealogical Tables 421

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Acknowledgments

TT book has been in the making for about fifteen years. A major reason for such a long time frame was the fact that I decided early in the process to publish a portion of my source base, with commentary; this has now appeared as Wilnianie. Zywoty siedemnastowieczne

(Vilnans: Seventeenth-Century Lives, Warsaw, 2008). I refer the reader to that volume (Frick 2008), in addition to the archival locations, whenever appropriate in the course of my argument.

I have also published articles on topics addressed in this book, materials from some of which have been incorporated in various forms. Parts of the introduction have appeared in English and in Polish in Frick 20034, 2008. Aspects of the topic of the competing calendars in multiconfessional Wilno (chapter 4) were treated in Frick 20034; those of ethnolinguistic and ethnoconfessional stereotyping (chapter 5) in Frick 2009; godparenting (chapter 6) in Frick 2007a; separation and divorce (chapter g) in Frick 2007b; the language of litigation (chapter 11) in Frick 2002; the period of the Muscovite occupation (chapter 12) in Frick 2010b

and forthcoming); old age and poor relief (chapter 13) in Frick 2006b. Questions of Jewish-

Christian interactions, which arise in several chapters throughout these pages, were the topic of Frick 2005b and 2o10a. A handbook-style summary treatment of some of the book’s main arguments has now appeared in Frick 2o11. As the reader will quickly note, the main difference between the earlier thematic treatments and their incarnations in this book is the

attempt here, for the first time, to place Vilnans and their negotiations of confessional and religious differences in specific Wilno topographies. This discussion is unique to this book and new, in its specificity, in studies of early modern cities. I have been supported in this work by a number of institutions, to all of which I offer warm words of gratitude. Research trips to archives and libraries in Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Russia were funded by smaller and larger grants and fellowships from IREX, the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright-Hays, and Humanities Research Fellowships from the Division of Arts and Humanities at the University of California, Berkeley. The final writing up of the results was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. The identities of the archives visited will be clear from the list

VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

of abbreviations. Their staffs have my utmost appreciation and gratefulness for their unfailing help. With a project this long in the making, it is impossible to name all those whose ears I have bent and who have generously offered me their advice and encouragement. The list would have to begin with my parents, Ivan and Ruth Frick, who sent me off on the journey; and with teachers, at Indiana University, Bloomington, and at Yale University—especially Riccardo Picchio, Alex Schenker, and Harvey Goldblatt—who gave me the tools, taught me how to use them, and planted the seeds of some of the questions. In Lithuania, Sergejus Teméinas, Dalia Leinarteé, Valerijus Cekmonas, Nadezda Morozova, Elmantas Meilus, Aivas Ragauskas, Ingé LukSaité, Zigmantas Kiaupa, Juraté Kiaupiené, Edmundas Rimsa, and Agnius Urbanavi¢ius helped me find my way in Lithuanian scholarship, archives, and collections. In Poland, throughout my work, but particularly while I was occupied with producing Wilnianie, Andrzej Rachuba, Henryk Lulewicz, Andrzej Zakrewski, Leszek Zasztowt, Danuta Sosnowska, Jan Jurkiewicz, Boguslaw Dybas , Tomasz Kempa, Aleksander Naumow, Waclaw Twardzik, Roman Mazurkiewicz, and Jakub Niedzdwiedz have been constant supports. In Russia, my part-time Berkeley colleague Viktor Zhivov, and in Germany, Hans Rothe, my former sponsor with a Humboldt Fellowship at Bonn University, stepped in to assist me with access to archival materials and with their expertise. Mirja Lecke of Bochum University organized a research/lecture tour of German academic centers in the summer of 2011, once again under the auspices of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, during which I was able to present the results of my work to German scholars; among them, Stefan Rohdewald has been a particularly important Gesprdchspartner over the years. Karin Friedrich and Robert Frost facilitated discussions at the University of Aberdeen. Closer to home, Larry Wolff and Roman Koropeckyj both read the whole manuscript in an earlier version, Elaine Tennant and Tom and Kathy Brady read large chunks, John Connelly, Yuri Slezkine, Peggy Anderson, Jim Sheehan, Victoria Frede, Val Kivelson, and Dan Kaiser discussed materials that ended up as portions of various chapters. Susan Karant-Nunn responded to my many questions. The UC, Berkeley graduate student Russian kruzhok took on one of my chapters for spirited debate, as did the east-central European krouzek. The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC, Berkeley provided a collegial place for discussion over the course of one semester, as did other stimulating forums too numerous to mention. Several graduate-student research assistants provided crucial help, among whom Michelle Viise, Anne Dwyer, and Aida Sakalauskaité gave considerable amounts of their time. Otylia Frick’s constant snoring was a calming blessing. My editors at Cornell University Press, Jamie Fuller and Karen Laun, were patient and careful readers; it has been a pleasure to work with them as well as with the director of the press, John Ackerman. Ingrid Plajzer-Frick lived with my absences, when I was either in archives in east-central Europe or in my study downstairs. Daughter Lillie Josephine, born halfway through the project, asked the first truly fundamental question: “Will it be a chapter book?” Heartfelt thanks to all.

Maps

he maps are the result of my reading of “Lustrations” done of the intramural houses of Tit city of Wilno in preparation for visits by King Wladyslaw IV in 1636 and 1639 (BUJ, B Slav. F. 12 [1636] and BUJ, B Slav. F. 15 [1639]). The surveys were prepared by a royal func-

tionary, a stanowniczy or “quartermaster,” whose job it was to determine where the royal en-

tourage could be housed, and my numbering system follows him as he made his walk through the city. The houses, as referred to in the text, are double-numbered by survey order and house number, thus loosely following the quartermaster’s own numbering system. The numbers of the segments, from 1 to 80, accompany arrows in the maps indicating the direction the quartermaster took in his walk around the town. The individual houses in each seg-

ment are assigned their own numbers. Thus, for example, on the maps of “Upper Castle Street” and “Lower Castle Street and Market Square,” numbers 1.01 to 1.42 indicate that the quartermaster first surveyed the eastern side of Castle Street, from top to bottom, 2.01 to 2.32 that he went next to the houses across the way, again beginning from the top.

Wilno

4pper ~ t+y we. \Y Suburb , River >er Castle

SS. Peter and a7 Th Paul OF

Mosque (_/ {/ Ae

“ee PE cot cate | Castle P~¥ 2Subocz St \XN fof PES S BRS | \\ Ps)NNae& / |goly Z Subocz Gate Trinity Holy Spirit (O)

\ [> Suburb N & (Basins) e on

Rudniki tT % \ st. Teresa Gate >2J‘a (Discalced

te . \ Little Market 4: armelites) Rossa Suburb

cy te, \; oo MPEG reer Sharp

: BEC ae ery: © aRS'\ Fey \AII Saints \eGate

: oe] i St. Stenhen U ;= Uniate a e eS\¢e Nicodemus : Calced aay

ce eies) V1 lz x SS. Joseph and

Step iT O= Orthodox || | 8 \ ‘ George (U)

4

0 = ae Upper Castle Street

em

amc 1

7 D ardin 5

|i

Skop § (reer E rs ~s ,

aee eS

(2 (14

= (w\

4 zs = 20 21

Syie.-& 7 The quartermaster then returned to Jewish Street, surveying the right-hand side from Glass Street to German Street (24.01—24.08), before retracing his steps across the street back up to Glass Street (25.0I-25.04). At this point in the Lustration, we move down to German Street, proceeding from Market Square (i.e., in this usage, from Meat Shop Street) to Dominican Street, along the left-hand

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 35

side (26.01-26.15), before returning on the other side of the street (27.01-27.13). The survey of the neighborhood ended with a walk through the area below German Street: St. Nicholas Street (28.01—28.10) and some back streets—‘“from St. Nicholas to the alleyway leading to the pipe running alongside the Church of St. Nicholas” (29.01—29.03) and the “St. Nicholas Alleyway” (30.01—30.08).?®

There are reasons to treat these streets as a discrete whole, as did the quartermaster. He had arrived here from a neighborhood that did not border on this one, and he would move to quite a different point of departure for the next part of his survey. The main unifying factor was the presence throughout these streets of German-speaking Lutherans living in close proximity to (and often in the same houses with) Yiddish-speaking Jews. But there are other reasons—mostly of wealth and estate—for separating out the more affluent German Street from the neighborhood in and around Glass Street. Taken as a whole, the larger neighborhood contained 105 habitations in 1636, of which 32 (a little under a third) were still completely nonbricked. A sum of 445 chambers (plus 100 alcoves and 131 vestibules) suggests something over four potential family-unit dwelling spaces per house. There were 51 single-story houses and 39 of at least two stories. But these numbers are misleading in that they obscure the differences between the two subcommunities found in this larger neighborhood. Fully 12 habitations did not receive descriptions of any more detail than “ample and spacious” because they were owned by nobles and thus not subject to the obligation of housing guests. Consequently, we find a variety of jurisdictions here: the majority were subject to the Magdeburg law of the magistracy, but five came under the nobles’ land and castle courts, and six under that of bishop of Wilno (the latter clustered together on St. Nicholas Street). Four of the noble houses in the neighborhood, as well as most of those described simply as ample and spacious, were to be found on German Street. Here we come upon a concentration of bricked town houses of considerable size—many in the range of eight to fourteen chambers. This was no doubt the other of the “two most fashionable streets or ways, in which to the greater extent Germans and others live as merchants,” described by Samuel Kiechel during his 1586 visit to the city. The Germans, who had been in Wilno since before the conversion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Christianity, had first congregated in the area around what would become German Street, attending one of the city’s oldest Catholic churches at St. Nicholas (founded at the beginning of the fifteenth or even the end of the fourteenth century). The Reformation in Wilno may have gotten one of its starts among the Germans of St. Nicholas, and the Lutherans would establish their place of worship in a courtyard off German Street in 1555.”° By 1636 we still find a few Lutherans settled in the town houses near their church, although not with anything approaching the density of elite Protestant settlement that prevailed in Castle Street. The widow of Lutheran goldsmith Karol Libert, Anna Glinska, owned houses at both ends of one block of German Street (26.01 and 26.09), and she would eventually marry a Lutheran renter of one of them.*° Lutheran royal doctor and memoirist Macie} Vorbek-Lettow had inherited the family house at German Street 27.04, but he resided when

36. CHAPTER1

he was in Wilno across the street at 26.03.** As we will discover later, although he had many ties to Wilno burghers (especially to the elite on Castle Street) and did not attempt to hide any of them, he was also busy either reclaiming—or inventing from whole cloth (perhaps the latter)—his family’s “ancient” membership in the Pomeranian szlachta (nobles).** This

would ease his social integration with his less dubiously noble, mostly Roman Catholic neighbors. Palatine of Polock Janusz Kiszka (d. 1653)—a Calvinist convert to Roman Catholicism who had a Calvinist wife—owned the house next door at 26.04, although he seems not to have resided there, as the family had been renting it to Jews since 1551. The starosta of Krasnosielsk lived under castle jurisdiction at 26.13 (it, too, had been rented to Jews since 1551). Next to that at 26.14 were Jerzy Karol Hlebowicz (d. 1669), starosta of Onikszta and Radoszkowice (from 1633; he would end his political career as palatine of Wilno, from 1668), and royal courtier Lukasz Wojna at 26.15. The Slucki princes had owned the house on the other side of the street at 27.04 before Vorbek-Lettow’s father Matys acquired it; Jan Kazimierz Pac, the son of the palatine of Minsk, owned the one at 27.12. Some of these addresses

toward the western end of the street formed a neighborhood with the “noble ghetto” of Dominican and Troki Streets around the corner. This rather wealthy street stood in contrast nonetheless to the neighborhood on Castle Street (Kiechel’s other “fashionable street”): it was by now less thoroughly German, and it had a higher incidence of Roman Catholics and nobles. In spite of ties of confession, language, and ethnicity, elite Lutherans from both neighborhoods were set apart from the middle-level Lutheran neighborhood in and around Glass Street. In the narrower side streets and alleyways, even in Glass Street itself, we find many more wooden buildings and much

smaller structures, on the whole in the range of one to five chambers. Glass Street itself boasted nineteen bricked town houses (four of which were described using the diminutive, kamieniczka) but also twelve fully nonbricked structures, even if many of the latter were of two

stories. In fact, in 1636 the street, although about 40 percent wooden, had at least twenty-two two-story buildings and only eleven ofa single story. The glassblowers, for whom the street was originally named, were no longer in evidence here by this time. We find, rather, a concentration of artisans identified by their trades (and occasionally only by a first name); we may assume they practiced those trades in workshops in their Glass Street houses. The Lustration noted four goldsmiths, a trade with a strong Lutheran presence (and a study of goldsmithery in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania finds several more in the neighborhood*?), an apothecary, two barber-surgeons, three tailors, two cobblers, four locksmiths, a carpenter, a swordsmith, a harness maker, a soap boiler, a founder, a dyer, a painter, a stonemason, and a lute maker. Add to this a few middle-level merchants, such as the Marcin Buchner family (which included the importation of spices among its activities), and we see a community of burgher merchants and artisans, largely German and Lutheran, not of the elites but still of some solidly middle financial and social status. If we can rely on the frequencies with which the quartermaster noted professions, this neighborhood had one of the highest concentrations of artisans and their workshops.

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 37

When we look later at various aspects of network formation (godparenting, marriage, clientage, and patronage, for example), we will find a high degree of neighborhood cohesiveness among these middle-tier Lutherans. And yet, even in such a closely delimited neighborhood and network, we still encounter the occasional exceptions: Orthodox merchants and goldsmiths, apparently drawn by ties of professional solidarity; members of the ruling elite, including a bencher, a councillor, and a burgomaster, all Roman Catholic; and the lone noblewoman—Jadwiga Niwierzanka (Glass Street 20.06 and 20.07), the widow of the starosta of Traby, Filon Drucki-Sokolinski, who was the son of the palatine of Polock, Prince Michal Sokolinski. The latter was a convert from Orthodoxy to the Uniate Church and a partisan of the future martyr-saint Jozafat Kuncewicz (beatified in 1642), Melecjusz Smotrycki’s competitor as Uniate archbishop of Polock.**

We are thus clearly dealing with two subneighborhoods here, the loose agglomeration of nobles and Lutherans of German Street and the considerably more cohesive network of Lutheran artisans and midlevel merchants in and around Glass Street and environs. And yet a few things made this mix into one larger neighborhood. First, there was, as I have already noted, the marked presence of German Lutherans in both areas. But second, and more important, a Jewish settlement was beginning to take shape here, drawing together Glass and German Streets. At this point let us take a closer look at the “Jewish neighborhood” in Wilno.*? I have put quotation marks around the phrase because in spite of encouragement, incentives, and commands, the process of the formation of a neighborhood remained unfinished at the end of the seventeenth century, and Jewish settlement—although concentrated—was in no way delimited (to say nothing of being closed behind gates). The term “ghetto” or even “quarter” applied by some historians to Jewish settlement in Wilno in this period misses the mark.*° After the 1551 decree exempting the houses of the grand duke’s council from the rule of the magistracy, Jews began to live and work in certain noble houses: that of Stanislaw Piotrowicz Kiszka (palatine of Witebsk and starosta of Brastaw, d. 1554) at German Street 26.04 (next to that of Vorbek-Lettow) and that of the Stucki princes across the way at 27.04 (now owned by Vorbek-Lettow). This practice cleared a path for Jews to rent and eventually buy other noble houses and finally also burgher houses within the Wilno city walls. Venturing out from these two houses—which would remain “Jewish houses” from the late sixteenth century onward— Jews began to live in neighboring streets between German Street and Glass Street and below German Street toward St. Nicholas’s Catholic Church. A street that had been identified descriptively in 1556 as the one that ran “from St. Nicholas to the hospital of St. Mary [Magdalene]” had acquired a name for one segment of it by 1592: Jewish Street.*” The Jewish community of Wilno differed from those of Cracow and Warsaw (to choose two other capital cities of royal residence) in two crucial regards. First, settlement was established much later here than in Cracow and Warsaw, where Jewish immigrants began to arrive in some numbers from Germany and Bohemia in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Indeed, Wilno was late by the standards of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, where Brest,

38 CHAPTER1

Grodno, and Pinsk first comprised the Lithuanian Va'ad, or Council of the Chief Jewish Communities. The Lithuanian Va'ad was established as a body of self-governance separate from the Council of the Chief Jewish Communities of the Polish Crown lands in 1622-1623. Wilno would be named one of the chief communities only in 1652. Second, unlike Cracow or Warsaw, where the Jews were banned from residing within the walls of the old cities (in 1495 and 1483, respectively), Jews would establish themselves in the heart of Wilno and were thus more of a constant presence for their Christian neighbors.** In response to a complaint against a burgher-led attack on Jewish life and property, King Zygmunt III Waza issued a founding privilege on 1 June 1593 granting the Jews of Wilno for the first time the explicit right to “acquire and purchase dwellings with the nobles, especially since, at the time of our accession to these domains, the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, we found [Jews] living [here].” He further permitted Jews to “have and celebrate their religion, to conduct various kinds of trade and commerce, just as our other subjects who live in our cities in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.” In a separate decree he granted the Jews of Wilno the right to establish a synagogue, cemetery, ritual bath, and meat shops.*° A privilege of King Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki from 15 November 1669 repeated provisions Zygmunt III had made on 28 February 1630. The king had then (in 1630) permitted the Jews of Wilno to erect—as a precaution against fire—a bricked synagogue on Jewish Street on the site where the original wooden main synagogue had stood (between 24.06 and 24.07). He stipulated, however, “that its peak not be higher than the town houses, and that

it bear no similarity in its appearance to Roman Catholic and Ruthenian churches [do kosciolow i cerkwi].”°° The stipulation was one frequently met in grants to found non-Catholic places of worship and in regulations concerning the dress of non-Catholic clergy, who were

not to look like Catholic priests. What is more specific to Wilno is the provision that the synagogue not resemble either a Roman Catholic or a Ruthenian (Uniate or Orthodox) church. At the coronation of King Wladyslaw IV Waza in the winter of 1633, two members of the Wilno Jewish elite, Samuel and Lazarz Mojzeszowicz, received a new privilege. In addition to reaffirming his father’s 1593 grant, Wladyslaw called upon the Jews of Wilno to live not

scattered throughout the town in houses under the Magdeburg jurisdiction but gathered together in one place, after the model of other Polish-Lithuanian cities. Adhering to a project drawn up by Father Marcjan Tryzna, royal secretary and spiritual referendary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the one who resided in the Canons’ Town House at Castle Street 1.05), the king commanded the Jews to “buy, exchange for, or obtain by some other legal means the

wooden and bricked houses in the following places: all houses on Jewish Street on both sides, as well as the houses at the back of Jewish Street across from the meat shops [i.e., the western side of Meat Shop Street], and the houses on both sides of St. Nicholas Street.” The royal decree set a limit of fifteen years, during which time “all Jews [were] required to move to the quarter assigned to them, with a ban on living in other parts of the city.” Exempt from

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 39

that ban were the two original “Jewish houses” on German Street—the Kiszka and the Stucki houses (26.04 and 27.04).°* Some more clarifications came soon thereafter on 20 July 1633. The Jewish settlement would now take in both sides of Meat Shop Street.°* Jews would be allowed to build on any Jewish-owned back properties that opened onto German Street. Those structures, however, could have only windows—no gates of entry to the houses—from the German Street side. A royal commission that had been assigned the task of investigating an anti-Jewish tumult in 1635 proposed the construction of gates to the Jewish quarter, one at Glass Street and two at the intersections of German Street with Jewish and Meat Shop Streets. The gates were to be in the control of the Jews.>? In 1644 the magistracy registered a series of complaints against the Jews, alleging that not only had they acquired all but three or four houses in the allotted streets, not only had they occupied the “best street” in town (presumably German Street, in this estimation) and taken over Glass Street, but they were also living among Christians on Jop Street, Holy Spirit Street, and others, and they were even approaching the town hall. The magistracy claimed it was helpless to protect Jewish life and property because of the multitude of jurisdictions within the city, and it urged the Jews to build the proposed gates for their own protection.** The Jewish side countered that more than twenty houses in the assigned streets were still owned by Christians and that as long as Christians lived there it was impossible to put gates on the community.°° In its ruling on the litigation, the Lithuanian Tribunal set a new twenty-five-year deadline (by 1669) for Jews to purchase the houses in the Jewish quarter, and it allowed Jews during that period to own one house elsewhere in the city for every Christian-owned house in that quarter.°° Appraisals of property values in the proposed Jewish quarter were to be conducted by a commission of two Christians and two Jews in an attempt to obtain reasonable prices for both buyer and seller.’ A survey conducted in 1645 determined that in the Jewish quarter Jews owned thirty-two houses and Christians eleven and that Jews lived in seventeen houses “among Christians.”°® Upon his election as King of Poland-Lithuania in 1669, Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki reaffirmed royal privileges for the Jews of Wilno. This was the year in which the twenty-fiveyear grace period had run out. The king granted a new twenty-year extension (to 1689) on the required move to the Jewish quarter in recognition of the “calamitas moderna temporum [recent misfortune of the times] and in view of the fact that Wilno itself had remained for several years in the hands of the enemy under Muscovy [1655-1661], and the Jews had had to wander around various places and cities.”°°

Although Wilno burghers and guild elders may have tried sporadically to make exclusive claims, they never really received an enforceable privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis (the right not to admit Jews). I know of only one attempt to obtain such a ban: that was during the Muscovite occupation of the city in 1655-1661, and there are some indications that the burghers’ petition to Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovi¢ met with temporary success.°° Muscovite forces

40 CHAPTER 1

had entered the city on 8 August 1655. Soon thereafter (28 December 1655) some Jews of Wilno petitioned the new Muscovite palatine of Wilno, Mixail Saxovskoj, for permission to return to their houses within the walls. The petition seems not to have been granted.°* But Jews, too, returned to the city, even during the occupation. In a protestation from 23 July 1660, well before the city’s liberation, Lewek Majerowicz complained (as did many of the returning Christian Vilnans) that the things he had buried in the cellar when he fled the city were—to his great surprise and indignation!—no longer there.” In fact, although it is certainly possible to discern the outlines of a Wilno neighborhood in which Jews were preponderant, that neighborhood was never—at least in the seventeenth century—uniquely Jewish. The triangular section of the city (German Street-Jewish StreetMeat Shop Street) that had been proposed for Jewish occupation behind gates became largely Jewish but not entirely so. And St. Nicholas Street, which also belonged to the official Jewish quarter, was a kind of dangling appendage across German Street and could not be gated effectively. To get to it from the Jewish Triangle, you had to cross German Street, which— although Jews lived there legally (in two houses only) and illegally—was still a street in which mostly Christians (Lutherans and Catholics) occupied some of the city’s better houses. What is more, many Jews continued to live elsewhere in the city and suburbs. The Lustrations of 1636 and 1639 noted—at a minimum—Jews in three houses on German Street (26.05, 27.06, 27.08) in addition to the two explicitly granted to them (26.04, 27.04).°? I say “at a minimum,” because, as we know, these particular surveys were conducted in order to deter-

mine where members of official entourages should reside while accompanying the king on his visits to the city; the quartermaster was almost entirely uninterested in who also lived in the house in addition to the owner or chief renter. Thus he may well have overlooked other Jews living elsewhere in town as renters in Christian or Jewish houses. Other types of surveys make the picture clearer on this question. In 1676, fulfilling the

requirements of a constitution of that year in preparation for a Jewish capitation tax, Wilno Jewish elders Salomon Jakubowicz and Mojzesz Dawidowicz, along with Jewish bailiffs (szkolnicy°*) Mojzesz Jakubowicz and Lewek Izraelewicz, came before the officials of the Wilno castle court to render their solemn oaths concerning the census of Jews living in the city under jurisdictions other than that of the magistracy (and thus apparently also outside the Jewish quarter). In the castle jurisdiction (i.e., noble houses) there lived 922 “Jewish heads of both sexes, both male and female, children and servants,” and in the Episcopal jurisdiction, 84—in both cases “excluding children under age ten and beggars incapable of work.”® Yet another type of census offered even more information on this topic. In 1690, detailed surveys of the Wilno palatinate were conducted for the purpose of assessing hearth taxes, including two separate reviews of houses subject to the Wilno magistracy and “belonging to the synagogue of Wilno.” In the survey of houses under the jurisdiction of the synagogue we find, in addition to the Jewish quarter and the two German Street houses originally granted for Jewish occupation (the Kiszka and Stucki residences), four more Jewish residences on

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 41

German Street. But it is the much larger review of houses subject to the magistracy that gives a picture of the spread of Jewish habitation—certainly not to every quarter of town but still widely among the city’s Christians. The year 1690 followed immediately upon the expiration of Wisniowiecki’s new twenty-year grace period for removal to the Jewish quarter. The survey noted thirty-one houses in which Jews were living subject to the magistracy. Jews appeared in houses in the Third Quarter (“going from Rudniki Street from Market Square toward German Street on the left side”) and Fourth Quarter (“going from the castle toward the market on the right-hand side”). Perhaps farthest afield from our Jewish Street focal point was the neighborhood around Troki Street and heading toward Wilia Gate, where we find fourteen houses in which at least one Jewish hearth was reported (and sometimes there were several in one house).°° I find no Jews in the Ruthenian neighborhoods: around the Uniate Holy Trinity Church and to the east (right) of the Castle Street-Sharp Street axis, around and to the north of the Orthodox Holy Spirit Church. There are some indications that conflicts between Ruthenians and Jews in the Commonwealth were greater and more violent than those between other Christians and Jews and that either side might initiate the violence.®’ The survey of 1690 ends with the complaint that members of several groups—including specifically Catholic clergy and Jews—refused to cooperate, even though they were living in houses under the jurisdiction of the magistracy. This caveat thus implies an even greater Jewish presence outside the Jewish quarter than that reflected by the registered Jewish hearths.°®

From the Church of St. John to Troki Gate Once again the quartermaster moved from a place near the walls on the southern side of town to a more central location, by now from a bit farther around the clock face; from here he would survey the next several minutes on the dial. Standing at the mouth of St. John Street, with the Jesuits’ Church of St. John and on his right and the now-Catholic Radziwills’ Cardinalia on his left, the quartermaster had before him a thoroughfare that led west-southwest in a slightly bending line from Castle Street to Troki Gate. In those days, as now, its course was divided into separately named segments: St. John Street beginning at the church of that name, Dominican Street (sometimes then called Holy Spirit Street for the Dominicans’ church of that name on that segment) beginning at the intersection with Bishop Street, and Troki Street beginning at the intersection with German Street. And yet, then as now, in the mental geography of most Vilnans it was perceived as a direct path between upper Castle Street and Troki Gate and the road to Troki beyond it. A visitor coming into town from along Troki Road had a commanding view of the city from the end of the plateau before making the short descent to Troki Gate. Once inside the walls, he saw a mostly flat road ahead of him until the intersection with Glass Street/St. Ignatius Street, where the way descended in a graceful curve toward the left to the intersection with Bishop Street before continuing, now on the level, in a slight bend toward the Church of St. John.

42 CHAPTER 1

The quartermaster treated these three streets as a single axis, surveying first the lefthand side of the entire stretch from the Church of St. John to Troki Gate (31.01-34.08) before looking into the little side streets at the gate itself (35.01-36.10). He then made his way back up the other side of Troki Street (37.01-37.14), now turning off to the left to survey all the streets between this main artery and the walls and gates on the northwest side of the city. At the end of the Troki Street segment he turned left into what might be perceived as the continuation of German Street. Then (as later) it was known as Wilia Street because it led to Wilia Gate and eventually, through suburbs and fields, to the Bricked Bridge (near the site of the Green Bridge) over the River Wilia. After registering the intramural houses on this street up to the gate and back (38.01—39.09), he returned to two houses on the Dominican Street section of the main artery (40.01—40.02). He then turned left into what might be seen

as the continuation of Glass Street—called St. Ignatius Street for the Jesuits’ novitiate church and monastery at its end—which he surveyed to the wall and back (41.01—41.06). Not quite returning to the main artery, he made the sharp left into the downwardly sloping and bending Tatar Street, so-called for Tatar Gate at its end, which led to the Tatars’ settlement and mosque overlooking the river in the Lukiszki suburb. (Tatars did not have right of settlement within the walls.) He seems to have registered the houses on this street from the gate back to the Church of the Holy Trinity (42.01-42.07), whereupon he visited the buildings of Bishop Street (43.01-—43.05), which also fell away gently from the intersection of Dominican Street and St. John Street. He then finished his walk through the neighborhood with the other side of St. John Street (44.01-44.05), ending at the Jesuits’ church of that name.°? This part of the survey—no matter how clearly delimited—was, of course, much too farflung to form a cohesive single neighborhood. The houses surveyed at the beginning, for example, were more closely tied to those across the street, visited at the very end, and they had little to do with those visited in the outlying areas in the vicinity of the three gates. Still, there was a certain overarching shape and sense to the grouping. We perceive a major artery from St. John’s Church on Castle Street to Troki Gate and the outlying suburbs grouped along the Troki Road. And from this main artery we find several side streets, two of them leading directly to city gates and to the Lukiszki suburb overlooking the river. These streets and houses—all told, a sizable portion of the surface area of Wilno within the walls—are underrepresented in the information I can glean from the surveys of 1636 and 1639 and from my reading of the Wilno court books. There are two main reasons for this silence in the sources. The first is the large number of nobles who owned many of the

houses along the main corridor between the Church of St. John and Troki Gate. Since these houses were largely exempt from obligations to house guests, the quartermaster frequently recorded little more than the name of the owner, and most often just the title or office—for example, at St. John Street 31.05, “His Grace, Lord Under-Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”—and the fact that the given town house was “rather spacious and fine.”

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 43

The owner of this particular property was Stefan Pac (1587-1640), and we can identify many of his brethren-neighbors. Jan Alfons Lacki (d. 1646), castellan of Minsk (1630) and then Samogitia (1634), owned the house at St. John Street 31.07. Krzysztof Zawisza (d. 1670)

would rise from master of the hunt of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1629), starosta of Minsk (1631), grand notary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1637), marshal of the court (1649), and grand marshal (1654), to castellan of Wilno (1669); he owned the house next door at St. John Street 31.08. One of the Doro(ho)stajskis (Paknys identifies him as Wladystaw’°) owned the houses at Holy Spirit Street 32.05 and 32.06. Holy Spirit Street 32.07 had been the property of marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Jan Stanislaw Sapieha (d. 1635) and was now occupied by “His Grace, Lord Notary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” the brother of Kazimierz Leon Sapieha (d. 1656), both of whom were sons of Lew Sapieha (1557-1633), palatine of Wilno and grand hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Jerzy Chreptowicz (1586-1650), then castellan of Smolensk (1632) and future castellan of Samogitia (1643), palatine of Parnawa (1645) and Nowogrodek (1646), owned a second house at Troki Street 33.01. He was an ardent Roman Catholic; it was most likely his Lutheran wife, Zuzanna Nonhartéwna, daughter of a possible newcomer to the noble estate, Piotr Nonhart, who induced him to buy another house at Castle Street 2.09 among the Lutheran burgher elite. Jan Rakowski (ca. 1594-1639), royal courtier, under-treasurer of the court (1631), palatine of Brzes¢ (1635) and of Wicebsk (1638), owned the house two doors over at Troki Street 33.03.

Returning along the other side of this main thoroughfare, we find Stefan Pierchlinski (d. 1659), royal courtier and cellarer of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, at Troki Street 37.01; Calvinist royal courtier Dawid Szweykowski next door at 37.02; a second house of Jan Alfons Lacki at 37.09; castellan of Smolensk (1631), later palatine of Minsk (1638) Aleksander Massalski (Mosalski) at 37.08; and at 37.12, “His Princely Grace, Lord Hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania”—this was Calvinist patron Krzysztof Radziwill II (d. 1640). Prince Jan Oginski, castellan of Mscislaw, was next door at 37.13, and in the next house at 37.14 lived Prince Szymon Samuel Sanguszko (d. 1638), palatine of Wicebsk. In the next block, at Holy Spirit Street 40.02, we find yet another house owned by the notary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Kazimierz Leon Sapieha. We know much more, of course, about almost all of these individuals than we do about

any of the wealthy and not so wealthy burghers of Wilno, whose stories we will pursue throughout this book. Most of them are profiled—some at considerable length—in the multivolume Polish Biographical Dictionary (Polski stownik biograficzny). We are even able on

occasion to place them at important events in the life of the city. Our first example, Stefan Pac (St. John Street 31.05), was a devout Catholic and a member of the biconfessional

commission—together with his neighbor and opponent in these matters, Krzysztof Radziwill, Calvinist palatine of Wilno and Lithuanian grand hetman (37.12)—that was charged with investigating the anti-Calvinist riots of 1639-1640. During a lull in the proceedings, Pac took on the ceremonial function of giving Radziwill’s daughter, Katarzyna,

44 CHAPTER 1

away in marriage to Jerzy Karol Hlebowicz, who was himself Catholic and a future palatine of Wilno.”* We have already encountered Hlebowicz around the corner at the end of German Street (26.14). Further, Pac served as a witness of the last will and testament of his neighbor Jan Wojeciech Rakowski (Troki Street 33.03).”* But these networks were not the immediate result of neighborhood proximity (as we often find in the case of Wilno’s burghers). It is more likely that the neighborhood was itself the result of already existing networks among the Lithuanian szlachta. After all, each noble house in Wilno was only one among other country and city dwellings (including those in other cities) owned by the individual nobleman, and the given owner may have been present at these Wilno addresses quite rarely, if ever. Moreover, legal dealings, if registered locally at all, would have appeared in the books of the Wilno land and castle courts, which since World War II are in incomparably worse shape than those of the magistracy—a factor that adds to the neighborhood’s silence in this book. But the simple point remains that the nobles were not of the city in the same way as were the burghers or even the residents without citizenship. A second reason for the relative silence of this large portion of the city in the sources available to me is the high concentration of church-owned property, especially in the side streets. In these cases, we do not learn the names of inhabitants. This applies especially to the houses along St. Ignatius, Tatar, and Bishop Streets. Related to this may be an issue of settlement density. With the exception of Wilia Street, the survey gives the impression that the area be-

tween the artery connecting Troki Gate with the Church of St. John and the walls to the northwest, heading toward Lukiszki and the River Wilia, was quite sparsely settled. Even today, a walk along St. Ignatius Street confirms the impression of large, rather open plots of land (within the walls!) associated with churches and monasteries. Indeed, laconic entries for this area register the presence of some imposing ecclesiastical buildings and institutions without linking them to any names. At St. Ignatius Street 41.05 we discover the recently founded “church of the Jesuit fathers and monastery [consecrated only in 1647], where they also have their novitiate.” The seminarium at Bishop Street 43.03 was the so-called Alumnat, the Catholic theological seminary chartered in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII, with its recently (1622) added Renaissance courtyard. The “manor” next door at 43.04 was a residence of the bishop of Wilno. And the collegium across the street at 43.05 was the first seat of the Jesuit Academy, which would become Wilno University, eventually taking over the Lutheran houses on Castle Street at the other end of the block and spreading through its maze of internal courtyards from St. John Street to Skop Street. Catholics, it would seem, predominated here to a greater degree than in any neighborhood we have visited so far. The nobles along the main artery were largely Catholic (with the exception of Krzysztof Radziwill and Dawid Szweykowski, both Calvinists). The churches here—the Jesuits’ St. John (established in 1387, taken over by the order in 1571), the hospital Church of the Holy Trinity (1530s), the recently established Jesuits’ St. Ignatius (built 16221647), the Dominicans’ Holy Spirit (late fifteenth century), the Benedictines’ St. Catherine

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 45

(after 1618), and the Franciscans’ Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “on the Sands” (first half of the fifteenth century)—formed a dense network of exclusively Roman Catholic places of worship. We may suspect that many of the named and unnamed inhabitants of the more modest houses in the side streets attended these neighborhood churches. And yet there were certain exceptions to the rule of noble and Catholic residence here. Even in the main artery we find a few nonnobles, by no means all of them members of the ruling burgher elite (which is weakly represented here). And we can find the occasional exception to the rule of Catholic confession, such as the few Lutheran burghers of Dominican and St. John Streets, who lived in the vicinity of their brethren on Glass Street. Lutheran municipal clockmaker Jakub Gierke, for instance, lived at the corner of Dominican Street (32.01) and Glass Street; we may suspect he felt some sense of belonging in both neighborhoods. As late as 1690, Jews were renting chambers in Christian houses on Wilia Street. Finally, in the side street by the wall at the Troki Gate (35.06) we come upon a house owned by a mysterious “Obdula,” which would appear to suggest the presence of at least one nonbaptized Tatar (Abdullah)—and within the walls, if only barely.’? But he was the exception: the main Tatar settlement was in the Lukiszki suburb on the banks of the River Wilia. In the side streets, there were not only the residences of anonymous burghers and occasional artisans (three cobblers, a boilermaker, a trumpeter, and a fiddler) but also their gathering places—for instance, the Furriers’ Brotherhood and the Wax Works at Troki Gate (36.02 and 36.01), across the main artery from their neighbor Obdula. The Lustration of 1636 suggests an almost even division between bricked and wooden structures among the neighborhood’s 112 habitations and an average of something over three chambers per house and only one building with clearly at least two stories. But the numbers are especially misleading in this case because of the unusually large noble presence. We should clearly think of the artery leading from the Church of St. John to the Troki Gate as one of imposing bricked structures of two or more stories and many chambers (“rather spacious and ornate” was a typical description, with no further information), a sort of nobleman’s ghetto in the city of Wilno. None of these houses was described in any detail by the quartermaster because—since they were exempt from the obligation to house guests— they did not interest him. By contrast, in the side streets we encounter single-story, often single-chamber, wooden houses. My knowledge of the suburbs beyond the three gates of this segment of the Lustration is limited to the few documents I have encountered dealing with owners and inhabitants of houses in these areas. Here too, bridges over a water-filled channel led from the gates to the suburbs. In 1802 the bridge at Troki Gate was bricked, ten paces long and eight wide; at Wilia Gate, likewise bricked, twelve paces long and seven wide; and at Tatar Gate, wooden (as late as 1802!), eight paces long and five wide.’* Here again we sense connections between the suburbs and the parts of the city just beyond the nearest gates.

There are indications that some of the dirtier trades were banished to these suburbs (as well as others). We encounter furriers here (one Bazyli Zawiski, who lived “in suburbio

46 CHAPTER 1 Trocenst actaliter ex opposito Portae Trocensis [in the Troki suburb, directly opposite the Troki Gate]”) and tanners (a certain Tomasz Swiderski).”> And the Salcewicz family, who were

Orthodox members of the ruling elite (with the family house at Horse Street 8.04), owned an empty plot of land “beyond the Wilia Gate, on Tanners’ Street, which goes from the Clay Moun-

tain to the River Wilia.”’° Further, one result of a dispute between Jewish and Christian butchers in 1667-1668 was a decree of the Lithuanian Tribunal banishing the slaughter of animals to the suburb beyond Troki Gate; the decree cited the filth that accompanied the profession in its decision to remove its practice—by both Christians and Jews—from within

the walls to this particular suburb.’” (But note that as late as 1667 Christian and Jewish butchers were still slaughtering animals within the walls, perhaps at their own places of residence.) The Lukiszki suburb beyond Wilia and Tatar Gates, perched on the high bank of the Wilia River, must have been quite a mixed place. In addition to the nearby smells and sounds of the butchers, furriers, and tanners, we find the extramural houses, manors, and gardens of the city’s ruling elite. Many of them kept the boats (wiciny) they used for conducting commerce here on the banks of the Wilia. This was the port of Wilno. Contact with the world led down that medium-sized river to the broader River Niemen (Lithuanian, Nemunas) and thence into the Baltic, with K6nigsberg as a frequent first port of call, before heading to such further destinations as Danzig.’* Here in the suburbs their properties lay side by side with the quite modest wooden houses of families whose only place of residence was beyond the walls.

Among their other neighbors were the Tatars of Wilno, who were settled here with their wooden mosque and school. Tatars had probably been present in Lukiszki from the fifteenth century. Their wooden mosque dated from 1558. In 1631 the Lukiszki suburb was the site of

thirty-two houses and the palace of Jerzy Chreptowicz (the husband of Zuzanna Nonhartowna), who owned two houses within the walls and had founded the suburban Lukiszki Church of SS. Filip and Jakub.”

Skop and Bernardine Streets Now the quartermaster turned his attention to the area between eleven and one on the clock dial, at the northern extreme of the city within the walls. On either side of Castle Street at its very top, just below Castle Gate, were two similar and in fact closely related subneighborhoods. They were close enough to an old branch of the Wilenka, nowadays long filled in and paved over, to smell it in the air from time to time. Rather than a wall or ramparts, this little stream, plus Castle Gate, marked the edge of the city to the north and separated it from the cathedral and the castles. The owners of these houses were mostly Roman Catholic, although here, as everywhere, we can document exceptions to the rule among the owners, and we may suspect exceptions among the neighborhood’s mostly anonymous renters.

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 47

The dwellings were largely wooden, smaller and poorer than most we have encountered so far. And yet the inhabitants of these houses are anything but silent in this book. This is because they were almost all under the jurisdiction of the Wilno Roman Catholic Chapter and some of them additionally under a subjurisdiction known as the Monwid (or Moniwid) Altar—presumably rents from the houses were devoted to the upkeep of that particular altar in the cathedral church.®° They were not subject to, nor did they have access to, the magistracy. The people who lived here took their complaints, deeds of sale, inventories, and wills to the clerical judges of the chapter court, which acted in these cases just like secular courts and adhered to the Lithuanian statute in making its determinations. Access seems to have been freer, and perhaps cheaper, than before the magistracy, since relatively modest people appeared on a daily basis with their smaller and larger complaints. And because the Acta Capituli Vilnensis have been preserved relatively well, we are able to hear a louder and denser set of voices of relatively minor figures than in other jurisdictions. Moreover, these acta, as well as two sets of record books for lower instances of the chapter jurisdiction and the Monwid Altar, also allow us a glimpse of something largely missing from the books of the magistracy: a seventeenth-century Wilno neighborhood in the period from before the Muscovite occupation of the city and the destruction of most of the city archive. Once again the quartermaster’s path reveals that he was attuned to the shapes of Wilno neighborhoods. He began his survey from the mouth of Skop Street at Castle Street, as usual beginning on the left-hand side of the street from his perspective (now facing west). He surveyed all the houses of Skop Street up to Mary Magdelene Gate (45.01-—45.14) and then crossed the street to make the return journey, first examining the house at 46.o1 next to the “little hospital church of St. Mary Magdalene” (established in the 1510s). Just past the church he made a left turn into an alleyway identified only as “a little side street heading toward the castle on the River Wilenka.” Here he surveyed the houses on the street’s left side (47.01— 47.05), with the little river flowing through the backyards, and then returned along the right (48.01-48.04). He now completed his survey of the other side of Skop Street, ending up back at its mouth in Castle Street (49.01—49.13). At this point the quartermaster crossed Castle Street and went to its top, where he would begin his survey of the city’s “left half” (looking down the axis from Castle Gate to Sharp Gate), that is, its eastern side. He entered the first cross street south of the bridge and gate— a “little street going from Castle Street to the Royal Mill”—again apparently registering the two houses and the mill on the left-hand side of the street (50.01-50.03) before crossing over to complete the survey on the other side (50.04-50.08). Then he returned to the mill and to a “little street going from the Royal Mill to St. Bernardine”—probably what would later be known as Mill or Orangery Alley—to survey its six houses (51.01—-51.06). I have no indications here on which side of the street these individual houses lay. “Having entered Bernardine Street from the Mill,” he surveyed three houses (or rather two little manors and a wooden house, 52.0I—-52.03) before reaching the “the monastery of the Bernardine fathers, and there

48 CHAPTER 1

the wooden gate to the Transfluvia [suburb].” Then, “returning on the left-hand side,” he first noted “the Church and Convent of St. Michael,” before bringing his survey back up Bernardine Street to its conclusion for this segment at Castle Street (5 3.01-53.10).** Of these sixty-one dwellings, a mere three—and those widely scattered—were under the jurisdiction of the magistracy (Skop Street 45.01, Mill Alley 50.02, Bernardine Street 53.06). Only one was described as under the castle jurisdiction. This was the little manor of an otherwise unidentified “Lord Vice-Judge of Minsk” at Bernardine Street 52.02. Two other dwellings of unspecified jurisdiction may also have been subject to the castle court. These were the little manor next door at 52.01, which was the property of royal courtier Adam Sakowicz (“five chambers, a store, bakery, stable for a few teams of horses”). Although we find him implicated in Calvinist circles as a sort of client of Krzysztof Radziwitt I], Sakowicz was Roman Catholic. He would hold many offices: chamberlain of Oszmiany (1628), vicepalatine of Wilno (1633-1640, under Krzysztof Radziwill), master of the horse of Wilno (1645), starosta of Oszmiany (1649), palatine of Smolensk (1658), administrator of the treasury of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1659-1662).°* The other possibly noble house was the manor of “Lord Michal Zienowicz, courtier of His Royal Majesty” at Mill Alley 51.04 (“six chambers, a spacious kitchen, an alcove, a little pantry, a shop, cellar, stable for a few teams of horses”).*?

All the rest were either (1) owned and occupied by various “father canons of Wilno” or owned by the bishop himself (45.10, 45.11, 46.02, 47.01, 47.02, 48.07, 51.05, 51.06, 53.08, 5 3.09); (2) the property of the Ambrosian and Korsak bursae (church-subsidized lodgings for poorer students of the Jesuits’ Academy, 45.06, 45.07, 53.10); or (3) the vast majority here— the properties of various artisans, musicians, and “bailiffs general” (functionaries of the nobles’ land and castle courts), mostly Catholic, living under the jurisdiction of the Wilno chapter. The majority of this large third category were single-story buildings (fifty-one of fifty-three described dwellings), predominantly wooden (fifty of sixty-one) with only a few chambers (fewer than four, on average). We often sense the relative poverty of the edge of town in the stories of the owners and inhabitants of these houses. Sometimes we even smell it. Especially on the Bernardine Street side we will sense the tanneries. Hanus Kiczka (Hans Kietzcke) was a Lutheran “white-leather tanner” (WeifSgerber, biatoskornik, baltusznik, also sometimes called a “chamois tanner,” Sdmischmacher, zamesznik) who lived in a little wooden house next to the Royal Mill at 51.01 that contained only “a chamber with an alcove,” in addition to “a workshop in which they tan skins.”** I know from other sources that the Pawel Rachwicz (Rejchowicz) who lived on the little side street heading toward the Mill (50.01) was another Lutheran chamois tanner, again no doubt working from home.®° Just across the Wilenka River from Bernardine Street to the north was a cluster of houses

in a suburban neighborhood called Szerejkiszki, which was under the jurisdiction of the horodnictwo. The horodnictwo—from the Ruthenian word for castle (horod)—is not to be confused with the castle court (sad grodzki, from the Polish cognate word for castle—gréd). The latter was the court of the nobles (also of Jews and Tatars), and its like was to be found

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 49

throughout the lands of both the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The former was a purely Lithuanian institution, found in a few cities of the Grand Duchy. The Wilno horodniczy (administrator of the horodnictwo) had responsibility for the upkeep of the castles, and he ruled over a court that heard the litigation and registered the testaments of the modest owners and inhabitants of the little wooden houses clustered in his jurisdiction under the castles.®°

In addition to the Szerejkiszki suburb, the horodnictwo ruled over houses on the other side of the castles and cathedral, toward the Antokol suburb. I can offer no precise map for these suburban houses, but a picture emerges of a group of tanners and other artisans— many of those in Szerejkiszki were Lutheran—clustered on both sides of the Wilenka and no doubt dirtying its waters in the course of their labors. In many ways, the horodnictwo formed a kind of Lutheran mirror to its Catholic counterpart just inside the city limits on the other side of the Wilenka under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Chapter. Two of the more important holders of the office of horodniczy in our period were Protestant: Piotr Nonhart (1619-1633), a Lutheran, was succeeded by the recently ennobled royal doctor Calvinist Pawel Kleofas z Brylewa Podchocimski (1634-1657).

The documents connected with these houses—both those under the Roman Catholic Chapter jurisdiction and those under the horodnictwo—give a sense of the rough-andtumble of these probably crowded houses and neighborhoods, peopled largely by poorer artisans, some of them engaged in the dirtier trades, plus—always a marker of a poorer, marginal neighborhood—a large concentration of students and other transients, or as one document put it, “students, paupers, and other loose people.”*’ The houses may have been small and probably crowded, but the courtyards must have been of some size. This neighborhood, especially that around Skop Street, seems to have been a good place to tether your horse, the numbers of which may have vied here with the teeming human population. Just a few examples. The one-story wooden house at Skop Street 45.04 had 6 chambers and a stable for 12 horses; that at 45.09 had 4 chambers and a stable for 8 horses. The second house of bailiff general Jan Dziblewski on the little side street off Skop Street (48.03) was a one-story wooden house with only 2 chambers, but it had a stable for 20 horses! And so on. The larger neighborhood boasted only 200 chambers in 61 houses (or 3.3 per house), but it could bed

down at least 288 horses (4.7 per house). This fact, added to the local “tanners’ ghetto,” contributes to the sense of the neighborhood’s olfactory richness. But of course occasional whiffts of equine waste—and human, for that matter—would hardly have been unfamiliar to the noses of those occupying “the most fashionable streets and ways.” A reading of court records often leads to an exaggerated sense of the verbal and physical violence of a society. Still, it is hard to escape the impression that the citizens of these two

neighborhoods were particularly given to litigation and subject to violence. Skop Street denizen “Ambrozy the weaver” was probably one of the more litigious residents of this neighborhood—and that is saying something: the last entry in the record book for a lower instance of the Roman Catholic Chapter was dated 24 July 1655, just two weeks before the

50 CHAPTER 1

city would be occupied and pillaged by Muscovite armies.** Citizens of the chapter were pursuing their small litigations with their neighbors at a time when they could hardly have been unaware of the gathering storm. Those who could do so—mostly the wealthier burghers from the jurisdiction of the magistracy—had already fled to K6nigsberg. Ambrozy the weaver seems to have spent much of his time in court. A scrap of paper made its way into the books of the court at its lowest instance, a list of expenses incurred by one Jan Motowicz (otherwise unknown to me) in litigation with Ambrozy the weaver during the year 1636.°° The violence of these peripheries is given chilling expression in a laconic entry found in the acta of the horodnictwo: “27ma Augusti [1690]. Barttomiej Sobolewski made a claim of a

deflorata virgo [a deflowered girl] at the house of Jan Waserowicz. Sobolewski brought his complaint against Andrzej. Andrzej] Krasmowski alleged that Bartlomiej, who brought the girl Anna Misiewska, seven years old, placed her on a bench and poked her with an awl.””°

The Environs of the Old Calvinist Church On 25 June 1640, after a year of confessional unrest, Wladyslaw IV signed a decree banishing the Calvinists of Wilno from within the walls, but—typical for the practice of that ruler

in which both tolerance and intolerance were mitigated—allowing them immediately to regroup just outside the walls, near their “garden,” which is to say, by their cemetery.°* The Catholic side had made allegations against the Calvinists of general haughtiness and of purposeful shooting of arrows on 4 October 1639 at the Bernardines’ Church of St. Michael and its convent. After a series of anti-Calvinist “tumults” blamed, as so often, on “students” and “other loose people” and after the usual flurry of protestations registered with the jurisdictions willing to entertain them, the Calvinists were both banned and specifically permitted to rebuild, under somewhat different rules, almost within the walls. The king had noted as a root cause of the unrest the close proximity of confessions: “And... it is evident that the location of the Calvinist church among Catholic churches gave the occasion for both the earlier and the current excesses.”°? In fact, three confessions ( four if we consider Orthodox claims on Ruthenian institutions)

competed for hearts and minds in this picturesque neighborhood, which fell away from Castle Street to Bernardine and Savior Gates and their bridges over the River Wilenka to the Transfluvia suburb. Not all of the images were violent ones. In 1622, in the course of the polemic over the “illegally” reestablished Orthodox hierarchy—largely vacant since the 1596

Union of Brest had drawn most of the bishops to the Uniate Church—the Uniates of the Wilno Holy Trinity monastery would claim that Rus knew “from their elders” that “in Wilno, having heard the morning divine service at the [Church of the] Holy Most Pure, the entire people used to go to the Bernardines for the sermon.”°? Melecjusz Smotrycki, Orthodox

archbishop of Potock and archimandrite of the neighboring Holy Spirit monastery, responded by granting the assertion but adding a qualification: “They know this not from old

OVER THE QUARTERMASTER’S SHOULDER 51

people, but even now from the young and from what they themselves saw with their own eyes and reckoned: that when their Calvinist church took up its place alongside the Holy Church of the Most Pure in Wilno, the Rus of Wilno, after hearing the morning divine service, almost

all of them... used to go to the Calvinist church for the sermon, whereby many of them even remained there.”°* Smotrycki’s goal was to set the assertion in its proper context: “Rus used to go to the Roman Church in Wilno; they used to go even to the Calvinist Church. They go even now in many cities—but not led astray by the love of the rite, only partially for the spectacle, partially curiositatis gratia [for the sake of curiosity], and no less for the organ, which the commonality, the simple folk, are wont to do.” His point had to do less with Wilno and more with the identity of “ancient Rus,” but what we see inadvertently is a glimpse of life in this highly mixed neighborhood. The quartermaster began again at Castle Street, now one street down from Bernardine Street, registering the properties on Calvinist Church Street (i.e., St. Michael Street 54.01— 54.09). Then he returned to Castle Street in order to survey the houses on both sides of the next cross street down, a “little street heading toward the [Uniate] Church of St. Iwan [i.e., John the Baptist]” (55.01-55.02 and 56.01-56.06)—-what would much later be known as Literary Alley. His movements became more and more complicated and difficult to chart as

he entered into the narrow side streets of this part of town. Across the little street at the bottom of Calvinist Church Street was the large Bernardine complex. First, directly facing the old Calvinist church was the Bernardine convent and Church of St. Michael the Archangel (founded at the end of the sixteenth century, consecrated in 1629). Behind that was the little Church of St. Anne (founded at the beginning of the fifteenth century, rebuilt a century later), which in turn stood in front of the Church of SS. Francis and Bernard, founded by Kazimierz

IV Jagiellonczyk (d. 1492), and the associated Bernardine monastery. Here the quartermaster surveyed the houses next to St. Michael’s, across the street from the Calvinist church (57.01— 57.05), which street he would not identify any more precisely than “Calvinist church, across the little street an alley.” Then he continued “along that same street to the Holy Most Pure [Virgin],” sometimes also called Savior Street (58.01-58.12). I draw indications concerning the location of specific houses here and throughout the survey of this side of town, from the quartermaster’s frequent use of phrases like “on the other side,” “facing” to describe the relationship of the house then under consideration to the preceding address. In other words, he no longer made it his practice in every case to walk first along the left and then the right sides of streets from beginning to end; rather, he zigzagged back and forth, registering all the houses as he went on both sides of the street. At this point, the quartermaster entered a “little alleyway off Savior Street on the left-hand side” in order to note its two houses (59.01-59.02) before, “again having crossed Most Pure Street on the left-hand side,” proceeding to survey the remaining houses in front of the now Uniate Cathedral Church (60.01—60.03). Here the quartermaster registered the presence of the “bell tower of the Most Pure and the [Cathedral] Church of the Most Pure and the hospital next to the Gate” (61.01—61.08), and then he surveyed the houses across the street. Finally,

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, bene: i : pe Dar are t $55 Fi Yee The feast is celebrated on the sixth Thursday—which was forty days—after Easter. In 1592, Ascension Day was celebrated on 7 May. My point here is that non-Catholics were

well aware not only of the dominant calendar but of its (Catholic) rhythms of feast days.

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The Jewish complaint located the event in time not by a calendar date but by its associated feast. Many—Jews as well as Protestants—were keenly aware of some of the Roman Catholic feast days, since their annual recurrence provided the moments of tension that sometimes led to violence against the minority groups.

A Saxon Month? And what about Wilno’s Protestants? They were certainly fewer in number than the Ruthenians but nonetheless of considerable importance. In the middle of the century the Calvinists were still represented by one branch of the powerful Radziwitt family, and they would long have a faithful backing in a certain middle-level szlachta; and some of Wilno’s Lutherans were members of an urban elite (although largely outside the magistracy), with wealth and political significance disproportionate to their numbers. In other parts of Europe, some Protestant societies made adherence to the old calendar a defining aspect of their difference from Roman Catholics—in England and Sweden, for example, into the middle of the eighteenth century (1752 and 1753, respectively).2° What about here? In short, was there a “Saxon month” in Wilno?

The answer involves certain ambiguities. The question of doctrine and practice in the matter of the calendar reform among the various Protestant churches in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has received next to no scholarly attention. This may be, in part, because it seems to have been a nonissue for the Protestant societies of Poland-Lithuania at the time of the reform. I know of no Polish Protestant defenses of the old calendar, and I am aware of few positive statements on the question. A synod held in Poznan dated its proceedings Thursday, 5 May 1583.7” This was a new calendar date, used without apology—and without comment—in this official context by a provincial synod of the Polish Church of the Czech Brethren (which was in communion with the Calvinists throughout Poland-Lithuania), about half a year after the introduction of the corrected calendar. I have not been able to establish any use of the old calendar in synodal documents at the provincial level after the introduction of the new calendar in 1582. Our records for the Wilno Reformed Church begin only after the destruction of its library and archive in 1611 in a fire that accompanied an anti-Calvinist tumult. The extant records indicate that, at least by that date, the Wilno Calvinist Church was using the new calendar. On the other hand, protocols of the annual provincial synods indicate regional variation within the Lithuanian Calvinist Church. The Wilno synod of 1616 stipulated that the new calendar was to be the norm, except in the so-called Ruthenian (i.e., Belarusan) district of the Lithuanian Calvinist Church, where, “for the sake of the edification of the Lord’s Church,” either calendar was to be permitted.?® This deviation was allowed in spite of increasing pressure for uniformity within the Lithuanian Calvinist Church, with Wilno usage serving as the norm. The provincial synod of 1614 had determined that the “form [of worship] is to be that

THE BELLS OF WILNO_ 85

which is in the Wilno church.”*° By 1644, a provincial synod meeting in Wilno declared that “propter conformitatem [for the sake of conformity] with other churches of God, holy days

should be celebrated there [in the Ruthenian district] from now on according to the new calendar.”*°

Thus, although the Wilno Calvinist church seems to have been using the new calendar from early on, a certain lack of conformity within the larger Lithuanian Church was allowed for some time. In addition to the variance between the Wilno and Ruthenian districts, we should consider the possibility that certain nobles, including those who played important roles in the life of the Wilno Church, allowed or encouraged use of the old calendar on their estates and among their clientele. One factor in both cases may have been the presence outside the towns of large—perhaps preponderant—numbers of Ruthenians, whether Uniate or Orthodox. The case of the chief patron of the Wilno Calvinist church in the first half of the seventeenth century, Lithuanian hetman and palatine of Wilno Krzysztof Radziwill II (1585-1640), raises certain questions. One study has cited a letter from Radziwill as evidence that the hetman was dating his private correspondence according to the new calendar by 1624.** But actually this letter raises more questions than it answers. In it Radziwill invited his friend and regular correspondent, bishop of Wilno Eustachy WoHowicz, to attend “the christening of my little son set pro die 30 Junii stylo novo [for the day of 30 June according to the New Style].”?

Radziwill might well have dated his voluminous correspondence stylo novo without calling attention to the fact. I imagine that this was a necessity in order to avoid misunderstandings, especially given the fact that so many of his letters were addressed to Catholics such as the bishop of Wilno. But the fact that he thought it necessary to inform his good friend the bishop that the christening would take place on a particular day according to the new calendar points rather to a need to be clear. It indicates a sense that the bishop, who knew Radziwitt well, might otherwise mark the event in his social calendar only after figuring out a new calendar equivalent for a perceived old calendar date. In any event, the specification of the calendar points to a usage that was still in flux four decades after the calendar reform. And what about the Lutherans across town on German Street? Here I have only a few pieces of indirect evidence. When Andrzej Schénflissius, longtime pastor of Wilno’s Lutheran congregation, published his Polish-language funeral sermon for Wilno Burgomaster Jakub Gibel (Castle Street 2.13), he silently used the new calendar in giving the date of his death: Friday, 13 November 1637, was a new-style date.** This would seem to indicate that the Lutheran congregation employed the new calendar, at least by this time. Somewhat contradictory evidence is offered, however, by one of the leading polemicists of the first generation of Wilno Jesuits, Stanislaw Grodzicki, who published Two Sermons on the Correction of the Calendar in Wilno in 1589. These works were directed against both the “heretics” and the Ruthenians. They were an answer “to the allegations of both the people of the Ruthenian rite, who take delight in their Greek errors, and also of the heretics, who, as adiaphorists, are displeased by any sort of order.”** It is not entirely clear to what extent

86 CHAPTER 4

Grodzicki addressed local Protestants under the rubric “adiaphorists” (those who believe that certain religious doctrines and ceremonies are matters of indifference) and to what extent his remarks were aimed at heretics in general. Only one passage points directly to the Wilno Lutheran church: “I know,” Grodzicki wrote, “what the heretics of the Saxon faith say, both in Germany (about which books have been published), and also here (about which we

know), that this [adherence to the new or the old calendar] is a voluntary thing... adiaphora [indifferent matters].”?° I find significant the lack of specificity in Grodzicki’s attack on the local Germans (“about which we know”) and the fact that he attributes to them not a defense of the old calendar but an indifferent attitude to the entire issue. This stands in stark contrast to the detail and specificity of his attack on the local Ruthenians. Another piece of evidence, however, may suggest the use of the old calendar by some of Wilno’s Saxons. The above-cited 1627 statute of the goldsmiths’ guild, which divided power between Catholics and others, contained some interesting evidence in this regard. It said (once again) that the priest who was to be engaged was to be “without table, since it would not be proper to include dinners in view of the fasts and vigils of various [brethren] of the

other religion.”° In fact, the guild had long been almost entirely Polish and German. It seems unlikely that the other religion in this case referred to the Uniates or the Orthodox.?’” Thus, the others were probably the still strongly positioned Saxons, whose calendar sensibilities were being considered here. In sum, Polish-Lithuanian Protestants seem to have been employing the new calendar from the very beginning and in an official way, since synodal records were kept according to that reckoning. Nonetheless, there are recurring suggestions of a lack of conformity. And above all, I note the dog that didn’t bark: I have been unable to find any record of internal Protestant discussion surrounding the initial switch to the new calendar—apparently made together with the Catholics in 1582.

A Time to Fast and a Time to Feast If there was no great public polemic over the calendar between Catholics and Protestants in Poland-Lithuania, there was certainly a debate over how the Christian was to make use of his time. The Agenda published in Danzig in 1637, which was to be normative for all Calvinists and Czech Brethren of Poland and Lithuania, established a Church calendar headed simply “The Calendar, which is commonly called Gregorian.”** In smaller congregations there were to be only two services during the workweek, on Wednesdays and Fridays. In the larger congregations, “and where there is a school for this purpose” (this would have been the case at the Wilno Calvinist church), services were to be held twice a day, morning and evening.*° Calvinists and Czech Brethren were to celebrate, among others, Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter, Trinity Sunday, and the Feasts of the Ascension, the Circumcision, and the Transfiguration; in addition, various commemorations of the Virgin

THE BELLS OF WILNO_ 87

Mary, of the Holy Apostles, martyrs, and other faithful confessors and imitators of Christ the Lord “for the call to imitate them in faith and in a pious life.”*° This was a calendar unusually full of saints’ days and high holy days for Calvinist usage. Still, an implicit distancing from perceived Catholic attitudes toward the celebration of holy days is evident in notes on how the Reformed were to behave on those days. All days, we read in the Agenda, are equal: “Not only on Good Friday is Christ the Lord crucified.” On Sundays, the Christian was not to engage “in the labors customary to weekdays.”** Holy days were established among Christians “not for loafing about, nor for drunkenness, danc-

ing, etc.”** On saints’ days, in contrast to Sundays, “having listened to the Word of God, .. . [Christians] proceed to the work of their vocation. They do not spend them in excesses, in idolatry, nor in superstitions.”*? The parish pastor was warned against adding to this already full ecclesiastical calendar, “partly because on holy days sins are multiplied more in taverns, dancing, and in other indecencies, which teach idleness, and partly because there are barely enough working days for the poor to take care of the things necessary for life.”**

Although Calvinists engaged in fasting according to a particular schedule and celebrated certain saints’ days, Catholic polemicists derided them on both accounts for engaging in Catholic activities in un-Catholic fashion. A leading figure among the Czech Brethren in Great Poland, Szymon Teofil Turnowski, published in 1594 in Wilno, as a result of his presence there for a disputation between Protestants and Jesuits, a Mirror of the Christian Religion in Poland, Beginning with the Acceptance of Christianity, Up to the Current Year 1590 [sic]. The work

was answered by Wilno Jesuit Marcin Laszcz in a 1594 tract entitled Eyeglasses for the Mirror of

the Christian Religion in Poland. Laszcz could not fault his opponent for adherence to the old calendar: Turnowski not only accepted the new one; he also claimed at one point to have proselytized for its use among the Orthodox during his stay in Wilno.*° Rather, the Jesuit polemicist attacked what the Protestants had done with the calendar. “I certainly have cause

to praise you,” he wrote sarcastically, “in that you have received our dear St. Adalbert [Wojciech] and dear St. Stanistaw into your Church and, as I hear, have written them into your calendar. And what is more, that you, as you claim, have converted these saints to your faith.”*° Further, Laszcz defended the Catholic calendar of fasts as the original one: “Poles did not eat meat on Saturday for six hundred years; it has only been during the time of you Lutherans that the gluttony has begun... . You cannot stand to look at fasting. You prefer to look into the kitchen where meat is being cooked. Not so did St. Adalbert, who fasted both Fridays and Saturdays.”*” The citizens of Wilno may well have looked into each other’s kitchens, and their noses probably told them when their neighbors were preparing the wrong foods at inappropriate times. Those who lived on the same gallery must have known these olfactory dissonances quite well; they would have been a part of their own sense of the passing of time. An instance of alleged Protestant Sabbatarian carnivory gave the Jesuits of Wilno occasion in 1623 to publish a versified pamphlet deriding the recent death of their Lutheran colleague across

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town, Pastor Mikotaj Burchardy. The unfortunate pastor had apparently fallen from a chicken coop ladder and broken his neck. In this Jesuit representation, the Lutheran congregation of Wilno then wrote a letter (in verse) to Martin Luther in heaven that was to be taken along on the journey by the deceased minister. It turns out, of course, that the addressee was instead residing in hell, “where already a third of the devils speak German,” and where the good minister eventually landed.*® The minister’s fall, moreover, had occurred on a Saturday, when, after returning from giving his sermon and “chugging some booze,” he asked his wife

what was for dinner. Upon hearing that she intended to prepare eggs and some fish, the minister flew into a righteous rage: “Well, stupid,” he says, “do you intend to become a papist That you feed me scrambled eggs on a Saturday?” And so, somewhat enthused by that booze, And raging like a lion over your [i.e., Martin Luther’s] decrees, Being a true son of you, his father,

He bounds up the ladder to the chicken coop fora hen. That head, entirely full of God’s Writ,

Clattered upon the ground such that the wool flew out of it. The tongue, with which he once briskly flogged God’s Words, Was cut by his teeth, whereupon his speech also ceased. And his little soul, when the doors were closed for it in his throat,

Barely escaped, the poor thing, through the other end. Thus if it should smell a bit of musk, May Your Grace direct it to the baths; let it wash itself. And if he should have missed the road to heaven by a bit, (Which is no cause for surprise with a drunk), You should indicate to him the straight road. He wished to eat meat on a Saturday, that true martyr. For, in order not to keep papal fasts, He did not begrudge breaking his neck, falling from the chickens.*°

And there are other passages from the polemical literature suggesting that people (or, in any case, confessional polemicists) in Wilno knew what their neighbors did and when they did it. In a litany of alleged discrepancies between Uniate program and Uniate practice, their observer from across the street, archimandrite of the Orthodox Holy Spirit monastery Melecjusz Smotrycki charged in 1621, “You confess, practice, and teach one way publice [publicly] and another way privatim [privately]. . . . Publice you monks do not eat meat, but

THE BELLS OF WILNO_ 89

privatim—hah!”°° (And he went on to note, “Publice you celebrate according to the old calendar, but privatim according to the new one.”)

The Backwardness of the Ruthenian Month Notall months were equal. In addition to being long or late, the Ruthenian month became also backward, second-rate. Rus was, in the current stereotype, “simple” and “crude,” and one of the ways it betrayed this simplicity and crudity was through a stubborn adherence to the old calendar. When Wilno Jesuit Stanislaw Grodzicki wrote in 1589 against the heretics

and schismatics who favored the old calendar, he attacked the Protestants on issues of dogma and science; his words toward the Ruthenians (his most immediate audience, since the Protestants seem to have refused to fight back on this issue) often added elements of derision. The following passage is typical of Catholic polemical postures: But our Ruthenians point to the current spells of cold weather [in arguing against the new

calendar], and with them they abuse the simple man. But they themselves are much greater simpletons in this matter. . . . If they do not believe me, let them ask those who have been there [1.e., in the Holy Lands], or let them make a quick trip themselves even a bit nearer by, to Italy or to Spain. Then they will see that in those places not only the fields

but even the trees are already now turning green. If they understand that elsewhere it is already much warmer, then why do they wish to mark the beginning of spring according to the warmth of their Lithuania?>*

The inhabitants of the Ruthenian month were, in this representation, isolated and provincial (and cold!), ready to make general pronouncements according to experiences limited to Lithuanian latitudes.

In Catholic (and even some Uniate) polemical works, there appeared the figure of the Ruthenian bumpkin, who was unqualified to participate in complicated discussions of calendar reform and should therefore simply have accepted the findings of the wiser Catholic mathematicians and astronomers. An extreme example of this sort of treatment was published in 1642 by Kasjan Sakowicz. Long-time archimandrite of the Uniate monastery in Volhynian Dubno, Sakowicz had first converted from Orthodoxy to the Uniate Church in about 1624. Nearly twenty years later, around 1640, he made what was considered an impossible confessional move, a conversion across the supposedly nonexistent border between Greek and Roman Catholicism. The last straw in this case, at least according to Sakowicz, was a failed attempt to convince the Uniates of Wilno’s Holy Trinity monastery that it was finally time for the Uniates to switch to the new calendar. >? The work I consider here was entitled A Dialogue or Conversation between Maciek and Dionizy,

the Wilno Schismatic Pop. In it, a Catholic, Polish-speaking visitor to Wilno named Maciek

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encountered a local, Ruthenian-speaking pop, or simple Orthodox priest, named Dionizy. Dionizy’s Ruthenian was represented, in Latin letters, as a kind of crude, jargon version of Polish, and Dionizy mistook all the abstract Polish and Latin technical terms of Maciek’s discourse on the calendar for similar Ruthenian words with physical, rustic meanings. Matematyka (mathematics) became matyka (hoe), and komput (computation, a technical term

for handbooks on determining when to celebrate Easter) became kapiut (they dig) in the Ruthenian perception and rerendering. A final argument against celebrating Easter according to the old calendar was the “great quantity of rotten fish and herring” Maciek noticed in the Wilno Market Square on his way to his conversation with Dionizy.°? In a piece of charming doggerel, Maciek addressed Rus: The poor herrings now roast in the sun, So long have your fast days dragged on. Nay, soon even herrings will not stay, If you the Lord’s Rising so delay.

Know by such a clear clock at the least, When you ought to celebrate the Feast.**

Thus, in Sakowicz’s portrayal, Rus was immediately recognized in Wilno by its adherence to the old calendar, and in an attitude typical of converts toward their former coreligionists, he associated that community—here, both Orthodox and Uniate—with physical degradation. Note further that Sakowicz had simply turned the argument of Grodzicki’s Ruthenian “simpletons” on its head: the old calendar could not be right because it was too hot at Ruthenian Easter. And part of the evidence came from a perceived disharmony of diet and time: the Ruthenians were eating their herring and thin soups out of season. The Ruthenian month thus became a subject for derision on the part of Catholic polemicists and a source of insecurity for Ruthenian elites. In a learned treatise on astronomy, astrology, and the calendars from 1603, Marcin Laszcz joined the polemic once again, provid-

ing a detailed chart showing the constant slippage of the old calendar, such that Easter would eventually be celebrated over the years in all seasons: in AD 23,358, for example, Greek Easter would be celebrated on 15 October; and by AD 43,574, Greek Easter would have made its way through the cycle of months back to 15 March! These futuristic calculations

also belonged to what would become a kind of favored genre among Catholic and some Uniate polemicists: the revelation of the “great absurdities” of Ruthenian usage.

There was a political problem here for Catholic and Uniate polemicists. From 1582 until the Union of Brest in 1596, Catholics could criticize Ruthenian adherence to the old calendar without any restraints. After 1596 the Catholic side was supposed to accept the validity of Uniate usages, including adherence to the old calendar. There was a clear perception among elites that this aspect of Uniate usage was due to a calculation that switching to the corrected calendar would greatly diminish the ability of the Uniate Church to

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compete for souls among “simple Rus.” This perception put Ruthenian elites in a position of internal conflict. Wilno Jesuit Wojciech Tylkowski would write in 1685 that “even the Uniates differ [with respect to the calendar] by permission of the Church for great reasons, but in this it is nota

matter of something that belongs to the faith, but to doctrine.”°° The “great reasons” of which Tylkowski wrote probably had to do with the above-mentioned calculation on the part of Catholic and Uniate hierarchies. When, in 1622, archimandrite of the Wilno Orthodox Holy Spirit monastery Melecjusz Smotrycki attributed to his Uniate neighbors across the street a secret use of the new calendar, he was alleging that they thought of the calendar as

belonging to the category of adiaphora, and it was only because they risked losing their flocks that the shepherds adhered to the old rather than the new. Thus the Uniate hierarchy, too, believed in the simplicity of Rus. Writing in 1628 after his conversion, the now Uniate Smotrycki would claim that his former cobishop and new opponent, Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev Hiob Borecki, had long seen the matter of the calendar as the chief stumbling block for a union of Rus, since the “simple people” could not be made to understand the need for

the correction.’ Uniates left particularly eloquent testimonies to the discontents of difference from the dominant world. They, of course, did not write disinterestedly about Ruthenian difference. They often presented their program with the words of Christ: “That they all may be one” (john 17:21). But these writings are of some use in imagining the kinds of difficulties caused by difference. I cite here two Uniate polemicists: Kasjan Sakowicz and Jan Dubowicz. Both had direct experience of confessional relations in Wilno. Sakowicz spent time in the city in 1640 to make his plea for a correction of the Ruthenian month; Dubowicz may have been related to a family of long-standing importance on the Greek side of the Wilno city magistracy. Both left testimonies to the difficulties of life in a community run on various clocks, and both focused on the absurdities of lives as they were lived in close contact between Eastern and Western Christians. In 1644 Jan Dubowicz called the variance in the celebration of “the same” holy days a matter of “heartfelt disgust” (dyzgust serdeczny): The one sings “Christ has arisen from the dead,” while the other occupies himself with a threnody over the most dear passion of the Lord. One rejoices at the coming of the Holy Spirit, but the other is still preparing for the Lord’s Ascension. These celebrate the festivals of SS. Luke the Apostle, George the Martyr, Stephen the Protomartyr, John the Baptist, but for the others are now the days of the Holy Apostles Simon and Jude, of the Holy Cross, Epiphany, or of Three Kings, the Birth of the Most Virgin Mary. And what is worse, the holy days themselves are broken through various entertainments, work.°®

Uniate polemicist Sakowicz wrote in 1640 of the “shame” involved with the old calendar:

92 CHAPTER 4 By receiving the new calendar you will avoid those difficulties that occur in the married life of a Roman with a Ruthenian woman, of a Ruthenian with a Roman woman, in the making of pilgrimages, in going to sessions of the courts, tribunals, Sejms, to weddings and funerals. Also in the maintaining of servants and retinue of various religions, in preparing different food for them, etc., etc. And so you will have one set of joys from the receiving of the new calendar, in home, in the Orthodox church, in the Catholic church, on pilgrimages. But from adhering to the old—only tribulation of the soul, and a certain shame, and no little incurring of harms. That, Sir Ruthenian nobleman, they do not allow you to celebrate your holy days, but you have to go to court and render account of yourself.... And you, Sir Merchant, have to celebrate Roman holy days whether you like to or not, and your workers are idle, and you have to feed them, give them to drink, clothe them, pay them, and all this takes away from, not adds to, your pocket book. . . . Itis very improper when the one says Christos Wosktres [the traditional Church Slavonic Easter greeting, “Christ has arisen”], and the other will not reply for five weeks Wo istinu Woskres [the

traditional response, “He has arisen indeed”], and your Roman friend in his rejoicing will be dancing about, but you, sitting over herring and sour soup, will be in distress.°°

The Regulation of Public Processions Questions of space and time came together in crucial ways when Vilnans took to the streets in ceremonial marches along more or less precisely established paths and at particular moments, some predetermined by calendars, both secular (e.g., annual “musterings” of the guilds and other corporations) and religious (e.g., Corpus Christi), others in sudden response to circumstance (e.g., visitation of the dying and funeral processions). As an introduction to these issues, let us take a look at some of the structural similarities the various sides encountered in negotiating Jewish-Christian and Christian interconfessional relations in the area of public processions. Lutheran memoirist and doctor to King Wladyslaw IV, Maciej Vorbek-Lettow (German Street 26.03), who was residing in Wilno in 1654 as the war with Muscovy was building, noted his surprise “that the Jews, too (about which we had never heard before)—under their own banner (it was red, edges of the borders white on both sides, with a Hebrew inscription)—mustered with good kit about 130 of the Jews who were eager to bear arms.”°° But perhaps the doctor need not have been so surprised. In fact, every corporation within the city had its own banner and colors, and all were required to muster once a year outside the city “in the field beyond St. Stephen.”°* The exercise served a paramilitary function, since one of the obligations of these guild and other corporation troops was to defend the city in time of attack. Corporations were also required to present their colors to greet the arrival of impor-

tant functionaries. These reviews sometimes provided opportunities for acts of violence against the Jews on the part of the burghers.

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When Christian and Jewish tinsmiths came to a mutual agreement in 1673 accepting four Jewish tinsmiths (“but no more”) as adjunct members of the Christians’ guild, the Jews were accorded certain rights (to work and sell their wares) and obligations (to pay a fee to the guild altar at the Roman Holy Trinity Church). They also received one important liberty: “except for the annual fee, they are to remain free [from the obligation to appear] at all guards and reviews, also at the Corpus Christi procession, and at the arrival [in Wilno] of His Royal Majesty, as well as for the coming of His Grace the Bishop and of His Grace the Lord Palatine of Wilno.”°?

In a series of letters to the Wilno magistracy beginning in January 1682, King Jan III Sobieski admonished city leaders to show some understanding in this matter, “since almost every year... as also now during the recent review of the entire city, fearing attacks, violence at this review, the Jews asked Your Graces that they might be freed of [the obligation], that at least, not going out into the field, they might be reviewed right here in town, namely in the palace of His Grace the Palatine of Wilno.”°? But the magistracy had refused to listen to this Jewish request, and the feared violence did occur. In response to the Jewish petitions, Sobieski made “the aforementioned Jews from now on absolute [absolutely] free from review,” taking “all of them, that is, the entire Wilno synagogue and each individual Jew into Our royal protection.”°* But in 1687 Sobieski again had to remind the magistracy of its obliga-

tions to protect Jews and in particular that it was not to make them appear in public as a corporation at the annual municipal review. In his letter of 1682, the king had placed a considerable monetary penalty (zareka) upon the persons of the magistracy for infractions against the Jewish protections. The magistracy had pointed out that given the patchwork quilt of jurisdictions in Wilno, it was hardly in a position to guarantee protection to Jewish life and property. Still, one protestation reflects at least a partial attempt to do so. In 1681, Stefan Izaak Dziahilewicz, councillor of Wilno (and thus a member of the magistracy), brought before the magistracy a complaint against the elders of the tailors’ guild and against their entire corporation for the tumult they had caused at that year’s review. Dziahilewicz had noticed at the end of the review that two Jewish “companies” (chorqgwie, units gathered under one banner) were standing next to merchants’ and shopkeepers’ companies. As the guild companies began to approach, the tailors’ guild used the presence of the Jews as a pretext for starting a tumult. When Dziahilewicz sent his servants to the tailors, admonishing them to maintain order, they attacked the councillor’s entourage. Thus the protestation was in the end about general sartorial unrule and specifically about attacks upon a member of the magistracy (and not upon the Jews). On the one hand, it would seem that the magistracy had indeed required Jews to participate in the review in 1681 (one year before Sobieski’s first extant intervention); on the other hand, a member of that body located the potential threat to the Jews in the guilds (and not in the

merchants or shopkeepers, to say nothing of the magistracy), and he claimed he had sought—at risk to himself—to maintain civic order.® The Jewish (and Protestant) presence in the streets during Roman Catholic religious processions, whether large or small, formal or semiformal, was a constant potential source of

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friction. A pastoral letter from Bishop of Wilno Mikolaj Stefan Pac written 28 September 1682 gives a sense of some of the situations that regularly arose and of one strategy imposed from above for avoiding conflict: To the parish priests of the city of Wilno. When, here in the city, you carry the viaticum [here: Holy Communion given to those who are dying as a part of the last rites] to the sick

going along Jewish Street, a most unseemly custom has already come into use—that of attacks carried out by the persons and Church servants assisting the priest, who are called sacramentalists. They inflict insult upon the Divine Mystery, when, with great license and unheard-of violence, they attack the Jews they encounter: by beating the Jews with whips and other instruments, by overturning the tables they have put out with items for sale, by snatching those things away; and by various buffoonish derisions of Jews and Jewesses, they incite the rabble to laughter and pillage, and they scandalize the pious. Quite often, in order to have a cause for similar license, they purposely give the sign with the bell as quietly as possible, or they even cease ringing the bell entirely, so that the Jews not be given warning and that they be unable to avoid the encounter with them. Therefore, in order to curb such continuing grave abuses, the scandalizing [of the pious], and the insult to the Most Holy Sacrament, and for the protection of innocent Jews from damages and harm, We most insistently enjoin, and We command without fail, that you never carry the Most Holy Sacrament along Jewish Street, rather that you carry the viaticum to the sick through other streets; moreover, the servants assisting the priest are required to ring the bell loudly as a warning for the Jews, so that they might take refuge the more quickly. Those who disobey this command will be severely punished. Given in Wilno, in Our residence in Antokol.°°

The bishop was interested here in establishing the rules of the game in the Christian-Jewish encounter in a way that would preserve the dignity of the Sacrament, the consciences of the pious, and the health and property of Jews and Jewesses. The rules, in his version, permitted the “sacramentalists” to beat up and rob Jews who did not seek private quarters when the Host passed by in the streets: they remained fair game. But the bishop’s rules also sought to limit such occasions to the point that they would become practically nonexistent. And they mandated severe penalties for Christians who did not abide by them. Above all, they were based on sensitivities to time and place in Wilno topography: Roman Catholics must cease conducting holy processions, no matter how informal, through Jewish Street for the preservation of the sacred but also for the protection of Jewish health, property, and honor. It was a more sensitive issue if a Jew opened shop on Roman Catholic Good Friday or Corpus Christi than if a Ruthenian did so. The argument with the Ruthenian, after all, was over timing, not so much over the body of Christ. Protestant behavior during Corpus Christi, however—given the debates over transubstantiation—was no less thorny an issue, and Roman Catholics were likely to put the heterodox and the Jews in one category: those who

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scoffed at the notion of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Host and who therefore ought not to appear in public or even to open their windows on that day.°” Let us look at one conflict over space and time that was litigated in court. In 1667-1668, the Christian butchers of Wilno fought a legal battle with their Jewish counterparts. Part of the complaint here had to do with how and when commerce could be conducted in a public space. Not only—so the Christian complaint had it—had the ranks of Jewish butchers “multiplied beyond count” (when they had been limited to four by a royal privilege and six by a later guild charter), but on Fridays, and especially during Lent, having established the seat of their slaughterhouse near Roman monasteries and churches, killing cattle in the city publice, and throw-

ing the faeces [remains] out near their synagogue, where people of the Roman Catholic faith are wont to go to gather for Church services at the Reverend Father Franciscans, having laid out cows, calves, sheep, and goats consulto [on purpose], without any annual corporal oath [of allegiance to the city], distrahunt [they sell retail].°°

The appeal in this legal argument was to Catholic religious sensibilities: the incompatibility of Jewish meat and Christian feasts. It was also an appeal to (Christian) public order and propriety: the argument was based on the specter of Jewish dirt and disorder near Catholic holy places and at sacred times. But the motivations were clearly also those of commercial rivalry. The Christian butchers of Wilno were forced to accept the right of Jewish butchers to have their own guild, but they complained when they saw that the Jewish guild was such a successful institution that Christian journeymen found it an attractive and lucrative place to learn their trade. The goal here was to restrict Jewish commerce (“they sell retail”). The protestation about place, time, and manner may have been ancillary to that end. Objections similar to those in the Christian butchers’ complaint about proximities and the normal paths for navigating the city had also been raised in the course of recurrent conflicts between Catholics and Calvinists. In one instance, Catholic protestations claimed that modest Catholics—in this case, Bernardine monks and nuns—could not make their way from their convent and monastery at St. Michael and SS. Francis and Bernard to Market Square without passing by the neighboring Calvinist complex and encountering derisive comments and gestures and general threats to health, honor, and sensibility.°° The royal decree of 25 June 1640 removing the Calvinists from their seat within the walls tells us that the founder and patron of the Bernardine convent and Church of St. Michael, palatine of Wilno Lew Sapieha (d. 1633), had been forced to remove “the dormitories that were on that side of the street facing the Calvinist church” and to wall up the windows because “when the nuns, following common Catholic custom in dedicatione ecclesiae suae [in dedication of their church], hung out banners, then [the Calvinist students from the other side of the street] in contemptum religionis [in contempt of religion] hung out from the Calvinist church facing the nuns’ church what neither honorable lips [can speak], nor the dignified ears of the senate

96 CHAPTER 4 can hear sine horrore [without horror].”’° Whether the Calvinist boys were facing the horrified nuns or had turned their backs to them (more likely the latter offensive gesture), the alleged behavior clearly had to do with an obscene baring of body parts. Here again the appeal was

to offended sensibilities, and it was based upon incompatible juxtapositions: Catholic virgins in Christ facing Calvinist profanities. In both instances—the Bernardine-Calvinist and the Christian-Jewish conflicts—it would have been quite easy to find a minimal detour that would have brought sensitive souls to their goals, from convent to market and from just about anywhere in town to the Franciscans’ church and monastery at the city wall near Troki Gate, without any need to pass by the offending sites. The Christian butchers’ complaint is particularly interesting in this regard. It is hard to imagine how anyone not living on Jewish Street would feel compelled to go to the Franciscans by way of that street, where all the offending carcasses were lying about. This confirms the impression that Christians were a regular presence on Jewish Street and Meat Shop Street, but it also suggests that the Christian butchers were searching hard for something to complain about, since it is unlikely that Roman Catholic Vilnans walked that way to Mass at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “on the Sands.” The representative for the Jewish butchers replied to the allegations of the Christian lawyers concerning sacred time in this manner: that Jewish butchers do indeed “sell meat on Fridays and during Lent, but then distrahunt not publice but privatim, and only to their own Jews

at that.” This may not have been strictly true: there are some indications that Jewish shops, including those of the butchers, served Christians as a kind of neighborhood convenience store when Christian shops had to be closed. Here, too, the question of competition in the marketplace may have been lurking behind arguments about the profanation of the holy. The lawyer for the Jewish side then addressed the question of place: “the fact that Jews slaughter cattle in the city—this is usus antiquus, a majoribus of them introductus [ancient usage, introduced by (their) ancestors] ..., as also the Christian butchers of Wilno do not have their separate house, rather they slaughter cattle partly in their own houses, partly in their meat shops.” And as far as the oath is concerned, the Jewish butchers were ready to swear on an annual basis that they “do not sell sick meats or infected cattle.” The tribunal ruled that henceforth both Jewish and Christian butchers were to do their slaughtering in the suburb beyond Troki Gate.”* What these few episodes reveal is the tension between regulations, both Christian and Jewish, that aimed at maintaining the separation and distinction of members of the two religions on the one hand and on the other the negotiations that necessarily followed—on the part of both individuals and law-giving bodies—when “ideals faced reality.”’* Questions of proximity, public behavior, dress, architecture, and times and place of commerce were not limited to Jewish-Christian discussions. Although Roman Catholicism was becoming the dominant religion of the szlachta and to an extent of the state, its position was weaker in places like Wilno. Jews negotiated some of these issues on occasion with all five Christian confessions; at the same time, the Christians of Wilno were engaged in similarly structured

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debates with each other over dress, behavior, and indeed their very presence in the streets, doorways, or windows during each other’s public processions.

The Wilno Acoustic Environment How people kept time, and what moments they marked as belonging to the sacred, was one of the most pervasive aspects of difference among the peoples, religions, and confessions of early modern Wilno. This was a city in which the calls to worship rarely ceased: think

only of the regular daily, weekly, and annual Jewish, Muslim, and Christian cycles of services—then add to this the conflict between the Christian calendars. The lists of high holy days I have cited (Batory’s list of days on which the Orthodox were not to be called into court, the Calvinist calendar set in the Agenda of 1637, plus the very full Roman Catholic calendar) suggest that the bells of Wilno got little rest. In addition to the bells of the Christian churches, there were the appointed “criers” who called Tatars and Jews to their places of worship. A 1558 account of Tatar life drawn up by a Lithuanian Tatar for Sultan Suleyman noted that, contrary to normal practice in Muslim countries, in Lithuania “before worship, one of our

citizens goes around the streets, summoning aloud [the worshippers] to prayer in the mosque.” The nineteenth-century editor of this text, A. Muchlinski, suggested that this non-Islamic practice was borrowed from Lithuanian Jews, who selected someone to walk through the streets summoning the faithful to the synagogue. ’”? Itis clear that the calendars played a role in the religious violence that took place throughout the age. Daily, weekly, and annual rhythms provided regular occasions for tumults and excesses within the city: every week—every day even—as the various religions and confessions heeded the call and made their way to their closely situated places of worship; every week as the kitchen smells of those who, in the opinion of the other, ought to have been fasting made their way to the noses of those who actually were fasting; every year, as the various confessions celebrated their many and various high holy days, held festivals (often loud), and conducted public processions; every year, at the time of provincial synods.

Noting the inherent difficulties involved in offering a “reconstruction of [the urban] acoustic backdrop” from extant textual descriptions, Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum nonetheless devoted an evocative chapter to “Clock Time Signal, Communal Bell” in his masterful History of the Hour that can serve as a suggestive framework for thought about the peculiarities of seventeenth-century Wilno. The large monoconfessional cities of the west soon reached a “threshold to signalling chaos,” with the plethora of churches, in addition to the municipal bell/clock tower, and the many types of signals to be sent on a daily basis: calls to worship

according to the daily cycle of offices, calls to work, calls to rest, summons to important secular gatherings, call to curfew. Against the background of calls to worship “everyday life was [further] temporally structured through and through by bell signals, with hardly a day resembling another. Apart from signals for proclamations, prohibitions, and ordinances,

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the inhabitants of the city also received a wealth of acoustic information about important public civic events.””4

Seventeenth-century Wilno was a place where the ordering of temporal life through bell signals coexisted with, and indeed was no doubt an auxiliary tool of, clock culture. There was one central municipal clock at the town hall, and there was a municipal clockmaker. In the first half of the century, he was a Lutheran named Jakub Gierke, and he lived at Dominican Street, 32.01.”° The Calvinist church that was within the walls (until 1640) had a “small clock tower.”’° Personal inventories indicate that some of the elite possessed domestic timepieces of various sorts. Among owners of watches and clocks we find Uniate councillor Aleksander Ihnatowicz (1679, Market Square 4.05), Uniate burgomaster Stefan Lebiedzicz (1649, at the city wall heading toward Horse Street 7.07), and Orthodox burghess and merchant’s widow Anastazja Witkowska Gilewiczowa (1684, Horse Street 8.02). Orthodox merchant Grzegorz Sienczyto (1686; he lived at Glass Street 20.05, but the family house was at Subocz Street 78.07) owned a “table clock,” a “hanging clock” (1.e., with a pendulum), and two “pectoral watches.””’ The cacophony of Wilno bells and calls to worship meant that all Vilnans were constantly reminded of the fact that they were sharing the city with a number of other confessions and religions, which could have led to tension and resentment; but it also meant that a citizen of Wilno had a good sense of the rhythms of life of all those others. An insomniac visitor to the old town of a modern European city quickly learns to distinguish the bells of one establishment from those of another—by pitch, volume, direction, and manner and purpose of ringing. Surely Vilnans knew immediately whether a given bell was intended for them and if not, who among their neighbors was being summoned and for what purpose. Bells that summoned Vilnans to shared activities such as work and service to and defense of the city may have served to create a shared identity. After all, not all the bells and signals exerted a centrifugal force upon the inhabitants of Wilno. The bells also summoned a wide spectrum to work in the various guilds, and the night watch announced curfew by “beating the capa [or capstrzyk, from German Zapfenstreich, curfew] on the drums in order to remind [the citizenry] of their obligations.””®

~CHAPTER FIVE~

Stereotyping, Writing, Speaking

nother aspect of the backdrop for the intercultural dramas played out in seventeenthAlene Wilno was that of language, both spoken and written. The lingua franca of early modern Wilno may have been Polish, but in the streets of the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one heard—depending on the neighborhood, or whom one met passing through Market Square—an array of other tongues, including Ruthenian, German, Lithuanian, and Yiddish, to name only the most important of the minority languages that were present on a permanent basis. To this constant spectrum we may add some uncertain numbers, although certainly more than just a few, of Scotsmen and Italians, even the occasional Spaniard.’ Foreign merchants, including a steady stream of Muscovite forest-product and fur traders, resided during their stays in the city in the municipal “guests’ house” located behind the town hall. In addition, Vilnans heard words and phrases in Latin, Church Slavonic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and Ottoman Turkish in religious worship and discourse, and they could have encountered texts written in Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic letters, in addition to the Latin letters used for Polish, Latin, and German. The questions I address here are these. What were the spoken and written linguistic environments in which the citizens of the second capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth conducted their lives? How did the speakers of the various languages perceive and caricature each other in ethnolinguistic terms?

Stereotyping I will start with the stereotypes. In 1642 the Lutherans of Wilno allegedly welcomed a new minister—a “Father Lut[h]ermacher”—recently arrived from K6nigsberg, the nearby capital of Ducal Prussia. A good practitioner of Protestant sacred philology, he liked to insert phrases

in Greek into his homilies when he explicated Holy Scripture. Whether he preached in German or Polish on this first occasion remains unclear: Lutheran Vilnans heard sermons in both languages, and their ministers were often bilingual. In any event, a contemporary Jesuit pasquinade—supposedly “printed in Wittenberg in the year 1642, yesterday” but actually the

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product of the local Uniate printing press—made the minister’s linguistic pretensions the premise of its satire.” The versified mock encomium for the learned clergyman began with a prose “Preface to the Augsburg [Auszpurski] Reader” by a fictitious Wilno Lutheran named Bilger Reinhercigius, who was made to write in a bizarre Polish: “And, understanding that his high intellect is comprehensive of the varieties of lingual spirits [jest pojetny rozmaitosci duchow jezycznych]—

in addition to the Greek, also Polish, Lithuanian, Ruthenian, Latin, German, and a bit of Hebrew—I illustriously dedicate this text to the New Sun, and I publish it to the world with a greeting to schismatic Rus, the Germans, the Latins, and the Wilno Jews themselves.” The short versified pamphlet itself began with a “Greeting As to a Wise Man of Six New Languages Together”: Kaip ad nos il tes Hencher licha duszka minister? Ar tanis bolsz alloon ewona litewska gut est? Od galgen pryszodl, lecz entade sydera weyzdy,

Su dich przyniostes hreckoje gamma tibi. Du kanst greckie logos kadu tua burna hlaholi, Os nori, francie, sasow ducere flux na htaholi?

The “poem” was indeed a bewildering mixture of all six languages, with never more than two words in the same language in succession. It can be “translated” (more or less) as follows: How does the executioner long for us? Does the Lithuanian aura (?) suit you more than others? He has come from the gallows, but here he looks to the stars. You brought with you the “Greek gamma” [i.e., the gallows]. You know Greek words when your lips speak [Ruthenian, htaholt]. Do you, you rogue, wish to bring the Saxons quickly to the gallows [htaholi]??

Hiaholi, the final word of the last two lines, is both the Ruthenian/Slavonic verb “to speak” and the name of the Cyrillic letter h (I), the equivalent of the Greek gamma (I) that had ended the line before, both of which were thought to have the shape of the gallows. I will return to this point in a moment. The Jesuit pamphleteer had replaced the minister’s high ground (i.e., the sacred philologist’s recourse to the pure sources of the original biblical languages) with the Babel that was seventeenth-century Wilno and in which we find real living Greeks (i.e., Ruthenians) and Hebrews, next to Lithuanians, Germans, Tatars, and others. The linguistic assumption made by the author was that Polish was the only spoken language of Wilno with any sort of dignity. It was, in fact, what might be called the framing language of the entire pamphlet—even though, or perhaps precisely because, it was the language least in evidence in the versified

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prologue cited above; and all the other voices, including that of the Catholic Lithuanians, became debased variants of, or deviations from, that norm. But in this first poem of the pamphlet, it was the German with his Greek New Testament and the Ruthenian with his Greek faith, the dissident and the schismatic, who were most closely linked. This joining of suspect religion with suspect social and political identities was a constant in the Polishlanguage portrayals of Lutheran burghers and of “foolish Rus” penned by the local Jesuits. It was adumbrated here through the insistence on the Greek gamma and its Ruthenian equivalent, htaholi. Looking at the matter from the Lutheran and Ruthenian perspectives, the letters were symbols of that which was holy: of Lutheran recourse to the unsullied Greek font of Holy Scripture and of Ruthenian Greek Orthodoxy with its sacred Slavonic letters. But gamma and htaholi were also the contemporary symbol of the gallows, and the identification had wider usage in the works of Polish and Ruthenian baroque writers.* The Greek capital pi (II), which then was written with a shorter right vertical line and thus resembled the capital gamma, also

functioned in this way; it is encountered in the Latin curse i ad graecum pi—‘“go to the Greek pi,” in other words, “take yourself to the hangman,” “go to Hell.” The juxtaposition was much more than gallows humor, and it had quite local and specific referents that would have been immediately transparent to contemporary readers. In the seventeenth century, the members of Schismatic Rus were frequently dubbed Nalewajkos in reference to Seweryn (Semen) Nalewajko, who had led a Cossack uprising in 1594-1596 and was subsequently executed in the Warsaw town square.® Among the voices of Wilno recorded further on in the Jesuit pamphlet, we encounter Sienko Nalewajko himself, come back from the dead to send his own “friendly lesson/sermon” (pouczenie. . . pryjatelskoe) to the new Lutheran minister in Latin-letter Ruthenian (or Ruthenianized Polish) verse. His lesson was, in fact, not at all friendly toward the Protestant clergyman, and he made it clear that the enemies of the Orthodox included not only the Poles and the Uniates—“It is hard for us with the Poles as well, but worse with the Uniates” (Tiaszko nam iz Lachami, a horszz unitami)—but also the sometime ally, the hellenizing Protestant, who, from Nalewajko’s point of view, had nothing to do with what was really Greek. “You gave the sermon,” Nalewajko objected, “hav-

ing begun to utter nonsense in Greek. At the end of the lesson you added something in Czech. We will find for you, you son of a bitch, another tongue in the water. You will speak the rogue’s language in that cold.”° In other words, the resurrected leader of the failed rebellion promised to find for the Lutheran minister the same watery death that had met uncooperative clergy and magistrates, drowned by Cossacks in the recent decades of the conflict over the Union of Brest in various Ukrainian rivers.’ The irony, of course, was that Nalewajko himself had ended his days in a meeting with the executioner. But the central conceit had to do with the uncomfortable connection between Protestants

and the profession of the executioner. Another versified pamphlet parodying recent events in the Wilno Lutheran church, this one from 1623, claimed that the noble patrons of the Lithuanian Calvinist Church treated their plebeian ministers with such disdain that “many a

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one would rather see his son an executioner than a catechist or a minister for Calvin. After

all, that’s just what happened recently in Wilno, that some hangman was their minister.” The author was referring to rumors circulated widely, and gleefully, by Catholic polemicists in the early seventeenth century about a certain Stanislaw Sudrowski, who was an elder in the Wilno Calvinist church. According to those Jesuit allegations, Sudrowski had been an executioner in Lwow before moving north; he had been sentenced to death there for theft,

and the sentence had been commuted to that of taking on the taboo profession of executioner.®

The Lutheran church in Wilno may not have had any executioners among its clergy, but it most definitely had a few in the pews over the years on Sunday morning. The rolls of offerings to the Lutheran church did not regularly indicate professions, but for those years where they did do so we find several executioners (and one “executioner’s widow”) next to bakers,

barber-surgeons, cobblers, and goldsmiths.° The historian of the executioner’s office in Wilno has claimed that the profession—its practitioner was called “master” (mistrz)—was not dishonoring, unlike that of the executioner’s assistants (hycle, dog catchers). I have doubts about his claim: the Jesuit pamphleteers clearly expected their readership to see the profession as ignoble. However this may be, it was certainly a job that required training. And some of the best training was to be had in German-speaking cities. Wilno imported from K6nigsberg not only Lutheran ministers but also masters and their assistants. The executioners were supposed to reside in the Orthodox neighborhood of Subocz Street, in Subocz Gate itself at the city walls.*° It was to this uncomfortable connection between Lutherans and

the gallows that the Jesuit pamphleteer was alluding in his insistence on the minister’s gamma. The broader goal was, of course, to emphasize difference, not only that of all the peoples and confessions of Wilno from the Polish Catholic norm but also differences among those many nations and tongues. But a second goal was also to note something they shared: none of them were of the szlachta; the Lutherans and the Ruthenians in particular were burghers and peasants and were associated in these representations with the lower, physical realm. At one point, the Jesuit pamphleteer had the “old Saxon women” (baby saskie) sing a “thanksgiving to the minister for his szprach and Greek predyk [pseudo-German for language and sermon]” to the tune of a well-known song of the times, in which they (as had also Nalewajko) confused greka (the Greek language) with gryka, which could be a substandard dialect form of greka, although its more usual meaning is “buckwheat.” The substandard adjectival form for “Greek” would have been grycki (standard form, grecki), but the pamphleteer indicated that the Lutheran faithful had confused Greek with buckwheat by having them use the adjectival form that can refer only to the latter delicacy: gryczany, as in that most noble of all kashas, kasza gryczana, or “buckwheat groats.” Thus we hear not of a greckie kazanie (Greek sermon) but of a gryczane kazanie (buckwheat sermon). And the Saxon women complained that the “minister’s speech is complicated” and that “it gets in the way of my prayers when they stuff us full of buckwheat/Greek” (gdy nas gryka otykajq).**

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A final, longer section of the pasquinade of 1642—a “Conversation between Lejba the Jewish Bailiff and Rabbi Lachman about the Arrival in Wilno of the New Talmudist Lut(h)ermacher”—gave the view from the Wilno margins. Lejba had told the rabbi that he had “heard from Hans who goes to the Saxons that a neophyte teacher has arrived here in Wilno; their worthy rabbi reads them sermons in Greek.” Here, too, the immediate connection was the Greek language. In mentioning the “seventy who translate the Bible,” Lejba was referring, of course, to the translators of what came to be known as the Septuagint, which, according to Jewish tradition, was the Greek version of the Hebrew Old Testament done for Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-246 B.C.) and his famous library at Alexandria. Rabbi Lachman was intrigued and gave his blessing to the bailiff to “converse with him about the faith.” The rabbi set the minister’s Greek over that of the local Greeks: “The neophyte does well to take away their Greek, and to catechize the Nalewajkos in his church [zbor’’], for they are entirely unable to defend their faith. They may be Greeks, but they will not be able to save their Greek

language.” But the rabbi finally decided not to send Lejba to the minister for fear of contamination: If he will be a Christian, our Talmuds will perish and all of us will die. He will teach us to

suck pigs, to eat pork, he will teach us to talk Greek, just as he himself does. Shrimps, scallops and crickets, lobsters and crabs will be considered great delicacies on our tables, even though that is forbidden. Rather advise him to join the Mosaic law. Tell him, it is not a big thing; all we ask of him is that he allow us to circumcise him publicly in the synagogue.

“Not a big thing” (nte wielka rzecz), to the rabbi, perhaps; but presumably the good minister was of a different opinion.*? The Jesuit pamphleteers employed linguistic tools at every step, here and in other paro-

dies, to facilitate the stereotyping of the non-Polish and non-Catholic Wilno others.** Lutherans were not just uxorious, beer-sopped burghers and plebeians, Ruthenians were not Just rebellious Cossacks and bearded peasants and merchants, and Jews were not just circumcised Talmudic casuists: they also had exotic—sometimes fancifully parodic—names, and they talked funny. Jews were Lejba and Lachman, Ruthenians Sienko, Dionizy, and Mikita. Germans were occasionally Hans, Hansworszt, and Herman Worszt. But they also had gaudier names, many of which were parodies of the names of identifiable contemporary Wilno Lutherans. To choose just one example, Pothetm Ogonbrychth was no doubt meant to be Wilno merchant and city councillor Wilhelm Engelbrecht (his house was at Castle Street 2.15). (The name was from pét, half, and helm, helmet, perhaps by analogy with pothak, a type of weapon; and ogon, tail, plus the visual absurdity for Polish readers of -brychth.)*> The Jews of Wilno, in this satire, mixed Hebrew and pseudo-Hebrew into their Polish, alongside words of Ruthenian, perhaps even Muscovite origin. Ruthenians added the final t in third-

person singular and plural of verb forms where Polish lacks it, substituted a and u

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for the Polish nasals, sometimes said h instead of the Polish g, and often used so-called pleophonic forms (e.g., gorod instead of grod). Even the Lutherans—at least in their Jesuit representations—knew to make fun of the Ruthenians by calling Mikita borodaty instead of brodaty (i.e., the Ruthenian, rather than the Polish form of “bearded”).*° And, of course, the Germans were made to speak Polish with the standard vaudeville markers of a German accent: the v-sound devoiced to f, s voiced as z, s before stops pronounced as sh (spelled, Polishstyle, sz), z pronounced sharply as ts (spelled with a c, as required by Polish orthography), monosyllables predominant. Minister Verbi Dei became Minister Ferbi Dei (and minister became Swinister, from swinia, pig, often as not); universitas krolewiecka became unifersitas krolefiecka

(University of K6nigsberg), and universitas itself could become unfersztas.

Nor were the Tatars left in peace. The Roman Catholic printing house of Jozef Karcan was involved in the publication of an anti-Tatar pamphlet entitled The True Tatar Alfurkan; the work

was attributed to a fictitious Piotr Czyzewski and published in Wilno in 1617. Czyzewski’s main goal, announced on the baroque title page, was to prove that “Tatars are not nobles, nor landed gentry [ziemianie], nor princes [kniazie], but goatherds [kozincy] and tanners [skdroduby].”

The author identified himself on the title page as one “whose father was killed by the Tatar Assan Alejewicz.” The work was a product of either the Wilno Roman Catholic Chapter or the local Jesuit pamphlet mill. The fact that the work was printed by Jozef Karcan argues at the least for a connection with Wilno Catholic and probably with Wilno Jesuit circles.*’ Contemporary opinion and law distinguished three types of Tatars by estate: simple, Cossack, and Hospodar. The latter group shared certain rights with the Polish szlachta but was excluded from the political life of the Commonwealth; converts from this group to Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, were full members of the szlachta.*® Czyzewski’s main argument was that the perception that there were noble Tatars was based on a printer’s or corrector’s error in the relevant Lithuanian statutes: there was no Tatar kniaz (the Ruthenian word for prince), only the Tatar koziniec (goatherd). Czyzewski used what he saw as stock Tatar names to impress upon his readers the absurdity of the notion of the Tatar prince: just imagine speaking of Prince Mucha (it means fly in Polish), Prince Obduta (i.e., Abdullah), Prince Habdziej, Prince Achmeé (i.e., Ahmed), Prince Assan Alejewicz, etc.*® The stylistic dissonance alone told his readers that the Tatar nobleman was an impossibility. Czyzewski lent his Tatar several qualities that allowed him to make his main point. These, for him, were a servile people, brought to Lithuania as prisoners of war; they had not, as one might have read elsewhere, voluntarily entered into military service under Lithuanian Grand Duke Witold (Lithuanian, Vytautas). At first, they, like the Jews, were forced to pay kozubales. (From kozub, a basket carried by Jews, kozubales was a tax, a kind of protection money, paid by

Jews to Christians, especially students and priests, as they encountered them on the road and in exchange for not destroying or stealing their baskets.) The major Tatar occupations were to work as carters and tanners and to cultivate the land and sell cucumbers and onions—hence

Czyzewski’s further semantic absurdity: “the cucumber noble and the onion gentryman.” These were drunken and violent people, who worked on Sundays and holidays and forced

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their Christian servants to work on those days too. They converted their Christian wives, children, and wet nurses to Islam. They engaged in sorcery and spying. And finally, although they affected szlachta ostentation, wearing silk clothing and other costly items (which they should cease doing), they were physically crude: “one smells some sort of unpleasant stench from little Tatar children, which one never smells from Christian children.”7°

The Tatar, in Czyzewski’s representation, was a willing participant in every sort of violence and lawlessness. “Ifanyone wants to make a raid upon someone, the Tatars will quickly help in this. If you want to murder somebody, get yourself a Tatar. If you want to raise a ruckus, the Tatar won’t say no, to the contrary, he will take the lead.” What is more, and here the stock Ruthenian rebel once again came into play, “If you wish to be a Nalewajko for the destruction of the state, you will see that all the Tatars will flock to you like flies to honey.”?* And note that the stereotypical Tatar often spoke—in contemporary Polish representations— a form of Ruthenian or Ruthenianized Polish. The solution to the Tatar problem, according to Czyzewski, was to be found in the Spanish model, which did not tolerate heretics or Jews. Czyzewski offered a ten-point program: force the Tatars to go to church and listen to sermons; make them work for the church (ringing bells, hauling wood, etc.); demand a tithe for the church from their communities; destroy the mosques and forbid them to hold private services at home (and allow the Jesuit students of Wilno to use the resulting scrap wood to heat their lodgings); remove their privileges, and forbid them to take part in “knightly affairs”; establish a head tax, and force them to do public works (repairing and building the walls around Wilno, etc.); make them care for soldiers’ horses; forbid them to walk about in silk garments, wear swords, or have servants (in imitation of the szlachta); forbid them to work on Sundays and holy days; and finally, “compel them to come in” (the classic proof text for the licitness of compulsion in religious matters; see Luke 14:23)—threaten them with expulsion from the land if they do not convert.*? Czyzewski concluded his work with a call for the removal of the Tatars from the city of Wilno.** Presumably this meant from their settlement in Lukiszki. There are good reasons for exercising caution in evaluating the historiographic useful-

ness of these ethnolinguistic stereotypes. First, all our written evidence on this topic in seventeenth-century Wilno stems from those who laid claim to control over the discourse: Polish-speaking and -writing Roman Catholics (mostly from Jesuit circles). The lack of such sources from other camps should not make us blind to the probability that a set of sociolinguistic stereotypes about the others, including caricatures of the dominant Polish-speaking

Roman Catholics, functioned in each of the more weakly situated groups, alongside the anxieties and insecurities often met on the margins. Second, the fact that the dominant discourse portrayed the others as deviations from the Polish and Catholic norm does not mean that those others did not contribute to the shaping of contemporary Wilno Polish usage. And third, the Polish of that place and time, even in the usage of Roman Catholic Poles or polonized people, was not what we think of as standard codified Polish. In fact, all the languages of seventeenth-century Wilno may have been hybrid, to greater and lesser degrees, and the

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Polish was certainly that of the eastern borderlands with its characteristic articulations and intonations. The Jesuits attempted to make the local Lutherans into vaudeville Germans. But all indications are that on the one hand, second-generation Germans, such as royal doctor and memoirist Maciej Vorbek Lettow, were more at home in Polish than in German (their first-generation fathers saw to this) and that, on the other hand, the Polish of a majority of Vilnans was most likely similar across the confessions and different from that spoken in Cracow or Warsaw.” What we witness in these pamphlets is an attempt by local Jesuits to create or exaggerate differences and then to exploit them. One wonders, however, just how successful these pasquinades ultimately were; after all, many Vilnans, of various confessions and religions, saw the students of the Jesuit Academy, with their noble pretensions and refusal to be subject to the magistracy, as the most obvious “intruders.” And—except for in these pamphlets—the Lutherans, unlike the Calvinists and the Jews, were left mostly in peace. And yet, some of those differences must have been palpable to contemporaries. The Jesuit pasquinades suggest that Vilnans of different confessions may have dressed differently from each other. The Jesuits of Wilno lampooned the religious practices of the local Orthodox by having them act out Ruthenian “simpleness.” The congregation—this was the premise of a pasquinade from ca. 1635—was supposed to have put a note in the coffin of a recently deceased local merchant by the name of Jarmula Zlotowicz. This was to be a sort of letter of recommendation to St. Peter. The letter, written in a kind of Latin-letter Ruthenian, “involuntarily” revealed the foolishness of the Ruthenian congregation: “And that was a good man, he did not have a bit of pride in him. He walked about in a sheepskin coat, he did not tie up

his great boots, nor did he ever comb his hair; he didn’t wipe his nose or his ass, and he didn’t wash his feet.” In similar fashion, the religion of the Orthodox was “innocently” portrayed as naive, downright primitive. The letter threatened St. Peter that if he did not receive

Zlotowicz into heaven, the Orthodox of Wilno would “put all of your icons out of our churches, nor will we kiss your bones.” But if he fulfilled their demands, they would “thank you before good people, princes, lords, and boyars of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and paint grand icons to you, and Jarmuta’s son will set out a great wax candle to you, and will beat his forehead in submission to you.”?° (The Jesuits may not just have been making fun of a perceived Ruthenian crudeness here. They may also have sought to deride a funeral practice that set the Orthodox apart. In Muscovy, letters of attestation to St. Nicholas were regularly put into the hands of the dead in preparation for burial.)?’ On German Street, so one of the Jesuit pasquinades tells us, “there sits a crowd of Hosen Saksen in gaudy federhuts ” (Hosen Saksen gromada/W szumnuch federhutach siada). The federhut is

the German feathered hat, and Hosen Saksen, the term used here to describe the ethnos itself sounds a bit like place-names such as Frankfurt’s Sachsenhausen suburb but also turns the Germans into “Saxony-pants” (Sachsen-Hosen). And in fact, one of the collective—and derogatory—terms the Wilno Jesuits and others used for the Germans was pluder (Polish plural as an ethnonym, pludrowie; as clothing, pludry), which was the German (and borrowed

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Polish) term for the short, puffy pants popular in and characteristic of Luther’s Germany.*® (In German, it was usually Pluderhosen.) While the Jesuit pasquinades must be used with caution when it comes to descriptions of dress and grooming of Wilno’s non-Roman Catholics, other evidence suggests that some such differences may have been real and functioned in the perceptions of contemporary Vilnans. On 28 March 1669, an inquisition was conducted at the request of the bishop of Wilno, Aleksander Sapieha, in the matter of an altercation between Samuel Brykman, a goldsmith who did not belong to the local guild, and guild members, who had attacked and robbed him. He had apparently been living and working in a property under the jurisdiction of the bishop or the Roman Catholic Chapter and thus in theory was exempt from the rigors of guild statutes. The guild members felt otherwise. One part of the recorded inquisition tells us of the offending goldsmith’s appearance: “The German goldsmith [Brykman], having heard the ruckus on account of more people in the vestibules, since he had a small chest before him, hid it in his pludry and went into a German rage” (do pluder schowat 1 po niemtecku furtowat).*°

A case heard before the bishop’s consistorial court in Wilno on 28 January 1668 tells of the nighttime robbery of a German in the Rudniki suburb carried out by a priest and his lay accomplices, one of whom gave testimony in this fashion: “I caught sight of the German. We attacked him. The priest struck him first with the flat of the sword that Pawlowski and Nacewicz had taken away from a Tatar during the day. . . . Interim [in the meantime] all four of us grabbed that German, took his coat from him, Karny [the priest] knocked his hat off his head, they took away his sword, Father Karny immediately reached into the pocket of his [the German’s] pludry, [looking for money].”?° Brykman and the anonymous German victim of nocturnal priestly violence may have been recent arrivals in Wilno, but their recorded sartorial predilections suggest that we should keep in the back of our imaginations certain sensory differences—dress, speech, song, and cooking and other smells—that were associated with smaller and larger groupings of the various confessions and ethnicities. Were Vilnans readily able to assign ethnicity and confession or religion on the basis of speech patterns, tastes in song and dance, grooming habits, dress, gait, diet, and so forth? The evidence points on occasion in both directions. Think only of worries among Roman Catholic authorities that Vilnans might confuse a Calvinist minister, as he wended his way through the streets of Wilno to visit the sick, with a Catholic priest.** All this suggests that we must be alert both to the levelings that brought Vilnans together and to the legible markers of difference, both subtle and obvious, that kept Wilno society in a constant state of tension.

Writing Now the second question: What was the written environment in which seventeenthcentury Vilnans conducted their lives? I begin with an aspect about which I have no evidence,

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only a strong suspicion based on what seems to have been the irresistible urge, felt across cultures and centuries, to scribble and to carve letters, words, and phrases on everything from masonry walls to wooden benches. Wilno can hardly have been the world’s only graffiti-free zone.** We may imagine a preponderance of the majority language in the given neighborhood, but we might also suspect a certain amount of “tagging” done by the literate in the public space of the market and in the territories of the others. Furthermore, late medieval and early modern cities sported other sorts of more officially sanctioned signage: identifications of streets, houses, and businesses.?? Some of these would have been images, but some were texts, and we may suspect that—again, depending on what part of town they were in—not all of them were in Latin-letter Polish. These most public of signs must remain an imagined backdrop for what we know from extant documents. Among the latter we find scattered autograph signatures and the rare holograph letter from Wilno family archives. Wilno was a multilingual city, and many individual Vilnans spoke, and some were literate in, more than one language. Consider, for example, the letters sent by second-generation Dutch Calvinist merchant of Wilno, Korneliusz Winhold IJ, to his Lutheran cousin Dawid Rendorf. The Winholds were not nobles, although they served as arendars (lease holders) for the Calvinist Radziwills.?+ The elder Winholds sent their young son on a “peregrination to the schools” in imitation of noble customs. He arrived in Marburg in 1615 at age fifteen and matriculated at the academy in Basel the following year.*> A few years later we find him looking in on family business concerns in Amsterdam and planning a trip to Paris. He sent an autograph Polish letter (with an address in German) from Amsterdam to Wilno in 1620 and another, in German but with a French address, from Paris in 1621.7° Secrecy may have played some role in the choice of languages for the body of the letters (Polish in a letter sent from Amsterdam, German for that from Paris), transparency in the addresses (German in Amsterdam, French in Paris). However this may be, the exchange between the young Calvinist and his Lutheran cousin suggests a community of German-Polish bilingualism—and literacy—among Wilno Protestants. And in this particular case we find a twenty-year-old merchant’s son with fluent mastery of at least two modern languages (next, no doubt, to grammatica, i.e., Latin) as well as of the quite different hands customarily used to write them.*’ But these sorts of private documents have not survived in great numbers for Wilno burghers, and we are most familiar with the hands of the “professional writers,” the notaries charged with keeping the acta for Wilno’s many secular and religious corporations. These included the books of the several jurisdictions that made up the patchwork quilt of the Wilno legal systems—the land and castle courts for the nobles but also for the Jews and Tatars; for the burghers the magistracy but also the Roman Catholic Chapter and the so-called horodnictwo. In addition, the Roman Catholic consistory kept its own records, as did, apparently, some court-like venues associated with Wilno’s other confessions. In addition, there were baptismal, marriage, and death records for most if not all of Wilno’s confessions. (The possible exceptions here were the Orthodox in addition to the Jews and Tatars.) Confraternities

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connected with the various churches kept records of meetings, contributions, and “inscriptions” (sometimes autograph), as did at least some of the trade guilds. Jewish and Christian societies functioned in parallel structures. In addition to rabbinical writings in Hebrew with some Aramaic admixtures, we may assume—although none of this is extant for Wilno—the presence of record books, the pinkasim, kept by the Jewish kahal and perhaps also by the burial and charitable societies, as well as by the Jewish guilds.** An extant Yiddish “Ballad on the Martyrs of the Wilno Blood Libel,” apparently published in Amsterdam ca. 1692 but probably produced by a Wilno Jew, may serve as confirmation of some sort of Yiddish scriptural community in the city in the period even if there was as yet no standard orthography for the language.*° Finally, there is a reference to a judge—a qadi—for the Tatar community of the Wilno county, and he may well have kept some sort of record book, although it is not clear in what language. We have the last will and testament of such a qadi from 1594, entered in Ruthenian

in the books of the Wilno castle court but with an Arabic-letter signature.*° In general, Lithuanian Tatars, including those of Wilno, produced and read so-called kitaby (the Slavic plural of the borrowed Arabic word for book), Arabic-letter—although Slaviclanguage!—collections of legends, fables, adventure stories, descriptions of Moslem rituals, moralistic tales, and guides to fortune-telling and interpretations of dreams based on the Koran.

What we may call scriptural communities grew up around these secular and religious sodalities and nodes of authority. Most Vilnans were members of multiple communities. Even the illiterate and the semiliterate participated in them in some ways: their oral testimony would be recorded; they would listen to the reading of documents; they would have notarized extracts from them made for their personal archives. After all, to choose only one example, the possession of a record of legitimate birth could be extremely important to the bearer and his heirs in a variety of contexts, even if the directly interested parties were unable to read it. We find an easy equation of the languages of scriptural and ethnic communities only on the margins and among the non-Christians. Few were the erudite Christians who could read Hebrew and had an interest in Talmudic interpretation or Kabbalah. Perhaps there were one or two such persons at some point among the transient communities of Wilno’s Jesuits or Dominicans. Perhaps people like our Lutheran minister from K6nigsberg had some biblical Hebrew at some point in their studies: we know of contacts and conversations between Antitrinitarians and Jews (and Karaim in nearby Troki),** but that would have been about it. It is doubtful that Christian Vilnans had an interest in, or access to, the record books of the kahal or other Jewish bodies. For almost all non-Jewish Vilnans, with the exception of a few theologians, Hebrew letters must have seemed a secret code. The same no doubt held true, only more so, for the Arabic-letter writings of the Lithuanian Tatars. The Tatars assimilated linguistically within a generation or so and began speaking and writing a variant of Belarusan (Ruthenian) if they were village dwellers or Polish if

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they lived in a city like Wilno. But they wrote their Slavic kitaby (perhaps also the records of the Tatar judge, if he kept them) in Arabic letters. There was a functional similarity here with Yiddish. This was a language based on the spoken idiom of the Christian environment but with considerable admixtures of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish and written in the sacred

letters of the cult. Only the rare Christian orientalist or merchant/traveler would have had access to this scriptural community.** Scholars have noted a tendency among Lithuanian

Tatars to establish hierarchical equivalencies, translating Arabic texts of great cultic dignity into Polish (but again—in Arabic letters!), lowlier Turkish material into Belarusan (Ruthenian).*? A brief footnote here: Polish-Lithuanian Jews not only read Yiddish and Hebrew written in Hebrew letters; they also read Polish in that form. We know this, among other things, from rare privileges granted by Christian authorities transcribed in this manner—Polish texts written in Hebrew letters—and entered into Jewish record books.** I have no evidence for this sort of scriptural practice in Wilno. We do know, however, that Wilno Jews knew Polish to varying degrees of fluency and for use in various forums (in the marketplace, in court, perhaps with Christian neighbors), and so we may wonder whether they jotted things down from time to time in Hebrew-letter Polish. Here, again, the alphabet could have functioned as a secret code. There are some indications that Lithuanian Jews learned Polish and Ruthenian from the Christian servants who lived with them.*° Finally, we have evidence of various local German hands. We find them in the acta of the magistracy, where Germans signed legal documents written in Polish or Latin and in the scripts normally employed with those languages. Further, German script was routinely employed in the various record books of the Wilno Lutheran church. It may have been less a mystery to some seventeenth-century non-German Vilnans than to later readers of German. I find some evidence that those with business interests beyond Wilno were able to read, even write, in this script. After all, one common trade route took merchants and goods down the River Wilia to the Niemen, thence eventually to the Baltic Sea and to K6nigsberg, as the first port of call to the old Hansa network. K6nigsberg was the first choice of asylum for Vilnans of all confessions, including the Orthodox, during the Muscovite occupation of Wilno. Asylum seekers signed oaths of loyalty to the elector of Brandenburg in the winter of 1656. See, for example, the autograph signatures of Calvinist merchant Michat Baranowicz and Lutheran Adam Palczewski. Neither was German, but both signed the oath in that language, the former in a standard German hand, the latter in a Polish hand.*°

The other scriptural communities—centered around Latin letters in the various Polish and Latin hands, and Cyrillic, which was used for both Church Slavonic and Ruthenian— were much less specific to confessional and ethnic identities. True, it was mostly Ruthenians who signed their own names in Cyrillic by the seventeenth century or who read anything in that script other than the court documents and royal decrees that were written in Chancery Ruthenian. Still, the Lithuanian land and castle courts, which served the nobles, as well as the Jews and the Tatars, continued to employ Lithuanian Ruthenian cursive as a chancery

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language until 1696. Its use was obligatory until that date for all land and tribunal decrees. In the course of the seventeenth century it appeared in fewer and fewer court documents, depending upon which territories we look at. But we still find it often enough in the highly fragmentary acta of the Wilno land and castle courts and right up to 1696. Usage here ranged from documents written entirely in Chancery Ruthenian through those in which boilerplate introductions and/or conclusions accompanied specific acta entered in Polish to entries entirely in Polish.*’ For example, the Polish-language testament of Katarzyna Rejchowicz6wna Gierlicowa (“the street leading to the Church of St. Iwan,” 56.05), which was recorded in the acta of the Lida castle court in 1658, had such a Ruthenian-language prologue; it was rerecorded with the Wilno court of the bench in 1663. She was Lutheran, as had been her first husband; her second husband had been Calvinist.*® The household archives of the nobles—not just Ruthenians, but also Roman Catholics, Calvinists, and recently gentrified German Lutherans—could have included significant amounts of texts with Ruthenian writing in them, including deeds of sale, wills, litigation, and other legal instruments. Furthermore, individual Jews and Tatars who went before the land and castle courts, either with Christians or with fellow Jews and Tatars (and we find examples of both, although Jews were not supposed to litigate with other Jews outside Jewish courts), would have been in possession of similar types of documents with varying amounts of textual material in Ruthenian. Even the occasional burgher who pursued a case up to the Lithuanian tribunal came home with a Ruthenian decree. (Some contemporary copies of Ruthenian court pronouncements were made with Ruthenian morphemes but in Latin letters in a standard Polish hand.) The acta of the other jurisdictions—the magistracy, the Roman Catholic Chapter, and the horodnictwo—were kept in varying proportions of Polish and Latin, depending on the type of document and the level of the instance. For example, the acta of the lowest instances of the Roman Catholic Chapter were kept entirely in Polish. At the highest instance, proceedings of the canons were kept in Latin, although last wills and testaments, as well as records of various sorts of litigation between residents of the chapter jurisdictions, were often still recorded in Polish. These forums heard cases brought by Christians of all confessions, as well as by Jews and Tatars, on the principle of actor sequitur forum rei (the plaintiff goes to the court of the accused).*° Although the magistracy functioned according to a well-defined system of Greek-Roman parity and there were notaries for both the Greek and the Roman benches, Cyrillic was used rarely, at least in the extant acta of the Wilno magistracy. A common pattern here was a Latin prologue and/or colophon with a Polish main text. Vilnans of all confessions, religions, and ethnicities participated in these Polish-Latin scriptural communities, occasionally leaving written evidence of their presence through Cyrillic, German, and Hebrew signatures. There were other indicators—in addition to signatures in alphabets, scripts, and languages other than those of the documents themselves—that point to a blurring of the boundaries between linguistic systems, or perhaps a creation of hybrids that included more than

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one of them. Readers of seventeenth-century Polish texts—from baroque poetry through polemical pamphlets to forensic prose—are used to deciphering Polish-Latin macaronicisms.°° Clearly, the complicated games played by the more sophisticated practitioners of the literary art differed from the habitual use of Latin in the forensic genres, as did both of these rhetorical styles from the code switching and simple mixings of average speakers in multilingual contexts. Some of these performances required an acute awareness on the part of both actor and audience that a well-defined linguistic boundary had been crossed. Others were the result of an equally profound lack of such awareness. Still, from high to low, an everyday presence of more than one language and an openness to hybrid solutions was part of the linguistic backdrop. One of my favorites in the local usage at the lower end of the artfulness scale—I’m not certain how widely the usage was spread—is that of the Latin pauperibus, the ablative plural of pauper, employed as a Polish nominative. This example is taken from a court interrogation: |Plomieniony Fiedorek Andrzejewicz chodzit do bramy przez kilka nocy 1 tam z pauperibusami w

bramie nocowat (the aforementioned Fiedorek Andrzejewicz came to the gate for several nights

and he slept there together with the [other] pauperibusses).°* Here, on the whole, Polish functioned as the framing language, with Latin words and phrases inserted and correctly inflected according to Latin norms but governed by the rules of Polish syntax. But we also find Wilno Lutherans introducing Polish words into their own German texts in similar fashion, switching to a Polish hand for Polish words and sometimes giving proper Polish inflections to the Polish words, depending on the requirements of the German syntax in the larger context. One example: Anfenglichlichen [sic] daf§ haus inn der Rudnischen gassen, welches von Ihr Gnadden fraw Elisabeth Volerofney Alexendrowey Holowniney.

[First, the house on Rudniki Street, which [belongs to] Frau Elisabeth Vonlerofna Alexendrowa Holownina.]

The name has been put in the Polish dative, as required by the German syntax. The woman is identified according to the rules of Polish legalese: she is Elizabeth, daughter of Voler, wife of Aleksander Hotowna. But note that the first name of this Lutheran woman is left in German, Elisabeth, not the expected Elzbieta (dative, Elzbiecie); that her patronymic is written the way a German would pronounce the Polish—Volerofnej, not Folerowne] (or, actually, Fo[n]larownej, as she is in Polish documents?’); that her husband’s names (they are possessive adjectival forms) are absolutely correct Polish; and that her two names were written in a German hand, those of her Ruthenian husband in a Polish hand. And we find this combina-

tion of scripts two lines later in the names of two Poles: Lukasz Hoscilo and Melchior Rudzianski, and a bit further along two “foreign” words (Contract and Inventiret).°? In somewhat similar fashion, we find scribes absentmindedly switching back and forth on occasion

between Latin and Cyrillic hands, turning passages—apparently unintentionally—into

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Polish-Ruthenian hybrids. Given the close similarity of the two spoken languages, we should consider the likelihood that literate non-Ruthenian Vilnans could make out varying amounts of Ruthenian textual material.

Speaking This brings up the final set of questions. What languages did Vilnans speak in public and more private places, and how did they speak them? Did spoken usage reflect similar sorts of slippage between language boundaries? The sounds of seventeenth-century speech are, of course, largely unreconstructable, but written sources offer some indications of paths for fruitful speculation about the linguistic aspect of Wilno’s acoustic backdrop. Especially useful here are those protestations in which citizens defended their honor in court against the “dishonoring words” (stowa uszczypliwe) uttered against them by their neighbors. Most were not satisfied with the simple allegation that their honor had been challenged: they wanted to put on record the precise words that had been uttered against them. There is, of course, a paradox here: in having his protestation recorded, the plaintiff was preserving in

writing for posterity—and making as public as could be for his contemporaries, for whom his honor or dishonor were quite real things—precisely what dishonoring words had been used to slander him. Here, it would seem, we finally come close to hearing something like the living speech of the seventeenth-century Wilno market, street, and chambers. Again, three caveats. First, these are the words of the accused, as reported by the plaintiff: Still, there are certain reasons to expect some sort of reliability here: should the litigation proceed to the next stage, in the absence of other witnesses, the plaintiff, as the one “closer to the proof” (blizszy do dowodu), would be called upon to take an oath in three days’ time,

together with two “co-jurors,” swearing to the veracity of his allegations. Such oaths were taken seriously and not only for religious reasons, as there could be penalties for refusing to take the oath, since now the complainant could himself become liable to charges of defamation. Second, Wilno was a city of many languages. It is not necessarily the case that

the alleged exchange of words took place in the language of the acta—which was most often Polish, occasionally Ruthenian. Third, more important to me here, these recorded insults—seemingly so full of real lives—adhered to certain generally recognizable rhetorical norms.

The peoples of the various ethnicities who have laid claim to the city have either argued explicitly in their modern national historiographies or tacitly assumed that the sounds of Wilno were largely music to their own ears. Poles have tended to equate the language of the majority of the sources with the language of the majority of the speakers and imagined a chorus of pure Polish in the streets of Wilno. Lithuanians have seen the use of Polish in

chancery documents as a political necessity and caught the intonations of Lithuanians

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speaking their own language in more local and private settings. Others will hear Ruthenian when they make mental visits to the neighborhoods of early modern Wilno; still others will hear Yiddish or German. The question of what languages Vilnans spoke can never be answered definitively, but the sources provide a few clues. There is no direct answer, for example, to assertions by some scholars that although the city may have written Polish, it spoke—at least in some places and in some situations—Lithuanian. And yet a court case from the horodnictwo sheds a little indirect light on the matter. In June of 1686 the court heard a case of defamation.** A certain Andrzej Jurewicz charged that Piotr Kowalski had been alleging in public that Jurewicz’s father was a plaktynik. The word is both Polish and Lithuanian: the formant -nik is Polish (as in nudnik), and the root plakty comes from the Lithuanian verb plakti, which means “to flog,” “to thrash,” “to whip.” The case—recorded as was usual in Polish—dragged on for several days, so the unusual word came up a few times: “calling him a platkynik, that is, alleging that the executioner beat his father at the whipping post and drove him from the city”; “calling him, in Lithuanian style [z litewska], a pltaktynik, that is, alleging that the executioner drove his father out of the city”; “calling him a ptaktynik, as if the executioner had driven his father out of the city.” The accused answered that he had “never called Mr. Jurewicz a plaktynik, rather he had heard that other people said this, but he [Mr. Kowalski] considered him a good man.” Litigation ended with a court-imposed apology from Mr. Kowalski and a demand for 4 zlotys to cover legal fees. The case suggests several things: that a sort of Polish-Lithuanian jargon functioned in Wilno, at least in the poor suburbs under the castles; that enough people, at least in those neighborhoods, were sufficiently capable of understanding the word plaktynik that Jurewicz felt the need to go to court in defense of his father’s honor; but also that the word was not universally transparent, even in those marginal suburbs. In all but the last occurrence, the record glossed the word, on one occasion noting that it was “in Lithuanian style.” This story would seem to suggest that there was a zone of Polish-Lithuanian hybridity on the margins,

probably also that there were speakers of Lithuanian, at least in the suburbs, but that the language was not widely known in the city and its immediate suburbs by 1686. The language of the Polish acta of Wilno’s various legal forums suggests further hybrid-

ity. Here we find unglossed Lithuanianisms (next to Germanisms and Ruthenianisms, among other “foreign” material), much of which would have to be glossed for speakers of standard Polish. Some of them are not only missing from the dictionaries (notably the otherwise compendious Warsaw and the Wilno dictionaries), but they have also escaped notice in the works of Konstantinas Jablonskis (1941) and Jurgis Lebedys (1976), which seek to document all Lithuanianisms in early modern Polish and Latin texts. This fact suggests that further study will uncover a deeper and broader hybridity in the official Polish usage of seventeenth-century Wilno. Two examples. Acta regularly include the battusznik in lists of professions, sometimes next

to the more transparent bialoskornik (white-leather tanner) and zamesznik (chamois

STEREOTYPING, WRITING, SPEAKING 115

tanner). This was a tanner who specialized in white-leather products, from the Lithuanian baltas, “white”—hence baltusznik.°° Inventories listed among personal possessions the indowka, which must have been some sort of vessel for domestic use. In one case, under the heading Miedz (copper), we find jedna indowka i dwie miedziane miednice (one indéwka and two

copper washbowls).°° The word must come from the Lithuanian indas, “dish, vessel.” In another case Uniate town councillor Samuel Filipowicz had found two Ruthenianspeaking witches squatting in his house at Subocz Street 79.08 in the spring of 1662 upon his return from asylum in K6nigsberg. This case points in a somewhat different direction from that of the defaming plaktynik. I cite part of it here. The reported speech of the witches was in Polish with Ruthenian phrases inserted, as well as a Latin aside indicating that a Ruthenian obscenity had been omitted in order not to offend the sensitive reader, all in the same Latin-Polish hand. The words in bold below—in no way distinguished from the rest of the text in the original—contain the Ruthenian reflexes: For immediately, in the presence of that Lady Koszewska, they made an intrigue and a boast upon the health [of the new inhabitants] tis formalibus [in this fashion]: “Whoever will live here will not thrive. Neither did that cobbler’s wife rejoice, who drove me out of my dwelling in the monastery.” To this they added terrible and frequent improperia et male-

dictiones [taunts and curses], once taking inspiration even from the dead. For when [a corpse] was being carried across the street, [they made their taunts] with the following words: “May they carry that (honoris gratia contumeliosum omittitur verbum [for honor’s sake,

the abusive word is omitted here)], as they carried that corpse.” [Zaraz abowiem przed taz Pania Koszewska machinacyja i odpowiedz na zdrowie tis formalibus uczynili: “Kto tu budiet zyt nikoli nie rozzywiecsia. Nie ucieszyla si¢ i szew-

cowa, szto menie z monasterskoho mieszkania wykuryla.” Przystapily do tego straszne i czeste improperia et maledictiones, pochop biorac od samych czasem umarlych. Gdy wiec

przez ulice ktorego prowadzono temi slowy: “Bodaj toho (honoris gratia contumeliosum omittitur verbum) tak niesiono jak tego trupa.”]°”

There are, I think, three main points to be drawn from this. First, in this passage and elsewhere in the rest of the protestation where the witches’ speech is reported, Ruthenian words were left unglossed. The assumption was that all speakers and readers of Polish would understand them without aid—unlike the “Lithuanian” platktynik. Second, Filipowicz was himself Ruthenian, although of the elite. By in essence parodying the Ruthenian speech of his foes he came perilously close to denying cultural capital to himself. This was the dilemma of Ruthenian elites, especially the Uniates, in early modern Poland-Lithuania: how to main-

tain both dignity and difference when the language spoken by fellow Ruthenians could easily be caricatured as a Jargonized, second-rate version of Polish. And finally, the reported speech of the two witches was a Polish-Ruthenian hybrid. It may have been that Filipowicz inserted only a few Ruthenian forms to signal that they were speaking “pure” Ruthenian. But it might

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also have been the case that they spoke this hybrid language, that indeed all of Subocz Street could sound this way on occasion.*® There are reasons to suspect thata number of hybrid languages functioned in seventeenthcentury Wilno and that individuals of various ethnicities were able to employ more than one of them. Moreover, Wilno may have been a local example of what has been described as the “communicative community” of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the site of the convergence of things like place of articulation and aspects of morphology and syntax, not only between closely related languages like Polish and Ruthenian but between those two idioms and languages much more distantly related to them such as Yiddish and German.°”° If we listen carefully, I think we hear something of the Jesuits’ Tower of Babel that was seventeenth-century Wilno and with which I began this chapter—but in quite a different tonality. The picture of strict separation and maintenance of difference was a dream of the various clergies and of late modern nationalisms; such distinctions were largely ignored in the daily life of early modern Wilno. As we move through the corridors of the various houses,

through the various neighborhoods, drop in at workplaces and at christening parties, we hear many different hybrid languages, all having some relationship to the linguistic convivencia characteristic of early modern Wilno. We hear people communicating with each other across linguistic and ethnic boundaries. We also hear people making jokes in secret about the others in their own secret languages. The midlevel Germans of Glass Street and their Jewish neighbors may on occasion have had recourse to some common Germanic Jargon. But mostly we will hear them all speaking Polish (the Jews and Tatars also spoke Polish), as this was the language of public discourse in most circumstances. But it was a Polish with an articulation and syntax that Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Scots and Italians, Jews, and Tatars could accommodate. In some ways, it was probably a bit like the Polish one still hears to this day in certain corners of Wilno.

~CHAPTER SIxX~

Birth, Baptism, Godparenting

na postil published in Poznan in 1580, Polish Jesuit Jakub Wujek—future translator of the

| and a key player in the Counter-Reformation in Poland-Lithuania—criticized the sins of “our Catholics,” who “even in things that touch upon the faith, make bold to keep company with the heretics by attending their baptisms, their weddings, and their funerals.”* Wujek’s concerns were for the state of the Church in the Commonwealth at large, but he had just returned from a stint as the rector of Wilno’s academy (he held that office in 1578-1579), and he certainly also had Lithuanian conditions in mind as he wrote. On the other side of the confessional spectrum, the Calvinist Agenda published in Danzig in 1637, a handbook on doctrine and ritual for reformed ministers, contained similar warnings against permitting any sort of spiritual kinship with those outside the confession: “The servant of God is to strive most vigilantly that faithful parents not receive for Holy Baptism godparents of

another religion, and he himself should not admit such ones without some great and significant reason.”? These were attitudes more at home in the Polish Crown, where confessionalization was marginally more successful; nonetheless, the Reformed superintendents demanded that they be binding for laity and clergy in the notoriously lax Grand Duchy of Lithuania as well. The title of the Agenda stated specifically that it was for use “in the evangelical churches of the Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania” (emphasis added), and its authors gave special attention to the maintenance of uniformitas religionis (uniformity of religion).? One of the reasons for the prohibitions, in addition to general attempts to maintain discipline, was that clergy of all the confessions that practiced infant baptism—whatever their belief about the nature of the sacrament—were largely in agreement that one function of godparenthood was the Christian upbringing of the child.* There are indications, however, that—at least in Wilno—not all parents heeded the call and that some local clergy silently looked the other way when a member of another confession presented himself or herself at

the baptismal font for service as a godparent. This suggests that, for some—laymen but perhaps also local parish clergy—godparenthood served purposes different from, or at least in addition to, spiritual instruction within the confines of the confession. In what follows, I examine practices and attitudes surrounding birth, baptism, and godparenting: how children were viewed; what motivated parents in choosing names and godparents for their

118 CHAPTER 6

children; the extent to which the choices served to delineate confessional identities within the city landscape; and what sorts of syncretisms arose in these practices.

The Royal Doctor’s Babies We have few and highly scattered sources for the attitudes of seventeenth-century Vilnans

toward their children. That evidence is perhaps most concentrated in the journal of the Lutheran doctor to King Wiadyslaw IV, Maciej Vorbek-Lettow (German Street 26.03), the closest thing we possess to a burgher memoir from that city. Vorbek-Lettow was busy reestablishing his family’s presence in the Polish-Lithuanian nobility. Whatever the case was concerning the family’s patent of nobility, Vorbek-Lettow was intimately implicated in numerous networks that included Wilno burghers, and he made no attempt to exclude them from the narration of his life. Vorbek-Lettow’s Calvinist wife, Elzbieta Isfelt, bore him eleven children over the years 1619 to 1642; he was from twenty-six to forty-nine years of age during this period, she, eighteen to forty-one. The memoirist belonged to the new clock-and-watch culture in Wilno, as did others of the elite and perhaps not only the elite, and he noted with great precision not only the place and date of his children’s births but also, with only two exceptions, the precise time of his wife’s “fortunate deliveries”: his first child, Elisabet Zofia, was born “that same [1619] year, on the 31st day of March, the first day of Easter [i.e., Easter Sunday], just at noon, a quarter before twelve”; others were born “before nine at night on the half-clock,” “at half past eleven” at night, “on the night of Saturday to Sunday, an hour before day,” “at one in the afternoon on the eve of St. John’s,” and so forth.° For the girls, he asked of the Lord God, as in the case of his firstborn, “that she might grow unto Your Holy praise, for us parents a comfort.” For the boys, he added the appropriately noble pursuit of the martial arts, as in the case of his second child, Krzysztof Wiktorzyn, born 27 February 1621: “Grant Lord God that he might grow unto Your Holy praise, for the service of the Commonwealth, [and] for us parents a great comfort and support in our old age.” The intensity of the hopes and fears associated with each new life is reflected in the small variations in the formulaic language used in the report of each birth but especially in additions to the accounts such as that which followed in this last case: “That right after the baptism he cried out in a stentorian voice [tubalnym gtosem]—may God make of it a bonum omen [good sign]. The Prince, Lord Hetman [Krzysztof Radziwill I], one of the godparents] said to me, ‘You will see, when he achieves his years he will make a good soldier.’ ”° In fact, his cry may have been a good sign: Krzysztof Wiktorzyn was one of the few of Vorbek-Lettow’s children who lived to adulthood. The concern—the hopes and fears and the search for signs and omens at birth—must have been a constant. Of the eleven children, although six reached what was then considered maturity, only three, all boys, would outlive their father. The pain and sorrow with which their father recorded their deaths is palpable,

BIRTH, BAPTISM, GODPARENTING 119

even in its occasional use of recognizable rhetorical formulas. Here, too, he noted the precise times, whenever he could, including the death of his firstborn child, daughter Elisabet Zofia, who lived just past her ninth birthday. The entire memoir, it should be noted, was written in Polish with the usual admixtures of individual phrases in Latin. In this instance, however, the doctor switched in the middle of a sea of Polish to record a discrete event entirely in Latin. I would argue that our modern linguistic sensibilities are exactly wrong here: the grieving father felt a need to have recourse to the more dignified language in order to give expression to keenly felt emotion, inexpressible for him at the moment in the “vulgar tongue”: Anno 1628 die 17 aprilis inter horam octavam et nonam ante meridianam Elisabet Sophia, filia mea primogenita, unice dilecta, angina opressa, ex hac miseriarum valle decessit. Vixit annos novem.

[In the year 1628, the 17th day of April, between the hour of eight and nine in the morning, Elisabet Zofia, my firstborn daughter, especially beloved, afflicted with angina, departed from this vale of miseries. She had lived nine years.]’ Other passages on the sufferings and death of children, equal in length and detail to those devoted to the passing of adults, suggest strong ties of affection across the generations in the Vorbek-Lettow family and elsewhere. The doctor’s concern for his own children clearly shaped the consolation he attempted to give a fellow Lutheran. She was Zuzanna Nonhartowna (Castle Street 2.09), Lutheran wife of Roman Catholic nobleman Jerzy Chreptowicz (by then castellan of Smolensk). She had many personal contacts with those Lutheran burgher residents of Castle Street who quietly slipped into the noble estate in the course of one generation, and she and her father, Wilno horodniczy Piotr Nonhart (Rudniki Street 12.06), may have belonged to that category. On 15 August 1640—by which time Vorbek-Lettow had received eight children from his wife and already

buried four of them—he wrote to Nonhartowna about some matters involving the local church but also in reaction to her family news: I understand that the Lord God has deigned to visit upon Your Grace sorrow at the death of your Lord son, nonetheless may Your Grace deign to take note in your grief that the Lord God only lends us children in this world; He does not give them to us for eternity. The Fatherland of us all is in heaven. And why [does He take] some sooner, others later?

We must ascribe this to His incomprehensible will, which, just as it causes sorrow, so it also consoles us, and I do not doubt in the least that He will grant you as a recompense to enjoy great consolations in your remaining offspring.®

Vorbek-Lettow was drawing here in metaphorical fashion on a principle from Lithuanian testamentary law: some goods could be bequeathed only on the basis of dozywocie (advitali-

tium, for use during the legatee’s lifetime); others could be bestowed “for eternity”

120 CHAPTER 6 (na wiecznosc; i.e., the legatee could bequeath the property further). In this life we are granted

only temporary joy from our children; eternal consolation comes in the next life. Care for children (his “tiny little sons” [synaczkowie]), for grandchildren, for the children and grandchildren of blood relatives, in-laws, and friends; pleasure in their increase; and sorrow at their loss are constant themes of the Treasurehouse of Memory. They appear on practically every

page. Vilnans were attached enough to their young children to express their grief through the commission—and publication in print!—of funeral sermons for them. Lutheran minister Jedrzej Schénflissius, who published funeral sermons for members of all the burgher elite

families of Castle Street, devoted at least three of them to children. There was a certain amount of rhetorical monotony, even self-plagiarism, to Sch6nflissius’s funeral sermons, and yet, especially in the final sections entitled Personalia, certain concrete details about individual lives shine through. And the important thing for my argument here is that lives of the young were valued just as highly as, and perhaps lamented with even greater effusions of sentiment than, those of the elderly. In 1633, Sch6énflissius helped Lutheran merchant and magistrate Wilhelm Engelbrecht (Castle Street 2.15) lament the loss of his fifteen-year-old Katarzyna—“a withered rose and lily, whom cruel death has cut down with his scythe.”° In 1637 he published his funeral sermon for fourteen-year-old Zofia Majer6wna, daughter of Calvinist barber-surgeon Jan Majer (Castle Street 2.05).*° In 1635 he accompanied to the grave one Anna Debowska, daughter of a Lutheran apothecary named Marcin Debowski (about whom I know nothing further). She was twelve years old when she died. Sch6nflissius dedicated the printed version of his sermon to the girl’s mother, Elzbieta, with the words “A mother’s love for [her] children is the more ardent.”** Not to be outdone by his Lutheran neighbors and in-laws from across the street, Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold II (Castle Street 1.16) had his own minister publish funeral sermons not only on the deaths of his parents but also for his children. The title page of one of them told the story: A Parent’s Meditation during the Sickness and after the Death of Children, Submitted over the Little Son of Noble Lord Korneliusz Winhold, Who, Having Seen the World on the Day of

1 August in the Year 1637, Parted with It Peacefully on the Day of 12 October of That Same Year. Jan

Winhold had been baptized on 11 August, and one of his godfathers was Lutheran merchant Wilhelm Engelbrecht from across the street, the same one whose own daughter had died at age fifteen. The title page of another printed funeral sermon—the Memoria Winholdiana— gave the names of Korneliusz’s parents and his deceased infant son Korneliusz III (baptized 1 January 1635, funeral 6 March of the same year) equal billing.**

No other documents I have encountered connected directly with seventeenth-century Wilno speak so directly to love for children. Still, Isee no reason to suppose the royal doctor was unique or that this sentiment was limited to the Lutherans and the Calvinists. Occasional

references in documents like last wills and testaments and other moments when parents sought to provide for the well-being of their children suggest similar attitudes toward children across the confessions in Wilno.

BIRTH, BAPTISM, GODPARENTING 121

In addition to the precise time of birth, Vorbek-Lettow carefully registered the place of baptism, the name of the minister or priest presiding (like most Lutherans, he used the word others reserved for Roman Catholic priests—ksiqdz—for clergy of all the Christian confessions), and the names of godparents. Vorbek-Lettow sought, whenever possible, to have his children baptized by a Lutheran minister, preferably in Wilno. His first three children, Elisabet Zofia (b. 1619), Krzysztof Wiktorzyn (b. 1621), and Konstanty (b. 1622), were all baptized by “father Samuel Dambrowski, [our Wilno] Polish ‘Saxon’ [i.e., Lutheran] preacher.” As Vorbek-Lettow’s career as a royal doctor took shape, and the family’s fortunes improved, he

was away from Wilno more and more, often residing with the entire family on an estate in the nearby countryside, especially during times of plague. His third child, Krystyna (b. 1625), was baptized “in Berdowka, in an estate belonging to nearby Wsielub,” by “father Tomasz Chociszewski, the Evangelical [i.e., Calvinist] preacher of Bielice [a Calvinist Radziwill town], since it was impossible to get [one] of my own confession from Wilno at that time on account of the [pestilential] air cruelly reigning there, which lasted until Candlemas Day [2 February] in the year 1626.”*? Twins Anna Felicitas and Marcin Feliks (b. 1630) were baptized by the same Calvinist minister and under similar circumstances.** Vorbek-Lettow’s last child, Aleksander Jerzy (b. 1642), would be born in Warsaw, where the family was residing temporarily in connection with the doctor’s service to King Wladystaw IV. He was baptized in the capital’s Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of St. John—there were no Protestant churches in Warsaw at the time—and by a Catholic neighbor from Wilno, Father Marcjan Tryzna, soon to be under-chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then coadjutor of the bishop of Wilno and spiritual referendary of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was he who had “restored [the Canons’ Town House at Castle Street 1.05] sumptu proprio [at his own expense]” and was thus living across the street from Vorbek-Lettow’s burgher relatives and in-laws.*°

Recourse to non-Lutheran clergy for his babies’ baptisms was not a matter of religious indifference. On both occasions when he was forced to make use of a Calvinist minister, Vorbek-Lettow noted why it had been impossible to bring a Lutheran minister from Wilno— because of the plague then raging there—and he made it clear that the solution was not his first choice. In fact, if his Calvinist-born wife remained a member of her father’s confession, it would have been entirely normal for the family to have decided to baptize the girls in their mother’s church and the boys in that of the father. This was nota law but a common practice in mixed marriages of the day. Aleksander Jerzy’s Catholic baptism (we may suspect he, too, was to be raised Lutheran) went without comment, other than the fact that his mother happened to be in arch-Catholic Warsaw when the time came to be delivered and that she was unable to travel. Vorbek-Lettow’s choice of godparents and of names for his babies is reflective of a strategy for placing the family and the individual children in networks of friends and spiritual kin drawn both from the ranks of noble patrons, but also from Castle Street burgher relatives and in-laws.*° There were always worries about sudden deaths, especially in the case of his

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twins: when Anna Felicitas died at age one and a half, the concerned father doubled his prayers for her brother’s safety, “especially since people are commonly wont to doubt that twins can ever be raised in good health.”*” The memoirist’s two grandsons, born in 1642 and 1643 (their mother was Greek Orthodox), both died the day they were born, and both were baptized immediately by the Lutheran minister in Wilno, apparently in fear for their lives and souls: “the Lord God granted us to rejoice in our grandson only a brief while, for he lived only five hours from his birth, and having received the name Wladyslaw [no doubt for his grandfather’s royal patron] at baptism, he fell asleep in the Lord. I had his little body [ciatko] buried in my chapel that same day and month of that year. Preserve us, Christ Jesus, from similar sorrow and grief in the future.”*® None of Vorbek-Lettow’s own children died that quickly; all the recorded baptisms took place a week to a few weeks after the birth and reflect a careful orchestration of networks of spiritual kin, ranging across the same spectrum between pomp and asceticism that Vilnans would negotiate in plans for their funerals. Elisabet Zofia received two noble godparents— her father’s Calvinist patron at the time, Castellan of Wilno Janusz Radziwill, and the latter’s Lutheran wife, Margravine of Brandenburg Elisabeth Sophie, daughter of Elector of Branden-

burg Johann Georg (for whom Vorbek-Lettow obviously named his own daughter). But standing at the font was also one Lutheran burghess from the neighborhood. This was Katarzyna Sztrunkowna, wife of Szymon Engelbrecht II. She was a sort of cousin to her goddaughter, since Macie]’s sister Krystyna had married Szymon EngelbrechtI, and Sztrunk6wna was her daughter-in-law. The burgher godmother lived in the Engelbrecht house at Castle Street 2.11, next door to the Sztrunk family house at 2.10 into which she had been born and two houses over from that of Zuzanna Nonhartowna Chreptowiczowa at 2.09. Krzysztof Wiktorzyn was named for his first godfather, his father’s new patron, Calvinist castellan of Wilno (and future palatine and grand hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), Krzysztof Radziwill II. He received his second name in acknowledgment of the fact that his birth date (27 February) was the “day of St. Victorinus.” I have been unable to identify a St. Victorinus or Victor whose feast is celebrated that day. The feast of St. Victor of Troys, a French noble who died in the seventh century, is celebrated on 26 February. That of St. Victorinus, a Greek who was martyred in Egypt ca. 284, is celebrated on 25 February. But the

point remains: the Lutheran Vorbek-Lettow organized a part of his life according to the saints’ calendar.*? Krzysztof Wiktorzyn’s other godparents were likewise from the Lithuanian Calvinist nobility: future equerry of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Bogustaw Radziwill (Janusz’s son and Krzysztof’s nephew) and Ewa Abramowiczowa, wife of the son of the palatine of Smolensk.?° Use of the saints’ calendar in naming babies and marking important events—we will see more of this—suggests that Wilno Lutherans shared some aspects of a sense of time with their Roman Catholic neighbors that went beyond the simple use of the Gregorian calendar for measuring temporal life. These clearly included aspects of the holy—

even if we remain puzzled about which St. Victorinus with a memorial on 27 February Vorbek-Lettow could have had in mind.

BIRTH, BAPTISM, GODPARENTING 123

Other of Vorbek-Lettow’s children received less prominent godparents, and one child was raised from the font by even more important notables, but the general strategies for naming the child and surrounding him or her with spiritual kin remained the same throughout. Konstanty was named for his father’s great-uncle, and at least two and probably all three of his godparents were Protestant burghers.** Krystyna was named for her aunt, Krystyna Vorbekowna-Lettowowna, wife of Szymon Engelbrecht I. She too received three Prot-

estant burgher godparents—the first two of whom were her uncle, Jakub Isfeld, a Calvinist, and her Lutheran cousin Sara Engelbrechtowna (daughter of aunt and namesake Krystyna), who had married the neighbor boy, Lutheran merchant Jerzy Sztrunk II.7* (Again, the Sztrunk and Engelbrecht families lived side by side at Castle Street 2.10 and 2.11.) Jan— named both for his stepuncle Jan Katerla but also for the fact that he was born “in the year 1627, the 23rd day of June, on the eve of St. John’s Day” (i.e., St. John the Baptist, Midsummer Day)—would receive four godparents. One of them came from a Roman Catholic magnate family. This was castellan of Wilno Mikotaj Hlebowicz (d. 1632). He was VorbekLettow’s own neighbor at German Street 26.14; in 1640 his son Jerzy Karol would marry Krystyna Radziwillowna, Calvinist daughter of the doctor’s patron Krzysztof Radziwitt II. The other three were all Lutheran burgher neighbors on Castle Street: the infant’s uncle, Szymon Engelbrecht I (Castle Street 2.11); Jerzy Sztrunk I (Castle Street 2.10); and Katarzyna Giblowna, daughter of Lutheran burgomaster Jakub Gibel (Castle Street 2.13) and sister of Tomasz Gibel (Castle Street 2.12). Giblowna remained Lutheran, although she was married to Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold II, with whom she resided across the street at Castle Street 1.16.*?

Anna Felicitas and Marcin Feliks both received their first names in honor of relatives: the

first for her maternal grandmother, the second for his paternal great-grandfather. VorbekLettow “added Felicitas and Feliks because the day of the baptism [19 November] was St. Elizabeth’s Day, on which day I had made my first entry into the home of my wife’s father

for the purpose of seeking her hand, and because God had miraculously protected them in the womb when she was struck by a beam in Berdowka.” In other words, they represented happiness and good fortune for their father, and he dated one major aspect of that happiness by the saints’ calendar. (And note further that the young Lutheran doctor had purposely chosen St. Elizabeth’s Day to make his first entry into the house of his future wife, Elzbieta (Elizabeth) Isfeltowna. When he got around to re-creating his memoirs—lost to fire in 1644—Vorbek-Lettow confused dates a bit. The Feast of St. Elisabeth—cousin of Mary, wife of Zachary—was 5 November, the date of his twins’ birth, not of their baptism. But, again, the point is that the Lutheran doctor marked time according to the saints’ calendar accepted by his Catholic neighbors.) The baptism took place in a Calvinist church during the family’s stay in the country, where they had fled from the plague, but they had fled there with some of their old circle from Castle Street. Anna’s godparents were Lutheran merchant Jerzy Sztrunk II (Castle Street 2.10) and “the woman who received [her]” (babka, co przyjmowala), 1.e., the midwife. (Others on occasion would ask a beggar kept in the church’s hospital to be the

124 CHAPTER 6 godparent. We have records of this for the Calvinists.)** Marcin’s godparents were Szymon Engelbrecht II (Castle Street 2.11) and the memoirist’s step-sister Katarzyna—the Lutheran cousin and aunt of the baptized baby.*° Maciej—clearly named for his father and paternal grandfather, although the memoirist did not point this out—would also be put under the care of Protestant neighbors: the recently

ennobled Calvinist royal doctor and master of the Wilno horodnictwo Pawel Kleofas z Brylewa Podchocimski, who had married Krystyna Giblowna, daughter of Lutheran burgomaster’s son Tomasz Gibel and Vorbek-Lettow’s niece Anna Engelbrechtéwna (Castle Street 2.19); Tomasz Gibel himself (Castle Street 2.12); and finally, wife of Lutheran merchant Wilhelm Engelbrecht, Zofia Zuchowczanka (Castle Street 2.15).”° Wladystaw—the fact that there was no explanation of the name suggests it was meant to honor the doctor’s patron and patient, King Wladystaw IV Waza—had three godparents: “His Grace, Lord Krzysztof Eperyeszy, Lord High Steward of Kowno,” who had married Lutheran burghess Barbara Sztrunkowna, daughter of Jerzy Sztrunk II and the memoirist’s niece Sara Engelbrecht6wna (Castle Street 2.10); Marcin von Enda (Fondenden, Fonemden), a Lutheran, probably some relative of the Andrzej von Embdens, father and son, who lived at

Castle Street 2.14; and Lutheran “Halszka” (Elzbieta) Giblowna, daughter of Jakub and brother of Tomasz Gibel (Castle Street 2.13 and 2.12), who was married to Lutheran merchant Jan Sztrunk II (Castle Street 2.10).7”

The choice of name (again left unexplained) for the next son, Zygmunt, appears to have continued in the Catholic Waza line, now honoring Wladystaw’s father, King Zygmunt III. He was baptized by the Lutheran minister of rural Gojcieniszki (a holding of the Nonhart family). His godparents were Piotr Kopacz, “a near neighbor and my trusted friend” (about whom I know nothing further); His Grace, Lord Krzysztof Nowowiejski, “the landwojt [from the German Lehnsvogt, the local representative of an often absent wojt/Vogt] of Nowogrodek, cousin of my wife” (he was Calvinist); and the memoirist’s daughter-in-law Anna DorofiewiczoOwna Lettowowa, who came from a family of the Orthodox burgher elite in Wilno and seems to have remained of that confession.*®

And finally, Aleksander Jerzy, baptized by a Roman Catholic prelate in the Cathedral Church of St. John in Warsaw, received the most prominent of spiritual kin, none of them burghers. His godparents were King Wliadystaw IV; under-chancellor of the Polish Crown Jerzy Ossolinski; Crown carver Piotr Danielewicz; Queen Cecylia Renata; and Elisabeth Stuszczanska Kazanowska, wife of castellan of Sandomierz, Adam Kazanowski. (The king was ill at the time, and “His Grace, [Roman Catholic] Father Piotr Gembicki, Crown Chan-

cellor,” stood in for him; “Danielewiczdwna Ossolinska, wife of the Crown UnderChancellor,” represented the queen.) All were Roman Catholic; all but the officiating priest, Marcjan Tryzna, were connected with the Crown elite rather than that of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”°

This set of data obviously raises several important questions. How did Vilnans choose names and godparents for their babies? What role did confession play in these choices? What

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was the purpose of godparenthood for those directly involved—parents, children, godparents? I will postpone discussion of these issues until I have examined the networks surrounding some other nodes of godparenthood in Wilno.

Buchners at the Font The practices of the rest of the Lutheran congregation are difficult to determine, given the lack of an extant baptismal record book. We do have such records, however, for the more numerous Roman Catholic community and for the smaller Calvinist congregation. In them we can occasionally discover godparents from beyond the given confession, including—or perhaps especially and in both communities—Lutherans. A consideration of observable patterns here will help flesh out the picture suggested by Vorbek-Lettow’s memoirs and extend

it—beyond the space he occupied at the intersection of the Lithuanian szlachta and the Wilno burgher elite—to the middle reaches of merchants and artisans. I turn my attention in what follows to members of one Lutheran family that practiced particularly promiscuous extraconfessional godparenting. In spite of the fact that they may have said hello to each other at church services, theirs was a network set quite apart from that functioning among the Lutheran elites of Castle and German Streets. As we have seen,

by the beginning of the seventeenth century, middle-level Lutheran merchants and artisans—goldsmiths perhaps chief among them, but also swordsmiths, ironsmiths, founders, soap boilers, and barber-surgeons—had settled in and around the narrow and winding Glass Street, which ran from the top of Market Square westward toward the St. John Street-Troki Street axis. They were thus around the corner from the Lutheran elite residing in upper Castle Street and one street up from their common place of worship on German Street. Their shortest path to the Lutheran church took them through the Jewish neighborhood that consolidated in the course of the seventeenth century on Jewish and Meat Shop Streets, and we find evidence of lively contacts between these Lutherans and their Jewish neighbors. Here they occupied modest though often two-story houses of two to five chambers; many of them were bricked, but in stark contrast to Castle Street, we still find a number of wooden structures here in the first half of the seventeenth century. The street, as we have seen, was heavily Lutheran. At Glass Street 18.08 we find the modest two-story “little bricked house” of Lutheran merchant Marcin Buchner. Buchner and wife Regina Stegnerowna had at least five children, all of whom married Lutherans, as did the one granddaughter I have been able to identify. And all of them would own and occupy houses in the Glass Street neighborhood. Regina Stegnerdwna Buchnerowa signed her will on 16 June 1685 in Wilno. She had returned to the city by 1662 after the family’s exile in K6nigsberg—which offered asylum to

Vilnans of all five confessions during the Muscovite occupation—and, as “Frau Merten Buchnersche,” “Martin Buchners Witfrauw,” etc., she generously supported the Lutheran

126 CHAPTER 6 church in the period 1664—1683.°° Her husband had died before 1652. Regina thus outlived him by more than thirty years, and—contrary to one common pattern of the day—she never remarried; and yet she seems to have played a certain independent role in Wilno society and to have conducted her affairs largely on her own.?* Her youngest son, merchant Jan Buchner, became a pillar of this second tier of Wilno Lutheran society. He prospered for a time, rivaling the Lutheran elite in his generosity to the church over the period 1662-1701. Like them, he would appear as “senior” of the congregation in the years 1671 and 1673.7? He remained in the neighborhood, however, and here he built his networks. The 1690 tax register of hearths found “Pan [Mr./Lord] Buchner” owning two “large bricked houses” on Glass Street. Buchner lived in one of them himself, together with one Christian and six Jewish neighbors. In his second home there were four Christian and two Jewish neighbors.** Jan’s older brother Michat had identified himself as a spice merchant when, in 1656, he signed the oath of loyalty to the elector of Brandenburg along with many other Wilno exiles of both noble and burgher estates.?° Perhaps the spice trade was part of the family business. But if the greater Buchner family married exclusively within the Lutheran community (if we ignore one black-sheep Calvinist second cousin), many participated in more extended

networks that crossed this confessional boundary. Jan Buchner signed his name at least twice in the local Calvinists’ financial records, acknowledging his financial contributions “to the support of God’s praise.”?° Jan Buchner, his wife Krystyna RejterOwna, and a “Miss Tropowna” (Buchner’s niece Marianna) served several times as godparents for Calvinist babies.?” And Jan Buchner, mother Regina Stegner6wna, wife Krystyna Rejterowna, and niece Marianna Tropowna appeared on numerous occasions as godparents for Catholic babies.?® Jan’s wife and in-laws, the Rejter (Reutter) family, bring us into a related Lutheran network, members of which also frequently engaged in godparenting beyond their own confession. Many of their trips to the Calvinist and Catholic baptismal fonts brought them together with cosponsors from the Buchner family.° Jan Buchner appeared at the font of the Catholics’ Church of St. John at least twenty-seven times over the years 1665-1680. There are some obvious gaps in the ledger in 1665-1666 and 1671, but the rest appears to be complete. I focus on that fifteen-year period in my comments here. Over that period there was only one year when he did not appear at all. This was in 1671, one of the years for which the extant record is incomplete; his name may well have appeared in the missing entries for that year. He reached his peak in 1674 when he sponsored 5 Catholic babies. The year seems to have been a high point for the rest of the family as well: mother Regina was at the Catholic font four times, wife Katarzyna once, niece Anna (Marianna) Tropowna four times, which makes fourteen appearances by the immediate family in one

year. The total number of babies sponsored by the four Buchners that year was fewer— 11—since Jan Buchner’s name appeared once with each of the three women from his family. That year, a total of 705 babies were baptized at St. John’s, so the immediate Buchner family

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participation in Catholic godparenting was 1.6 percent of the total. But villagers from rural regions not belonging to Wilno and its suburbs regularly brought babies for baptisms, often waiting for major feast days such as Palm Sunday. As they came from quite a distance, they cannot be said to have belonged to the daily life of the city and its rhythms. Thus if we wish to estimate Buchner family participation in the sponsoring of Catholic babies from the Wilno conurbation, the number rises somewhat. That year, 625 sets of parents from the city and its suburbs had their babies baptized at St. John’s, and Buchners sponsored 1.8 percent of them. The total number of babies who had non-Catholic godparents in 1674 was at least 32, or 4.5 percent of the total; this was at least 5.1 percent of the babies from Wilno and the immediate environs. I say “at least” for two reasons: I can identify Orthodox and Uniates only where I have chanced upon information about them from other documents such as testaments; further, women were frequently identified only by their husbands’ or fathers’ names. Thus | have undoubtedly overlooked some non-Catholics among the godparents. Jan Buchner’s appearances at St. John’s over the years, it is worth noting, came on every day of the week, including six times on a Sunday.

Buchner Case Studies I offer here three clusters of Buchner family interventions as godparents for Catholic babies. This is not the whole story, but it will help give a sense of what was going on in Wilno and provide a basis for some further hypotheses. Buchners and Sienczytos

On 26 August 1673, Szymon Safarowicz and Katarzyna Wojsowiczowna offered a son for baptism at the Catholic Church of St. John. They named him Bartlomiej, and he was “raised from the font” by four godparents: Gabriel Siericzyto, Jan Buchner, Anastazja Zagiewiczowna, and Anastazja Sienczytowa. A little over two and a half years later, Szymon Safarowicz was

back in the same church, together with wife Katarzyna Daniusiewiczowna, to present a daughter, Rozaria.*° Her godparents were Jan Harszewski, Jan Buchner, Anastazja Sienczylowa, and Katarzyna Kalofowa.** We know Jan Buchner. About Jan Harszewski, I can offer nothing further. Katarzyna Kalofowa was probably the wife or a relative of the Lutheran Kalofs, who took on the duties of

godparent for Catholic babies alongside other Lutherans, once sharing the role with Regina Buchnerowa.*? “Valentin/Valtin Kalau” made regular offerings to the Wilno Lutheran church in the years in question (1671-1691) and would seem to have been the head of the household.*? Anastazja Zagiewiczowa may have been Orthodox. Her first name suggests Ruthenian origins, and the Jozef Zagiewicz, who crops up in the archive for the years in question,

128 CHAPTER 6 was a merchant with strong Ruthenian connections.** These names—Kalof and Zagiewski— belong to the realm of circumstantial evidence, but they may take on more significance when placed in the context of larger patterns. The two remaining godparents were Orthodox. Anastazja Sienczylowa was married to Grzegorz Sienczyto, and Gabriel—Anastazja’s co-godparent for Bartlomie} Safarowicz— was her brother-in-law. The Sienczyto patriarchal home was in the thoroughly Ruthenian

neighborhood across town at Subocz Street 78.07.*° Anastazja herself was from the Sokotowski family, which produced a number of Orthodox Wilno merchants.*° Members of the Sienczylo family—Anastazja, Grzegorz, and Gabriel—appeared in the Catholic baptismal record at least thirteen times over the years examined.*’ The Safarowicz babies were not the only ones for whom Buchners and Sienczylos shared the duties of godparenthood. What brought them together in this role? One thing the two families had in common is the fact that the ancestral family houses were objects of attempted confiscations during the wars with Muscovy by the law of escheat (jus caducum), which allowed the king to alienate the property of traitors, as well as that of foreigners who died without male heirs.*® Another was the fact that members of both families spent part of the period of the Muscovite occupation of Wilno (1655-1661) in shared exile in K6nigsberg. Both the Buchners and the Sienczytos were thus moderately successful merchant families, well integrated into Wilno society, both before and after the wars of midcentury, and yet subject to being portrayed as outsiders. Jan Buchner was at the top of the middle-level Lutherans. Even if he had wished to launch a career in the ruling elite, he would have been unable to do so: in spite of his wealth, his ties to the Lutheran elite residing on Castle Street

were limited and not those of social equals. And in any case, after 1666 Lutherans were banned from holding office in the magistracy. In this situation, ambitious members of the Lutheran burgher elite were busy marrying or otherwise stealing their ways into the Lithuanian nobility. The Orthodox Sienczylos had been on their way to joining the ruling burgher elite in the first half of the century. Filip Sienczylo (he was the father of Pawel, Gabriel, and Grzegorz) was annual councillor in 1614 and burgomaster in 1634 and 1641. Pawel had been a bencher.*? Gabriel and Grzegorz were wealthy men, but they did not seek office in the magistracy, perhaps because after 1666 this would have required at least pro forma allegiance to the Uniate Church. And yet, while it may have given the Buchners and the Sienczytos something to talk about,

outsider status alone did not create this network. The answer lies in the ties of neighborhood. Gabriel Sienczylo seems to have been the older of the two brothers, and it was most likely he who took possession of “the Sienczyto house that has been handed down from the grandfathers and great-grandfathers on Subocz Street,” right in the middle of the Ruthenian neighborhood. It was still in the family in 1688.°° Younger brother Grzegorz had to set himself up, and he made the unusual move for an Orthodox Vilnan of buying a house on Lutheran

Glass Street. He and wife Anastazja Sokolowska had purchased the house of Lutheran

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barber-surgeon Jerzy Dames at Glass Street 20.05 in 1667, and she was still living there as a widow in 1690.°* The posthumous inventory of Grzegorz’s property conducted in 1686 offers a picture of a wealthy businessman with interests in the family properties on Subocz Street and an intent to be buried with the Orthodox at the Holy Spirit Church and monastery in the old neighborhood; but it also reveals business connections typical of the Glass Street neighborhood: his debts were to, and his creditors were among, the Lutherans and Jews of the immediate surroundings. °* This suggests that Safarowicz, about whom I know nothing further, was being careful about his ties to the Glass Street neighborhood when he selected godparents for his children. Szymon Safarowicz himself would sponsor Catholic babies on at least four occasions, his wife Katarzyna Safarowiczowa at least twice. In every instance, the Safarowiczes shared the duties of godparenthood with Lutherans, all but two of whom I can situate in specific Glass Street addresses.°? And the survey of 16go—to return now to a piece of circumstantial evidence with which I began this discussion—tells us that the “great bricked house once of the Kalof family [quondam Kalowska]” was in the neighborhood.**

Buchners and Grekowiczes

On 10 May 1680, Marcin Zegaliriski and wife Katarzyna Dyjakowska had their son Dominik

baptized at St. John’s. Not a one of his godparents was Catholic: they were Jan Buchner, Bazyli Omelanowicz (Orthodox or Uniate, probably the former), Anna Grekowiczowna, and Katarzyna Golliuszowa (both Calvinist).°> Zegalinski was Catholic; wife Dyjakowska (judging

only by the name) could have had some Ruthenian roots. But the choice of godfather Bazyli Omelanowicz, if it had any confessional motivation (the name can only be Ruthenian), was

again probably based more on ties of neighborhood and the profession that predominated there. Marcin Zegaliniski was a goldsmith. His father Augustyn (d. 1657) had also been a Catho-

lic goldsmith and had owned “half a house” on Glass Street. The other half was the property of Lutheran goldsmith Job Bem (B6hm), who, in 1636, resided (apparently then as a renter) at Glass Street 18.11, three houses down from the original Buchner family dwelling.°° Marcin Zegalinski inherited part of his father’s Glass Street property, and he also owned the “Tym house,” likewise on Glass Street. A document from 1679 tells us that Augustyn Zegaliriski’s house was near the property of Jan Buchner and that Marcin’s sister Anna sold her portion of the family house to Buchner.?’” Bazyli Omelanowicz was probably some close relation—perhaps the son—of a goldsmith by the same name who had also lived and worked in Glass Street. The elder Bazyli was married to Marianna Sznejderowna, the daughter of Lutheran goldsmith Jakub Sznejder, in whose Glass Street atelier he lived and worked. He had died by 1666.”* I suspect the younger Omelanowicz’s presence at the font had something to do with the goldsmith’s trade that his older namesake had practiced and with the fact that the latter had lived and worked on Glass

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Street. The Bazyli Omelanowicz I find active around 1680 had ties with the Orthodox and Uniates of Subocz Street.>*°

Anna Grekowiczowna (probably a mistake here, and it should have been Grekowiczowa, as it was on all other occasions) was probably the wife of one of the Calvinist goldsmiths of that name. Jan Grekowicz had once lived and worked on Glass Street before moving nearer the Calvinist church, where he served as a lay elder.°° Anna Grekowiczowa was named as godmother on twelve occasions in the record of the Wilno Calvinist church during the years 1663-1682.°* She also took on those duties at least three other times for Catholic babies, on

one occasion in 1674 sharing the task with Jan Pecelt, a Lutheran locksmith from Glass Street, and on another occasion with Regina Buchnerowa and a certain Albrycht Sznejder.°? The latter was the apothecary who attended the Lutheran church in those days; he was probably a son or nephew of the goldsmith by that name who had worked and lived on Glass Street in the 1640s.°? The elder Albrycht Sznejder was the brother of Jakub and thus the uncle of the elder Bazyli Omelanowicz.°* The younger Albrycht Sznejder still lived on Glass Street in 1690.°° Katarzyna Budrewiczowna Golliuszowa was a Calvinist and the wife of Calvinist royal secretary Jan Golliusz.°° As there were no professional ties here through the goldsmith’s trade and no confessional connection with either parent, we might again suspect some connection through the neighborhood. Evidence for this hypothesis can be found in the Golli-

uszes’ own choice of godparents for their Calvinist babies: for one of them “Nastazja” Sienczylowa (i.e., our Anastazja Sokotowska Sienczyltowa), for another “Lord Sienczylo”— the place for the first name was left blank, but here too it was most likely Anastazja’s husband or brother-in-law.°’ In any event, both were Orthodox and could have been tied to the Golliuszes directly by the Glass Street neighborhood.

Buchners and Dabrowskis

The surname name Dabrowski is not uncommon, and several men and women with the name appear as parents and godparents in the record book for baptisms at St. John’s. In several instances, Buchners and others of their Lutheran circle appear with them, which makes me suspect we are again dealing with individuals tied to the Glass Street neighbor-

hood. I will focus on one of them, Tomasz Dabrowski, who had at least three children baptized at St. John’s. I have no reason to suspect he was not Catholic. His wife was once called Marta Tarnawska, once Marianna Tarnawska, and once simply Marianna. But this was probably the same person, and she, too, was apparently Catholic. The couple chose names for their children that appear regularly among Catholics: Katarzyna and Jerzy among the more popular, Antoni among the somewhat less common. But the sponsors they chose for these Catholic babies included many non-Catholics. The duties of godparenthood for Katarzyna (baptized 19 March 1673) were shared by Grzegorz Sienczylo (our Orthodox merchant living on Glass Street), Szymon Safarowicz (probably a

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Roman Catholic with strong Glass Street connections), Krystyna Buchnerowa (Jan’s wife), and a certain Katarzyna Mogilnicka, about whom I knowalmost nothing further. Her maiden name was Fokitinowna (this we learn from the Catholic baptismal record of her own child).°° The name—the registrar seems not to have gotten it quite right—suggests “otherness.” Even so, she may have been Catholic. Jerzy Dabrowski (baptized 6 May 1675) also received four godparents: Jan Buchner, Jan Pecelt, Katarzyna Safarowiczowa (Szymon’s wife), and Anastazja Sienczylowa. Again, it was the neighborhood that brought them together. Only Jan Pecelt is mostly new to us. (We found him sharing godparent duties with Anna Grekowiczowa above.) There were two middle-level Lutherans of that name, father and son, both ironsmiths. This was probably the son. He had married Katarzyna Szmitowna, widow of “Malcher” (Melchior) Ilis, the Lutheran swordsmith who owned the house at Glass Street 21.03.’° In the 1660s and 1670s

Pecelt was overseeing his wife’s properties, which included two more houses in the neighborhood.’* Finally, Antoni Dabrowski (baptized 17 May 1680) received only two godparents: Jan Buchner and Dorota Bezowa. The Bezes (B6[$) known to me were Lutherans; one of them, Daniel, was a surgeon, and the other, Zachariasz (occupation unknown), served during their

KOnigsberg exile as a witness to the testament of Jan Buchner’s sister Marianna Cylichowa.’?

Godparenting and Network Building I began this chapter with the strictures of Church hierarchs—Roman Catholic and Calvinist—against reaching beyond the confines of confession for godparents. The Jesuit pamphleteers of Wilno, always well aware of what was going on among the other congregations, made Vorbek-Lettow’s use of Calvinist godparents for his children an object of their parody. In a pamphlet published in Wilno in 1624, “Martin Luther” himself addresses a versified letter from his new residence in Hell—he appears to have received bad directions on his journey to the other world—to his faithful flock on German Street in Wilno. In it he takes the royal doctor to task for his acceptance of Calvinist spiritual kin for his children.’ In fact, of the thirty-four godparents Vorbek-Lettow chose for his eleven children, sixteen were Lutherans, six Calvinists, one Orthodox, and six Roman Catholics. (Iam unable to assign a confession to the other five of them.)

The evidence I have put together—some pieces of it direct, others circumstantial— suggest further lines of reasoning. Clearly, Christian education, if we define that term as an upbringing within one’s own confession, cannot have been chief in the minds of either Vorbek-Lettow or the Roman Catholic parents who turned to the Buchners and their circles as they chose sponsors for their babies. I have pointed to the ties created by neighborhood, which sometimes included the ties of professions and social estates predominating in a

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particular neighborhood. Parents were interested—at least in these cases—in providing their children not so much with guides in the faith as with patrons in avery local, worldly life. A small baptismal record for a congregation at the Jesuits’ St. Ignatius, in which entries began in 1666, after the Muscovite occupation, may suggest the importance of ties of ethnicity, which may also have been ties of trade and neighborhood. In it I find parents who remain almost entirely anonymous to me, but who—judging by their names—would seem to have been German Catholics. In the period from 1666 to 1699, at least 7 (of a total 220 over that period, or a little over 3%) had at least one Lutheran godparent. Jan Buchner appeared here three times (in 1666, 1673, and 1695), and his wife Katarzyna Rejter6wna served together with Jan Sztrunk II in 1674 as Lutheran godparents for a Catholic baby. ”* How did the local clergy look upon this? We have only the most indirect of information. The Calvinist record of baptisms occasionally drew attention to the presence of a “Saxon” or of a member of the “Augsburg confession/rite” or of a “female papist” among its godpar-

ents.’° The Calvinist church of Wilno disciplined one of its own at the synod of 1664, a member of the Grekowicz goldsmith family, for fraternizing with members of another confession; the following year’s synod noted his return to grace (and discipline).’”° The fact that the Calvinists identified non-Catholic godparents on six occasions over the years may suggest some discomfort about the practice, which, the Agenda of 1637 had urged, the ministers must not permit “without some great and significant reason.”’’ But in spite of—or along with—any discomfort, those reasons must have come up with troublesome regularity. The record book identifies them only six times, but I count at least seventy-seven other occasions when godparents of another confession raised Calvinist babies from the font. This means that, at minimum, of the 404 Calvinist babies baptized in the Wilno church over the years 1631-1682, 83 (21%) had at least one non-Calvinist godparent. On the other hand, the fact that they all had at least one Calvinist godparent may suggest some attempt to adhere to the guidelines imposed by the Agenda. (Recall that some Catholic babies received no Catholic godparents.) Of the non-Calvinist godparents of Calvinist babies that I have been able to uncover, the vast majority were Lutheran. Only three were Roman Catholic and three were Orthodox. The numbers could be due, in part, to the fact that, thanks to extant offering rolls, I have a much more complete list of Lutheran heads of households (and the names of a few Lutheran wives) than for the other confessions. But I suspect the overall proportions would not change much if I had similar lists for the others. Although it may have been a contributing factor, the small numbers of Calvinist burghers in Wilno cannot have been the sole—perhaps not even the main—reason for looking outside the confession for spiritual kin. What we see here is the same sort of easy formation of Calvinist-Lutheran networks in Wilno that functioned among Vorbek-Lettow’s kin and circles among the elite of Castle Street. The only Orthodox godparents I am able to identify with

certainty—the Sienczytos—had become a part of those same Lutheran, now LutheranCalvinist networks.

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Unfortunately, we do not have any registers of Lutheran baptisms, so we are unable to form an impression of what sorts of spiritual kin people like the Buchners were choosing for themselves and their babies. We might expect them to be somewhat more open than the Calvinists, who frequently drew on Lutheran godparents, mostly silently, but less frequently on Catholics. Jesuit pasquils notwithstanding, Wilno Lutherans coexisted with the dominant Roman Catholics much more peacefully than did their Reformed brethren.”* Here, as elsewhere, we are hampered in our attempt to gain a picture of Ruthenian practices by a near total lack of Uniate and Orthodox record books for the Wilno communities. Still, the suspiciously frequent appearances of otherwise anonymous Anastazjas, to choose one usually Ruthenian name, among godparents for Catholic babies may suggest that the Greeks of Wilno also played some role in supraconfessional networks. In 1668 alone, 22 of 835 Roman Catholic babies (2.6%) had godmothers named Anastazja, which may suggest not only the presence of Ruthenian godparents at St. John’s but also perhaps the popularity of the name among Wilno’s Romans. The frequency with which Catholic parents chose non-Catholic godparents for their babies is, I think, remarkable. For the 835 babies baptized at St. John’s in 1668, I have been able to identify 54 (6%) who received at least one non-Catholic godparent. There may well have been more. But equally or perhaps even more surprising is the absolute silence of the priest-

registrar on this topic. The entries were boilerplate. They tell us, always in the same order and with the same syntax, the date of the baptism; the names of the officiating priest, baby, father, and mother; the fact that the child was (or was not) legitimate; the parents’ place of residence; and the names of the godparents. Not a word about the confession of the godparents (or parents). It is only by comparing these names with other lists and documents that I have been able to ferret out the interlopers. It cannot always—not even often, in my view—have been a case of turning a blind eye. There are signs that Jan Buchner, for one, enjoyed a certain amount of respect among local Catholic authorities. In 1669 he and Lucja Juskiewiczowa stood as the sole godparents for the

illegitimate but Catholic child of a certain Katarzyna.’? What is more, the child was a boy, and Jan Buchner gave him his own Christian name. Perhaps neighborhood again played some role. Why else would an apparently Catholic woman seek the services of this Lutheran man as a sponsor for her illegitimate child? Godparents played even more important roles for illegitimate children than for those legitimately conceived, but the priest did not insist on any objections he might have had.®° A year earlier, in 1668, Jan Buchner had sponsored a Jewish girl or woman who received the name Anna when she was baptized in the Catholic church. This seems to me an even stronger vote of confidence on the part of the Catholic clergy. These occasions were treated as festive events, and the godparents were often drawn from the Catholic elite. When that same year a Jewish male converted and took on the name Kazimierz (that of the Jagiellonian patron saint of Lithuania), he was baptized not by the usual parish priest but by bishop of Wilno Aleksander Sapieha, and his godparents were palatine of Wilno Jerzy Hlebowicz and

134 CHAPTER 6 “Magnifica Dijomi|na Leonora Gorska Wojnina,” all of them Catholics.** Wojnina was the wife of

vice-palatine of Wilno Aleksander Michat Wojna Jasieniecki.

Jan Buchner’s Jewish goddaughter did not receive sponsors of quite that rank, but still they were significant: in addition to Buchner, there was Wilno burgomaster “Dominus Franciszek Burba,” “Domina Cecylia Kukowiczowa,” and Konstancja Burbianka Antonowiczowa.®

All but Buchner were related. The Burbas were a Catholic family with members in the burgher ruling elite. Cecylia Kukowiczowa was the wife of Uniate mayor Jan Kukowicz. She was probably Orthodox or Uniate. She and her husband lived in the house they inherited from her father, Mikotaj Zypta, in a heavily Orthodox neighborhood (St. Kazimierz Alley 75.04). In his testament, Jan Kukowicz called Franciszek Burba his brother-in-law,

so perhaps one of Jan’s sisters had married Franciszek.?? Konstancja was a Burba (Burbianka = daughter of Burba). She was the wife of Joachim Antonowicz, who also seems to have been Catholic. But the Antonowiczes drew on Lutheran Glass Street deni-

zens for godparents for their own children: in one case, Zachariasz Hubryk, a Lutheran

merchant and brother-in-law of Jan Pecelt; in another, Orthodox merchant Gabriel Sienczylo.** Other members of the Antonowicz family did the same: Kazimierz Antonowicz called on Zachariasz Hubryk and Lutheran Barbara Zatrybowa, whose Catholic husband had witnessed the testament of Jan Buchner’s sister Marianna Cylichowa during the K6nigsberg exile;®> and Stanistaw Antonowicz chose Regina Buchnerowa as godmother for his children (three times!).®° All of this suggests that neighborhood was also at play here. Glass Street and Jewish Street formed one community in some ways, and Jan Buchner himself lived in his Glass Street house together with Jewish renters and rented out a neighboring house to both Christian and Jewish families. Perhaps the newly baptized Anna was one of his neighbors. But this also suggests a certain status for Jan Buchner in the eyes of Catholic clergy. Not just anyone was asked to stand as godparent to a Jewish convert. The documents of the Wilno magistracy kept in Polish (and that was the vast majority) used the title pan (lord, sir) for almost anyone, regardless of birth; to indicate nobility it was necessary to write something like Jego Mos¢ Pan.—“His Grace, Lord.” The baptismal record for St. John’s was kept in Latin, and the use of the title dominus, although an exact translation of the Polish pan, was regularly reserved for the nobles or for the families of Wilno magistrates, who enjoyed noble rights. In the previous record, Burba and Kukowiczowa, a burgomaster and a burgomaster’s wife, were titled dominus and domina. Buchner and Antonowiczowa were not given titles. But on one occasion Catholic baptismal records accorded Buchner the title dominus. What is more, his co-godparents included a Catholic priest (Admodum Reverendus Dominus Joannes Kal, Most Reverend Lord Jan Kal), in addition to Lady Lucja Bojmowa, and Lady Mari-

anna Rychterowa.®’ The first godmother was the wife of Wilno wojt Pawel Bojm, the second

the wife of burgomaster Mikotaj Rychter. Both men were Roman Catholics. Burgher Jan

BIRTH, BAPTISM, GODPARENTING 135

Buchner had entered into higher spheres here. More notably, he stood on this occasion next to a Catholic priest as co-godfather. Godparenthood provided Jan Buchner with a certain status in Wilno society, and it gave the families of his godchildren a burgher patron of some importance. The fact that nearly all the people for whom Buchner sponsored babies remain for me little more than names suggests that they had looked higher than their own estate for godparents. It also allowed him to build community across confession at the neighborhood level. Think of baptismal and

other celebrations that brought together Lutherans, Calvinists, and Orthodox for food, drink, and music in the dwellings of their Catholic neighbors on Glass Street. The lowerlevel clergy administering the baptisms were much more a part of the life of the neighborhoods than the likes of Jakub Wujek and the higher clergy who penned the Calvinist Agenda. An understanding of the importance of this sort of community building in the lives of some of their parishioners—what John Bossy has termed the establishment of “a relation of formal amity”*®?—may have made it possible for them to act contrary to the strictures of the hierarchs. In any event, this kind of confessional indifference in the choice of godparents was clearly not limited to the nobles or the burgher elites of Castle Street.

What’s in a Name? This practice fits well with the emerging picture of other aspects of the coexistence of the confessions in seventeenth-century Wilno. That coexistence was founded on a mixture of confessional discipline and generous amounts of give. Acceptance of Roman Catholicism was the acknowledged road to advancement, but those who would not take that step found ways to prosper within the limits imposed by religion and estate. People created neighborhoods and networks largely within their confession, but many had some ties of community across those bounds.

The Catholic clergy succeeded only partially in imposing discipline on their flock. One example is to be found in the naming practices used by the faithful. The baptismal registers

reveal the expected clustering of Bartlomiejs around the feast of St. Bartholomew (24 August; all nineteen of them in 1668 were baptized between 15 August and 2 September) and of Agnieszkas around that of St. Agnes (21 January; all twelve baptized between 6 and 29 January of that year). In fact, those were two of the names that did not appear even once

among the 404 Calvinist baptisms recorded over the years 1631-1682. Others of some popularity among Catholics (and absent among Calvinists) included Agata, Ewa, Kazimierz, Klara, Konstancja, Lucja, Magdalena, Marta, Mateusz/Matiasz, Szymon, and Teresa. Conversely, we find several names used by Calvinists that were not met even once among the 835 Roman Catholic baptisms recorded in 1668: Balcer/Baltazar, Dawid, Florentyna, Korneliusz,

Matgorzata/Margareta, Marek, Samuel, among others. Even with names used by both

136 CHAPTER 6 confessions (e.g., Andrzej and Anna), one difference appears to be the recourse to the saints’

calendar among the Roman Catholics and the preference for family tradition among the Calvinists. Lutherans also looked to family naming traditions, but—as we saw in the case of Vorbek-Lettow—that practice could coexist with the old saints’ calendar, perhaps another example of Roman Catholic-Lutheran syncretism in Wilno. A glance at the genealogical tables I have assembled for a few Wilno Protestant burgher families will give a sense of the importance of family traditions. In this, Protestant burgher families of Wilno behaved like Catholic nobles, for whom family traditions were of paramount importance in the choosing of names, and the saints’ calendar played only a secondary role, if in fact any.*? By contrast, arch-Catholic royal secretary and burgomaster Stefan Karas—he would ask on 22 February 1684 to be buried under the altar of St. Francis Xavier at the Jesuits’ St. John— chose names for his children that reflected the program of Counter-Reformation Roman Catholicism: Francisio (little Francis), Teresia (little Teresa), Basia (little Barbara), Kasia (little Catherine), Ignacy (Ignatius). We may suspect that, in addition to choosing names of great importance to post-Tridentine Catholicism, he might have relied to some extent on the saints’ calendar.°°

Thus in addition to a certain number of names shared among the confessions, there were some names more or less clearly marked as Roman Catholic or Lutheran, Calvinist or Ruthenian. The names I have collected from contexts other than church registries offer considerable impressionistic data on which names to expect in which communities. Dawids, Daniels, and Zuzannas were most likely Lutheran or Calvinist. Afanasys, Eudoksjas, Fiedors, Iwans, Bazylis were most likely Ruthenian, whether Uniate or Orthodox. And so if you met a Vilnan named Zuzanna or Anastazja, you might feel tempted to bet your house on Glass Street that the first was a Lutheran or a Calvinist, the second Uniate or Orthodox. But you might end up homeless. In 1668, for example, out of 835 Catholic babies,

3 were baptized Anastazja and 1 Zuzanna.°* One of the Anastazjas was baptized on 26 December, the day after her feast in the Western church. (That Anastasia—the martyr who

died ca. 304—was commemorated in the East a bit earlier in the old calendar, on 22 December/1 January.) The other 2 were baptized within two days of each other (30 October and 1 November), which suggests a more local cult—perhaps under Ruthenian influence—of St. Anastasia II (d. 257), whose feast day was 28 October. A further sort of Catholic-Ruthenian syncretism is suggested in the names of two Roman Catholic babies baptized in 1668—Eudoksja and Eufrozyna. In both cases we might suspect the interference of the old calendar. Eudoksja was baptized on 18 March. The feast day of this saint is 1 March, but ifthe parents were using the Julian calendar for domestic purposes, they would have celebrated the feast ten days “late,” on 11 March, New Style; they brought her for baptism just a week after that. This sort of calculation seems even more likely in the case of Eufrozyna, who was baptized on 4 June. St. Euphrosine of Potock (daughter of Prince Svjatoslav; d. 1173) was the object of a cult among the Ruthenians of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Her feast day was 23 May, which—again, if the parents of this Eufrozyna were using the

BIRTH, BAPTISM, GODPARENTING 137

old calendar at home—would have been 2 June, two days before they brought her to church for baptism. I would further note that Eudoksja’s godmother was named for the same saint and that Eufrozyna’s mother’s name was Anastazja. Seventeenth-century Vilnans were certainly subject to a kind of confessional disciplining in naming and godparenting practices, but it was imposed economically and in moderation, with concerns for the creation of supraconfessional community located in neighborhoods sometimes overriding the strictures of the clerical elites.

~CHAPTER SEVEN~

Education and Apprenticeship

ven in still relatively prosperous times, the Lithuanian Calvinist Church seems to have 3 lived under a siege mentality. Canon 2 of the Wilno General Synod, 28 June 1621, read, in part: 2. Concerning Evangelical [i.e., Calvinist] children. Since they are the semina Ecclesiae [seed of the Church], the children of Evangelical parents, must not be seasoned in the leaven of opposing religions; rather right ab incunabulis [from the cradle] they must be trained in the fear and in the true knowledge of God. And although this is sufficiently

protected both by God’s law and ecclesiastical canons, nonetheless, many parents and guardians, having gotten a taste for some sort of worldly enticements, unto the contempt of the Evangelical churches and schools, with evident harm to the praise of God, some give their sons to the schools of the adversaries, others keep false preceptors at home for them. And they either cast the girls into conventual orders, or, for the sake of the mothers (when it happens that only the father is an Evangelical) they allow them to go to the opposing side. ... Therefore, a term of 12 weeks from the conclusion of this synod is set for parents or guardians, before the expiration of which they must and are obliged to correct the described errors, take their sons from the schools of the adversaries and give them to Evangelical ones (since, by God’s grace, we haven’t yet begun to lack them), remove the pedagogues of the opposing religion, withdraw their daughters from the convents and consecrate them to no other religion but the genuine Evangelical one.* Those who continued in their errant ways were to be “anathematized and excluded from the Church of God” at a local synod. The concern that good Calvinist parents were employing “preceptors of the Arian [i.e., Antitrinitarian], Ruthenian [i.e., Greek-rite, whether Uniate or Orthodox], and papist faith” for their children or sending them to “opposing schools” was a constant refrain in the canons of the general synods throughout the seventeenth century.” One Calvinist, a certain “Mr. Gauter”’—this was most likely Marcin Gauter, alias Uphogen, Uphagen, etc., a steward and elder in the Wilno church in the first half of the seventeenth century (he owned the house at Castle Street 1.13)?—-was singled out for public censure in canon 24 of

EDUCATION AND APPRENTICESHIP 139

the Wilno General Synod of 1638: “Reprimand of Mr. Gauter. Even though he was frequently admonished by the pastors of the Wilno Calvinist church about removing his children from the Jesuit schools, he has not wished to acknowledge his duty.”* A letter from the superintendent of the Lithuanian Calvinists to the ministers dated 1639 proclaimed under the rubric “incentives for good cheer” (pobudki do otuchy) that “only one thing is lacking for complete happiness” (do zupelnej pociechy): “the deprivation of its privileges, or the removal of the Wilno [Jesuit] Acad-

emy from its location.” Unfortunately for perfect Calvinist joy, that was not going to occur, even

under—or perhaps especially under—the relatively benignant rule of Wladyslaw IV Waza.

The concern about sending the community’s children (sons) abroad for schooling was not limited to Calvinist clergy. As always with such anxieties and strictures, several questions arise. Why did priests and ministers feel a need to promulgate such decrees? What practices of the laity elicited these attempts to impose confessional discipline upon education? How did the faithful view and approach the problem?

This chapter examines religious, cultural, and occupational aspects of upbringing, broadly construed, in seventeenth-century Wilno. One of the terms for “upbringing” generally used at the time, wychowanie (a verbal substantive from the infinitive wychowac’), also included—perhaps even implied for the majority—first and foremost the simplest material aspects of care for minors: food, clothing, shelter.* Here I look at spiritual, intellectual, and practical components of providing and acquiring training in the faith and the tools of a profession and/or trade. I am less interested here in the details of the various rationes studiorum (plan of studies), and more, as throughout, in the role of confessional allegiances and identities in forming interpersonal associations in the context of providing and acquiring an education in the broader sense of the term.

Mixed Families I begin where I left off last chapter—with baptisms and godparenting but focusing now more specifically on the children of confessionally mixed couples. What I offer here may serve as a corrective, or qualifier, to the impression of a certain confessional indifference in the practices of some parents. Choices of spiritual kin, among other things, suggest an occasional willingness to situate children and the kinship networks formed around them at baptism across the boundaries of confession. And yet, even in these cases, parents still made a choice to have their children baptized in one Church rather than the other. This choice— especially in the case of mixed marriages—may suggest that, no matter how “irenicist” some Vilnans may have been in some of their views on confessional discipline, baptism—even when the godparents were of another confession—nonetheless signified some sort of initiation into the faith taught by one Church rather than another. After all, the differences between the articles of faith of the various confessions, if parents listened to the theologians and polemicists, brought either salvation or damnation.

140 CHAPTER7

There was a tendency in the mixed households in the east of the Commonwealth—by no means written into law—to raise the boys in the confession of the father, the girls in that of the mother. Lutheran royal doctor Vorbek-Lettow seems not to have followed this pattern, in spite of his openness to social and other ties with members of all the other confessions. His wife was born into a Calvinist family and probably remained in that faith: this was the pattern we will discover in several other Lutheran-Calvinist marriages.° The fact that two of the three girls (and one of the eight boys) were baptized by a Calvinist minister was due to circumstances and not to strategies for keeping harmony in what may have been a mixed marriage: the family had fled the plague from Wilno to the countryside, and the doctor had to make do with a Calvinist minister, since “at that time it was impossible to get [one] of my own confession.”” The sources also suggest that other Vilnans—many of them well known or even related to the royal doctor—did in fact adhere to the practice of allotting different confessions to boys and girls in the maintenance of religious order and peace in multiconfessional households. The practice must be inferred in most instances, however, not only because we have no positive statements from contemporaries about it but also because of the nature of the available sources. We have, for instance, baptismal registers for one confession (Calvinists) and offering rolls for another (Lutherans). Use of these two record books, coupled with other evidence about confessional allegiances and the numbers and sexes of children born to confessionally mixed couples, suggests cases where we find boys brought up in the Church of the fathers, girls in that of the mothers. I start under the spreading genealogical tree of the Gibel family. As we learn from the Personalia section of one of the many funeral sermons by Lutheran minister Jedrzej Sch6nflissius, longtime burgomaster Jakub Gibel (b. 1569) was the son of Lutheran city councillor Tomasz Gibel and burgomaster’s daughter Katarzyna Dochnowiczéwna, probably also a Lutheran. In any event, “as soon as the Lord God had given him to them into the world, they offered him to Him through holy baptism. Then they raised him [wychowali] in the fear of God and in the doctrine and obedience of the Lord.” Jakub’s father soon died, and his mother married another Lutheran, merchant Piotr Fonderflot, who continued his upbringing, sending him abroad on a study trip. Upon his return to Wilno, ca. 1600, he met his future wife among the daughters of Lutheran merchant Andrzej Fonderflot (perhaps the brother of his

stepfather?). Krystyna Fonderflotowna, with whom he lived in marriage for thirty-eight years, gave birth to six sons and four daughters, of whom half, three sons and two daughters, would survive their relatively long-lived father (he died in 1637 at age sixty-eight). So far as I can tell, the couple raised all their children in the Lutheran faith. The layout of the dedicatory page in Schénflissius’s sermon suggests orders of birth among the boys and girls: Tomasz, Jakub, Jan; Katarzyna, Elzbieta.® In 1636 the Gibels (Jakub and apparently eldest son Tomasz) owned three houses on Castle Street—Jakub at 2.13 and 2.18, Tomasz next to his

father at 2.12. Daughters and sons-in-law (and one grandson) also lived in the neighborhood.

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Tomasz Gibel—although he would successfully maintain a claim to noble rights as the son of a Wilno magistrate—would marry a burghess from the neighborhood. This was Anna Engelbrechtowna, quite literally the girl next door (Castle Street 2.11). She was the daughter

of Lutheran merchant Szymon Engelbrecht I and Krystyna Vorbekéwna-Lettowéwna, sister of the royal doctor. The couple would have at least five children. One of them, daughter Krystyna Giblowna, married a Calvinist. She was the second wife of royal doctor and master

of the Wilno horodnictwo Pawel Kleofas, whom King Wladyslaw IV would ennoble during the 1633 Election Sejm as “z Brylewa Podchocimski” in recognition of his medical services to the then future king at the Battle of Chocim (1621) and over the next decade.” At that time, in the early 1630s, Podchocimski’s first wife was apparently still living. She was the Anna Podchocimska who served as a godmother for a Calvinist baby on 2 October 1635.*° “Pan Doktor [Lord Doctor| Paulus Cleophas” brought his own son Pawel to the font at the Wilno Calvin-

ist church on 14 October 1631 to be baptized. Two years later, and newly incorporated into the ranks of the Lithuanian nobility, “His Grace, Lord Pawel Cleophas Podchocimski, medicinae doctor, secretary of His Grace the King, Wilno architect [budowniczy],” would name his second son Wladyslaw Karol in honor of his royal patron, who would be the boy’s nominal godparent.** These were sons borne by his first wife. None of his other children would receive baptism in the Wilno Calvinist church. Podchocimski had at least four children with his second, Lutheran wife, Krystyna Giblowna, three of them, according to Vorbek-Lettow, daughters: Katarzyna, Anna, and Zofia.’ Their absence from Calvinist baptismal, marriage, and Communion records can best be explained by the assumption that they were raised in their mother’s Lutheran confession (for which baptismal records are lacking). Similar pictures emerge from an examination of the cases of their mother’s cousins. A daughter of Jakub Gibel named Katarzyna married Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold II in 1622.*? The couple resided across the street from the Gibel properties in the Winhold family home at Castle Street 1.16. As we learn from the funeral sermon for Korneliusz II (d. 31 May 1638) published by Calvinist minister Baltazar Labedzki, the deceased “had five children with [Giblowna], of whom only one remains alive, and four of them they accompanied to the grave with sorrow.”** The sole surviving child was named Jakub. He was still a minor at the time of his mother’s death, and in 1644 his Gibel aunt, “Halszka” (Elzbieta), received a detailed inventory of the family house that she would be holding in his name.*? Two of those who had already died were Korneliusz III and Jan. They had been baptized in the Calvinist church on 1 January 1635 and 11 August 1637, respectively.*° From funeral sermons by Calvinist minister Labedzki, we learn of Korneliusz II’s burial on 6 March 1635, and of the death of Jan on 12 October 1637.*’ Jakub, no doubt named for his maternal grandfather, the Lutheran burgomaster Jakub Gibel, seems to have been the oldest son; his absence from the Calvinist baptismal register could be explained by the fact that the first entry in that book is from August 1631, and he was probably born before that date. The other two unnamed children—likewise absent from Calvinist baptismal rolls and otherwise unmentioned in Labedzki’s funeral sermons, even though they too had died by 1638—would seem to have

142 CHAPTER7 been girls, baptized and raised in their mother’s Lutheran church. Records of offerings given to that church by “Frawe Corneliuf§ Wiencholdtsche” for the two-year period ending 1640 (29 zl, 10 gr) indicate that she remained in her family’s confession.** Women appeared independently in the rolls of Lutheran giving only in two instances: as widows or when their husbands were of a different confession. Both of these applied to Giblowna in 1640. Moving to the next branch of the Gibel family tree, we find sister of Tomasz and Katarzyna, Elzbieta Giblowna—the one who received the inventory of the Winhold house. She was the wife of Lutheran merchant Jan Sztrunk II. (The Sztrunk family owned the house nearby at Castle Street 2.10.) Their son, Jan Sztrunk III, would marry Barbara Monesowna, the Calvinist daughter of Henryk Mones, who was the last Protestant burgomaster of Wilno and would go on, after the royal edict of 1666 banning all but Roman Catholics and Uniates from office in the magistracy, to hold a number of high offices and titles, including that of royal secretary, royal administrator of the customs, and postmaster general of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Mones’s family had immigrated from Belgium, and Vorbek-Lettow numbered him among his first cousins, once removed (cioteczny wnuk).*® Mones’s own second wife was Lutheran Sara Sztrunk6wna, whom he married in 1655. She would thus become a cousin-inlaw to her own stepdaughter, and both father and daughter, Mones and Monesowna, would have Lutheran Sztrunk spouses. Barbara Monesowna and Jan Sztrunk II married on 18 November 1663. Barbara MonesOwna’s mother had apparently also been a Calvinist; we find “Monesowa” (occasionally further identified as “Halszka”) on numerous occasions in the role of godmother to Calvinist babies in the period before Mones’s second marriage, and the couple’s two daughters would

both receive Calvinist baptisms.° In any event, Lutheran merchant Jan Sztrunk HI—he would also attain the title of royal secretary and begin claiming membership for the family in the Lithuanian szlachta as “de Sztrunk”—appeared in the Calvinist church on at least three occasions in order to baptize his daughters: Halszka (12 March 1668, probably named for her Lutheran paternal grandmother Elzbieta Giblowna), Katarzyna (3 November 1675, perhaps named for Lutheran great-aunts Katarzyna Giblowna and Katarzyna Sztrunkéwna), and Anna (20 March 1677, perhaps named for another Lutheran great-aunt, Anna Engelbrechtowna).”? Their mother, Barbara Monesowna, would remain Calvinist. We find her name,

together with that of her first daughter Halszka and second daughter Katarzyna, among the communicants of the Reformed congregation in the 1680s. If the couple had any boys, they were evidently raised in the Lutheran church. Jan Sztrunk III was one of the major contributors to that congregation’s finances in the second half of the seventeenth century, and the family name would live on in Wilno society.?? We have yet another, similar example from the Calvinists on the other side of Castle Street. The Desaus family lived—and successfully defended their property against confiscation for alleged collusion with the Swedes during the midcentury wars—in the town house at Castle Street 1.26. The chief object of allegations of treason, Jan Desaus, would return to Wilno and see his daughters married in the local Calvinist church; he would also serve with some

EDUCATION AND APPRENTICESHIP 143

frequency as an elder of the church and godfather for Calvinist babies in the 1660s and 1670s.7* His daughter Katarzyna (baptized in the Calvinist church on 6 March 1650) was married twice, the first time to a certain Piotr Korona, apparently a Calvinist, with whom she had two daughters, both baptized in the Calvinist church.*? Her second husband was Lutheran royal secretary Jan Szretter (1686-1698). He would go on to hold the office of treasury secretary, Lithuanian treasurer, and—an incredible coup for a former burgher—castellan of Livland. The couple was married on 10 October 1674.”° She would also have two daughters with her second, Lutheran husband, and he would bring them to the font in his wife’s Calvinist church—Marianna on 15 November 1675 and Zuzanna on 23 November 1679.’ Katarzyna continued to take Communion in the Calvinist church, along with her daughters.** We know that the Szretter line would continue in Lithuanian society and that it would remain Lutheran—apparently deriving in part from Jan.*° In any event, it seems likely this couple too had some boys, and since they are entirely missing in Calvinist records, we may assume that they were raised in the Lutheran Church. We have one example from more modest circles. A baptismal register of mostly German Catholics from the Jesuits’ Church of St. Ignatius tells us that on 22 January 1688 a certain Thomas Bader and his wife Anna baptized their son Thomas in that Roman Catholic church. The Lutheran offering rolls tell us two things: that Thomas Bader was a white-leather tanner (probably he lived among the other Lutheran chamois tanners in Szerejkiszki) and, by default, that he was the Catholic in this marriage, as the entries for offerings to the Wilno Lutheran church—from 1679 to 1691—were all ascribed to “Thomas Bader’s wife [Thomas Bader Haufsfrau].”?° The son was clearly named—perhaps in imitation of German Lutheran patterns?—for his Catholic father (and was to be brought up in the Catholic faith). The nearest Catholic feast to the baptismal date was that of St. Thomas the Apostle on 21 December. And finally we have one example of a mixed marriage of a different confessional constellation. Contrary to some assertions, Burgomaster Stefan Lebiedzicz was Uniate, not Roman Catholic.** His wife, Marta PaszkiewiczOwna, however, was a member of the local Reformed church. She was probably some relation of the several Paszkiewiczes who held office in the magistracy in the first half of the seventeenth century, at least one of whom was a Calvinist.?? Lebiedzicz and Paszkiewicz6wna had two daughters, Halszka and Katarzyna, whom they had baptized in the local Calvinist church 2 October 1633 and 8 March 1635.*? The posthumous inventory of Lebiedzicz’s estate tells us of a son named Stefus (Stevie) and of a gift of six golden spoons to him from his godmother.?* Stefus was not baptized in the Calvinist church. The father’s fidelity to the Uniate Church is reflected in the several provisions for local Uniate institutions found in his posthumous inventory of possessions but also by the fact that the son was not baptized a Calvinist.?° Daughter Halszka would marry a certain Krzysztof Hendrych Dydykien. A Krystyna LebiedziewiczOwna (daughter of Stefan)— perhaps there was a mistake here and Krystyna and Katarzyna were the same person—was married to Stanislaw Gurski, a “ziemianin of His Royal Majesty in the Polish Crown” (in other words, a gentryman of limited noble rights).?° Lebiedzicz’s Calvinist daughters seem to have

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been headed on the path that would take them out of Wilno, to the land, and into the first rungs of the Polish-Lithuanian szlachta. Uniate son Stefus—here, too, among the Ruthenians, we see adherence to family tradition in naming practices—seems to have died in childhood. The majority of Wilno’s children would have received their upbringing in monoconfessional households, learning the rudiments of religion in the same Church to which their parents belonged. But even they would have been aware at some early age that others who lived close by were learning other things about God and faith. And some number of them must have been aware—if only through questions of the sort “Where’s your Mommy?” heard before or after religious services—that a certain number of their playmates had parents of various other confessions. The cases I have pieced together suggest that the fears of the Calvinist synod of 1621 were entirely justified, that at least in some cases, “for the sake of the mothers (when it happens that only the father is an Evangelical) they allow them [or at least the girls] to go to the opposing side.”

Apprenticeships Any further education beyond the rudimentary religious training of the catechism would for the vast majority of Vilnans have been connected with the learning of an art or trade. While the topic belongs, in a sense, to the first rung on the ladder of work in a given profession, there is clearly a pedagogical aspect to an apprenticeship. There was a hierarchy among the trades, ranging from the more noble (goldsmiths, barber-surgeons, printers), downward to the dirtier (furriers, tanners, butchers), to the downright dishonorable (executioners and their assistants, the “dog-catchers”). General levels of literacy and education varied greatly across the spectrum of trades and professions, and the skills taught and acquired were, of course, specific to the given art. What interests me here is not so much how the apprentice was to be trained as how those involved—both the teachers and the taught, masters and apprentices—viewed reaching across boundaries of confession, even religion, in acquiring the tools of a trade. In spite of scattered attempts to draw confessional limits, the guilds of Wilno—unlike those of most other multiconfessional cities—remained highly mixed, even after the victory

of the Counter-Reformation. This necessitated working out methods of power sharing among the masters of a trade who belonged to a range of confessions. Since the guilds remained mixed and the masters themselves had gone through the steps from apprentice to journeyman to owner of a shop, we may presume that the workers in the shop, beginning at the lowest rank, were also of various confessions, even if the guild statutes rarely addressed the issue of relations between the confessions below the level of the elected “annual elders.” Efforts to exclude artisans from a guild by confessional criteria—reflected in the sources on remarkably few occasions—were undertaken not only from the theoretically stronger

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Roman Catholic side. On ro October 1641 Wiadyslaw IV signed a decree in Warsaw instructing certain guilds of Wilno (these included barber-surgeons and various types of tanners) to

cease placing restrictions on Roman Catholics. In each case, we may suspect that the complaint was directed against the Lutherans, who predominated in some of these areas, and that the king’s decree came in response to specific requests brought by Wilno tradesmen, in this case Roman Catholic. Specifically, so the complaint went, “the elder and younger chamois tanners have made some sort of conspiracy [zmowa] among themselves, concerning the acceptance of both journeymen and apprentices of the Catholic faith of the Polish and Lithuanian nation, as also in the election of elders of their craft,”*” and the king ordered them to stop the practice. In general, the guilds were supposed to accept apprentices without regard for confession or ethnicity, except for Jews, Armenians, and Tatars, the sole criterion being the ability to provide a certificate of legitimate birth, of an “honorable bed” (uczciwe loze).?® Thus we may treat as an exception—and wonder just how successful it was—the attempt of the white-leather tanners’, glove makers’, and chamois tanners’ guild (they formed one guild) “not to receive any other apprentices but those of the Catholic faith, of an honorable bed, and born of free [parents].”°

Occasional attempts to ban Christians from serving their apprenticeships in Jewish guilds—and one instance of a ban on Jewish apprentices in a Christian guild—suggest that crossing this particular religious boundary in seeking and providing training in a trade may actually have been something of a troubling, perhaps not entirely uncommon, practice. The only reflection I have seen of the possible presence of a Jewish apprentice in a Christian guild came in a compromise statute for the needle makers in 1672 that allowed four Jewish artisans into the Christian sodality, “and no more,” and specifically disallowed Jewish apprentices and bunglers.*° But the real attraction seems in fact to have been in the other direction. The articles of the

glaziers’ guild enacted 3 December 1663 commanded, “Let no Jew from the date of these statutes of ours dare to receive an apprentice of the Christian faith for training [na nauke].” The very fact that a burgher institution was attempting to dictate Jewish behavior suggests that this was indeed a common practice. In fact, the Jewish glaziers of Wilno may have had a head start on the Christians, which might be an added reason for the attractiveness of an apprenticeship among them in this particular trade. In 1633 King Wladystaw IV had allowed Jews to engage in trades not yet organized into guilds in Wilno, and he named specifically “furriers, haberdashers, and glaziers.” King Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki reaffirmed this privilege in 1669, again naming the same three trades. But the Christian glaziers were incorporated no later than 1663, and their charter that year pointed to a conflict, demanding that Jews cease receiving Christian apprentices to study the trade with them.** A legal battle fought in 1667-1668 between Christian and Jewish butchers’ guilds resulted in a decree that forced the Christian butchers of Wilno to accept the right of Jewish butchers to have their own guild, but it also registered one aspect of their complaint that pertains to the subject at hand: the Jewish guild, so the language of the Christians’ lawyers implies, was

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such a successful institution that Christian journeymen found it an attractive and lucrative place to learn their trade: “They [the Jewish butchers of Wilno] entice to themselves Christian apprentices [czeladz], who, having caused not inconsiderable harm to their [Christian] masters, and having incurred debt with them, depart from them; and they [the Jewish butchers] receive them and maintain them.”* In fact, this was a problem not unique to Wilno: the Jewish guilds of Poland-Lithuania offered an attractive product—high-quality training in certain trades and at prices lower than those found in the Christian guilds.*? (By way of comparison, in Lwow toward the end of the seventeenth century, the lace makers’, glaziers’, tinsmiths’, haberdashers’, needle makers’, and gunsmiths’ guilds were either completely Jewish or included only two or three Christian members, and Christian artisans, including those who became masters, sought apprenticeships with Jews.)**

Although certain confessions were predominant in a few guilds, all were mixed in the seventeenth century to greater and lesser degrees. This would suggest that young Vilnans of the various confessions (and occasionally of the Christian and Jewish religions) rubbed shoulders as they gained professional training from masters who were not necessarily of their own religious group. This also meant that with their first steps outside the family— even in the case of those who gained no literacy but only training in a trade and even if they came from a monoconfessional household—young Vilnans would have encountered both colleagues and superiors of another confession on a daily basis and from an early age.

The Royal Doctor’s Schools Although some elements of the catechism, with the addition of training in a trade, would have been the end of an education for the vast majority of Vilnans, some sought out the schools. For most, a year or two at Wilno’s various church-afhiliated grammar schools would have had to suffice. Some would venture forth to nearby gymnasiums in ducal or royal Prussia—KOnigsberg, Elbing, or Danzig. A very few—probably almost all of them from the upper reaches of the burgher elite—would set off on “peregrinations to the schools,” partly in emulation of the szlachta, partly in order to gain training in a profession that might facilitate their own passage into that estate (medicine, law, and mathematics/fortifications chief among them). The richest concentration of information on the personal experience of an individual Vilnan is to be had, once again, in The Treasure-House of Memory of Lutheran royal doctor Macie}

Vorbek-Lettow. The account takes us on a journey through a highly mixed experience in the lower schools of Wilno itself and of ducal and royal Prussia (a common first destination for Protestants of Poland-Lithuania), back to Wilno for studies in the Calvinist lyceum and the Jesuit Academy, and then on to universities and academies of western Europe (both north and south) for the purpose of learning languages and acquiring training in a profession, in

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this case that of medicine. This rather comprehensive account of the education of one Vilnan offers some context in which to situate the few and isolated details we possess about the experiences of others from the city. Vorbek-Lettow tells us that he was born 12 February 1593 and that, “after seven years [1.e., ca. 1600], [he] began to go to the Saxon [Lutheran] school at the Wilno church. In half year [he] had learned to read and to write mediocriter [not particularly well].” His first two teachers, Michael Frobenius and Jedrzey Ustowski (“a learned and exemplary youth”), seem to have been satisfactory. The third, Andrzej Gutowski, although “a worthy and good man,” was, in the memory of his young student, “extremely unfit for teaching; he did nothing but waste my years.”*° Presumably the emphasis was on learning the rudiments of Latin, but some German reading and writing may have been a part of the equation, perhaps also some Polish. The result was that, “having completed grammaticam [grammar, 1.e., Latin] in this school very perfunctorie [superficially],” the future doctor was sent by his father to K6nigsberg at age ten (ca. 1603) to continue his studies. He attended a school there—most certainly some sort of Lutheran grammar school and not the university—in the Old Town for “almost a year.” But since “the German tongue is vile in K6nigsberg,” the now eleven-year-old went on to

Elbing (Elblag) in royal Prussia to live with his father’s stepmother so that he might “acquire ‘high German’ [gorna niemiecka mowa], for it is pronounced purely only in this one Prussian city.” Clearly, the purpose of traveling to study was to acquire not only Latin but also the local vernaculars. After a year in Elbing, thus ca. 1605, at age twelve, Vorbek-Lettow moved on to Danzig. There he began to study at the famous Calvinist gymnasium, where he heard lectures in logic by Bartholomew Keckermann (1571/1573—-1608)—a professor

of philosophy and theology of international renown, often seen as one of the “fathers of modern systematic theology”*°—and in medicine by Danzig doctor and physician Nicholas Oelhaf.*” We do not learn how long he stayed in Danzig, but, he wrote, “since I was sent [to study away from Wilno] as a youngster, I began to become deficient [szwankowac ’] in Polish.” When his father noticed this in the letters his son was sending to him—evidence that the Saxon father and son corresponded at least partly in Polish—he “ordered me to come home, which I did.”*®

At that point (ca. 1608 if Vorbek-Lettow remained a year or so in Danzig, as he had done in K6nigsberg and Elbing) the school at the Calvinist church in Wilno was, according to the

memoirist, experiencing a period of “glory.” His father placed him in it for another year and ordered him to “listen to various lectiones [lectures].” He attended lectures in theology and logic by Calvinist minister and doctor of theology Baltazar Krosniewicki, in physics and ethics by Marcin Chmieleski, and in rhetoric by Adam Rassius (“vir literatissimus [a most learned man]”).*° Vorbek-Lettow had spent barely a year with the Calvinists, when, “tempore vacationum [at vacation time],” he happened to meet “father Gruszewski [other sources call him Gruzewskil], Jesuit, professor designatus pro renovatione studiorum philosophiae [appointed for the reformation of studies in philosophy].” Jan Gruzewski first studied in the Wilno Jesuit Academy and

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then went to Rome to complete a doctorate in theology. He had returned to Wilno in 1609, the year he met the future royal doctor, and he spent five years teaching and reforming the instruction of philosophy at the academy before taking over the instruction of theology in 1618. From 1618 to 1625 he would serve as one of the academy’s more energetic rectors.*° But

in 1609 he had come to see Vorbek-Lettow’s father—himself a barber-surgeon—“for getting advice conservandae valetudinis [about how to maintain his health].” The Jesuit patient encountered his Lutheran doctor’s son in the courtyard (no doubt of the Vorbek-Lettow family house at German Street 26.03) with “a book under my arm.” Upon discovering the identity of the young student (now sixteen years of age), the new professor asked his doctor to send his son to begin the study of philosophy under his tutelage beginning 1 September. “I assure you by my priestly word,” Gruzewski told his doctor, “that he will learn more in half a year than in the schools to which he went through all those years. As far as religion is concerned, I promise that I will leave him in peace.” On the basis of the motto “omnia probate, quod bonum est tenete” (1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good”), Vorbek-Lettow Sr., “having invited the Calvinist church preceptors to a dinner, gave them his thanks and sent [his son] off to the collegium [college].”>*

The young student was generally appreciative of the training he was to receive at the academy: I must grant it to the Jesuit fathers that they teach diligently and benevolently. They keep

an eye on the youths. Even if one did not wish to, through the constant repetitions, no matter how incompetent he might be, he will have to learn something. In addition to this, they teach methodice [methodically], they do not burden the youths with various subjects, as they do in other schools and as it was with me: ex omnibus aliquid, ex toto nihil [something of everything, of all—nothing].>?

The religious question was another matter, and the experience in the Jesuit Academy both challenged Vorbek-Lettow’s Lutheran faith and finally confirmed him in it. He did not experience “any sort of harassment [dokuka] from the professor himself, but enough and more from Father Jakub Ortisius, a Spaniard,” who promised him “mountains of gold” if he would convert to Roman Catholicism. Vorbek-Lettow girded himself for confessional battle during his year at the Jesuit Academy by going “every Sunday and Thursday for half an hour for privatae [private lessons] to Father [Grzegorz] Borastus, the Polish preacher augustanae confessionis [of the Augsburg confession]. He resolvebat propositos nodos [solved the problems posed] and taught me fideliter [faithfully] how I was to answer them from Holy Writ.” When Borastus (1584-1630)—a Swedish doctor of law and theology and a royal secretary—left for Prussia, Vorbek-Lettow’s father placed his son in a sort of student dormitory run by Father Chrystian Bruno, “the German Saxon preacher, a pious and learned man.” (Was this at the Lutheran church complex just up the street from the Vorbek-Lettow house?) Among other things, the boys would eat

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together, one of them reading aloud—from the Bible on holy days, from Protestant Church historian Johannes Sleidanus (1506-1556) on weekdays. But when they got up in the morning, “[they] would go... each to his own school.” Bruno “saw to it that [they] learned diligently the lessons [they] received in school.” Making each boy write on the wall above his bed in the dormitory an admonitory text was to encourage another sort of self-discipline: “In omni loco oculi Domini contemplantur bonos et malos” (Proverbs 15:4, “The eyes of the Lord are in every

place, beholding the good and the evil”).>? The story of a dispute between Lutheran minister Chrystian Bruno and Jesuit doctor of philosophy Jedrzej Nowak adds a few details to our picture of the schools of Wilno and the conditions in them. It was Father Nowak who had laid down the gauntlet: “If he, Bruno, could prove ex patribus et consilis [from the fathers and the councils], that in primitiva ecclesia [in the early Church] there was given tam clericis quam latcts sub utraque specie Venerabile Sacramentum

[the Venerable Sacrament to both clergy and laity under both kinds], then he would convert to the Saxon faith; if not, he [Bruno] would convert to the Roman. To which they gave each other their hand in the presence of trustworthy people.”** Bruno did not have an unabridged copy of the Council of Constance (“non castratum concilii Constantiensis codicem”) in his library,

but he knew that the local Dominican fathers at the Church of the Holy Spirit did have one. (And note that a Lutheran minister in Wilno knew off the top of his head where to look for a specific book in the libraries of his local confessional competitors!) So he sent VorbekLettow’s stepbrother, Pawel Katerla (yet another future royal doctor, apparently Calvinist), who happened to be studying philosophy with Nowak at the time, to make a copy of the crucial passage for him. Katerla, Bruno knew, “was on good terms with the Dominican librarian,” so the Lutheran preacher asked him that he, “praetextu alio [under another pretext], having received permission to go into the library, write out what he needed (for all their books are chained to the benches by little chains)—and namely, the canon of sessio 13 consilii Constantiensis [session 13 of the Council of Constance].” The canon stated clearly that the usage of the early Church was to grant Communion to the laity in both species but that a recognized custom had arisen later whereby only the priest received Communion in both the bread and the wine, the laity in the bread alone.*° Nowak was mightily surprised at the turn of events and asked where Bruno had found the proof-text, demanding “ipsum autenticum codicem [the authentic codex itself].” The Lutheran preacher replied, “I don’t have it. Go to the library of the Dominican fathers, it is there, and you will find it in no other form.” The duel ended amicably but without the conversion of either party. Vorbek-Lettow often returned in his memory to that moment: “Every time I read that canon, or brought it to memory, it confirmed me miraculously in the genuine apostolic faith.”>°

“Upon completing philosophiam [the course in philosophy] with the Jesuit fathers, the Lord God punished Wilno with fire.” With this stunning anacoluthon—we might be inclined to see it as a pre-Freudian slip were it not for the fact that Old Polish usage enthusiastically embraced such constructions—Vorbek-Lettow brought to a close the chapter on his studies

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in Wilno and the two Prussias and turned his attention to an account of his “peregrinations to the schools” of western Europe. The Polish-Lithuanian nobles regularly sent their sons to western Europe for some years of travel from school to school. The itineraries changed over time and with the progress of the Counter-Reformation. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a nobleman might be expected to sample several universities and academies, of both north and south and of all the confessions. Gradually, places of learning began to be chosen with the confession of the student in mind, although there was still a certain amount of indifference on this front and more interest in the particular strengths of the given institution of

higher learning.’ Vilnans traveled too, and for some of the same reasons, above all because of a lack of certain faculties at the Wilno academy (especially the professions—law and medicine) and because non-Catholics were not permitted in the higher subjects (theology, sometimes even philosophy) or because non-Catholic parents simply preferred not to entrust their sons to the Jesuits. Some of those from families situated at the intersection of the burgher elite and the Lithuanian nobility, such as Vorbek-Lettow, may also have used such a study tour as yet another way to emulate the szlachta and facilitate the family’s (re-)entry into it. Much of Wilno, probably including Vorbek-Lettow’s own house, had burned to the ground on 1 July 1610. In view of the dire situation, his father sent him on 15 August “to foreign countries for education,” giving him his blessing and a viaticum (here, provision for the road) that included a symbolic reminder of his parents’ situation in the Lithuanian capital. This was “a portugal [a coin] melted together with a taler found in the ashes of the ruins, as a souvenir, so that, looking at them, [he] might remember in what ashes [he] had left [his] parents, for this warning, that [he] might bea good, thrifty custodian of the viaticum they had bestowed upon [him], .. . that [he] might take care and heed of [him]self and not be a burden to [his] lord parents.” Vorbek-Lettow Sr. was a balwierz, a barber-surgeon, who managed to cultivate relations with elite patrons. His goal for his son was to move one rung up on the professional ladder, to that of medical doctor, which would open even more doors. The younger Vorbek-Lettow traveled as far as Frankfurt am Main with his brother-in-law or perhaps at that time still future brother-in-law, Szymon Engelbrecht I (Castle Street 2.11), arriving there on 6 October, before heading off on his own for Paris.°* By 13 October he had arrived in Basel, where he presented himself to “Kasper Bauchinius, renowned botanicus et anatomicus [botanist and anatomist].” Caspar Bauhin (1560-1624) was indeed a famous scientist, a precursor to Linnaeus in his work on the classification of plants.*? No one interested in the study of medicine would have needed to be told to pay Bauhin a visit; still, the way to the scholar’s door may have been opened by the contacts made by Vorbek-Lettow’s future patron and future palatine of Wilno, Krzysztof Radziwitt I, who had also made the journey some years earlier and was then carrying on a correspondence with the Swiss scientist.°° (Vorbek-Lettow would find Radziwit! and wife, among others, feasting at his father’s table on his return to Wilno 15 August 1616.°* The family acquaintance probably predated the beginning of the peregrination.) Bauhin offered the young Vorbek-Lettow “lodging and table,

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if only [he] would wish to reside with him.” As the plague was then raging in the city, the traveler preferred to “join some Lord Poles residing in Aucen [Augusta Rauracorum] two miles beyond Basel.” This was Augst, an old Roman settlement on the left bank of the Rhine a few

kilometers below Basel. When the plague reached Augst, the “Lord Poles” decided to move on: Princes Juliusz and Aleksander Pronski, whom Vorbek-Lettow identified as Calvinists

(Evangelicals), set off on the return trip to Poland; Lords Piotr and Samuel BolestraszyckiSwietopelk and Lord Jedrzej Czuryto departed for Paris, “and I in their company.”°” On the way to Paris, the preceptor who had been sent along to supervise the education of the young noblemen, a certain Silesian (natione Slqzak) by the name of Hieronim Praeto-

rius, “noticed... that [he] had red ztotys sewn [in his cloak] in reserve. He pleaded so long that [he] admitted it and loaned them to him.” The agreement was that Praetorius would

return the money once the group reached the French capital. The seventeen-year-old learned his lesson the hard way, of course—this, too, was part of an education. The group arrived in Paris on 2 December 1610. The “little Lords” (panieta) spent three months there before departing for England, at which point they sent their preceptor back to Poland for more funds, “and that was the last [Vorbek-Lettow] saw of him and [his] money.” The future doctor was forced to feed himself for the next three months by “serving with riding horses” for a riding teacher (kalwakator) by the name of Jean Baptiste who lived in the St. Germaine suburb.° This brings us to the summer of 1611, when sons of palatine of Brzes¢é Mikotaj Sapieha, Fryderyk and Aleksander, took Vorbek-Lettow on as a servant (za stuge). He spent about a year with them in the Roman Catholic university town of Louvain, whereupon they all traveled back through France to Italy, stopping in Paris, Lyon, Turin, Milan, finally arriving at Bologna. Vorbek-Lettow complained that his masters gave him nothing but his food, his “bread” (chleb), that they paid him nothing, and that he had to clothe himself. Their preceptor in turn admonished the frustrated burgher student, “It is enough for you that you visit foreign countries at the side of these Young Lords without any expense of your own.”°* The study part of the trip began in good earnest during the year in Louvain—but not without certain difficulties of a confessional nature. Vorbek-Lettow’s father had sent him abroad

to study medicine. To start down this path, he now wished to hear the lectures of “doctor of medicine Phienus,” a faculty member at the local academy. The problem was that Pope Pius IV had promulgated a bull (written 13 November 1564, published 4 December 1564) that placed upon doctoral students, professors, and administrators of Catholic academies and universities the obligation of making a public confession of the Roman Catholic faith.°° This did not end the presence of the heterodox in Catholic centers of higher learning, but it made it more difficult for those who did not wish to dissimulate concerning their religious beliefs to take degrees, at times even to be present at lectures. This included, of course, the many Protestant peregrinators from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The papal bull encouraged the growing tendency for Protestants from the Commonwealth to send their sons to Switzerland, parts of Germany and the Low Countries, and England and conversely, for the sons of

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Roman Catholics to head to Italy, Spain, France, and other parts of Germany and the Low Countries. Conditions in each institution varied somewhat. Here is how Vorbek-Lettow described the practice at Louvain of dealing with those unwilling to take the oath:

If he does not take the oath [that “he is a Catholic and wishes to remain one until his death”], since he is unmatriculated, as soon as the students notice that he comes once, twice to school to listen to lectures, ex instituto et consuetudine continuata [by the uninter-

rupted ordinance and custom] of that academy, all of them, having stood up, will importune the professor with calling and banging as long as it takes until he comes down from the cathedra; asked by him why they had been impatient, [they will say] that a nonmatriculatus [unmatriculated person] was sitting among them. Whereby no one of any religion other than the Roman [Catholic], and praestito fidei instrumento [with the performance of a record of the faith] at that, can listen to public lectures in that academy. I, too, had to give it up, wishing to have free and unsullied conscience.®°

Thus were his attempts to begin medical studies at Louvain thwarted at the outset, and for strictly confessional reasons. Vorbek-Lettow’s status as a sort of valet to the Sapiehas, however, helped him out somewhat here, although he had to give up, for the moment, his intention to study medicine. Noble sons went abroad to gain the tools needed for public life: in addition to fencing and martial arts (especially mathematics/fortifications), languages—including Latin and the vernaculars—rhetoric, and some aspects of history and the law. Vorbek-Lettow was able to make progress in all the latter fields, especially law, by sitting in on his masters’ private lessons with local humanists and lawyers. In fact, it was often Vorbek-Lettow rather than his masters who attended the lessons. Professor Corselius, “juris profesor primartus, vir literatissimus et locupletissimus [first-rate professor of law, a most learned and capable man]” was then

lecturing, and the professor, the young noblemen, and their servant worked out an arrangement: the Sapieha boys would pay Vorbek-Lettow “2 red ztotys per month each, so that [he] might write down [the professor’s] dictata [lessons] for them, which he [Corselius] allowed, since he had fifty or so auditors, of which each paid 1 red zloty.” In this fashion, the would-be student made a little money as well as quick progress in the study of the law, and the magnate sons did not need to trouble themselves with showing up for class.°’ But a law degree had not been the father’s desire for his son. Thus as soon as VorbekLettow reached Italy with his masters, he began looking for possibilities to study medicine. On 4 November 1612 he arrived in Bologna with his young lords and on 1 December departed for Padua, apparently now on his own, arriving there on 5 December: “I took a room with madonna Ewa Todesca alla Crosara del Santo. Having made myself comfortable, and having inscribed my name for certain reasons [z pewnych respektow] in matriculam nationis Germanicae [in the matriculation register of the German nation], I began, in the

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name of the Lord, to study medicine.”°* Although Vorbek-Lettow claimed he never made a secret of his confession, nor did he dissimulate, there are certain red flags in the narration of his studies in Padua that suggest that he might have made a few compromises in order to complete the desired degree. But we also see clearly that practice at the Venetian university was considerably less strict than at Louvain when it came to the students’ confessional allegiances. Vorbek-Lettow declared Padua, with the exception of Paris, “without equal in Europe.” The good German burgher son’s mentality shows through in the reasons. The first was the stellar faculty—in the practice of medicine, Joannes Minandus, “scriptis clarissimus [most brilliant in his writings],” and Benedictus Sylvaticus; in the theory of medicine, Sanctorius Justineapolitanus, “vir ingentosissimus [man of the highest intellect],” and Angelo Sala; in surgery, Hieronimus Aquapendens and Placentinus, and so on. But the second reason—and this theme comes up often enough that we begin to suspect its prime importance—was that they frequently taught for free. They did this for two reasons: those they taught privately and for free would attend their public lectures, thereby giving them renown and eventually—at least indirectly—also money; and since two or three professors taught the same subject at the same time, the younger or less famous ones listed second for each subject above would teach for free in order to fill up their lecture halls. One gets the impression that VorbekLettow received much of his training from the “seconds,” even if he wished to record his presence in the vicinity of the stars.°° In 1613 the entire theological, medical, and philosophical faculties of the university, “nemine contradicente [with none opposing],” elected Vorbek-Lettow their syndic. The syndic, as the future doctor explains, ran university affairs in the absence—and they were mostly absent—of the likewise elected student rectors and vice-rectors. The latter wore togas “just like the senators of Venice,” whereas the syndics “go about normally.” Rectors and vicerectors were all “young lords” (1.e., magnates’ sons) because it cost so much to obtain and maintain the office. Giving the example of Jan Zamoyski (1542-1605), the former grand hetman and grand chancellor of the Polish Crown, Vorbek-Lettow notes that they sought the office during their student days “for the great respect and memory that they had been rulers in an academy so famous in all of Europe.” (Burgher sons, he seems to grumble, even if he would soon seek to leave that estate behind, do the real work.)”° Once he had completed his year in the syndic’s office, Vorbek-Lettow joined Venetian forces in a campaign against the Habsburg archduke Ferdinand (future Roman emperor) outside Gradisca. After several months, the academy recalled the student-soldiers, and Vorbek-Lettow began negotiations with Venetian authorities about the requirement of a confession of the Roman Catholic faith in order to complete the degree at Padua. Clearly the practice in Padua was different from that of Louvain. After all, the “ultramontane heterodox” (Vorbek-Lettow’s usage was the old one, in which “ultramontane” meant “from north of the Alps”) had been streaming here for decades and were never subject to the immediate removal from the lecture hall that he had witnessed at Louvain.

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At Padua, the moment for the oath came at the end of studies, before the conferral of the degree (and not before entering the lecture hall for the first time, as at Louvain). It took place “in aula ordinaria promotionum penes ecclesiam cathedralem situata [in the usual graduation hall

located at the cathedral church].” No one was granted the degree (promowano) before he had made an oath of fidelity to the Roman Catholic faith, gone to confession, and taken the Most Holy Sacrament. The oath was taken in the cathedral church “before the bishop of Padua as the chancellor of the academy or before his substitute.” Ever since the papal bull of 1564, northern European Protestants had been in an ever more difficult situation in Padua: Arriving foreign ultramontani dissidentes in religione [ultramontane dissidents in religion], having spent their time and years there in study, avoiding such an oath, could not take the

gradum doctoratus [doctoral degree]. They were forced to travel back to Wittenberg, Leipzig, Strasburg, Altdorf, Basel, Heidelberg, at no little cost, and what is more lamentable, with a loss of time, work de novo [from the beginning] to earn the favor of the local

professors and their future promoters. Others, less concerned with glory, not leaving Padua, took their degrees [promowowali] sub comitibus palatinis [before representatives of the palatine]. And such actus [acts] were carried out imperatoris romani autoritate et stbi con-

cessa facultate [by virtue of the authority of the Roman emperor and the power granted him] in their dwellings privatim [privately].”*

But such degrees were derided as second rate. Both local Roman Catholic doctors and German academics called such doctors bullati (i.e., created on the basis of a bulla, a sealed privilege) and refused to consider them their equals, since they were “doctores promoti sub camino [doctors granted degrees “under a chimney,” i.e., privately, unofficially].” The result was that fewer ultramontane students were now seeking an education in Padua. Those who did were giving their money not to the Venetians but to the representatives of the emperor. Hence the saying then current in imperial circles: “Nos accipimus pecuniam et asinos mittimus in Germaniam et Poloniam [We take the money and send the asses to Germany and Poland].” Vorbek-Lettow was sent to Venice to attempt to find a compromise that would keep ultramontane money in Venetian hands and fully backed doctoral degrees in those of the heterodox graduates. The final motivating argument was the alleged poverty of the students coming in from beyond the mountains. The newly minted doctor’s report on the compromise solution is unclear (to me, at least) about how it “both non aggravantur dissidentium conscientiae [does not oppress the conscience of the dissidents] and nil derogatur veteri ordinarie a Sede Apostolica approbatae promotioni [in no

way causes the diminishment of the ancient awarding of degrees normally approved by the Holy See].” It is certainly possible that La Serenissima [The Most Serene Republic] had found a characteristic “compromise”—acceptable in Venice but not really in Rome. It is also possible that Vorbek-Lettow’s degree remained somewhat suspect in the local public realm; there are several moments of defensive self-fashioning in his memoirs. In any case, so he

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claimed, “the Doge together with the Venetian Republic came to the decision that, in place of the canceled [oath], propter et in gratiam ultramontanorum inopum [on account and for the sake of the poverty of the ultramontanes] (that was the praetextus [pretense]), [they] would be granted their degrees in universitatis auditorio matort publice, sine ulla obligatione [in the great hall

of the university, publicly, without any obligation], for which [they] were also given a diploma.” The result was that “Romanenses [the Roman (Catholics)] receive insignia doctoratus [distinctions of the doctor’s degree] in that place as in old usage, and the dissidentes [dissidents] here, subject to the same examinibus et altis ritibus [examinations but different rites], with the exception of the oath fidei catholicae romanae [of the Roman Catholic faith].”

Vorbek-Lettow was decorated with the doctoral laurel in philosophy and medicine in Padua on 16 December 1614. He then spent a year and a half in Bologna (a period curiously lacking all narration in his memoir) before returning to Wilno 8 July 1616 on the “anniversary” of his departure after some six years of “peregrinations to the schools.” ’* The story of Vorbek-Lettow’s education reflects both old and new patterns in European pedagogy and is both typical and atypical, in its various stages, of the experience of contemporary Vilnans. The haphazard quality of his studies before he entered the Jesuit Academy at age sixteen in 1609 is reminiscent of medieval patterns still echoed in the experience of people like Swiss pedagogue Thomas Platter (1499—1582).’* But by the time he reached the Jesuits, Vorbek-Lettow had entered the “modern” world of the ratio studiorum and similar “rationalized” pedagogies of all the confessions, where students were expected to begin to study at more or less the same age and to proceed from classis to classis on some more or less

strictly prescribed schedule. Vorbek-Lettow was both remarkably open to contacts with both burghers and szlachta of all confessions and remarkably loyal to his Lutheran faith. For all that, his experience in the grammar schools of Wilno would not have been so much different from that of his contemporaries. All who advanced beyond the most rudimentary instruction in reading and writing would have encountered fellow students from other confessions; many would have sought instruction in schools based outside their own communities. But the path of his foreign peregrinations was somewhat unusual for the time: while

it began in the north, which was a common travel goal for a Protestant (Germany, Switzerland), it was concentrated in centers more customary by that time for Catholics (Paris, Louvain, Padua).

The Schools of Wilno We have only scattered fragments attesting to the experiences of other Vilnans in the schools of Wilno and elsewhere. The trajectory of Vorbek-Lettow suggests one path up the Roman side of the local ladder of educational institutions. It reveals an obvious hierarchy of institutions: from the basics at the grammar school attached to the Lutheran church, then—after a detour to the grammar schools and gymnasiums of K6nigsberg, Elbing, and

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Danzig—to the more advanced lyceum run by the local Calvinist church, and finally to the Jesuit Academy at the Church of St. John. We have little direct information about practices on the Greek side in Wilno, but we do know that many Orthodox, as well as the Uniates, eventually sent their sons to the Jesuit Academy as well, and we may imagine that those who lived in the Lithuanian capital got

some of their first training at the local Orthodox and Uniate grammar schools, just as Vorbek-Lettow got his start among his own Lutherans. Some sent their sons from the countryside to begin grammar school in the city. The story of one young man of much more modest means and horizons than the royal doctor suggests a similar testing of the schools on the part of local and area Ruthenians. During a peak in confessional unrest in October 1639, students, mostly of the Jesuit Academy, rioted against the Calvinist church, and a certain Fiedorek Andrzejewicz (Little Theodore, son of Andrew) was taken into custody and interrogated. The name points to Ruthenian (Uniate or Orthodox, but probably the latter) origins, although this is nowhere made an explicit part of the record. Fiedorek told his interrogators,

I hail from Stowiensk [Belarusan Slavensk, a manor estate ca. 60 miles southeast of Wilno], born of father Andrzej Stefanowicz and mother Elzbieta Stefanowiczowa, and Iam I5 years of age. I have been here in Wilno for four years, during which time I have been going to school, partly in the parish school [1.e., the Jesuit Academy], partly in the Disuniate [i.e., Orthodox] Holy Spirit school, and for the last four weeks now in the castle school [the bishop’s grammar school]. And when the bursa [subsidized dormitory for poorer students] pauperibusses” [1.e., the poor pupils living in church-sponsored dormitories, on Skop Street, 45.06 and 45.07] from the castle school and from the parish school of St. John [the Jesuit Academy] went to tear down the Calvinist church [the tumults occurred on 5-6 October 1639], I was there with them, but I do not know how any of them are called by given and family names, and I am unable to name them, although I would recognize them.

A certain Nikifor (probably, judging by his name, also a Ruthenian), who was the gatekeeper at Rudniki Gate (the main entrance to the city from the south, at the mouth of the Royal Way from outside the city to the castle hill), was then summoned to give his testimony concerning Fiedorek: “The aforementioned Fiedorek Andrzejewicz came to the gate for several nights and there, together with pauperibusses, would pass the night by himself in the gate; but for

several weeks now, since he began to go to the castle school, he hasn’t come back anymore.””° And if he had not been caught up in the events of 1639-1640, we would know nothing of his strategies for survival, which seem to have included—from age eleven!—not only sleeping in one of the city gates, but also trying out the schools, and perhaps also the bursae, of Wilno’s various confessions.

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By the seventeenth century, Wilno was home to grammar schools of some sort connected with all the confessions and religions, at least one for each—more than one, as we know, for the Roman Catholics. We know nothing specific about the perhaps one Tatar and no doubt several Jewish schools of seventeenth-century Wilno and must imagine their structures from patterns observable elsewhere. Here, of course, it is unlikely that we would encounter students other than Jews and Tatars, although we should remember that some Christian theologians and philologists of the day were interested in learning Hebrew and did go to rabbis

for instruction and debate.”° And some Christians mastered Turkish and served in the Polish-Lithuanian “foreign service.”’’ However this may be, crossing of confessional boundaries was certainly more common in the schools of the Christians. A Greek Orthodox school located at the Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity Church received a privilege in 1589 from King Zygmunt III with provisions for teaching “children of the inscribed brethren and impoverished orphans Ruthenian, Greek, Latin, and Polish language and writing, for free, at the expense of the Brotherhood.”’*® The Orthodox Church and Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity and the school connected with them became Uniate institutions in the wake of the Union of Brest of 1596. The Lustration of 1636 noted that at the large town house at Castle Street 1.39 there now lived eighteen different inhabitants who all paid rent to the Uniate St. Michael Church but that “before the fire [i.e., the conflagration of 1610] there was only a [Uniate] school [szkota tylko cerkiewna].”’° The main location for the Greek-rite school was at the Holy Trinity Church, but we should not be surprised to find other small grammar schools connected with this confession in other locations. This situation would seem to apply to all confessions that had more than one parish (i.e., the Uniates and the Roman Catholics).

After 1596 the Orthodox regrouped a stone’s throw across Sharp Street and established the church, brotherhood, and hospital of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. The school that completed the complex was similarly a grammar school, also attempting to teach the rudiments in Ruthenian, Greek, Latin, and Polish language and writing (as at the Holy Trinity). It, too, received a royal privilege.®° For this school we have something like a ratio studiorum—for at least one aspect of its program—in the preface to Melecjusz Smotrycki’s grammar of Church Slavonic, published in nearby Jewje in 1618, which he dedicated “To the Teachers of the Schools.” The grammar itself owed something in its structure and categories to the textbooks of Latin used by contemporary Western grammar schools (Despauterius, Alvarez). It was a

description of Church Slavonic grammar, with paradigms as well as discussions of usage written in Slavonic, the target language, just as Latin textbooks were then written in Latin. The grammar would be used (in whole or in part: it was one of those early modern printed books that would make its way back into manuscript culture) for two centuries by teachers throughout the Eastern-rite Slavic world, including the Croatian Glagolitic monks and the Romanian Orthodox (who used Slavonic for liturgical purposes). It surely made its way across Sharp Street in Wilno for use in the Uniate school at the Holy Trinity Brotherhood.**

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What interests me here, however, is the minimal plan it presents for the first stages of instruction in Church Slavonic reading and writing, clearly based on similar methods of instruction developed by Jesuit schools and emulated by the Protestants in a process of mutual influencing and competition. The grammar itself was written in Church Slavonic, but the preface was in Ruthenian. This was the equivalent of producing a Latin grammar in Latin but with an address to the teachers who would be using it in the national language of the community (e.g., Polish, German, Portuguese, French). The first task of the teachers, according to the preface, was to convince the community that “Slavonic grammar is indubitably capable of bringing to its Slavonic language” the same benefits that Latin and Greek grammars had brought to those languages: a pure and, above all, fixed usage. Instruction was to proceed “in the common manner of the schools.” Something from Proverbs, or Wisdom, or Sirach, “translated from the Greek into the pure Slavonic language” was to be read during the lessons, and the class would then “translate [it] into the Ruthenian language.” In the manner of the student snitches appointed in each Jesuit class to report on colleagues who lapsed from Latin into the vernacular in their schoolboy conversations, “the Slavonic dialect will be maintained in usual school conversation among the pupils under threat of punishment.” Beginning students were to be given a primer, “commonly called an Alphabet Book, drawn from this very grammar.” Their first steps were to learn the Book of the Hours and the Psalter in Slavonic by heart. Here, as in late medieval schooling and in Vorbek-Lettow’s experience on the Roman side of town, a certain amount of repetition and rote memorization was foreseen at the early stages. If the teacher had not himself learned the art of Slavonic grammar, he was to give the book “to the children and youths . . . who already know how to read Slavonic.” They were to entrust it to memory “quickly and easily,” and upon their passage to “a more illustrious school,” they would both understand it and “come to a beneficial use of its art.”®? (It would take a truly prodigious effort to commit this book to memory.) There was a lot of programmatic wishful thinking in Smotrycki’s writing. The “more illustrious schools” he spoke of were supposed to be Orthodox Slavic equivalents of late humanistic trilingual academies (with Slavonic substituted for Hebrew). This project began in the Orthodox school sponsored by Konstanty Ostrogski at Ostroh in the 1580s, with which Smotrycki’s father Herasym had been involved, and it culminated in the academy founded by Piotr Mohyla in Kiev in the 1630s.*? But in Wilno, Ruthenian schooling remained at the most

basic level. Still, this glimpse through the window of a Slavonic grammar school helps us imagine what went on in the Ruthenian Brotherhood schools in Wilno. The language and the script differed, but the structure of instruction and the tools required of the students were the same here as in Vorbek-Lettow’s Lutheran grammar school. Students learned grammar in the sacred language (Latin or Church Slavonic) by rote memorization and repetition, and they gained some rudimentary experience in reading and writing the vernacular. We find Ruthenian boys like Fiedorek trying out the Latin schools in Wilno, but there were probably few non-Ruthenians in the brotherhood schools. Still, it was not only the Orthodox and

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Uniates who sought the ability to read and write Chancery Ruthenian; some Catholics and Protestants may have made their first steps in these grammar schools or with the help of their instructors. Other than Vorbek-Lettow’s comments on the Lutheran grammar school—that one of the teachers was totally unsuited for the job and that the learning he received was rudimentary at best and superficial at worst—we know little in detail about the curriculum and teachers at that institution. We must assume that it was a basic grammar school in which young Vilnans made their first steps in learning to read and write Latin, probably also some German and Polish. And note that this was an age when a person could be literate in the sense of being able to read but illiterate in the sense of being unable to write, sometimes even to the point of being unable to sign his or her name.** In Vorbek-Lettow’s statement that he had learned there “to read and to write mediocriter,” the Latin adverb may modify the second verb and not the first. We may assume that the student body was largely Lutheran, but we should not be too surprised to find others, especially given the fact that German was a language of commerce in the region, and there are indications that non-Germans learned it for use in their business travels and negotiations with German merchants. Perhaps some of the Vilnans with Slavic names who had mastered the language and were also able to write in the reigning seventeenth-century German script had made their first steps in the Wilno Lutheran school. Vorbek-Lettow’s experience suggests what we know from other sources: that the Calvinist school, in spite of the fact that the local community was much smaller than the Lutheran,

was a “more illustrious school.” Calvinist families from throughout the Grand Duchy of Lithuania would send their sons here and to the school in Sluck. The case of Vorbek-Lettow suggests that here, too, in spite of attempts to impose confessional discipline through visitations and catechetical examinations in the schools, not all the “scholars” were of the Re-

formed confession. At its most optimistic, the general synod of the Reformed Church of Lithuania viewed its schools at Wilno and Stuck as gymnasiums that would prepare the select for trips to Calvinist universities in western Europe as a gateway for careers back home as ministers and theologians. During this period a few names of some wider renown were connected with the institution. In addition to the teachers mentioned by Vorbek-Lettow, we may note that in 1640 the rector of the school was Jerzy Hartlib, brother of Samuel (ca. 16001662). Jerzy Hartlib had met John Amos Comenius (Jan Amos Komensky, 1592-1670), the leader of the Unity of the Moravian Brethren, at Heidelberg in the 1610s, and Samuel Hartlib, after his emigration to England, would be instrumental in introducing that figure to Britain and in attempts to bring him there. A friend of Milton, Samuel Hartlib was close to the Oxford group out of which the Royal Society was to grow.®° But all roads in Wilno led students who wished to advance beyond what even the Calvinists had to offer to the Jesuit Academy. Founded as a Jesuit collegium in 1570, it was granted a privilege by King Stefan Batory in 1579 establishing it, next to Cracow, as the Commonwealth’s second academy or university. From the beginning, its mission was to educate (and

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thereby ultimately to convert) the non-Catholics of the area, not only the Orthodox and the Protestants but also the Tatars and the Jews. The first generation of Jesuits in Poland came from abroad—Czechs, Englishmen, Scots, Spaniards, Italians. But from the second generation forward, a constantly shifting cohort of Poles and Polonized people from all over the Commonwealth rubbed shoulders with the foreigners sent on assignment. Vorbek-Lettow’s experience may have been typical. Although the local Jesuits also sought the conversion of non-Catholic students, they tended to be more pragmatic about the multiconfessionalism of Wilno and the eastern parts of the Commonwealth than were those who came from the Crown lands, to say nothing of the Spaniards, who were regarded with some suspicion locally as agents of intolerance.®°

Town and Gown, or, “Students, Paupers, and Other Loose People” A brief digression now about the relationship of the students to the other residents of Wilno. First the numbers. Early modern demographics, particularly for this part of the world and especially for Wilno, can be onlya highly approximate science. Estimates for the population of the city as a whole on the eve of the death, exile, and deportations that followed the Muscovite invasion of 8 August 1655 vary wildly, from fourteen to forty thousand. As I have argued, a number more like twenty thousand seems reasonable for the city and its suburbs. But how many of these were students? This is an even more difficult question. A census of the Jesuit Academy for 1618 suggests the presence of 1,100 students in the “grammar (or humanistic) school” (the seven classes from basic grammar to rhetoric) and 110 students in the last two years of philosophy and theology.*®” The number probably grew over the course of the century. To this we should add the much smaller but still not insignificant numbers of students in the other schools—not insignificant because there were so many of them. In addition to the Lutherans and the Calvinists, there were the Catholic schools of the bishop and the Dominicans (they had not only a library—with books chained to the benches—and a librarian but also a school that taught philosophy) and probably some sort of grammar school in each parish church; the Orthodox had one school, the Uniates at least one, perhaps also more for the other parishes. This means that some large percentage of the town’s inhabitants were professional students, mostly teenagers but some younger, perhaps the majority of them on their own. If the number of students of all categories reached 2,000 by 1655, which seems likely, this would make Io percent of my estimate of a population of twenty thousand.

But perhaps more important is the phrase “on their own.” Not all were “townies” like Vorbek-Lettow; probably many were not. Students came from far away in Lithuania to study at the Jesuit Academy; Little Theodore had come from the countryside to try out the various offerings of the city’s grammar schools. And even Vorbek-Lettow bunked in the Lutheran dormitory for some reason (it couldn’t have been more than a couple of houses away from

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his home on German Street) while he attended the Jesuit Academy. To the burghers of Wilno, the students were a foreign body, perhaps even more intrusive than the Jews, who were, after all, there on a permanent basis. More important in this estate-based society, the students of the Jesuit Academy, who were placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop and many of whom

were noblemen’s sons, were outside the reach of the burghers’ Magdeburg law, and they behaved with youthful impunity, often letting the burghers know they thought themselves of better blood. A section of the so-called Fond of the Commission of the Educational Foundation (the archive inherited from the Jesuits by Hugo KoHataj’s Komisja Edukacji Narodowej [Commis-

sion of National Education]), which resides in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA) in Moscow, contains a large collection entitled “Papers of litigation between the Wilno Academicians and the dissidents, Orthodox, and burghers of Wilno.”®* More scattered echoes of town-gown tensions are to be found throughout the acta of all the local Jurisdictions. I cite here one complaint as evocative of the issues at play in town-gown conflicts. On 26 January 1684, Father Jerzy Inkiewicz and two “academicians” (i.e., students of the academy), Jan Zarnowski and Franciszek Budkiewicz, came before the court of the bench of the Wilno magistracy to register a complaint against a burgher, goldsmith Jézef Barczynski. The two students and their clerical representative protested “in their own name et totius almae Academiae [and that of the entire alma (mater) academy]” that the previous day, as Mr. Zarnowski was returning along Glass Street on foot to his lodgings (ku gospodzie swej) around ten o’clock,

minding his own business, Mrs. Barczynska, not paying any attention to pedestrians, rode by on her sleigh, “mightily whipping the horse.” As she passed Zarnowski, who was not expecting anything of the sort [nic sie nie spodziewajqcego], she knocked him in

the chest with the shaft so forcefully that, having fallen to the ground, he had to lie there in the street for a moment unconscious. And then, having gathered his strength, he stood up and went to the accused [i.e., Barszczynska’s husband], wishing to expostulate with him about rendering justice.®°

When, after one failed attempt, now accompanied by a fellow student, he finally found Mr. Barczynski at home, he began to present to him his complaint about the “affront and dishonor, not to mention the blow.” Barczynski, not waiting to hear the conclusion of the “querimony,” had recourse to “acrimonious words, harmful of good reputation [do stow uszczypliwych 1 dobrej stawy szkodzqcych], calling both Their Graces, the Lord Academicians rascals,

intruders, sons of a dishonorable mother and using other names, reviling and disrespecting [lzqc 1 despektujqc] them.”

When the students reported the events to the academy’s prefect, Father Jerzy Inkiewicz, S.J., the priest decided to take up the issue of the bona fama of the students and, by extension, of the entire academy, with the irascible goldsmith. During the interview, Barczynski “began

162 CHAPTER 7 to revile, shame [lzy¢, sromocic¢], and to heap calumnies and incivilities (which, ob reverentiam

[on account of respect] for honorable ears, shame does not permit one to express) not only upon His Grace, Father Inkiewicz, but also upon the plaintiffs.” The plaintiffs soon found themselves dodging a flying inkwell and enduring other physical and verbal abuse from the accused: “I will order one of you to be beaten here with a club, or to be hanged, especially since you didn’t get it in the mug from that inkwell. And what will you do to me, for whom it is nothing new to sit and to converse with senators and lords?—I’ve made myself known to those better than you.” And as they were departing, Barczynski “reviled, shamed, and disrespected [Izyt, sromocil, despektowal] as he saw fit, whatever the saliva brought to his tongue [co mu slina do geby przyniosta].”

The phrases glossed in Polish are part of the standard rhetorical language of the protestation and show up in complaint after complaint by parties of all confessions and religions and in all forensic forums. What interests me here are the competing senses of honor, that of the burgher goldsmith and that of the academicians. The goldsmith claimed dealings with “senators and lords,” better than the likes of these “invaders,” “sons of a dishonorable mother.”

The academicians were defending their own honor but also by extension the nobility of the entire academy. There were many burghers who wished to register similar protestations against the students themselves but were thwarted by the legal system: on the whole, the students refused to see themselves as subject to the magistracy, and the bishop and the nobles’ castle court often protected them. In most instances, it was the burghers who complained of mistreatment by the students. Here the students were attempting to co-opt the role of victim. The general problem was reflected in a decree directed to the city and the academy by King

Jan II Sobieski in response to complaints by the Jews of Wilno about their treatment, among other things, at the hands of the students. In a decree of 1687, which allowed the Jews to be

mustered on an annual basis not in the open field with the rest of the city’s corporations outside the walls (where anti-Jewish tumults often resulted) but in a nobleman’s house within the walls, Sobieski identified students and pseudostudents of the Jesuit Academy at St. John as one of the circles from which violence against Jews frequently emanated, and he ordered the institution of something like a student registration program. Owners of houses in Wilno were not to rent a room to a student until the prospective renter presented a sort of identification card, approved and registered by the magistracy and the academy (which were to keep a record book of all bona fide students): “Since it has come to Our attention that under the name of the student academy are to be found various licentious people, and having found such a one who is not properly a student, but rather is engaged in nighttime, or daytime, prowling about [grasancyja], such a one is to be brought to the attention of the magis-

tracy, and We order that he be incarcerated or made to work on the walls, ramparts, and needs of the city.”°°

The “intruders” were concentrated in places like the bursae of the various schools. The Jesuit Academy had two of them side by side on Skop Street (45.06 and 45.07), and the

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students were frequently blamed for unrest in the neighborhood. But the impression is that one could find students throughout the town. Fiedorek moved about in looking for a place to sleep, from the bursae of the schools of various confessions to a bunk with the other pauperibusses on the floor in Rudniki Gate. Zarnowski rented a corner somewhere in the Glass Street neighborhood. In May 1639, shortly before the anti-Calvinist tumult that resulted in the removal of the church beyond the walls, the Reformed of Wilno called for an inquisition into alleged scholastic nocturnal rock throwing directed at the roofs of the Calvinist complex. The biconfessional commission that conducted a door-to-door investigation in the Calvinist Church Street neighborhood arrived at the last two houses and asked whether they, too, “gave lodging to any students.” They recorded the response: “The women [biale gtowy] said (for we did not find any men in those two houses) that we do give lodging to little pupils [matych zaczkow], but we never saw that they threw rocks at the roof of the Calvinist church.”?*

Town-gown relations were certainly not only ones of conflict. One need only think of the theater productions mounted by the academy, which certainly drew appreciative local audiences. That was one of the main points of Jesuit instruction after all—religious instruction through spectacle. But we should certainly think of Wilno as a student town, with all the benefits and detriments that come from locating a large concentration of student intruders and their sometimes itinerant instructors in a smallish urban setting. And although the student attacks upon the Calvinists and their Wilno real estate were useful to local hierarchs in their attempts to diminish the presence of non-Catholics in the city, we should not think of the student throngs as Catholic gangs preying upon non-Catholics. The presence in them of Orthodox students or would-be students such as Fiedorek Andrzejewicz, who was somewhere in the middle or the near sidelines of the anti-Calvinist riots in 1640, suggests that student unrule was not only about confession. The conflict between Barczynski and the acad-

emy was not about confession. In spite of his profession and neighborhood of residence (both of which were heavily Lutheran), all indications are that Barczynski was Roman Catho-

lic. The conflict was rather a social one, between a prominent burgher with pretensions to

ties with the nobility and student intruders who were beyond the discipline of the magistracy.

Other Vilnans’ Pedagogical Peregrinations For most Vilnans who received any formal schooling at all, the basic grammatical and rhetorical skills taught at the Lutheran and Calvinist schools would have sufficed. For some others, the training in philosophy and theology offered to an extent at the Calvinist lyceum but above all at the Jesuit Academy would have been the culmination of an education that set them far apart from the majority of their fellow Vilnans. But for a very few others, like Vorbek-Lettow, professional preparation could not be complete without a peregrination to the schools, and this always implied western Europe, both north and south.

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The case of Vorbek-Lettow himself indicates that such study tours were not limited to the magnates or even the middle reaches of the szlachta and that, even by the beginning of the seventeenth century, traveling students were not necessarily limiting themselves to the academies of their own confession. Whatever the color of the future doctor’s blood, he left Wilno the son of a successful barber-surgeon of a burgher lifestyle, and he made ends meet during his trip by carrying the book bags and taking notes for magnate sons who had better things to do (all the while grumbling about them); but he returned to his hometown with a doctorate in medicine from a first-rate Italian Catholic university, equipped to make full use of the patronage system in his climb up the ladder of the estates, and without ever feeling the need to abandon his Lutheran faith.

Vilnans of lower standing in the burgher elite also sent their sons to the west to experience life abroad, to learn languages, and to study. In a funeral sermon by Lutheran minister Jedrzej Schénflissius, we discover the outlines of longtime burgomaster Jakub Gibel’s education. Gibel’s parents had “raised him in the fear of God and in the doctrine and obedience of the Lord.” His father died early, and his mother married Lutheran merchant Piotr Fonderflot. His stepfather then took over the task of seeing to Jakub’s further training, which presumably began, as it had for Vorbek-Lettow, in the local Lutheran school: “He had care of him and provided for him at his house. When he had grown up a bit [podrost], he sent him to foreign lands, where he spent his young years in honorable occupations appropriate to his merchant’s estate, conducting himself honorably and well among foreign people.”°* We do not know exactly what the occupations were or where Gibel engaged in them. They would probably not have included things martial, which noblemen’s sons studied in addition to law and languages. They may well have included some courses of study at academies and universities and focused on the acquisition of languages and some rudiments of law and history. We possess a bit more information about the peregrinations of Gibel’s son-in-law, Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold II (Castle Street 1.16). The sources include the 1638 funeral sermon written for him by Calvinist minister Balcer Labedzki, two entries in matriculation books of Western academies and universities, and two autograph letters the young student sent back home during his trip. Winhold was born 25 December 1600 of “pious Christian parents,” who “trained him right from the years of youth in the genuine knowledge of God and in the genuine [i.e., Reformed] Christian faith.” This sounds much like what Schénflissius had to say about the first training of Winhold’s future father-in-law. We hear a somewhat different tone, however, when it comes to the further course of this merchant’s education: “He spent his entire life in the liberal arts [nauki wyzwolone], not only here in the city of Wilno, but he also visited foreign academies.”°? No mention here of limiting himself to pursuits “appropriate to the merchant estate,” as in the case of his Lutheran burgomaster father-in-law. Presumably he began his studies at the local Calvinist grammar school. The first foreign matriculation record I have found for him was for Marburg in 1615, when he would have been fourteen years old. He would seem to have been accompanied by Pawel Kleofas (the future “z Brylewa Podchocimski”), the royal doctor who would be ennobled in

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1633, serve as the master of the Wilno horodnictwo, and marry a niece of Winhold’s future wife (daughter of Tomasz Gibel II, Castle Street 2.19). Or perhaps the two future in-laws simply met there: we know little of Kleofas’s youth. However they met, they matriculated at Marburg together, the young Winhold yet as a pupil of the pedagogium (presumably a sort of preparatory high school), Kleofas at the university. The next year we find them both matriculated as students of the University of Basel.** We do not know when Winhold began his study trip abroad—probably it was not too much earlier than his appearance in Marburg. Nor do we know what his next stop was after Basel. We do know, however, that—by now he would have been nineteen years old—he had reached Amsterdam by 2 June 1620, the date on an autograph letter in Polish that he sent to his “dear cousin,” a Lutheran merchant of Wilno by the name of Dawid Rendorf. The date of a second autograph letter to the same recipient, this one written in German, shows that he had gone on to Paris by 18 March 1621. Here we see that it was not only liberal arts that occupied Winhold’s attention during his peregrination. The letter from Amsterdam tells of a dinner party a few days earlier at the house of Rendorf’s mother (we are not told where she lived), where the health was drunk “frequently and often” of friends back in Wilno; those friends, to many of whom he sends his greetings, were from the Lutheran-Calvinist merchant circles of Castle Street. Those with whom he had contact in Amsterdam were also en-

gaged in decidedly mercantile pursuits. Jochim Wikefort was “sweating diligently in the shop.” Ludwik Marin was “preparing to set off for Archangelsk” (the Arctic seaport of the state of Muscovy)—in other words he must have had something to do with the Dutch Muscovy Company.®° Probably Winhold himself was by now taking care of business connected with the interests of the Radziwill estates his father was overseeing. Some of the Dutch cattle that were imported through Riga to Lithuania in the period ended up on the Radziwiti estates at Bielica, for which the Winholds held the arenda.”° Winhold seems not to have traveled alone. One assumes his parents sent someone along with him at the beginning of his study trip, if not the preceptor that accompanied noble sons, then at least some sort of adult servant. From Amsterdam he intended to travel through Brabant to France with Samuel Wikefort, whom he expected any day from Hamburg. In the letter from Paris (18 March 1621) he tells his cousin that he is “ready for the road [gantz reifSfertig],

since [he] intends to set off for Orleans in several days and to head out into other cities in France.” Winhold had “a horse of [his] own, also a lackey.”°” Vaclovas Birziska has combed the readily and not-so-readily available matriculation records of west European gymnasiums, academies, and universities in drawing up a catalog of “Lithuanian students at foreign universities in the XIV-XVIII centuries.” His criterion was self-identification. Where a student neglected to mention Lithuania, a city of the Grand Duchy, or, in the case of the nobles, a father’s title or office, he overlooked a few “Lithuanians” (as in the case of Pawel Kleofas, who is missing from his catalog). The sources are more easily available for northern Europe than for Italy and France. And the case of VorbekLettow—who was, after all, in Konigsberg, Elbing, Danzig, Paris, and Louvain but never

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signed the matriculation record in any of those places—indicates that these signatures tell only a small part of the story. Still, Birziska’s meticulous work offers a good starting point for gaining a picture of seventeenth-century Vilnans abroad in pursuit of an education. The first observation is that absolutely no one from Lithuania was going to Cracow any more in the seventeenth century, as they had done during the university’s golden age of the late fifteenth and very early sixteenth centuries. The university had long ago lost its attraction and luster, and Poles, too, were looking elsewhere for an education, or at least for a supplement to what the old capital had to offer. In Birziska’s catalog, 118 entries for the seventeenth century can be specifically linked to Wilno. Of them, by far the most were for the Albertina in K6nigsberg—s8 or 49 percent. In a distant second place were the gymnasium at Elbing (Elblag) and the University of Padua with thirteen each (11%). Here is the list: K6nigsberg, fifty-eight; Elbing, thirteen; Padua, thirteen; Leiden, six; Ingolstadt, four; Braunsberg, four; Dillingen, three; Basel, three; Altdorf, three; Rostock, two; Wittenberg, two; Heidelberg, two; Wtirzburg, one; Giessen, one; Frankfurt, one; Marburg, one; Freiburg, one. These numbers tell a few stories. First, in this documentation, it was mostly Protestant burgher Wilno that went abroad to the schools and mostly not too far abroad—Elbing for the gymnasium, K6nigsberg for the university. By the end of the seventeenth century, beginning in 1673, at least in BirzisSka’s data, Vilnans went only to Kénigsberg; in fact, before that, from

1655 to 1673, fifteen had matriculated in the Prussian capital and only three elsewhere (Braunsberg, Rostock, Altdorf). Thus for the entire second half of the century—beginning with the Muscovite occupation of Wilno in 1655—KO6nigsberg was practically the only port

of call for burgher student peregrinators who now traveled on a much diminished scale. Moreover, for the most part, Protestants now attended Protestant institutions, and Catholics, now traveling in even more reduced numbers, visited academies found in Roman Catholic cities.

We find a few familiar names and are able to flesh out a few more family histories. “Thomas Gibelius Vilnensis” and “Jacobus Gibelius Vilnensis,” sons of burgomaster Jakub Gibel, were enrolled in “classis 1” (i.e., rhetoric, the highest class of Latin grammar school) at the gymnasium in Elbing on 8 August 1616. Vorbek-Lettow had spent some time there, living with his stepgrandmother (although apparently without matriculating); perhaps EIbing had been on Jakub Gibel Sr.’s itinerary. Elbing and K6nigsberg seem to have been first stops outside Wilno for the local Protestant elite. Jakub II’s path did not end here. We find him signing his name in precisely the same fashion on 30 August 1619 at the Protestant University of Altdorf (which served Niirnberg). It was probably a younger brother, “Johannes Gibell Wilna Lithuanus,” who matriculated in Konigsberg on 24 May 1631 and whom we find (now as “Johannes Gibel Lituanus Vilnensis”) as a student of law at the University of Leiden on 4 November 1633.%° In his funeral encomium for the elder Jakub Gibel, Schénflissius

noted with approval that he had sent his sons abroad for their own peregrinations to the schools. The sons of Wilno magistrates “enjoyed noble rights” (although not without

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challenges from those born to the szlachta), so there would have been no need for a merchant’s son’s modesty here in the choice of studies and style of life.°° Two sons of Maciej Vorbek-Lettow matriculated at the gymnasium in Elbing on 12 November 1637; unlike their father in Padua, they now claimed the noble status he had managed to win (he would have said “regain”). They were “Christophorus Littaw, Fratres Nobiles, Victorinus Littaw, Lithuani (classis I), Constantinus Littaw.” Actually, the record is a bit garbled. These were the two (not three) eldest Vorbek-Lettow boys, Krzystof Wiktorzyn and Konstanty. Thanks to their father’s memoirs, this is one of those rare instances where we can assign ages to students in particular classes: Krzysztof Wiktorzyn was sixteen and a half at the time of his matriculation in the penultimate class of the gymnasium; his younger brother (class unspecified, but it may well have been the same) had just turned fifteen. Still younger brother “Johannes Vorbeck Letoff, Nobilis Lithuanus” matriculated at Leiden as a student of law on 25 October 1649. He was a little over twenty-two years of age at the time and had cer-

tainly studied in other gymnasiums and universities before beginning his studies of the law.*°°

In fact, the closely knit Lutheran-Calvinist society of upper Castle Street flocked together to the schools. In addition to the Vorbek-Lettows and the Gibels at Elbing, K6nigsberg, and Leiden, we find more family names from their circles, especially in the Prussian capital, among them, “Christophorus Melczer Eperyeszy, Lituanus” (7 November 1610); “Joannes Agrippa, nobilis Vilnensis, Lituanus” (1 December 1612); “Paulus Mollerus Vilnensis Lithuanus” (30 August 1623 and 7 April 1625); “Wilhelmus Pohl, Vilnensis Lituanus” (10 April 1637); “Wilhelmus Engelbrecht Wilnensis Lituanus” (29 February 1640); “Arnoldus Zaleski Vilnensis Lituanus famulus” (8 July 1642); and “Georgius Strunck Vilna Lituanus” (3 December 1646).*°* All these people were related in some fashion—usually through marriage, sometimes through ties of friendship—with the Gibels and the Vorbek-Lettows. Most notably, on 15 February 1656, three from these circles, plus their Lutheran pastor, signed the matriculation record of the University of KOnigsberg. They were all present together in the Prussian capital because Vilnans of all confessions had fled there in the wake of the Muscovite occupation of Wilno. These were all grown men, most of them with their study years well behind them, with the royal doctor himself, who had turned sixty-three three days earlier, at the head of the list: “D. Mathias Vorbeck dictus Lettau Ecclesiae Wilnensis senior, DD Paulus Mollerus Vilnensis Med., Arnoldus Zalesky Eccl. Vilnensis provisor, Otto Mathesius Pastor Wilnensis.”*°? Perhaps they intended to wait out the occupation by passing the time in study; more likely, they were eligible for certain rights of citizenship as former and current students, and this was a help during their exile.

Not all the Vilnans we find in the matriculation records of Elbing and K6nigsberg had German names or were indeed Protestants. Two cases may bolster my argument that non-German and non-Protestant Vilnans sought to gain the ability to read and write German, probably for business purposes. On 1 July 1622 “Niccolaus Sienczytowicz Vilnensis Lituanus (Classis III)” matriculated at the gymnasium in Elbing.*®°? This was a mistake in transcription.

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Mikotaj Sienczyto(wicz) was an Orthodox merchant, a member of the elite on the Greek side of the bench in the early seventeenth century. His brothers would seek asylum in K6nigsberg together with the Protestants during the Muscovite occupation of Wilno. His younger brother Gabriel would buy a house in the middle-level Lutheran neighborhood of Glass Street (20.05) and, although he would be buried with the Orthodox on the other side of town, he would develop the same German and Jewish business ties as his German and Jewish neighbors. Perhaps speaking German was a Sienczyto family tradition.“ In similar fashion, we find a member of the Roman Catholic side of the ruling elite signing the record in Elbing on 26 May 1625 as “Stanistaw Gawtowicki Vilnensis (classis III).”*°°

He was the son of Cyprian Gawtowicki, notary of the Wilno weighing house. Stanislaw would rise to the office of burgomaster. Among his siblings we find a councillor (Kasper), a royal secretary (Dominik), a Catholic nun, two Catholic priests (Szymon and Marcin), and the wife of another Catholic burgomaster (Katarzyna, wife of Mikotaj Kliczewski).*°° We are

in thoroughly Catholic circles here. The conclusion must be that Wilno’s Orthodox and Catholic merchants sent their sons abroad to acquire German. There were, of course, no Orthodox institutions of higher learning in western Europe, so when Ruthenian families sent their boys abroad on peregrinations they had to decide whether to send them to Protestant or Catholic institutions (or both). Sienczylo attended the Lutheran gymnasium in Elbing. Melecjusz Smotrycki’s peregrinations were typical of one Orthodox pattern. He began at the trilingual academy at Ostroh, perhaps receiving some of his first training from his father, Herasym, who had organized that school. Then he spent some time in Wilno at the Jesuit Academy. Finally, the future Orthodox archbishop of Polock and archimandrite of the Wilno Holy Spirit monastery accompanied a young Orthodox nobleman, Bohdan Solomerecki, serving as his preceptor, as he visited mostly Protestant academies and universities of German-speaking lands. The lists of stops for this trip vary in the sources, but they certainly included Leipzig and Wittenberg, perhaps also Wroclaw and Altdorf. A matriculation record for Sotomerecki places him in Leipzig in 1606.*°’ Other Orthodox parents sent their sons to Catholic institutions. An entry for 20 November 1616 at the Catholic University of Ingolstadt records the matriculation of “Zachariasz Szycikowicz Lithuanus, Stephanus Szycikowicz Polonus Lituanus.”*°® Their presence in the record together suggests that they were brothers. Judging by the names and probable ages, these would seem to be the sons of Wilno burgomaster Iwan Hawrylowicz Szycik-Zaleski, the Orthodox patriarch of one of Wilno’s only true dynasties in the ruling elite. One of his sons, to his great dismay, would become a Bernardine monk. Zachariasz and Stefan would go on to pursue long careers in the Wilno magistracy, converting, of necessity, to the Uniate Church after 1666 in order to hold office, as was required by the royal edict of that year. Neither they nor their children seem to have abandoned the Eastern rite, however (in spite of a stay at arch-Catholic Ingolstadt).*°° Catholic institutions are much less well represented here, as are Catholic Vilnans. This may be due in part to the available sources. But I think it also reflects the facts: the expectations and

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aspirations of a small but socially mobile Protestant burgher elite that valued and used education as a tool for social advancement. The one Catholic Vilnan peregrination whose outlines we are able to sketch was that of a nobleman connected with the city: “Enoch Colenda nobilis polonus Vilnensis,” as he signed the matriculation record at the Catholic university in Swabian Dillingen on 3 April 1619. The Kolendas were an old Orthodox noble family of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By now they were all Uniate or Roman Catholic. Enoch’s journey continued: “Enoch Kolenda Lituanus” at Ingolstadt (31 May 1619), “Enoch Kolenda Nobilis Lituanus” at Wiirzburg (28 January 1620), and finally “Enoch Kolenda Lituanus” at Padua (21 April 1621). On that day he had joined two Wilno prelates: “Eustachius Wolowicz, episcopus Viln.” and “Lucas Gornicki canonicus Vilnensis.” Even the bishop (he held that office from 1616 to 1630) could sign in as a “student” on his way through town.**® Kolenda began his political career as the castle notary of Troki (1626-1632) and would rise through ranks that included a stint as vice-palatine of Wilno (1640-1642) to a culmination in the office of the palatine of Dorpat in 1651.***

Padua, with thirteen records of matriculations by Vilnans of various sorts, shared second place, after K6nigsberg, with the Lutheran gymnasium at Elbing. Most Vilnans who came to the Venetian university were Roman Catholic, as on that day in April 1621 when Kolenda and his bishop matriculated together. But royal doctor Vorbek-Lettow seems to have started a tradition among Protestant students of medicine from the Lithuanian capital. He would be followed by “Davidius Szolc chirurgus Vilnensis” in 1616 (we find him on the rolls of Lutheran offering-givers for 1640, but I know nothing further about him);**? and by “Paulus Mollerus Wilna Lithuanus Ph. et Med. Dr.” in 1638.**? Moller (Meller, in Polish) belonged to the Lutheran circles of Castle Street and was by far the most generous supporter of church finances in the second half of the seventeenth century.

The Perils of Education As we have seen, clergy urged their flocks not to send their children to schools outside their own confession and, to their minds, for obvious reasons. All the schools were tied, to greater and lesser degrees, to one Church, and there was too much danger, they argued, that education—especially if it included philosophy and, heaven help us, also theology—would lead to conversion. Parents and students—in spite of any concerns they may have shared with their clergy concerning the dangers of venturing abroad for an education—had equally obvious reasons for taking on that risk: training at the higher levels necessary to prepare both noble and burgher for public life (and the latter with tools for social advancement) was not always readily available in the schools of one’s own confession or in one’s hometown; thus certain compromises and risks were sometimes accepted. Many were like Vorbek-Lettow: they returned from their studies in an opposing camp both equipped with the tools they had sought and confirmed in their original faiths. But

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other cases reveal that the clergy’s concerns were not without basis. From the start, one of the missions of the Jesuit Academy of Wilno was to convert the “heretics and the schismatics.” One historiographic tradition maintains that the seeds for the future conversion to the Uniate Church of Melecjusz Smotrycki, Orthodox archbishop of Polack and archimandrite of the Wilno Holy Spirit Monastery—spectacular and scandalous in its day—were planted by his studies at the local Jesuit Academy (before his own peregrination to Protestant German academies and universities).***

Such concerns (or hopes) lay behind a complaint brought on 4 July 1685 against the estate of that most generous of the patrons of the local Lutheran church, Dr. Pawel Meller. It was he (“Paulus Mollerus”) who had followed in Vorbek-Lettow’s footsteps to complete his doctorate in philosophy and medicine at the University of Padua; he would become the second husband of Elzbieta Giblowna, widow of Jan Sztrunk II. The Gibel family house was at Castle Street 2.13, that of the Sztrunks at 2.10; Meller himself at one point owned the house near the Lutheran church at German Street 26.13.**° The story—at least in the version presented by the Roman Catholic side—went this way. Meller had had several sisters, all of whom—with one exception—“he married off, giving them a good dowry, and receiving from them a renunciation of further claims on his estate.” The one exception, a Pani Westerman, had a son named Samuel. Since Meller was unmarried at the time and childless, he “promised to make

her first son [this Samuel] .. . his own son, . . . promising him his entire inheritance and estate.”**° Meller sent Samuel to the best local schools he could find—first to the Jesuits in KroZe (Lithuanian Kraziai, a small town in Samogitia, about 200 km/124 miles northwest of Wilno), then to the Jesuit Academy in Wilno, where, “he attended two years of rhetoric, but since (uti moris est [as the custom has it]) he was a dissident [here, Protestant], he was not admitted to lectures in philosophy.” (The ban must not have been uniform: Vorbek-Lettow, after all, attended lessons in philosophy at the academy.) At this point Meller brought his adopted son to the Wilno Dominican monastery at the Church of the Holy Spirit, where he was to pursue philosophical studies. When the prior said to the doctor, “And what if, having become a Catholic, he remains in the monastery” Meller allegedly responded, “Even if he were to become a Dominican, I permit it and do not forbid it, nor would I change my affection for him, for I love this order more than the others.” The father’s words must have found a responsive place in the adopted son’s heart, since— again, this according to the Catholic account—“within two years, listening to lectures in philosophy, [the youth] took on the holy habit of the order, together with the holy faith.” Meller then himself had an alleged change of heart, and for more than twenty years, solely “odio religionis [out of hatred of religion], .. . since it was not fitting for his son to be a Catholic,” he refused him all support, “promising to make up for it after his death with his testament.” On the basis of this reported promise, Westerman and the order were now challenging in the courts some uncited, although apparently existing, testament.**’ Whatever the merits of the case and whatever the doctor’s true attitude toward Roman Catholicism, in the

background of the narration we sense a certain local ecumenism in the acquisition and

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provision of education, as well as the fear on the one side and the hope on the other that schooling might indeed lead to conversion.

Vilna Docta These Wilno stories reveal a willingness to cross the boundaries of confession in seeking and providing an education at all levels and an ability to maintain difference both during and

after the experience. We also sense the importance of estate and profession: merchants, whether Lutheran or Orthodox or Roman Catholic, would for the most part have come away with a similar training (once they got beyond learning the catechism); so would magistrates and nobles of all confessions. Orthodox and Lutheran goldsmiths would possess one set of tools, Orthodox and Lutheran tanners another, Orthodox and Lutheran burgomasters yet another.

One impression specific to confession that arises from a reading of the court and other documents is that of Lutheran (and perhaps also Calvinist) literacy and learning and the willingness to travel some distances in order to acquire it. This will of necessity remain nothing more than an impression, but a reading, for instance, of the oaths of Vilnans of all confessions signed in the winter and spring of 1656 in their K6nigsberg exile, swearing loyalty to the elector of Brandenburg and neutrality to the king of Sweden, suggests higher rates of literacy for the Protestants.**® This impression is supported by the presence of some (probably small) numbers of literate women of those confessions, both Lutheran and Calvinist. In fact, with

one exception, the only literate female Vilnans I have encountered were Protestant. Literacy was at the crux of a complaint brought by Katarzyna Szmitowna, the widow of Lutheran swordsmith Melchior Ilis (Glass Street 21.03), against her own daughter, Marianna IlisOwna, in 1679. The mother possessed various “court decisions, registers, promissory notes, bills of debt,” which, “since she was unable to read, she gave to [the daughter, at her request] to read, not suspecting that she would steal anything from these documents, having chosen the best ones.” The case over property theft dragged on for some time, and the issue of the mother’s illiteracy and the daughter’s literacy remained at the center of it.**° Autograph signatures by other Protestant women also attest to some level of literacy. Korneliusz Winhold II’s Calvinist mother, Jakumina Deschampséwna Winholdowa (Castle Street 1.16), signed her name to a letter to the family’s patron, palatine of Wilno Krzysztof Radziwill II, on 13 January 1627.’*° Barbara Monesowna Sztrunkowa, her daughter Halszka Sztrunkowna Ruczowa, and neighbor on Castle Street Katarzyna DesausOwna Szretterowa— all of them Calvinists—signed their own names when they gave offerings to the local Calvinist church (all had Lutheran husbands and gave to the church in their own names).*?* They all employed Polish scripts. In another case, the extant version is a copy, but the 1656 testament of Marianna Cylichowa, the daughter of Lutheran spice merchant Marcin Buchner, indicates that she too was literate, having signed the document “in her own hand.”*??

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The only literate non-Protestant among Wilno women I have encountered is Akwilina Stryludzianka Dorofiewiczowa. She was the daughter of Prokop Stryluda and wife of Pawel Dorofiewicz (Subocz Street 79.10), both Orthodox merchants of some significance. Her eldest son, Prokop Dorofiewicz, had a long career in the burgher ruling elite; he would have the distinction of serving as Wilno’s last Orthodox burgomaster before the royal decree of 1666 limiting the office to Catholics and Uniates. Her daughter, Anna, would marry VorbekLettow’s eldest son, Krzysztof Wiktorzyn. On 24 November 1651, Akwilina signed her name in Cyrillic under her Polish-language last will and testament.**? Here, too, the extant document is a copy, but the indications are that she had signed the original, since all but one of the other signatures were in Polish, and no one is identified as having signed for her (as was the practice in the case of illiterate “signatories”). How these women became literate remains unclear. Perhaps they were taught at home, either by family members or by specially hired preceptors. Or perhaps they were allowed—or encouraged?—to look on as their brothers made their first steps in home schooling. The sources are silent on the education of female Vilnans of the seventeenth century. The majority of Vilnans, however, were no doubt illiterate. Time and again we find them— especially women but by no means only women—acknowledging their illiteracy (or at least their inability to write) when it came time to have their wills notarized. Religious education

depended heavily on listening and memorization; trades were learned by example and observation.*?* But once they ventured outside the family (and even earlier in mixed families), Vilnans encountered instructors and fellow students of a confession, sometimes of a religion, other than their own. One imagines that Vilnans were surprised when they first encountered people from elsewhere, instructors at the Jesuit Academy and fellow students from the Polish Crown lands, or foreign professors and students in their peregrinations; it may have been a shock when those used to Lithuanian laxity were forced to come to terms with the greater confessional discipline that characterized contemporary societies to their west. I return to the image of the young Vorbek-Lettow during his year of philosophical studies with the Wilno Jesuits and its mixture of openness and confessionalizing tendencies. While studying there—at a level usually off limits to dissidents—he encountered both a local Jesuit, who no doubt would have loved to see him convert but had made explicit promises to the student’s Lutheran father that he would not actively seek this, and a Spanish Jesuit, who was much more insistent. Vorbek-Lettow lived in a Lutheran boarding house run by a kindly preacher who bolstered the faith of his charges with pious readings and admonitions, engaged in a good-natured dispute with a Jesuit colleague, was well versed in the contents of the local Dominican library, and was not averse to a friendly subterfuge to gain access to it. But above all, in the morning the preacher would send his charges “each to his own school” (emphasis added) but not before he had seen to it “that [they] learn diligently the lessons [they] received in school.”

~CHAPTER EIGHT~

Courtship and Marriage

ierarchs were no less concerned about mixed marriages than they were about the fact

Hie some of the faithful reached across confessional boundaries to find godparents for their children or to provide for their education. In fact, these aspects of cross-confessional mixing were often interrelated. The Provincial Synod of the Wilno District of the Reformed Church meeting in June 1613 warned Calvinist men against Arian, Ruthenian, and “popish” wives who would cause them to “allow their children to be baptized and ruined [psowac]” in those very faiths.* Things got so dire here that the Wilno Provincial Calvinist Synod of 1638 had to devote an entire canon to “ministers who marry their daughters to people of another religion/rite [obcego nabozenstwa].” The “brother ministers” were supposed to be a model for the Lord’s flock, and thus the punishment was to be correspondingly severe: any minister who continued the practice “was to be suspended ab officio et benefictis pro isto ausu temerario [from the office and its benefices on account of that audacious venture].”

Jakub Wujek, postillographer, translator of the Bible into Polish, and onetime rector of the Wilno Jesuit Academy, wrote in his Postil of 1579-1580 (just after his stay in Wilno), “A Christian must not be joined in marriage with people of another faith, for example, with Jews, pagans, heretics.”* In a further passage, Wujek considered the question of whether it was proper “to have intercourse [obcowac] with sinners?” He distinguished three sorts of sinners: “those who sin secretly, those who sin manifestly, but are not condemned, and the third who are anathema.” One may have to do with members of the first two groups, “but with the third, those who are anathema (as are all heretics), it is not fitting to have intercourse so long as they are such.” And—as we have seen—he went on to warn, “It is precisely in this matter that our Catholics sin who have intercourse with heretics in matters that concern the faith—when they attend their baptisms, weddings, and funerals.”* Thus not only was a Catholic not to marry outside the Church, but he or she was not even to attend the weddings of people of another faith. And although the Orthodox were, to them, technically “schismatics” and not heretics, Roman Catholic propagandists frequently blurred that line and included them with the “non-Christians.” These were the strictures, but what were the practices of seventeenth-century Vilnans?

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An established tradition in the study of early modern family structures and marriage patterns notes a basic divide between eastern and western Europe. In the West, in this model, early modern couples married late, often in their late twenties, and lived in “simple,” nuclear families with a sense of lateral kinship. In the East, couples often married up to a decade earlier and lived in “complex” households including multiple generations, with a pronounced attachment to patrilineal structures. Although some pockets of variation have been found (especially in the south of western Europe), the basic distinction drawn by the so-called Hajnal line, which stretched from the area around St. Petersburg to Trieste, is still found in much of the literature. The line places most of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, including its capital, to the east of this cultural divide and nearby Livonia, with Riga, to the west. But what was the pattern in such a mixed place as Wilno? Did, for instance, Wilno’s Saxons marty later, and live in simple households, like their cousins still living in western Europe and with whom many maintained lively contacts? And did those without such close international contacts marry earlier, and form complex households? Did Wilno’s Ruthenians behave like their co-confessionals from lands further east where the Orthodox were in the majority, marrying as early as twelve or thirteen for the girls, sixteen to eighteen for the boys?° Or do we find

a type of Wilno syncretism on these and other issues? Current research on other cities might suggest being attentive to the latter. The patterns found east of the Hajnal line applied above all to rural settings. The cities—admittedly much weaker here than in the northwest of Europe or in northern Italy—had already begun to show Western admixtures in family structure patterns with the Ostkolonization that began in the late medieval period.’ And work in Poland and Lithuania since the rggos has questioned the absoluteness of the Hajnal line and has suggested for east-central Europe in general a “transit zone,” or a “zone of cultural transition.”® A further reason for hierarchs to reject mixed marriages in their polemical and doctrinal writings may have had to do with the differing attitudes toward courtship, marriage, and divorce that were supposed to shape the actions of their flocks. But again, perhaps a distinction remained between strictures and behavior? There was some initial lag, for example, in bringing Protestant practice in line with the Reformers’ programmatic statements, just as there were national and regional variations in Roman Catholic implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent.° Still, by the seventeenth century, we might expect that attitudes and practices differed somewhat across the confessions in accordance with the prescriptive and proscriptive standpoints of the various Churches. What were they? A brief survey will help to establish a context.

The Protestant reformers, while envisioning an important role for the Church and the clergy in the family life of their parishioners, came to see marriage as a civil contract. As Luther famously put it, “Marriage is a worldly thing [Die Ehe ist ein weltlich Ding].” Clandestine

marriages were no longer to be treated as valid. There was thus to be a corresponding growth in the role of parental consent in entering into that contract.*° In response to reform movements within and without the Roman Catholic Church, the Council of Trent reaffirmed the sacramental nature of marriage with the decree Tametsi (1563).

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Protestant and Catholic doctrine on what constituted a valid marriage now differed somewhat. The post-Tridentine Catholic Church also sought to put an end to the medieval practice of clandestine marriages—sacramental unions “which the spouses administered to themselves by the exchange of consent”—by insisting on the participation of a priest and the posting of banns. This was the program. Practice in certain societies differed, and the Church continued to recognize the validity of clandestine marriages, even without parental authorization. Protestants on the whole now insisted on parental participation and consent.** The Orthodox Church treated marriage as a mysterion. (The Protestants used the philological argument that a mystery and a sacrament were two quite different things, and that the Catholics’ Vulgate—sacramentum, in their view, was a mistranslation of mysterion—had led them astray on this issue.)** Orthodox doctrine foresaw a two-part process of marriage— betrothal and the wedding—which might take place on different days or one after the other on the same day. Whenever they occurred, both were to be public ceremonies, performed in church, and they presupposed parental consent.*? Uniates were bound by the teachings of the Council of Trent, although in practice they may have behaved more like their Orthodox neighbors (and relatives). The teachings of the Churches also varied sharply on questions of incest: within what degrees of consanguinity and affinity were couples forbidden to marry? The medieval Western Church at one time banned marriage within seven canonic grades of consanguinity or affinity (fourteen in modern reckonings). These completely unenforceable restrictions— seen by Reformers as largely a moneymaking mechanism through sale of dispensations— were altered by the Council of Trent. Now marriages were forbidden for Roman Catholics within four degrees of consanguinity and two degrees of affinity, although these continued to include “spiritual kin,” i.e., godparents. The Reformers moved at various speeds to lift some of the restrictions. Luther banned marriage only within two degrees of consanguinity and one degree of affinity. Some Swiss Reformed cantons retained bans within three degrees of consanguinity and two of affinity. Spiritual kin were no longer off-limits as marriage partners for Protestants.** The Orthodox Church retained—at least in theory—far-reaching prohibitions on marriage “within the family,” as far as eight degrees of consanguinity and six or seven degrees of affinity among in-laws. It also included a wide range of spiritual kin among the prohibited—not just godparents but also the godparents’ own relatives by blood and affinity and godchildren of the same godparent—and placed bans on marriage to them within similar degrees of relationship.» But did these teachings reflect the attitudes of the faithful toward courtship and marriage? To what extent were children governed by the matrimonial plans their parents had arranged for them? What degrees of consanguinity and affinity were acceptable? At what age did they marry? What caused conflicts between spouses? What sorts of strategies did unhappy couples employ in seeking to circumvent restrictions on separation and divorce? To what extent did the clergy practice what the Orthodox called “economy,” the relaxing of the strict letter of the law on a case-by-case basis for the salvation of the individual and the greater good of

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the community?*° Above all, to what extent did the coexistence of the confessions in Wilno, and indeed sometimes the intermarriage of their members, influence attitudes and practices relating to family life?*’ The available sources are few, scattered, and fragmentary, and they will not allow comprehensive, quantifiable answers to the basic questions only sketched above. Scattered pieces of evidence do allow us, however, to note details about individual marriages on occasion— including things like ages at marriage, parental participation in the preparations, degrees of consanguinity and affinity between the spouses, and practice in and strategies for making marital alliances within and across confessional boundaries. In what follows, I look at what

the sources can tell us about courtship and marriage in seventeenth-century Wilno. Given the nature of the sources—above all, the lack of marriage records over any large period for any of the communities and the absolute lack of church record books for the Ruthenians, both Orthodox and Uniate—the stories I tell are anecdotal, based on a variety of disparate types of documents: a memoir, letters, litigation, testaments, and fragmentary Roman Catholic and Calvinist marriage records. Still, itis possible to produce snapshots of attitudes and patterns surrounding marriage in a few very specific contexts and networks and to provide some hypothetical answers to some of the general questions raised above. (I will postpone questions of marital discontent, separation, and divorce to the following chapter.)

Courtship To what extent were parents in Wilno involved in arranging marriages for their children? The indirect evidence that results from a consideration of the practice of what may be called “topographic endogamy”—i.e., marrying within a limited neighborhood, often quite literally the girl or boy next door—suggests that some parental planning may have been at play; but even this practice does not rule out the role of the individuals’ own wills and desires in choosing a partner. After all, he or she married one neighbor rather than another.

Let us take a look at the more direct evidence offered by a few individual cases. On 12 February 1641, royal doctor Maciej Vorbek-Lettow’s firstborn son Krzysztof Wiktorzyn married “Her Grace, Miss Anna, the only daughter of spouses Lord Pawel Dorofiewicz and Lady Akwilina Strzeludzianka Dorofiewiczowa.”*® King Wladystaw IV was ill at the time, in residence in Warsaw, and unwilling to release his doctor. Vorbek-Lettow marked the occasion by inviting a circle of friends, most of them of the nobility, including Roman Catholic prelates and secular dignitaries, two Jesuit priests, a chamberlain, a master of the hunt, a carver, a royal secretary who was then wojt of Wilno (Tomasz Bildziukiewicz, Market Square 3.01); but also two Warsaw burghers, Mr. Meidel and Mr. Pletenberg, perhaps Saxons like their host; in addition to “a few of the lord citizens of the city of Warsaw.” All of them were invited “for the sake of my delight, which was taking place in Wilno, made merry, danced, and banqueted [weselili sie, tanczyli i zapustowali] with me here.” The verb he used for “to make merry”

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(weselic sie) is based on the same root as the word for “wedding feast” (wesele): Vorbek-Lettow

was in a sense participating at long distance and vicariously in his son’s wedding. At that Warsaw wedding feast, the oration for Krzysztof Wiktorzyn was given by a nobleman, “His Grace, Lord Andrzej Eyrymowicz, castle notary of Wilkomierz” (a city to the northeast of Wilno in the same palatinate); and for the bride by a member of the burgher elite, “His Grace,

Lord Stefan Bilinski, notary of the Wilno council.” Both the bride and the groom were, of course, in absentia. Vorbek-Lettow was in the process of (re)establishing his family’s membership in the nobility and chose his circle of friends accordingly. He neither hid, nor did he particularly draw attention to, the fact that his circle included many burghers, that his son was marrying a merchant’s daughter, and that, although her brother would rise to the office of burgomaster, the Dorofiewiczes moved in decidedly burgher circles. The two families lived in quite different neighborhoods, the Vorbek-Lettows at German Street 26.03 and the Dorofiewiczes at Subocz Street 79.10. It seems likely that the alliance was facilitated by the connections of both

families within the burgher elite across a range of confessions. (Vorbek-Lettow himself had served in the magistracy on two occasions—in 1635 and 1641.)*? But what Vorbek-Lettow seems to have been somewhat uncomfortable with, and what he mentioned only obliquely, was the fact that his son’s in-laws were Ruthenians and Orthodox at that: “The marriage [sub] was performed (praeter meam opinionem [contrary to my will]) by Father Zoltadz, elder of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit in Wilno.” The marriage took place, according to Lettow, five days before his son’s twentieth birthday: “As the Germans say—“Friih aufstehen, jung freien soll niemandt gereuen [No one ought to regret rising early and marrying young].”

What Vorbek-Lettow both concealed and emphasized with his switch to Latin in an aside—praeter meam opinionem—was his displeasure with the fact that his son had followed the accepted practice of the groom’s going to “fetch” his bride by marrying in her parish church, which in this case meant not only a different parish but a different confession. Anna DorofiewiczOwna would appear to have remained Orthodox. Her mother remained in that confession until her death. Her Orthodox brother Prokop would convert to the Uniate Church only after the royal decree of 1666. He would serve as godparent for one of her sons who died in 1643, ten hours after he was born. That baby was named Pawel, which was the name of his Orthodox maternal grandfather, although Vorbek-Lettow did not point out this fact.*° (That both infant sons were baptized and buried in the Lutheran church simply confirms the rule that sons were to be raised in the father’s confession.) The father’s displeasure was directed not necessarily at his son’s choice of spouse but at the venue the couple chose for the marriage. Still, the story may point to a certain independence on the part of the marrying children. It also suggests the influence here of the practices east of the Hajnal line (even if the father again felt the need to comment upon it and justify it): the groom, a Lutheran, had not yet turned twenty when he married.

The timing of the wedding is of interest here. Vorbek-Lettow noted that the wedding day, 12 February 1641, was “the last day of Carnival.” This was a new calendar date: Ash

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Wednesday came on 13 February for the Roman Church that year. But what is more interesting here is the fact that this Lutheran-Orthodox wedding conformed to behavior expected of Roman Catholic societies: the frequencies of weddings were supposed to peak precisely in

this period with a precipitous drop during Lent. And it put both a Lutheran and an (oldcalendar) Orthodox family on a Roman Catholic calendar. Neither had any need to rush the wedding service to get it done by 12 February: the Lutherans of Wilno were probably using the new calendar, but they were not obliged to shun marriage during Lent; and Orthodox Lent began that year much later—on g March. In his masterful investigation of the “invisible border” between Lutherans and Catholics in early modern Augsburg, Etienne Francois notes the rarity of—the taboo against—mixed marriages, which does not seem to be the case to the same extent in Wilno, even if quantification is impossible here. But he also notes a calendrical syncretism: Lutheran Augsburgers continued to shun marriage during Lent well into the eighteenth century, unlike their coreligionists in monoconfessional cities who were quicker to adopt “Protestant rhythms.”** The timing of the wedding of Vorbek-Lettow and Dorofiewiczowna, of Lutheran and Orthodox, may suggesta similar syncretism in Wilno. It may also have owed something to a father’s wishes. He, after all, was making merry with Catholics in a very Catholic society, and his choice of words may have reflected that fact. They “made merry, danced and banqueted [weselili sie, tanczyli i zapustowali],” but the archaic last verb— zapustowali—can also have the more specific meaning of “to celebrate zapusty” (Shrovetide), which is what they were indeed doing. It is also worth noting that the memoirist himself had been engaged at age twenty-three, only a few months after returning from his long peregrination to the schools and that he was married “a week before Shrovetide,”** which may suggest that Wilno Protestants followed Catholic rhythms when it came time to marry. Another story from the close-knit Lutheran-Calvinist world of upper Castle Street might

point rather in the direction of a certain amount of parental arranging of marriages. Although many in this neighborhood found their mates in the household behind the next gate, one couple ventured as far afield as across the street—in this case directly across the street. In 1622, Katarzyna Giblowna, daughter of Lutheran burgomaster Jakub Gibel (Castle Street 2.13) married Korneliusz Winhold II, son of Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold I (Castle Street 1.16); she and her husband would inherit that property after the death of the elder Winholds.?? The arrangements for the marriage were in some danger of falling apart at one

point. Korneliusz I, as we know, had begun his peregrination to the schools of western Europe, at the latest by 1615 when he was fourteen years of age. We have two letters he sent to his Lutheran cousin Dawid Rendorf in Wilno—one from Amsterdam dated 2 June 1620, and a second dated Paris, 18 March 1621. One exchange from the first letter, written in Polish, allows us to eavesdrop on the long-distance courtship of two young Vilnans: At the same time Your Grace makes a very charming and pleasant legation to me, saluting

me from Her Grace, Miss Katarzyna Giblowna, although I do not know whether Your Grace does this of your own accord, or whether you deign to bestow upon me these sweet

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words at her desire and request. But however this may be, I thank Your Grace very much for this readiness to oblige, urgently bidding in return that you render a low bow from me to Her Grace, Miss Katarzyna, and recommend most urgently my most humble services to the mercy and friendship of Her Grace; and if the time and occasion should permit it, not to omit to bestow a kiss and a hug from me. For when Your Grace does this, Your Grace will do an act of great friendship to me in this matter, which I always remain ready to return and repay.**

But from the second letter, written in German nearly a year later, we learn that there were concerns that Korneliusz might have waited too long to return to Wilno and claim his bride. In response to his cousin’s report on the latest state of affairs he wrote, As far as Lord Gibel’s daughter is concerned, who, as I understand from your writing, is already half promised to Lord Simon Engelbrecht, and the notion that there will be no more maidens available for me should I remain absent any longer—I have no apprehension that one or another man will be able to do me harm in this matter or make any hindrance for me. Even if they [by “they,” he means “wives”] are not be found there, one certainly has other places where one can look for them [andere Orter mehr dar man sie suchen

kan]. But since Iam now on my journey, I do not concern myself with this; certainly when

the time comes God will find ways and means for us.”°

This competitor could conceivably have been Szymon Engelbrecht I, a recent widower at the time (if, indeed, he was still living), but it was much more likely his son Szymon II. The recently deceased wife of the elder Szymon, Krystyna Vorbekowna-Lettowowna (sister of Maciej Vorbek-Lettow), was in fact Korneliusz’s own godmother. Winhold had learned of her death from a letter sent him by Dawid Rendorf most likely in late spring 1620 (and to which he had responded from Amsterdam on 2 June). As we will soon discover, Szymon II would go on to marry his own girl next door—Katarzyna Sztrunkowna (the Engelbrechts lived at Castle Street 2.11, the Sztrunks at 2.10). They all lived across the street from the Winholds (Castle Street 1.16), and a couple of houses up from the Gibels (Castle Street 2.13). (And they were all Lutherans.) The first letter suggests an emotional investment on Korneliusz’s part and the hope for reciprocation. The second smells of sour grapes and betrays a young man’s attempt to save face with his cousin. After all, he had reached the ripe old age of twenty when his cousin warned him there would soon be no more maidens left for him in Wilno if he remained away too long, and he felt compelled to boast that there were plenty of other places to look for them. In any event, what I think we see here is some element of parental arranging, coupled with some amount of sentiment on the part of the bride and groom. We do not know whether Korneliusz’s absence from Wilno had lasted uninterrupted from 1615 to 1621, although the tone of the letter from Paris suggests that its author was still on some sort of peregrination

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to the schools. Whether he had been gone without interruption since age fourteen or whether he had returned to Castle Street at about sixteen or eighteen, after his documented studies (matriculations in 1615 and 1616) and before heading back on business to Amsterdam and Paris, the age of the groom and the presumably even younger age of the bride suggest some negotiations on the part of the neighbor-parents. After all, Jakub Gibel I had married in 1600, and thus Katarzyna could in any case not have been more than a month or two older than her future husband and was more likely somewhat younger.*° When the couple married in 1622, Korneliusz II had not yet turned twenty-two. In any event, some combination of parental

negotiations and reciprocated affections helped overcome the obstacles of distance and separation to cement this Lutheran-Calvinist family alliance on upper Castle Street.

Topographic Endogamies One way in which neighborhoods were formed in seventeenth-century Wilno was precisely through marriages contracted between neighbors. There have been various names for this and in various rhetorical registers: laziness, marrying the girl/boy next door, and in more technical language, topographic endogamy.’’ In most cases it was probably not convenience or lack of initiative but rather a calculation that those who were of similar or higher estate, subject to the same laws (recall Wilno’s patchwork quilt of jurisdictions), of comparable wealth, from families of the same or related profession, and often of the same confession or similar (e.g., Lutheran and Calvinist or Uniate and Orthodox) made better marriage partners and helped to secure the well-being, even advancement, of the immediate family and the cohort. The logic is circular, of course, but I think it reflects what was often happening here: proximity facilitated the contracting of marriages, and marriages helped create and bring people into networks defined in part by neighborhood. In this section I examine six distinct Wilno subcommunities: one Roman Catholic node of domicile and matrimony, three quite separate Lutheran (partially Lutheran/Calvinist) networks, and two among the Ruthenians (Orthodox/Uniate). I begin with some rather modest to poor Roman Catholics. I then discuss the Protestants, moving from the elites to the middle-level sorts to the more modest artisans, and finally I look at two neighborhoods of Ruthenian members of the ruling elite and their merchant cousins. The choice of the communities examined—as well as the themes of the stories Iam able to locate in those communities—is dictated largely by the nature and thickness of the available sources. The Kostromskis of Skop Street

The houses at the very top of Castle Street (1.01-1.07, I.09; 2.0I—2.04, 2.06), together with those in and around the first two intersecting streets—Skop Street and Bernardine Street—

were all subject to the Roman Catholic Chapter. The neighborhood was modest—largely wooden with more room for horses in its courtyard stables and sheds than chambers in the

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houses for residents. The two-legged residents were mostly Roman Catholic, although we do find at least one Lutheran exception. They were artisans in the middle and lower levels: tailors, weavers, organists, lutenists. The story of one Skop Street family from the center of the neighborhood will help give a sense of ties of place and confession. We enter the saga somewhere in medias res. On six days in the course of March 1623, two sets of neighbors came to the lower instance of the court of the Roman Catholic Chapter, the so-called Foundation of the Monwid Altar, to which most of the residents of Skop Street were additionally subject, in order to register complaints and countercomplaints against each other.”® On 12 March 1623, tailor Jakub Szczy-

gielski alleged before the court that his wife, the former Anna Lewoszowna, had received a beating the previous day “at seven o’clock, Just at dusk, on Skop Street.” The perpetrator was a certain “Mrs. Zofia, wife of Andrys the lutenist [Pani Zofija Andrysowa lutniszczyna],” and the

proof, as so often in these cases, was the physical evidence registered by an officer of the court: “a wound on the chin, with a bruise, black and blue around it.” “Later that same day (eadem die),” the wounded Anna Szczygielska came to court herself in order to complain that the lutenist’s wife had “beaten and slapped” her daughter Maryna, wife of “Jan Kostromp-

ski” (in other sources he will be Kostrzabski or Kostrowski but most frequently Kostromski, the central name in this story), during the latter’s absence and also on the evening of the day before. The next day, so the court record tells us, the case was postponed until Kostromski’s return on the grounds that this was a “causa conjuncta” (a Joint case), although we remain in

the dark about what role the absent husband and son-in-law might have played in the dispute. The lutenist and his wife brought their countercharges a day or so later.*? Here we discover that the Kostromskis were neighbors, renters of rooms in the abode of lutenist Andrys Helmer (Elmer). In 1636 he owned the bricked house at Skop Street 49.07 (“in it five chambers, a stable for six horses, a basement, a shed for six horses”), which was the scene of the crimes alleged in these complaints.*° According to the landlords, the story had actually begun earlier, on 8 March, when “Marusza Arcimowna, wife of Jan the tailor” (i.e., their neighbor Kostromska) had sent her servant-boy (chtopie-—even renters of chambers sometimes had a “boy!”), whose name was Wasyli, with the express purpose of using “dishonoring words” (stowa uszczypliwe) against the Helmers’ servants, “two girls by the name of Anna” (dwie dziewki imieniem Anny). More specifically, he called them “thieves” (zlodziejki). Here we

finally begin to get a sense of what had happened. Life in the close quarters shared by house

owners and their neighbors (and the servants of both—servants were treated to a certain extent as family?*) must have led to frequent charges of petty theft and the exchange of dishonoring words. The physical evidence of Szczygielska’s bruised chin was easily explained—at least by the Helmers: she was, they alleged, a “woman given to drink” (biata glowa opita), as was her daughter (nor was tailor Szczygielski—likewise a czfowiek opily, “a man given to drink”—one to refuse a glass); thus the wounds must have been self-inflicted. After all, when on 11 March

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Szczygielska came to the Helmers’ quarters to complain in turn about the way her daughter and her servant had been treated (perhaps mother and daughter shared the servant?), she herself—so the allegation went—directed dishonoring words against the Helmers and on the way out grabbed a rock from the street and threw it at Mrs. Helmer, hitting her in the

chest. At this point, according to the complainant, Szczygielska’s daughter, Maryna Kostromska having run out of her dwelling space [mieszkanie] to come to that wife of Jakub, her mother, allegedly in order to hold her back, when she led her, wife of Jakub Szczygielski,

her mother, as she was a woman given to drink, away from the gate of their house since it was slippery, there was slick ice in front of the gate, the one grabbing at the other, they fell on the slick ice before the gate, perhaps they could also have injured themselves.

The violent words and deeds escalated over the days after the first complaint and countercomplaints were registered with the court, eventually involving larger feuding factions. On the one side were Szczygielski and wife, Kostromska and her servant, as well as her two brothers, Pawel and Tomasz Arcimowicz (although, oddly enough, never involving Kostromski himself—was he perhaps still away?). On the other side were the Helmers and the “two girls named Anna,” as well as a fellow lutenist named Jerzy Szulc. Some themes of the conflict emerge. There was a professional opposition—tailors versus lutenists. There was an ethnic opposition—locals versus foreigners: Jerzy Szulc (Georg Schultz?) was probably some sort of immigrant, and at one point Helmer himself allegedly said to Szczygielski, “If only the Lord God would give me the right to finish with you, know, Mr. Szczygielski, that I will kill you, and having killed you, I will leave here, because this is not my homeland [ojczyzna].” The end to the feud was a classic restitution of peace through the imposition of an oath upon the Szczygielskis (as the party “closer to the proof”). As

often happened, rather than submit to the oath, the parties accepted a legally imposed reconciliation—“for all times, under threat of statutory penalties.” But the conflict, which dragged on from its first act on 8 March to its conclusion on 24 March, was not about confession. Helmer and Szulc, despite their names, left no record of any sort of dealings with the local Lutherans or Calvinists. With the exception of the servant boy Wasyli, whose name suggests he was Ruthenian and whose only role was to deliver his mistresses’ dishonoring words, all parties to the dispute must have been Roman Catholic—although the Helmers’ next-door neighbor at Skop Street 49.06—“Amplowa” in the 1636 Lustration, the Lutheran widow of organ builder and/or organist Hans Ampel (Empel, Hempel)—sat quietly by as all this was going on. Rather, what we begin to see here is a feud of two family networks—both of them Roman Catholic—brought into close contact with each other through the renting of rooms in a house on Skop Street. Perhaps the Helmers and Szulc were members of the congregation of German Catholics at the Bernardines’ Church of St. Anne at the other end of the neighborhood.

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Szczygielski and wife lived in the neighborhood as well, perhaps in the same house with the Kostromskis. In 1612 Szczygielski had been named a guardian for the orphaned minor daughter (Malgorzata) of salt merchant Bartlomiej Wala together with Grygier Mozejko, the maternal uncle (wuj) of the deceased, and weaver Lukasz Budzilowski. All but Szczygielski were identified as “citizens of the chapter”; Szczygielski was termed a “citizen of the Monwid Altar,” which was a subjurisdiction of the chapter and encompassed all of Skop Street.?7 Weaver Budzilowski may have been a relative of the Budziewiczes (such hesitations and variations in the recording of names were common) who also lived in the Skop Street neighborhood and among whom we find another weaver named Wasyli/Bazyli. Whatever his relationship to weaver Lukasz Budzitowski, weaver Bazyli Budziewicz was also a Skop Street neighbor of tailor Jakub Szczygielski, and the two appeared together in the record on a few occasions. In fact, the names of Szczygielski and several from his circle were registered with some regularity in a curious ledger called Income and Expenditure for the Endowment of Poor Maidens. The extant book contains entries from 1620 to 1654, ending a little over a year before the Muscovite occupation of the city. It was a foundation of the Monwid Altar and a tool for Roman Catholic confessionalization. Recipients of the dowries were recommended by neighbors, who were attesting to a few issues—their material need, their marriageability,

and their Catholicism. A few were converts, brought into the fold through this sort of almsgiving. In any case, these were all Roman Catholics, either from birth or by the time they received the grant.?? A weaver named Lukasz “Budziwolski” (most probably our own Budzitowski), was one of the reeommenders of a marriage in 1620, together with neighbor Pawel Kotlik, wheelwright, who owned the house at Skop Street 49.05 in 1636.7* Other Budziewiczes, perhaps relatives, received dowries, or helped to dower brides, thanks to the same program: weaver Bazyli Budziewicz married Anna Lomciewicz6wna in 1626; Maryna Budziewiczowna married Mikolaj Jodelewicz in 1646; Barbara BudziewiczOwna married Piotr Burakiewicz in 1650; Tomasz Budziewicz married Maryna Sadykowska in 1627.*° All the brides received poorrelief dowries from the Monwid Altar.

These were neighbors, on the whole, all marrying in the same Catholic circles. Consider the following instance: “g September 1622, to Miss Krystyna Chrzanowska and Balcer Kupicki, carpenter, both from Wilno, at the recommendation of Pawel the wheelwright and Bazyly the weaver, a dowry of 2 k.”3° These were again Pawel Kotlik and Bazyli Budziewicz, both of whom owned and inhabited houses on Skop Street (Kotlik at 49.05 and Budziewicz at 45.127”), and both of whom made other appearances in this little ledger. We know further that Pawel died a Catholic and asked to be buried at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, around the corner from Skop Street.?* Tailor Jan Kostromski, implicated largely by his absence in the court case with which I began this section, was also involved in these circles. In fact, he owed his (apparently) first marriage to precisely this endowment for poor Catholic would-be brides. We read in the ledger: “8 November 1622, to Miss Maryna Arcimowiczowna from Wilno and Jan Kostrzabski,

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tailor, at the recommendation of Mr. Jakub Szczygielski, 2 k.”?° The family names are all different, but we know from the litigation ofa little less than halfa year later that Szczygielski had married the widow of an otherwise anonymous Arcimowicz, thereby acquiring at least three stepchildren, and that he had thus recommended for acceptance in this Catholic poorrelief program a woman who was then, or would shortly become, his own stepdaughter. None of this was noted in the ledger. The newlyweds would not stay forever in rented rooms. By 1636 Jan Kostromski had bought the house next door to his old landlords, the Helmers, at Skop Street 49.08; and in 1640 he would purchase the house at Skop Street 49.05 from the widow of wheelwright Pawel Kotlik.*° By 1636, his brother-in-law, Pawel Arcimowicz (he, too, had been implicated in the feud of 1623), owned the house at Skop Street 49.10. Like his brother-in-law and stepfather, he was a tailor. He was among the more litigious denizens of Skop Street—which is saying something—and he would appear before the lower instances of the chapter court on several occasions, on at least two of them in conflict with brother-in-law Kostromski.** By 1640 at the latest, Maryna Arcimowiczowna had died, and Kostromski had remarried, a certain Cecylia Szymakowska, who was by all indications also a Roman Catholic. It was her name that appeared with his on the deed of purchase of the new house from Kotlik’s widow.*? By 18 November 1648, Szymakowska was a widow. The year before she had registered the contents of the dowry she had brought into the marriage with Kostromski, perhaps in preparation for taking control of her own fate.*? She seems in fact to have been a rather strong woman. The court record of November 1648 that tells us she was a widow contained the allegation by a certain Mr. Lukaszewicz that she had stolen his “bay horse.”** Kostromski had held the guardianship of the orphans ofa Skop Street neighbor and professional colleague, tailor Stanistaw Malcewicz (Skop Street 49.12), jointly with two other citizens of the chapter jurisdiction, tailor Tobiasz Rodziewicz (Skop Street 45.04) and gunpowder maker Tomasz Winkiewicz (Bernardine Street 53.02). The guardians became involved in a drawn-out litigation with Malcewicz’s widow over the fate of the guardianship. They claimed she had hidden the fact of their appointment as guardians from them and thus also withheld the funds that went with the office. They argued that this was not in the interest of the orphans, since, although their mother had remarried, she might predecease her new husband, and then the children would be at the mercy of a stepfather. This is exactly what happened in the course of protracted litigation that began in 1642 and was still going on in 1650. During that period Kostromski had died as well, and—in spite of objections from the other side that a woman could not do this—his widow, the alleged horse thief, appeared in court together with the two original coguardians, claiming, apparently with success, to be her husband’s legal heir in the matter. The case would be heard in the lower as well as the higher instances of the chapter court.* Szymakowska would go to court frequently as an independent legal actor, which seems to have been easier for a woman in the various instances of the chapter jurisdiction than in all other jurisdictions, and easier everywhere for a widowed head of household. It is from these

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appearances that we are able to form a sense of the bare outlines of a biography. On 11 July 1651 she came to court to complain that “the wife of the master of the kitchen, who was subject to the jurisdiction of the revered chapter, had directed her neighbor, the hajduk’s wife who lived with her, to hit her son in the neck with a rock, on the street, without giving any reason.”*° At this point she was still “Cecylia Kostromska,” although we know from another source that she had already become a widow by 1648. By 17 July 1652 she was “wife of Kazimierz Winski” (Kazimierzowa Winska). Mutual complaints brought on that day before the court by two sets of her neighbors concerning alleged witchcraft identified them as “living in an alcove at the house of Kazimierz Winski’s wife.” The fact that Winski himself was not named suggests that she had managed to remarry and bury another husband in short order. She would eventually go to law herself in this matter, and by 11 October 1652 she had obtained a court order requiring one of the troublesome neighbors to remove himself and his household from the premises “within a week.”*’ It was in fact not the alleged witch and her husband but the couple who had first brought the charges of witchcraft against their neighbors who would be evicted. She was quite definitely “Cecylia Winska, widow” by the fall of 1654 when she got involved in another drawn-out litigation with a family—that of “Mr. Jakub Miglinski, lieutenant of the Wilno Castle’—who had purchased the house next door at Skop Street 49.0349.04.** The events (and litigation) occurred from 28 October to 20 November 1654, and they included alleged window breaking (a standard complaint in the genre), violence to children and a pregnant woman (Mrs. Miglinska), and general hooliganism conducted against each other through third parties. The charges and countercharges descended at one point to the absurdly mundane: Miglinski complained that he had been the object of “the calumny of the lost goose [i.e., he had falsely been accused of goose thievery], but said goose was found somewhere other than at the plaintiffs house.” And yet, by late in the litigation both sides— identified to this point as Mrs. and Mr.—were claiming blue blood: “Noble-born Lady Cecyliia Winska complained and soleniter [solemnly] protested against His Grace, noble Lord Jakub Miglinski.” The priestly judge was able to impose peace and reconciliation in the neighborhood by convincing both parties to accept the explanation that “licentious people” (swawolni ludzie—this was, after all, the neighborhood that included two student bursae for the Jesuit Academy), under orders from neither of the parties, had been responsible for the violence.*°

Itis at this point (eight and a half months before the Muscovite invasion of 8 August 1655) that I lose sight of Szymakowska. Two of her children with Kostromski, Maciej and Justyna, would survive the war, however, and live to litigate with the Jesuits of the Corpus Christi Brotherhood at the Church of St. John over an alleged debt incurred in connection with their Skop Street property. The children were able to argue that the debt in question was connected with Jan Kostromski’s first house at Skop Street 49.08 (they did not put it this clearly, but this must be what was going on), and they sent the Jesuits to the current owner, the widow of

Matiasz Styszewski (yet another tailor), to collect their debt. Besides, they argued (here

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confusing the logic a bit), after the destruction of the war and the occupation, the current Kostromski house at Skop Street 49.05 brought no taxable income: it was “an empty and bare piece of land, empty after the destruction by the enemy and without any walls or buildings.”°° Justyna would rebuild the house at Skop Street 49.05, together with her husband Jan Baranowski, a musician in the employ of the Palatine of Wilno Jerzy Karol Hlebowicz. (In 1636, the house, in this largely wooden, modest neighborhood, was described as follows: “A wooden house... . Six chambers from the front and in back, a kitchen, a shed, a basement full of water, a brewery.”) I think we can see some of her mother’s independence in the few details we learn of her life. After the liberation of the city from the Muscovite occupation, Baranowski would buy a ruined town house in the “noble ghetto” at Troki Street 33.02, around the corner from that of his patron at German Street 26.14. (That patron was the Roman Catholic son-in-law of Calvinist palatine of Wilno Krzystof Radziwitt II [d. 1640].) Justyna was Baranowski’s second wife. She would eventually live in the Troki Street house with him and bear him some unspecified number of children. In his testament, Baranowski claimed that the five surviving children of his first marriage had already received their portions and that his entire estate belonged to his second wife and her children. He gave her 500 zi and “lifetime usufruct [dozywocie]” of the house on Troki Street. He “gave” her outright—it was hers, after all—the “little bricked house on Skop Street under the jurisdiction of the Monwid Altar, ruined by the enemy Muscovite, which, together with my wife, I restored and received the expenses I incurred from the rents from it over those years.” He, too, was Catholic and would ask to be buried around the corner from his Troki Street house with the Franciscans at the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary “on the Sands.” Baranowski lived long enough to put his signature (he was literate) to two wills. In the first, dated 1 July 1684, he named two Wilno burgomasters, Andrzej Gierkiewicz and Jan Berkinowicz (both Roman Catholic), as the guardians of his children from the second marriage. In the second will, dated 5 October 1685, there was one major change: the sole guardian of the children was to be their mother, Justyna Kostromska.°* She would live another ten years, having her own will witnessed (she was illiterate) on 28 December 1696. She does not seem to have died a prosperous woman, but she made what provisions she could for her son Wincenty, including arrangements for “protection” for him by noble guardians; she asked to be buried with her husband at the neighborhood Franciscan church. We will encounter a few other Skop Street family stories in other contexts. What emerges is a picture of a community—or a cluster of networks—of relatively modest Roman Catholics, drawn together by ties of blood, marriage, legal jurisdiction; often also by ties of profession and service as guardians, witnesses, executors of wills; and above all by ties of proximity. I have not discovered non-Catholics in these circles in spite of the presence of at least one Lutheran house owner in their midst. In the Kostromski family saga we also see a case of moderate social advancement. The daughter of a tailor, whose own start in married life had been the dowry his first wife received from the Roman Catholic Church as a part of

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its poor-relief programs and whose customers included priests and a few prelates, would herself marry a Catholic client of the Catholic palatine of Wilno and move out of the neighborhood and “up” to Troki Street. She thus put herself and her son in the proximity of the nobles and removed the traces of the family story from the acta of the Roman Catholic Chapter to those of the city magistracy.

The Sztrunks of Castle Street

The section of Castle Street just around the corner from Skop Street was one of German visitor Kiechel’s “most fashionable streets or ways,” and it is here that we find some of his Germans occupying large bricked houses of two and three stories, with a normal range of eight to fourteen chambers and numerous outbuildings. I will focus here on the block on the west side of upper Castle Street, bounded by Skop Street to the north and St. John Street to the south. This is now the eastern limit of the old seat of Wilno University; in 1636, its precursor, the Jesuit Academy, occupied a few buildings and three internal courtyards at the opposite end of the block, on Bishop Street (now University Street). The owners of the Castle Street properties were at that time almost exclusively Lutheran, members of an urban elite,

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intimately tied to each other through marriage and other social bonds and set apart not only from other non-Lutheran Vilnans but also from the other two, more modest Lutheran neighborhoods and networks that we will visit next. These Lutherans had close associations with

a smaller group of burgher Calvinists located directly across Castle Street. And they were quite separate from the more modest Catholics who lived under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Wilno Chapter or of the bishop and who occupied much of the other three limits of what would become the core of the university: Skop Street, Bishop Street (now University Street), and St. John Street. The houses in this block of Castle Street were all under the jurisdiction of the magistracy. Only one owner remains withouta story. This was a certain Adam Downarowicz, a tailor who occupied the first house at 2.08 and about whom I know nothing further. The rest were all in some way Lutheran houses. The survey from 1636 reveals the following names and addresses: at 2.09 Jerzy Chreptowicz (a Catholic nobleman but with a Lutheran wife, Zuzanna Nonhartowna; no doubt it was because of her the couple had a house here in addition to the one among the nobles at Troki Street 33.01 and a palace in the Lukiszki suburb); at 2.10 Jerzy Sztrunk II; at 2.11 “Szymonowa Engelbrechtowa”; at 2.12 Tomasz Gibel; at 2.13 Jakub Gibel; at 2.14 Jedrzej Fonend; at 2.15, the last house before the Jesuits’ Church of St. John, Wilhelm Engelbrecht. I have chosen to put the Sztrunks at the center of this narration, although these families were so closely intertwined that one could tell much the same tale beginning with any one of them.°? One of the stories to be told here is that of the quick rise of a tightly knit Protestant (Lutheran and Calvinist), immigrant (from Germany, the Low Countries, and France), and

decidedly burgher population into the lower reaches of the Lithuanian szlachta. The Jerzy Sztrunk II who lived at Castle Street 2.10 in 1636 was the grandson of a merchant and burgher of Kowno named Jan SztrunkI. As we learn from yet another funeral sermon by the indefatigable pastor Jedrzej Sch6nflissius, in 1561 Jan I and wife Anna Korsakowna had a son named

Jerzy I (the father of our 1636 homeowner), whom they “baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity and raised .. . in his youth in the teaching and discipline of the Lord [Ephesians 6:4].” In Jerzy’s twelfth year, around 1573, the elder Sztrunks sent him to Wilno to live—as a sort of ward and apprentice (na stuzbe, unto service)—with “the once famous and honorable man, Piotr Fonderflot, Lutheran burgher and merchant of Wilno.” Jerzy Sztrunk I served Piotr Fonderflot for fifteen years (i.e., until about age twenty-seven, ca. 1588), when he married “Maiden Barbara,” daughter of Wilno burgher and merchant Symon Karej. Judging by the names, both father and son had married into the local communities and not among the German immigrants; perhaps both brought their spouses with them into the Church. Barbara KarejOwna “lived in beautiful and sweet harmony in the state of holy matrimony for thirtyeight years” with Jerzy Sztrunk, giving birth “by the special grace and blessing of God” to eleven children, “six sons and five daughters, of which four sons and two daughters are living [in 1634], and another two sons and three daughters rest in the Lord.” Jerzy Sztrunk I died in 1634 at the age of about seventy-three.**

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His surviving children included Jerzy II, Jan II, Krzysztof I, Marcin, and Katarzyna. A survey of the marital choices of the elder Jerzy’s children and grandchildren will help suggest the interconnectedness of the neighborhood. I begin with Jerzy Sztrunk II, who was married to Sara Engelbrechtowna. The Engelbrecht family owned two houses on the block, one at 2.11 (next to the house Jerzy II owned in 1636) and a second at 2.15. Jerzy IJ had married the girl next door (Castle Street 2.11). Sara Engelbrechtowna was the daughter of Szymon Engelbrecht I and Krystyna Vorbek6wna-Lettowowna.”° Jerzy II and Sara, still clearly burghers,

would marry their daughter Barbara to lord high steward of Kowno Krzysztof Eperyeszy, thus facilitating her entry into the world of the lesser Lithuanian szlachta.*’ Confession may have played a role in contracting the marriage: Urszula Giecowna, Krzysztof’s mother and wife of Janusz Eperyeszy, was Lutheran, and—contrary to trends that made the Lithuanian Calvinist Church largely noble and the Lutheran Church burgher—we find the Eperyeszy family on the rolls of the Wilno Lutheran church over the years.*® Following family traditions, Jerzy’s sister Katarzyna Sztrunkowna married the boy next

door, Lutheran Szymon Engelbrecht IJ, brother of Sara Engelbrechtowna, thus making their children cousins twice over.°? Szymon IJ—and not his father—was most likely Korneliusz Winhold’s competitor for the hand of Katarzyna Giblowna in 1620. He would inherit the family house at 2.11; by 1636 it was in the possession of his widow. And by 1639 the house was registered in the name of Lutheran Reinhold Witmacher, who was Katarzyna Sztrunkowna’s second husband. Witmacher, a onetime city councillor, served in 1655 as the guardian for the orphans and widow of Wilhelm Engelbrecht, who had owned the house at 2.15.°°

He would be among the Wilno “dissident” burghers accused of collaboration with the Swedes during the wars of midcentury, and in 1661 the house was the object of an attempted confiscation—this one, unlike the others I have encountered, apparently successful.®*

Marcin Sztrunk had a daughter named Sara. In 1655 she became the second wife of Henryk Mones, then a Calvinist city councillor and a future burgomaster, royal secretary, administrator of the customs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Lithuanian postmaster general.°* Mones was the great-grandson ofa certain Bausin, allegedly from a Belgian noble

family. We learn this from the unpublished genealogical materials in Vorbek-Lettow’s Treasure-House of Memory. This made him the first cousin once removed (wnuk cioteczny) of Maciej Vorbek-Lettow and Krystyna Vorbekowna-Lettowowna Engelbrechtowa, since their

mother, Elzbieta Bausin, was the sister of Zuzanna Bausin, who was the grandmother of Henryk Mones.°? Henryk’s father, Franciszek, seems to have been a burgher of Gdansk; in any event, Vorbek-Lettow, who never missed an opportunity to do so, did not call this member

of the extended family a nobleman. Henryk Mones had two daughters with his first, Calvinist wife, Halszka. In 1663 one of them, Barbara, married Lutheran Jan Sztrunk III, son ofJan Sztrunk II and Elzbieta Giblowna.

This would make Henryk Mones the cousin by marriage of his own daughter. By 1675, Jan Sztrunk III was, in the words of a disgruntled stepfather (it was Lutheran doctor Pawel Meller, second husband of Elzbieta Giblowna) “titling himself” royal secretary. By 1701 he

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was “de Sztrunk,” as was his cousin, Krzysztof II (son of goldsmith Krzysztof I, Castle Street 2.26), and the name entered into Polish-Lithuanian heraldry in that form or, more often, as Desztrunk.®

Mones’s second daughter, Zuzanna, was engaged in 1666 to Vorbek-Lettow’s son Zygmunt, the cupbearer of Starodub. At this point, Calvinist father (Mones) and one Calvinist daughter (Barbara) were both married to Lutheran cousins; the other, also Calvinist, daughter (Zuzanna) was now betrothed to a Lutheran. That marriage seems, however, not to have come to pass. The couple was in fact related by blood but not closely enough to raise any eyebrows in these Protestant circles. Whatever happened here, Zuzanna later figured as the wife of Tobiasz Pekalski, Calvinist court judge of Wilno and later master of the royal hunt of Wilno, also a member of the minor szlachta.°° Elzbieta Gibldwna (mother of Jan de Sztrunk III and wife first of merchant Jan Sztrunk II and then of doctor Pawel Meller—both were Lutherans) was the sister of the Tomasz Gibel, who owned the next house down from the Engelbrecht/Witmacher house at 2.12. She was also the daughter of longtime burgomaster Jakub Gibel, who resided in the next house at 2.13. The Gibels were Lutheran. The elder Gibel was born in Wilno in 1569. He lost his father early on and was raised in the house of his stepfather, Piotr Fonderflot, the same man who served as a patron for the young Jerzy Sztrunk I on his arrival in Wilno from Kowno. The two grew up together—Sztrunk was eight years older than Gibel—in the same house, but while the ward of the house was learning his trade in Wilno, the stepson, as we have seen, was sent “to foreign lands, where he spent his young years in honorable occupations appropriate to his merchant’s estate, conducting himself honorably and well among foreign people.”°’” Gibel returned to his “fatherland” (i.e., Wilno) around 1600 and at age thirty-one married Krystyna Fonderflotowna, daughter of Andrzej Fonderflot and presumably some sort of niece of his stepfather Piotr. (A Zygmunt Andrys Fonderflot—perhaps the same person as Andrzej Fonderflot?—had sold his house at Castle Street 2.11 to Szymon Engelbrecht I in 1622.)°* The couple lived together for thirty-eight years, producing ten children, six sons and four daughters, of whom three sons and two daughters survived their relatively long-lived father. The five surviving children of Jakub Gibel and Krystyna Fonderflot6wna were Tomasz I], Elzbieta, Katarzyna, Jakub II, and Jan.°° Iam able to situate the first three more precisely in this neighborhood and its networks. We have already met Elzbieta. Tomasz was married to Anna Engelbrechtowna, yet another child of the family at Castle Street 2.11.”° This made him a brother-in-law of Sara Engelbrechtowna (wife of Jerzy Sztrunk II two doors back) and of Szymon Engelbrecht II (husband of Katarzyna Sztrunkowna, next door at Castle Street 2.10), and all of them, once again, were nieces and nephews of Vorbek-Lettow by either blood or marriage.’* Tomasz and Anna Engelbrechtowna—both Lutherans—had at least five children. Daughter Krystyna married Calvinist master of the Wilno horodnictwo (horodniczy) Pawel Kleofas, who would be ennobled by King Wladyslaw IV at the Coronation Sejm of 1633 as “z Brylewa Podchocimski.”’* They owned a house at Castle Street 2.19, next door to

COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE 191

another Gibel property at 2.18 and a few houses away from Krzysztof Sztrunk I at 2.26.77 A

second daughter, Sara, married Ferdynand Ro(h)r, who was horodniczy of Troki (16651670?), lord deputy steward of Troki (1665-16882), and lord high steward of Troki (1677?1692).’* A third, Katarzyna, was the wife of the standard bearer of Nowogrodek Aleksander Szwykowski.”° In other words, all had joined the lesser Lithuanian szlachta. In August 1651, Tomasz Gibel successfully defended before the Lithuanian Tribunal of the Treasury his right to own land. He made his case on the basis of a royal privilege given to Wilno burgomasters and councillors, as well as their children, by King Zygmunt II August in 1568. His plenipotentiary argued, “Not only they themselves, but also their proles [offspring], so long as maechanicis non contaminarent artibus [they not defile themselves with mechanical arts], butifliberalia et militaria tractarent opera [they should exercise free and military pursuits], can hold landed goods jure nobilium [by the right of the nobles] not only in pawn or lease [arenda], but also as eternal property.”’° The case was also based on precedent: Tomasz’s burgomaster father had also owned and sold landed property. Sister Katarzyna Giblowna, as we have seen above, married into the Calvinist burgher elite located just across Castle Street. (She remained Lutheran, nonetheless.) Her husband was Korneliusz Winhold I]—twenty-one years of age at the time of his marriage—son of Calvinist merchant Korneliusz I and Jakumina Deschampsowna, who had purchased the Rupert House at Castle Street 1.16 in 1599.’’ This side of Castle Street was a Calvinist mirror of the Lutheran block across the way, even if the networks were a bit thinner and more of the houses were under the jurisdiction of the nobles at the Wilno castle court. The block containing the Winhold house was at one time a Calvinist stronghold in the center of the city. The upper and lower side streets were largely owned by the Calvinist church or individual Calvinists, and the house next to the Winholds’ at Castle Street 1.17 contained at the rear a “gate to the Calvinist church,” which until 1640 was located at the other end of the internal courtyards

in this block.” Given the tightness of the web that linked all these people—in many cases in degrees of consanguinity and affinity not permitted to Roman Catholics and in some cases of doubtful validity according to the pronouncements of the Reformers—it is perhaps not too surprising that a challenge would be raised to one of these unions. We know of this because of a letter dated 15 June 1633, after the deaths of both parents, that Korneliusz Winhold II wrote to family patron Krzysztof Radziwill II seeking his protection against charges brought before the Lithuanian Tribunal by a certain Bieganski, who is otherwise unknown to me. Winhold wrote, “My parents entered into the state of holy matrimony not furtively [pokgtnie], but in the presence of many worthy people and with the permission of those who mattered, not, as the plaintiff alleges, within forbidden degrees of blood or affinity.””° Perhaps lurking in the background here was not Deschampsowna’s marriage to Winhold Sr. but her previous union with a Vonlar, who was a cousin of Vorbek-Lettow’s father-in-law Justus Isfeld. The royal doctor and memoirist derived his wife’s family name—perhaps

somewhat fancifully—from the German version of a place name in the Rhineland

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near Cologne, which Vorbek-Lettow writes as Gissfelt: the g could be replaced byj in pronunciation (and spelling), or simply dropped. Vorbek-Lettow interpreted is as the German aus/us (from), to which he added Feld (field). The Latin for this, Vorbek-Lettow tells us, was De-

campo (de campo), the French version of which would have been Deschamps (although the memoirist was silent on this point). Thus perhaps Jakumina Deschampsowna was in fact an Isfeld and had married a blood relative of some sort. Vorbek-Lettow devoted a few lines to questions of what would happen to the Vonlar estate upon the death of his widow, now mar-

ried to Winhold.®° Perhaps it was legal challenges to that inheritance that lay behind Bieganski’s litigation. A relative of Korneliusz IJ, presumably a sister, Zuzanna Winholdowna by name, had married the Calvinist merchant Jakub Desaus, known as “the Frenchman,” who owned the house at Castle Street 1.26. With the Desaus family we come to an equally local network of

burgher elite with aspirations to the lower reaches of the szlachta but one that was more thoroughly Calvinist. When the Winhold house passed out of the family in 1648 by the law of escheat (jus caducum), on the grounds that the Winholds were foreigners and had died with-

out a male successor, heirs to both Zuzanna WinholdOwna Desausowa and Katarzyna Giblowna Winholdowa sought to keep some of the property in the family.®* The Desaus family, too, in spite of allegations of treason and attempts to confiscate their property during the midcentury wars, would enter the ranks of the Calvinist szlachta, although its modern chronicler, Szymon Konarski, noted that in this case “marks of nobility were not always maintained in the record books.”** (His suspicions about the family’s status were justified.) As we have seen, one of Jan Desaus’s daughters, Katarzyna, would marry a Lutheran burgher, Jan Szretter, who made the startling rise to treasury secretary, Lithuanian treasurer, and finally castellan of Livland. In any event, what we find here in upper Castle Street is a Lutheran-Calvinist neighborhood and set of networks shaped by extremely close ties of blood and affinity—perhaps on occasion nearly within the degrees proscribed by the Reformers themselves. We find remarkably easy formation of Lutheran-Calvinist matrimonial alliances without the conversion of one of the partners. We also find anecdotal evidence for a mixture of marriage patterns and family structures. Jerzy Sztrunk I, who was sent out as an apprentice to another town and another household, married late, as did Jakub Gibel, in whose house (or rather that of his stepfather) Sztrunk had come to live; they married at ages twenty-seven and thirty-one, respectively. Krzysztof Wiktorzyn Vorbek-Lettow and Korneliusz Winhold II married quite young (nineteen and twenty-one). Maciej Vorbek-Lettow himself had married at age twentythree, as quickly as possible after his return from his long tour of the universities. Perhaps

what we see here is an opposition between Lutheran burgher circles, where marriage is thought to have come late, and those with stronger connections with the nobles (including some Lutherans and many Calvinists), among whom marriage often came earlier. But what is most remarkable is the rapidity and apparent ease with which these burgher families made their ways into the Lithuanian nobility, using a combination of professional

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skills (medicine and law chief among them) and marriage strategies to do so. This holds true, I would argue, for two individuals closely connected to this block of Castle Street but whose noble origins have only rarely been questioned in the literature. They were Macie} Vorbek-Lettow and Zuzanna Nonhartowna Chreptowiczowa. Vorbek-Lettow devoted several pages in his memoirs to his legal battles with the Wilno magistracy. His problem was that “at the frequent fervent request of the Wilno magistracy, in my youth, as I was ignorant of the laws, I allowed myself to be elected a bencher of Wilno.” The royal doctor had served “barely three months in the bench” when he was “taken into the

council” on St. Nicholas’s Day (6 December)—the day when “each year the magistracy is changed.” This was in 1635.°? (These were the first two rungs on the ladder of power in the magistracy. The next was that of burgomaster.) At this point his uncles and other relations warned him that he was risking his status as a nobleman because “fulfilling the duties of the civil magistracy removes noble birth.”** Vorbek-Lettow had just entered the service of the king, and he devoted much attention over the next year to effecting an official renunciation of burgher office. These efforts were reflected in a series of protestations registered with the magistracy and with the Wilno castle court (and inserted into his memoirs).*° The Sejm of 1635 (Warsaw, 31 January to 17 March) had granted Vorbek-Lettow the indygenat—a patent reconfirming or granting nobility (according to the royal doctor, it was the former)—on the basis of a document allegedly stemming from 1506, which he produced attesting to the origins of the family in the Pomeranian nobility. But there remain several ambiguities here and not a little defensiveness. He wrote in his protestation to the Wilno magistracy, in an attempt to forestall objections, that “praeterita conditio status [the past situation of the estate] of my father, ... which acerbae fortunae sors induxerat [the fate of bitter fortune had introduced], could raise some ansam [occasion] for certain people of various condition to doubt about my noble birth.”®° In fact, the royal doctor inhabited a world situated quite comfortably at the intersection of the burgher elite and the Lithuanian nobility. His oldest son Krzysztof, as we have seen, would marry burghess Anna Dorofiewiczowna.*®’ The godparents he chose for his eleven children born over the years 16191642 ranged from the Roman Catholic king and queen (represented, it is true, by high-born substitutes) through the Calvinist Radziwill to Lutheran and Calvinist burghers of Wilno, many of the latter his kin and in-laws.** It is hard to believe in Vorbek-Lettow’s claim of ignorance of the laws, and he was hardly a youth when he was first made an “annual councillor”: born 12 February 1593, the royal doctor was almost forty-three at the time. Even the story of his renunciation of burgher office had an ambiguous ending: it was his service as councillor in 1635 that had led to his difficulties, but if we trust a near contemporary, burgomaster Grzegorz z Kostrowic Kostrowicki, Vorbek-Lettow would hold that office again in 1641, well after the matter had been resolved.*®° The point here is that there were “better

and worse” claims to nobility, and that gained by service in the magistracy—the route taken by Vorbek-Lettow’s in-laws, the Gibels—was more suspect than that based on patents and blood.

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In 1636, the house at Castle Street 2.09 was in the possession of Jerzy Chreptowicz (15861650), then castellan of Smolensk (1632) and future castellan of Samogitia (1643) and palatine of Parnawa (1645) and Nowogrodek (1646). He was an ardent Catholic and a patron of the Lukiszki Church of SS. Philip and Jacob and of the Dominican monastery in Wilno, where his portrait hung. He also owned a house among the nobles at Troki Street 33.01 and a palace in the Lukiszki suburb.®° I suspect he acquired the Castle Street house either through or at the request of his wife. She was Zuzanna Nonhartowna, daughter of Lutheran immigrant Piotr Nonhart, who had died in 1633.°* As we learn from Nonhart’s funeral sermon written by Wilno Lutheran pastor Jedrzej Sch6nflissius (who wrote funeral sermons for at least four people on this block, including Zuzanna Nonhartowna herself), Nonhart had also been the object of rumors concerning his nobility. He claimed to be the son of His Grace Lord Stanislaw Nonhart—a Polish nobleman residing at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian (it would have been Maximilian II, who reigned 1564-1576)—and Elzbieta Angermundyn, a “hetman’s daughter.” When he was a little boy, “he was stolen secretly from his

parents and sold to the Turks, which was not hard to do there at that time, to steal noble children and drive and sell them to the pagan horde.” After he had spent a few years there, “God miraculously freed him, about which the deceased used to give sufficient account to everyone during his life.” He spent his young years in Hungary and then came to Poland in the entourage of Hungarian nobleman, Antitrinitarian, and pretender to the Transylvanian throne Kornyat Kasper de Békés, a favorite of King Stefan Batory. Nonhart would serve Batory and Zygmunt III, receiving the office of starosta of Oran and rising to that of horodniczy and royal architect.°* Nonhart, Schonflissius tells us, had many enemies who liked to slander him, as a foreigner, to the Polish kings. They alleged that he was not who he said he was—and specifically that he was nota noble. But “God miraculously aided him in all this, for by His special grace he demonstrated manifestly with letters, documents, and imperial privileges (which even today everyone can see and read) that he was born of a Polish szlachcic, who, tarrying in Germany for the German language [i.e., using the stay there to learn German], established himself there by God’s special counsel, since no one could forbid him this as a free szlachcic.”°? The story is an odd one. Clearly rumors must have been circulating throughout Nonhart’s life and after, and Pastor Sch6nflissius’s language betrays much defensiveness. Still, Nonhart seems to have been able to make his claim stick. His sister, Krystyna Nonhartowna (was

she also stolen away by Turks?), had married Lithuanian Calvinist nobleman Sebastian Sebastianowicz Kesztort, land judge of Samogitia, and the couple were patrons of the Wilno Calvinist church in the early seventeenth century.”°* Nonhart married his other daugh-

ter to Calvinist royal forester of Niemonice Aleksander Naruszewicz, also a patron of the Wilno Calvinist church.°* The daughter of Zuzanna Nonhartowna and Jerzy Chreptowicz, Zuzanna Chreptowiczowna, would marry first the Catholic palatine of Nowogrddek Tomasz na Holszanach Sapieha (1598-1646) and then Catholic Aleksander Hilary Polubnski (16261679), who would ascend to the office of grand marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.°°

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This was a quick rise for the descendants of an upstart burgher, if that is indeed who he was. Zuzanna Nonhartowna’s mother, Zuzanna Mrzygtodowna, Piotr Nonhart’s second wife, was in fact a burghess. She was the sister of Katarzyna Mrzygtodowna, wife of Lutheran merchant Arent Engelbrecht, who had once owned the house at the far end of the block next to St. John’s (2.15).°” Zuzanna Nonhartowna’s burgher cousin Wilhelm, merchant and member of the magistracy, owned it in 1636. “Wilim Engelbrecht” was annual councillor once, in 1641, serving that year next to “Matys Litaw,” 1.e., Maciej Vorbek-Lettow.?* And note

the adherence in these Lutheran burgher/noble circles to family naming traditions: three Zuzannas in three generations, ranging from merchant circles to the upper reaches of the nobility.

The Lutheran and Calvinist burgher elite of Castle Street facilitated their advance through skills that were useful to noble and royal patrons—knowledge of languages, “international business” connections, law, medicine, “engineering.” The Lutheran Nonhart, who apparently knew something about engineering, and the Calvinist doctor Podchocimski occupied the office of the Wilno horodniczy from 1619 to 1633 and 1634 to 1657. The office of postmaster general of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was practically a Wilno Protestant burgher monopoly in the seventeenth century. The postal system of Poland-Lithuania was established by a constitution of the Sejm of 1620 and entrusted to royal secretary and Italian immigrant Karol Montelupi (Polonized as Wilczogorski).°° Beginning in 1645 a separate office was created for the Grand Duchy under Motelupi’s rule but was administered by a local deputy, Lutheran Berent Vogt (whose wife was also Lutheran).*°° After Montelupi’s death in 1662, the Grand Duchy had its own independent postmasters. The first was Henryk Mones, Calvinist royal secretary, the last Protestant burgomaster of Wilno, and administrator of the customs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who held the office from 1662 to 1666. Mones’s first wife had been a Calvinist, and his second was a Lutheran Sztrunk from Castle Street. He was succeeded by the Calvinist factor of the treasury of the Grand Duchy, Reinhold Bizing, who served as postmaster from 1666 to 1686 (and whose wife, “Reinholt Bisinksche,” was a member of the local Lutheran church).*°* Perhaps the first rung on the step to becoming castellan of Livonia for Jan Szretter, Lutheran burgher (husband of Calvinist merchant’s daughter Katarzyna Desaus, another Castle Street denizen), was the office of Lithuanian postmaster, which he held from 1686 to 1698 and then passed on to two sons who held the position in succession until 1740. Thus thanks to education and skills, the Protestant Wilno

burgher elite was able to bypass service in the magistracy on their way to social advancement.

But they also paid attention to marriage alliances, marrying each other but also marrying into the nobility. Lacking the ability to advance on your own, you could marry your daughter to a nobleman, thus guaranteeing her and your grandchildren noble status. Or you could simply claim nobility and see ifanyone would challenge you.*° Jan de Sztrunk III and Krzysztof de Sztrunk II were great-grandsons of a Lutheran merchant from Kowno, grandsons ofa merchant of Wilno, and sons, respectively, of a local merchant and goldsmith. A family

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genealogy from 18o1 claims that the lineage was known in Austrian lands as early as 1274.*°? Available evidence suggests we should heed the grumblings of Jan III’s suspicious stepfather, Pawel Meller: the stepson was now a royal secretary but only “as he titles himself.”*°*

The Buchners of Glass Street

In 1636, at Glass Street 18.08, the royal quartermaster came upon the modest two-story “little bricked house” of Lutheran merchant Marcin Buchner. Buchner and wife Regina Stegnerowna had at least five children, all of whom married in Lutheran circles even to the generation of the grandchildren.*°° Spice merchant Michal Buchner was the elder son of Marcin Buchner. Marcin’s name appeared in Lutheran offering records for 1640 but not for 1652, by which time he had apparently died, and Michal, whose name we now see on the rolls, had become the head of the family. The family seems to have established itself financially only during and after the wars: Marcin managed an offering of only 8 zi in 1640, Michal a paltry 2 zl, 15 grin 1652.'°° It was Michal who would lead the family to exile in K6nigsberg, signing the loyalty oath for them together with the other Germans on 16 February 1656: “Ich, Michel Buchner, btirger undt gewtirtskramer von der Wilde, vor mich und meiner haufsfraw, wie auch vor meiner fraw Mutter undt meinem Schwieger-Vater, Mertten Jensen, Chirurgus, |... |len{Sborgck, wie auch

vor meinem Jungen, Conradt Burchardt [I1, Michal Buchner, burgher and spice merchant from Wilno, for myself and my wife, as well as my lady mother and my father-in-law, Marcin Jen-

sen, surgeon, (... )lenf{sborgk, as well as my apprentice, Conradt Burchardt].”*°’ Buchner was among those who quickly returned to Wilno. His name is missing, however, from the rest of the postoccupation record of life in Wilno, and a document from 31 August 1658 tells us why: he had died of the plague that visited the city the previous year. *®®

Father-in-law Marcin Jensen, a Lutheran barber-surgeon, contributed 8 zl to church coffers in 1640 and an even more respectable 16 zi in 1652. He survived the exile, as did his pocketbook: in 1662, amid the general impoverishment of Wilno society, he managed to give 14 zi, and his widow was able to increase the family’s giving to 22 and 24 zl in the next two periods (1664 and 1667).*°° From other sources we know that at least two of Michal’s sisters, in addition to their mother, had accompanied the family group in flight to Prussia, as perhaps did the younger brother, Jan, whose postwar career in Wilno is the best documented of the entire family. One sister was Marianna, wife of Fryderyk Cylich, a “burgher of Wilno and a servant [barbersurgeon] of His Grace, Prince Boguslaw Radziwill.” As “Friedrich Ziilich,” he also signed the loyalty oath that same day “for myself and my wife [hauf{fraw].”**° She soon died in exile, probably within half a year of their arrival. In any event, on 19/29 August 1656 she put her signature to her last will and testament (in Polish) and had it entered into the acts of the K6nigsberg magistracy.*** She asked her husband to see to it that her “sinful body be buried according to the Christian rite [porzqdkiem chrzescijanskim, by which she meant Lutheran], as modestly as possible inasmuch as we are now in exile [ile pod ten czas wygnantia naszego].”

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Cylich himself was also a Lutheran: “Friedrich Ziilich, balbierer,” contributed 15 zl, 2 gr to the Wilno church in 1652.*** He also soon died, perhaps while still in exile. On 19 July 1660 a certain “Lord Jakub Trop, captain of His Royal Majesty’s artillery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania” received a privilege given in Warsaw by King Jan Kazimierz for the confiscation of Cylich’s house on Glass Street by the law of escheat. By 3 September 1661, Trop had returned to Wilno to present his royal privilege to the Wilno magistracy and to request “intromission” into his new property.**? I will return to this case in greater detail in chapter 11. What is important here are the family connections. The royal decree did not overtly make Cylich into any sort of traitor; he was simply a foreigner—although that is always a tricky category during a time of war—and he had died without an heir. The rhetoric of the royal grant, however, was one of rewarding faithful servants during that war. What the king seems not to have known was that Trop was also a German Lutheran—although a citizen through his office—and that he was the brotherin-law of the foreigner Cylich.

Trop, too, had been present at the beginning among the German asylum seekers in K6nigsberg, although he seems to have arrived there with another wife. On 16/26 February 1656 Lutheran burgher and locksmith Erasmus Ertsleben signed the oath “for myselfand my son-in-law, Jakub Trop, for his wife and children.”*** His wife must have promptly died. A decade later, on 29 December 1667, the matriarch of the Buchner family, Regina Buchnerowa, wife of the long-deceased Marcin Buchner, came close to charging her former sonin-law, the same Jakub Trop, with defrauding her granddaughter (and his daughter) of her Buchner inheritance. Here we learn that Trop had married Regina’s daughter Anna Buchnerowna “in the year 1658 in K6nigsberg”—some two years after he had arrived there with a previous wife. The couple had produced a daughter—Marianna Tropowna. Anna Buchnerowna had died by the end of 1667, and Regina Buchnerowa now entered a detailed register of the dowry she had given her daughter at the time of her marriage in K6nigsberg. Her purpose here was to make certain that her daughter’s property passed into the hands of her granddaughter (and did not remain in those of her son-in-law).** Trop had married into a family that included at least two clients of Boguslaw Radziwill (which was a potentially risky move, given the Calvinist Radziwills’ attempts to found a Swedish-Lithuanian union during the wars of the midcentury): in addition to Cylich, there was brother-in-law Samuel Kalander, who signed the loyalty oath immediately after Cylich, also identifying himself as a “servant of His Princely Grace, Lord Boguslaw Radziwill.”**° The same volume of the Prussian Etatsministerium record books contains copies of Germanlanguage “passports” given to Kalander and Cylich by Radziwill, both dated 31 January/10 February 1656.**”

Kalander was the husband of yet another Buchnerowna, named Regina after her mother. He was a Lutheran wine merchant: “Samuel Kallender, Weinschenker,” contributed Io zi to Lutheran coffers in 1652.*** An inventory of Kalander’s Wilno property was conducted “at the behest of His Grace, the Lord Palatine of Wilno, Prince Mixail Semenovié Saxovskoj” on

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30 December 1656.**° (The stipulation that the date was given “according to the new calendar” is regularly found in magistracy records only in documents between 1655 and 1661, when the Muscovite-occupied castle functioned on the old calendar but city business remained on the new calendar. Before and after the occupation, all dates were recorded stylo novo but without comment.) The inventory was conducted by a “temporary” (natenczas) councillor and two city quartermasters, “in the house of the deceased Lord Marcin Buchner”— perhaps the one at Glass Street 18.08—and in the presence of Zachariasz Bez, Michat Buchner, and Dawid Paciukiewicz, “burghers and merchants of Wilno.” Bez was also a Lutheran and had been in Konigsberg in February 1656 together with Michal Buchner; both had clearly returned home very quickly, by the end of the same year at the latest. There is no record that Paciukiewicz sought exile in the Prussian capital. He was Roman Catholic.*?° On order of Saxovskoj, Kalander’s possessions were to be “given over to famous [stawetny] Lord Michal Buchner, burgher and merchant of Wilno, as his nearest relative.” In any event, the Glass Street neighborhood, populated by middle-level Lutherans and Jews, was where the members of the larger Buchner family made their homes, both before and after the Muscovite occupation. We find other Lutherans on the lists of exiles in K6nigsberg who were close neighbors of the Buchners back home and who would return with them to their houses. They included goldsmith brothers Jakub and Zachariasz Sznejder and sword-

smith Malcher Ilis, all of whom owned houses on Glass Street (Glass Street 20.02 and 21.03).*77

Mother Regina, younger son Jan, and son-in-law Jakub Trop would return to Wilno and play important roles in Lutheran society over the latter part of the century. The 1690 tax survey of hearths found “Lord Jan] Buchner” owning two “large bricked houses” on Glass Street. Buchner lived in one of them himself, together with one Christian and six Jewish neighbors. In his second home there were four Christian and two Jewish neighbors.*** The Glass Street neighborhood and the human networks with which Jan Buchner surrounded himself set him quite apart from the Lutheran elite on upper Castle Street. Still, this middlelevel Lutheran and his family survived the experience of war and exile, and his postwar offerings to the Lutheran Church rivaled those of the elite; like them, he served as a senior of the Lutheran Church.*? Jan Buchner was married to Krystyna Rejterowna. Her father, Joachim Rejter, was also a Lutheran merchant who had shared the period of exile in K6nigsberg and flourished in postoccupation Wilno.*** At this nexus we can flesh out this second-tier Lutheran network a bit more. In addition to Krystyna, Rejter had two heirs, identified in a document of 1673 as son Pawel, a “Wilno patrician,” and daughter Dorota, wife of Andrzej Fonderflot, the latter two both deceased by this time. That couple had at least two children, Katarzyna Fonderflotéwna,

married by 1673 to Andrzej Pozarski/Pezarski, and Zuzanna Fonderflotowna, then still unmarried.*?°

Andrzej Fonderflot had been a Lutheran. On three occasions during the period 1662-1667

he made no contributions; he apparently died sometime after 1667.'*° In general, the

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Fonderflot family appears to have slipped in income and status since the days when Piotr Fonderflot was Jerzy Sztrunk’s mentor and Jakub Gibel’s stepfather and burgomaster Gibel himself had sought his bride within the family. Zuzanna Fonderflotowna would marry sometime after 1673. Her first husband was Dawid Lidert, another middle-level Lutheran in the period 1673-1683.**” Her second husband was “Reynold Vonderenna.” His name appears in the ranks of Lutheran offering givers for the years 1683, 1689, and 1691. “Reinhold von der Ende HaufSfrau” (and “Reinhold Vonderenin”),

i.e., Zuzanna Fonderflot6wna, contributed on her own in 1685 and 1687. This is all a bit curious. The Lutheran financial records carefully distinguished between male contributors, female contributors (if their husbands were not Lutheran), and Lutheran widows of Lutherans who continued contributing after the death of their husbands. So Reinhold seems to have made some contributions, perhaps also worshipping with the Lutherans. But he would take Communion all his life with the Calvinists. Perhaps he participated in some active way in both congregations???8 Husband of Katarzyna Fonderflotowna, “Andrzej Pomian Pekalski,” served in 1684, together with uncle by marriage Jan Buchner and Maciej Vonderflot (perhaps a cousin or uncle by marriage), as guardian of the widowed Zuzanna Vonderflotowna. His name was certainly not German, although he too was Lutheran. The Lutheran treasurers frequently shifted from their standard German script to a Polish script when they came to the name “Andreas Po-

mean Pezarsky,” as if to mark his foreignness. Had he perhaps married into the confession???° In any event, the patterns we find in the Buchner/Rejter network seem to have been typical

for Glass Street and environs. These were mostly middle-tier Lutheran merchants and artisans, even as ties of profession (especially goldsmithery) brought people of other confessions into their midst. Although the inhabitants of Glass Street formed networks with neighbors of other confessions through service as godparents and guardians, the Buchners and the Rejters married almost solely within the Lutheran confession (with one Calvinist exception). Others were not quite so exclusive in their marital choices: we find a few Orthodox goldsmiths who married daughters of local Lutheran goldsmiths and set up shop with their inlaws in their Glass Street houses, without, however, accepting the Augsburg confession. For example, Bazyli Omelianowicz—the name is clearly Ruthenian—married Marianna Sznejderowna, daughter of Lutheran goldsmith Jakub Sznejder. He would work out of, and later inherit, his father-in-law’s Glass Street house. His name never appeared on the Lutheran offertory rolls, and we will find him serving as a guardian of orphans in Orthodox circles.*7°

The Szwanders of Szerejkiszk1

Clustered on either side of the little branch of the River Wilenka that separated intramural Wilno in the north from the cathedral, Lower Castle, and Szerejkiszki suburb were two small jurisdictions of petty artisans. Within the city proper, to the south of the river branch, on both

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sides of Castle Street, was the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Wilno Chapter, largely on Skop and Bernardine Streets. This was the neighborhood of mostly modest to poor Catholics that we visited at the beginning of this survey of topographic endogamies. Across the river branch to the north was the jurisdiction of the Wilno horodnictwo. This included the Szere]kiszki and Puszkarnia (Gunsmiths’) suburbs and reached toward Antokol—in other words, all of what was loosely termed the podzamcze (the area beneath the castle). Here we find a mixture of poor artisans, plus the suburban properties (“gardens,” “little manors”) of some of the wealthier Vilnans who owned bricked houses within the walls. Many of the poor artisans seem to have been Lutherans, and some of their occasional neighbors were members of the Glass and Castle Street networks.*3*

Although heavily Catholic, the chapter jurisdiction was not uniquely so. We find in and around it three Lutheran siblings. The Lutheran widow of organist Hans Ampel (Hampel, Hempel), lived in a bricked house at Skop Street 49.06. She would register her will with the Roman Catholic Chapter Court in 1655, having lived there alone in her widowed state for about thirty years, and ask to be buried “in our Saxon church, in the customary place, in the Christian manner.”*?? The fact that the couple was Lutheran played no role in their legal status. They were subjects of the Roman Catholic Chapter, just like their Roman Catholic neighbors: anyone who had a complaint against them would take them to that court, as did, in 1624, a Wilno Jew named Aaron Markiewicz and Calvinist merchant Korneliusz Winhold (it is unclear whether this was senior or junior), both in attempts to collect debts from the Lutheran organist.*?° Ampel disappeared from the record at about this time, and his wife never remarried. She seems to have been enough of a figure around town that the local Jesuits worked a reference to her into a versified anti-Lutheran pasquinade from 1641, taunting the heterodox that “you have more difficulty in achieving harmony [in the faith], than Hemplowa a beard” (trudniej wam o zgode,/Nizli Hemplowe o brode).*7* Amplowa made contributions to Lutheran finances

in her “own name” (“Hann{f§ Hemplerschin/Hemplersche”) in 1640 (12 zl) and 1652 (20 gr),**° and the house was registered in her name (“Amplowa”) in the Lustrations of 1636

and 1639.*?° Legal documents filed with the chapter court treated her as the owner of her house: when Jan Kostromski purchased the house at Skop Street 49.05 from the widow of Pawel Kotlik, itwas described as lying between those of “Marekthe cobbler” and “Mrs. Janowa Amplowa.”*?”

As we learn in her will of 1655, her name was Anna Rejchowiczowna; in other words she was the daughter of a descendant of someone named Reich. She left her worldly goods to her sister, Katarzyna Rejchowiczowna Gierlicowa. And as we learn from Katarzyna’s own will of 1658 (written in Sielec—probably it was the nearby village of that name south of Wilno and subject to the Lida castle court, where the document was first filed and where she had evidently sought refuge during the Muscovite occupation), her own first husband had been a

certain Antoni Szefer, a Wilno Lutheran. Her second husband was a Calvinist, Matiasz Gierlic, and the couple seems to have served as arendators (leaseholders) of nearby Calvinist

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properties, including the home at the “Street leading to the Orthodox Church of St. Iwan” 56.05 that they rented in 1636 and where they also resided. As a lay functionary of the local church, Gierlic was one of those mentioned by name in the royal decree of 1640 removing the Calvinists beyond the walls of Wilno. After Gierlic’s death, however, Katarzyna would return to the rolls of Lutheran giving, and she asked to be buried in the “Saxon cemetery in the city

of Wilno, and honorably, according to Christian custom.”*?® In her testament Gierlicowa claimed ownership of her deceased sister’s house under the chapter jurisdiction and the house she and Gierlic “had built with their own penny on the Calvinist church square.” And she claimed yet a third bricked house, left by her brother Pawel Rejchowicz, “next to the Royal Mill.” This was the house at “the little street from Castle Street going to the Royal Mill” 50.01. Rejchowicz was a white-leather tanner. I would guess that Pawel was Lutheran like his two sisters, although I have been unable to find his name on the lists of Lutheran giving for 1640 or 1652. Could it be that he was simply not an eager churchgoer (or offering-giver)?*>° We do know, however, that his daughter was Lutheran. She was Dorota Pawlowna (i.e.,

daughter of Pawel), wife of Tomasz Burchacki, and she lived in a wooden house under the jurisdiction of the horodnictwo “by the Bricked Mill of His Royal Majesty as you go to Szerejkiszki”—in other words, somewhere in the suburban neighborhood, just across the little branch of the Wilenka from her father. Her will was recorded in her house on 19 March 1645, “in the presence of burghers and other honorable men of this same jurisdiction, her local neighbors, house owners, namely, in the presence of Andrys Szwander, Jakub Kornor, Tomasz Wojtkowski.” I have been unable to find any information on husband Burchacki or neighbors Kornos and Wojtkowski. They may well have been Catholic. Nor do I find any indication that she made any recorded contributions in her own name to the Lutheran church. And yet, she expected to be buried “in fitting fashion in the Saxon garden [i.e., cemetery].” And she chose as guardians one probable and one certain Lutheran—her father, Pawel Rejchowicz, and Andrys (Andrzej) Szwander.**° With Szwander we come to the focal point of a third Lutheran neighborhood and network. He had served as a witness before. On 25 November 16309, Jerzy Urdowski, the notary of the horodnictwo, was sent to the home of a citizen named Mr. Matys Lipinski. There he would find gathered around Lipinski’s deathbed “many honorable people, trustworthy local neighbors, namely Mr. Wojciech Zabinski, Mr. Wojciech Wnorowski, Mr. Jakub Orlowski,

Mr. Bartosz Jacewicz, Mr. Jedrzej Juriewicz, Mr. Michal and Mr. Andrzej Szwander, and Mr. Anus Meler.”

The last three were Lutheran white-leather tanners. After the Muscovite occupation, the name Szwander, also rendered as Schweiner, Schwener, and Schwander, would continue to appear on Lutheran lists with various first names: Peter, Johen, Chriestof, Hanns. By this time the lists rarely stated the profession of the contributor, although one exception, an entry for “Hanns Schwenner, WeifSgerber” from 1667, suggests a continuing family tie with this confession and the profession of tanner.***

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But Matys Lipinski, to return to our deathbed scene, was Roman Catholic. Lipinski made provisions to disinherit his wife—perhaps she was a convert—should she marry “any Saxon or Evangelical.” *** The will she recorded for her second husband ten years later tells us that she had followed his wishes and married a Catholic, one of the witnesses of her first husband’s will by the name of Bartlomiej (Bartosz) Jacewicz.**? But these two documents, coupled with other scattered sources, tell us we have actually entered a very Lutheran world here—hence Lipinski’s deathbed concern that his wife might not marry a Catholic.

The last witness at Lipinski’s bedside had been the Lutheran chamois tanner Hanus (Anus, Hans) Meler. He owned a house “purchased in common” with his wife Anna Jodkiewiczowna in the Szerejkiszki suburb. On 7 March 1647 Meler went to the horodnictwo to bring the notary to his house in order to record his wife’s last will and testament. She too, in spite of her Slavic-looking family name, was a Lutheran. Perhaps she had joined her husband’s church. In any event, she asked “that my body be surrendered to the earth and buried according to the Augsburg confession, in which I die, in the Saxon cemetery, beyond the Wilia Gate.” **4

Anna Jodkiewiczowna, we discover here, was stepmother to the Szwander siblings: Regina Szwandrowna, wife of Jan Krejtner (also a Lutheran); Michal Szwander; Andrzej Szwander; and Barbara Szwandrowna, wife (by now) of Roman Catholic Bartosz Jacewicz.**> In other words, Anna must once have been a wife of a Szwander whose name I have not encountered but who had fathered these four siblings with a previous wife or wives. One might hazard a guess that the elder Szwander was also a Lutheran and a white-leather tanner. Meler’s presence at the deathbed of Catholic Matys Lipinski next to Michal and Andrzej Szwander is explained by his relationship to the widow Barbara and her brothers: he was the second husband of their stepmother. A postscript: half'a year later, on 7 May 1649, Anna Jodkiewiczowna would record a second testament of her own. In it, in addition to bequests to churches, hospitals, and family, she left 30 zi to a “fishwife by the name of Anna Popielowna.” And in her posthumous inventory, recorded in October of that year, we find that her estate included “six barrels of fish grease [rybia tlustos¢].” Both details add to our perception of the neighborhood (and its smells), and they may also indicate that Jodkiewiczowna had a hand in the family business: the tanning of chamois leather called for the use of prodigious amounts of cod liver oil. But more important here, the Slavic or Lithuanian name Popiel appeared on Lutheran rolls in the 1670s and 1680s attached to three different individuals—curiously, all of them women.**® Perhaps the neighborhood exerted some sort of attraction toward Lutheranism among its non-German inhabitants? The Catholic Matys Lipinski seems to have thought so.

The Dorofiewiczes of Subocz Street

Finally, we have snapshots of marriage patterns in two distinct but tangentially interre-

lated Ruthenian neighborhoods. Subocz Street began below the southeastern corner

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of Market Square and continued eastward toward Subocz Gate. It was overwhelmingly Ruthenian. This was also an area of the highest concentration of baths attached to private houses (twenty-four baths in thirty-three houses). In spite of the fact that members of the Ruthenian elite lived here, this was physically a much more mixed street in 1636 than Castle or German Street. There were seventeen wooden structures and sixteen bricked; only five houses were clearly of at least two stories. On average a dwelling in the neighborhood contained something over three chambers. The first sexagintavirate of the elite merchant’s community of 1602 was, like all other elected bodies in seventeenth-century Wilno, structured by a Greek-Roman parity: thirty members from each side. On the Greek side it included two members of the Dorofie(je)wicz family, Pawel and Bazyli (Wasyli).**” They seem to have been related, perhaps brothers or cousins, as it appears that they belonged to the same generation. Pawel was most likely Orthodox; his wife, Akwilina Stryludzianka, remained a faithful member of that Church until her death in 1651/1652, and her son Prokop was the last Orthodox burgomaster of Wilno before the 1666 royal decree limiting the Greek seats in the magistracy to the Uniates. Bazyli seems to have been Orthodox as well. The two patriarchs owned houses near each other on Subocz Street, Pawel in the middle on the southern side at 79.10, Bazyli on the northwest corner where the street emptied into lower Market Square at 76.01. We know little about the marriage patterns of the Pawel Dorofiewicz branch.**® He had married an Orthodox merchant’s daughter. I have found no record for son Prokop’s wife. A second son, Daniel, took a different sort of vow: during and following the period of the Muscovite occupation, he was the “vicar of the Wilno convent in the monastery of the Reverend Basilian fathers at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit.”**° Daughter Anna, as we know, married Krzysztof Wiktorzyn Vorbek-Lettow, the Lutheran son of the royal doctor and memoirist—but in an Orthodox wedding ceremony. We have a thicker set of names for the Bazyli Dorofiewicz branch. A dispute over the patriarch’s estate—in particular, over ownership of the house at Subocz Street 76.01— that was brought before the court of the magistracy on 12 March 1667 offers some insight into family connections.**° Bazyli himself had been married to Regina Szycikowna Zaleska. This was a member of the family that Aivas Ragauskas has identified as the only real burgher dynasty in the Wilno ruling elite.*°* Regina was apparently of the generation—perhaps the sister—of the patriarch of that family, Orthodox burgomaster Iwan Hawrylowicz Szycik Zaleski, who owned houses up from Bazyli Dorofiewicz in Market Square (4.08 and 4.09, the so-called Lesser and Greater Bourses); he resided, however, much closer to his presumed in-laws, in essence just across Subocz Street from the Dorofiewicz house at Sharp Street 10.14. Bazyli Dorofiewicz and Regina Szycikowna Zaleska had at least six children. In 1667 one heir to the estate, Marta Dorofiewiczowna, together with her husband Kazimierz Kostrowicki, was taken to court by the remaining siblings, their spouses, and other successors to the estate in a dispute over the division of that inheritance. Those other parties were Krystyna Dorofiewiczowna and husband Bazyli Filipowicz; Katarzyna Dorofiewiczowna and husband

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Roman Sobolewski; Anastazja Dorofiewiczowna and husband Krzysztof Ihnatowicz; and Domicella Dorofiewiczowna and husband Roman Kolczanowicz. In addition to Bazyli’s daughters and their spouses (no sons, if he had any, were party to the suit), we find among the plaintiffs Stefan Migura and Stefan Kuszelicz. Migura was the son-in-law of Uniate town councillor Samuel Filipowicz (Subocz Street 79.08). His presence in this litigation is most likely explained by the fact that Filipowicz’s first wife had been Dorota Dorofiewiczowna, yet another daughter of Bazyli Dorofiewicz. Filipowicz had died in 1663. As the husband of Filipowicz’s daughter Anna, born to his first wife Dorota DorofiewiczOwna, Migura was acting as a legal representative of an heiress to the property in question.*°? The lack of any sort of church record books for the Ruthenians of Wilno, both Orthodox and Uniate, makes an assessment of their network formation considerably more difficult than among members of the other confessions. Still, juxtaposition of documents like the Dorofiewicz litigation with Filipowicz’s will and a few other sources reveals a web of kinship

and residence among the Ruthenian elites every bit as tightly woven and as tied to place as that of the Lutheran and Calvinist elites of upper Castle Street. Among the children of Samuel Filipowicz and Dorota Dorofiewicz6wna was a son named Bazyli. This could hardly have been the same man who was married to Krystyna Dorofiewiczowna, but if they were, say, uncle and nephew, the two namesakes would have been related both by blood and by marriage. By the time we reach Filipowicz’s second marriage, such double bonds become clearer. The councillor’s second wife was Regina Kostrowicka, whom he named as guardian of their minor children, together with his grown son Andrzej (from his first marriage) and two of his brothers-in-law, Jan and Daniel Kostrowicki. Two other Kostrowickis witnessed his will: Kazimierz (who would be the object of the litigation a few years later brought by other heirs to the Dorofiewicz estate) and Grzegorz. Another document identifies Kazimierz as a brother to Regina, Jan, and Daniel.*°*? This meant that Filipowicz and Kazimierz Kostrowicki were brothers-in-law twice over: first because they had both married Dorofiewiczéwna sisters and second because Filipowicz had gone on to marry Kostrowicki’s sister. Indirect evidence such as names, coupled with direct evidence in testaments and other sources, tells us that all these people were Ruthenians. It is much more difficult to assign confession—Orthodox or Uniate?—with certainty in every case. All men who aspired to careers in the magistracy were de facto Uniate after 1666. Prokop Dorofiewicz, for example, was—like his parents, his sister, and his brother—first Orthodox but then of necessity Uniate. Samuel Filipowicz was Uniate before the decree of 1666 (he died in 1663); his son-in-law Migura, who went on to become a councillor, must have been Uniate as well.*°* Iwan Hawrylowicz Szycik Zaleski was Orthodox, as was, apparently, his son, councillor Zachariasz. But the latter’s sons, Stefan and Samuel, who held office in the magistracy after 1666, would have been Uniate, at least in public life. (Another of Iwan’s sons, Izacy, had converted and become a Bernardine monk.)*°°

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Such restrictions would not have applied to men—no matter how wealthy—who did not aspire to careers in the magistracy; nor did they apply, of course, to any of the women. There are some reasons to look for Orthodox among the women, even when other relatives were Uniate. Burgomaster Grzegorz Kostrowicki was Uniate, at least in the later part of his career, but his wife Maryna Iwanowiczo6wna was Orthodox.**® She was the daughter of Orthodox merchant Piotr Iwanowicz, whose other daughter, Eudoksja (perhaps Orthodox like her sister and father), would take as her second husband Uniate burgomaster Samuel Szycik Zaleski, grandson of the Orthodox Iwan Hawrytowicz.*°’ After the death of Domicella Dorofiewiczowna, Roman Kolczanowicz would marry into the Minkiewicz family, which, as we will see in the next chapter, remained at least partly Orthodox. Kazimierz Kostrowicki himself was apparently Orthodox at least at one point in his life: in August of 1658, during the Muscovite occupation, he deposited some of his belongings for safekeeping with the women’s convent at the local Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit; in fact, by decree of the tsar, all Ruthenians remaining in Wilno during the occupation were required to be Orthodox by early 1658.*°® Ties of neighborhood are also clear here. Iwan Szycik Zaleski and Bazyli Dorofiewicz lived essentially across the street from one another at Sharp Street 10.14 and Subocz Street 76.o1. The Pawel Dorofiewicz family (succeeded by son Prokop) lived at Subocz Street 79.10. Samuel Filipowicz lived two doors down at Subocz Street 79.08.*?? The Minkiewicz family house was at Subocz Street 78.06, and family members owned other properties on the street and in the suburb beyond the Subocz Gate. Jan Kostrowicki owned a house in the little alleyway off Subocz Street (77.02-77.03).*°° Grzegorz Kostrowicki had a house on Subocz Street at the end of his life.*°*

The Kuszeliczes of Horse Street

The one complainant in the Dorofiewicz litigation who has not yet been identified was Stefan Kuszelicz. Like Stefan Migura, he was listed alone (not as the husband of a DorofiewiczOwna), sO we may be justified in suspecting that his claim to the estate came through speaking for a close relative who was more directly interested in the inheritance but who was no longer alive. Stefan’s mother had been an Ihnatowiczowna, and she had died by 14 October 1667, just a month before the Dorofiewicz litigation.*°? One of the Dorofiewicz girls, Anastazja, who was no longer living by the time of the litigation, had been married to a Krzysztof Ihnatowicz, although he seems to have still been alive and should have been the interested party. It remains unclear to me what brought Stefan Kuszelicz into the picture; it may nonetheless have had something to do with his mother’s family. He was in any event Ruthenian—eventually he became a member of the magistracy—and we find his name with some frequency in largely Uniate and Orthodox circles. He was another of the witnesses of Samuel Filipowicz’s will in 1663.

But the family’s home neighborhood was in the Ruthenian environs of Horse Street, where we find a similar mix of Ruthenian merchants, magistrates, and church-owned (here,

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Uniate) houses. It was somewhat narrower, and shorter, than Subocz Street. It began, hidden

away behind the town hall and ran north-south, between and generally parallel to Sharp Street on the east and Rudniki Street on the west. Those two streets emptied through gates of the same names into suburbs on the high plain. Horse Street dead-ended at the wall that separated it from Horse Market on the other side. Between Horse and Sharp Streets at the end rose Holy Trinity “Mountain,” the small rising atop which sat the formerly Orthodox, now (after 1596) Uniate, Holy Trinity Church with its school, hospital, convent, and monastery. In

spite of its narrowness and hiddenness, the neighborhood gives the impression of older settlement than Subocz Street. Of its twenty-seven houses, twenty-three were bricked, fifteen of at least two stories, although the houses were probably narrower, with an average of under 2.5 chambers per dwelling. The neighborhood shared with Subocz Street its Ruthenian preference for baths in private dwellings, although, for reasons mysterious to me, only on the western side of the street, where seven of ten had them (there were none on the other side).

The Kuszeliczes (Kuszyto, Kuszela) were Orthodox merchants of some standing in seventeenth-century Wilno, although their participation in the ruling elite was minimal. Abraham Kuszylo had been a member of the first sexagintavirate in 1602. In 1636-1639 he owned a house (with a bath) on the upper-western side of Horse Street near the bottom of Market Square (8.09). Fiedor Kuszyto then owned a house (without bath) on the other side of Horse Street farther down toward the city wall (5.14).*°? Abraham may have died—or at least have drawn up a last will and testament—by 1638: a document from that year tells us that Fiedor, together with Uniate burgomaster Bogdan Filipowicz Zakrzewski (who was Abraham’s neighbor at 8.08 Horse Street), served as a guardian to the heirs of “Abram Kuszylo, merchant.”*°* A young Stefan Izaak Dziahilewicz, a grandson of Abraham Kuszylo and a future city councillor, would choose Stefan Kuszelicz (son of Fiedor) as his plenipotentiary.*® All of this suggests ties not only of neighborhood between Abraham and Fiedor but also of family. One document provides evidence that the two men were in fact brothers.*©° Horse Street was a kind of border neighborhood: it was the last concentration of Ruthenians this far west in the city; they looked east to the Uniate Holy Trinity Church and the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit and to coreligionists in the Subocz Street neighborhood. By the time we reach Rudniki Street, we begin to find some Lutherans, who looked west to their own local place of worship. Stefan would have converted to the Uniate Church from Orthodoxy in order to hold office in the magistracy after 1666. His mother, Eudokia Kuszelina, was definitely Orthodox, as was probably her husband, and we may suspect they raised their children in that confession. On 14 February 1667, Stefan and brother Michat brought Eudokia’s will for entry into the books of the Wilno magistracy.*°’ In it she left the sum of 1,500 z! to the local Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit “so that for all time a divine liturgy be celebrated for her soul.” Stefan and Michal were accompanied on that occasion by Orthodox merchant Krzysztof Sokolowski, described as a son-in-law of Kuszelina; since his wife was a certain Maryna Konstantynowiczowna, he must have married a daughter from a previous marriage.*®

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Brother Michal Kuszelicz seems also to have been Orthodox. Michal’s first wife, Eudoksia

Krytowiczowna, was definitely of that confession. We have an attestation dated 30 January 1673 in which Platon Lukianski, “vicar of the Wilno monastery of the Basilian fathers at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit,” confirmed that Michal Kuszelicz had indeed “had a proper funeral [for his wife] on 22 January 1668 in the aforementioned Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit and had laid her body to rest in the paternal crypt [his or hers?] that is in that same church.”*°° This “funeral receipt” is an odd document. I have encountered only one other like it in the Wilno archives, also an attestation that someone had been buried at the Orthodox Holy Spirit Church; both receipts were entered into the books of the Wilno magistracy.*’° Such a document would seem to betray a certain defensiveness on the part of the recipient, an attempt to put to rest allegations or suspicions that a proper funeral had not been secured. I am unable to say more precisely what was going on in this instance, although other extant documents suggest that Michal Kuszelicz was not living in complete harmony with the Wilno society into which he had been born. On 8 April 1669, in connection with a “case against Lord Michal Kuszelicz, burgher and merchant of Wilno, concerning the killing of a child while it was still in the womb of his spouse, who was then pregnant,” two officers of the court of the magistracy were sent out to take the testimony of the “midwife [babka] named Halszka Szpakowska, who receives babies for various ladies.” She bore witness that day that when she received the baby of Lady Eudokia Krydowiczowna [sic], the spouse of Lord Michal Kuszelicz, she saw on the little head and side the marks apparently of a blow, and the face and little body of that same baby were half rotted. Which body that same midwife carried to old Lady Kuszelina, the Lady mother of Lord Michal Kuszelewicz. When the mother had seen the baby nearly half rotted, she said these words: “He will answer before the Lord God,” and she asked me, “Do not spread the news to anyone,” and she told me to bury the body in the field in Rossa beyond Sharp Gate.

The officials registered the testimony in written form in the books of the Wilno magistracy four days later on 12 April 1669.*”*

The controversy seems to have arisen well after the fact. Eudokia Kuszelina was dead by 14 April 1667, when Michal and Stefan Kuszelicz, together with Krzysztof Sokotowski, submitted her will to the magistracy. And Eudoksia Krytowiczowna was buried on 22 January 1668; perhaps she had died from protracted complications associated with the childbirth. In any event, the magistracy was interested in the case at least two years after the event, in the spring of 1669, and it was only at the end of January 1673 that Michal Kuszelicz obtained the “proof of burial.” Whether this attestation was related to the earlier investigation remains unclear.

We do know, however, that by 1669, within a year of Eudoksia Krylowiczowna’s death, Michal Kuszelicz had remarried. His second wife was a Lutheran named Anna Zaleska.

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She was the sister of the influential Lutheran lawyer and royal secretary Arnolf Zaleski, who signed the loyalty oath in their K6nigsberg exile in the winter of 1656 together with the other “Germans of Wilno and Grodno.” He, too, would return to Wilno and become one of the

leading pillars of Lutheran society. There are some indications that Zaleski, together with doctor of philosophy and medicine Pawel Meller, might have served as leader of the Wilno Germans in K6nigsberg. They signed the loyalty oath, one after the other, together with the other Germans, but in Latin.*’* Both were among the older former students who “rematriculated” at the Albertina in 1656. Anna Zaleska’s first husband had been a Stanistaw Knapinski, who, together with his wife, children, and one servant boy, signed the loyalty oath along with the other “Poles of Wilno.”?’? He seems not to have been a Lutheran, but his wife was, and so were his sons— contrary to the norm in mixed families, where the boys were regularly raised in the confession of the father. In 1681 “Johan Knapinski,” and in 1683, 1685, 1687, 1689, and 1691 “Tomafs Knapinski” made their contributions to the Wilno Lutheran church.1’* These were Anna Zaleska’s children with Knapinski. Jan disappeared from the Wilno record after 1681 because he had returned to K6nigsberg: in her last will and testament of 1683, Anna Zaleska referred to her younger son as a “burgher and merchant of Konigsberg.” From the same document we also learn that Zaleska had lost all her possessions acquired with her first husband, since “partly they remained here in Wilno when we fled from the Foe, and partly Prussian soldiers confiscated them in Kénigsberg.” She praised the attention and care she had received from her second husband, especially during her illness, and she made him, next to her two sons from her first marriage, a greater participant in her estate than Magdeburg law would have required. She asked of him that he see to it that she be buried “fittingly, in the customary place, in the Christian manner, according to the order and the rites of the Wilno church Augustanae confessionis [of the Augsburg confession].”*”°

Perhaps Michat Kuszelicz finally converted to Lutheranism. In 1667 the rolls of Lutheran

offerings registered a gift from “Frau Knapinski,” that is, from Anna Zaleska, by now Knapinski’s widow, with a contribution of 12 zl. By the next two-year period she appeared as “Kuszelewiczowa” with the more considerable offering of 24 zl, and she continued (now often as “Michel Kuszelicz/Kuszelewitz Haulsfrauw”) over the next decade (1671, 1673, 1675, 1677) to make similar contributions. But in 1679 and 1681 it was “Michal Kuszelewicz/ Kufselewitz” to whom the contributions were attributed.*”° This ledger clearly identified (and distinguished between) Lutheran wives of non-Lutheran husbands and widows of Lutherans or non-Lutherans. The usage in this instance seems to suggest that by now Michal Kuszelicz had joined the community. Perhaps the period spent in exile in the Prussian capital had helped make the confession more familiar to him: the loyalty oath contained two sets of family signatures—one for Stefan and another for Eudokia Kuszelina and her apparently still minor son Michal.*’”

But except for this Lutheran deviation, the family’s connections remained in Ruthenian, often Orthodox, circles. An heir to Michat’s uncle Abraham Kuszylo brings together several

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names and places familiar to us by now. The first wife of Orthodox merchant Piotr Trosnica was Polonia Kuszelanka, Abram Kuszyto’s daughter. The couple’s daughter Anastazja would be described as Stefan Kuszelicz’s “niece.” She would marry into the Ruthenian Salcewicz family, who owned the house (with bath) at Horse Street 8.04, right next door to the one in which her mother had grown up and which, it would seem, her parents would inherit (“the bricked town house of Kuszela, later of Trosnica, on Horse Street”).*”® The guardians of

Trosnica’s children were Orthodox merchant Krzysztof Sokolowski (Michal and Stefan Kuszelicz’s brother-in-law) and Kazimierz Kostrowicki (one of the heirs by marriage to the Dorofiewicz estate).*”? Thus we find here in Horse Street, as in Subocz Street, intricately interwoven pan-Ruthenian (Uniate-Orthodox) networks, as well as occasional ties between the inhabitants of the two streets. In each of the two mostly separate networks (the Kuszeliczes and the Dorofiewiczes) we find one mixed Orthodox-Lutheran marriage.

Mixed Marriages On 5 April 1666, Ruthenian salt merchant Afanas Atroszkiewicz (Otroszkiewicz) had his will drawn up and witnessed (he himself was illiterate), and four days later, by which time he had died, his son-in-law Stefan Borkowski had it entered in the books of the court of the Wilno Bench. It began with the usual topoi concerning human mortality, although here they were couched in somewhat more memorable language than was usually the case: Since in the Heavenly Consistory, on account of the transgression of our first parents, it was established that each man would once die, and this edict was written with a hard diamond and in an indelible hand upon the forehead of each who lives, only this did the inscrutable wisdom of God hide from us, that we cannot know the hour, how, when, and

where we are to die, and there is nothing more certain than death, nothing less certain than the hour of death, therefore...

Such prologues were commonplace, always followed by the name of the testator and the specific dispensations of his soul, body, and property. Atroszkiewicz entrusted execution of his will and guardianship of his orphans to his wife and his son-in-law Borkowski.*®° His wife soon followed him to the grave. On 18 November of that same year (1666), Kata-

rzyna Otroszkiewiczowa—his name (Atroszkiewicz) but not hers had been registered with an orthography reflecting not standard Polish but the local pronunciation—had her own will

drawn up and witnessed (she, too, was illiterate), and on 26 November that same Stefan Borkowski had it entered in the same books. Although there were slight stylistic variations in the prologue, she quite clearly drew on the same notary—the one who liked the eloquence of the indelible edict written with a hard diamond on the foreheads of mankind—when she made ready to lay down her own dispensations.***

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But the paths the two took in death quickly diverged. After commending his soul to his “Lord and Creator,” asking Him to forgive his “grave and innumerable sins,” and to “deign to count [him] among His chosen,” Atroszkiewicz directed that his body be “buried according to the Christian order, as my means allow [wedlug przemozenia], in the Uniate Church of the Holy Trinity.” Otroszkiewiczowa similarly commended her soul to her “Lord and Savior,” begging Him not to remember her “grave and innumerable transgressions” and to “deign to count [her] among His chosen.” Her body, however, was to go to its eternal rest across the street from that of her husband: “And my body, as earth, I render unto our mother earth, [asking] that it be buried, according to the Christian order, as my poor substance allows [z ubogiej substancyjej mojej], in the [Orthodox] Church of the Holy Spirit.”

The extant sources allow no meaningful quantification of the phenomenon of mixed marrlages in seventeenth-century Wilno, and perhaps that is not ultimately the point. Anecdotal evidence such as that of the two wills cited above suggests that such unions occurred in some number and that they were treated as normal before the law, perhaps also in the eyes of some portion of Wilno society. Moreover, although there were certainly combinations that were more likely, all types of unions were represented. The Calvinist Agenda of 1637, which was to be a binding handbook for the Reformed clergy of both the Polish Crown and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, provided guidance for dealing with what authorities clearly saw as an evil that could not be simply banned or ignored. Even the extreme case of marriage with those who did not believe in the Trinity had to be taken into consideration. True, the wording (“unfaithful,” niewierni, i.e., “infidel”) would

have fit Jews or Tatars equally well, but there were harsh penalties for marrying a nonChristian infidel. I assume this point referred primarily to Antitrinitarian Christians, the members of the so-called Minor Church of Poland-Lithuania: “Ifit should become necessary (God forbid!) to marry those who do not confess the One God in the Holy Trinity, the servant of God [1.e., Calvinist minister] is not to compel such ones in their oath to confess the Holy Trinity, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed by the unfaithful for such a reason.” *** This was an extreme case, although one that Calvinist authorities felt the need to address. Clearly the concern was to avoid dissimulation on the part of the nonbelieving spouse. In other cases of mixed marriages, the Agenda continued, “frequent experience attests”

that some husbands, “especially of the Roman [religion],” persecute their spouses. The “servant of God” was to prevent this by administering the following oath during the marriage ceremony: “Since, bridegroom, you are ofa different rite [réznego nabozenstwa], lask you

before the Lord God and before this holy congregation, whether you promise and vow that you will not, regarding religion, work any irritation, force, or persecution upon this person who is entering into the estate of holy matrimony with you, on account of her faith and rite.” **? For clergy of all confessions (and religions) the obvious threat lurking behind mixed marriages was the loss of members of the community and their eventual children through the conversions of the spouse and the education of offspring in the new faith. The rate of marriage across lines of faith in Wilno is impossible to quantify, but given the apparent

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frequency of Lutheran-Calvinist and Orthodox-Uniate marriages, it would seem to be greater, for instance, than the less than 1 percent that has been established between the parity confes-

sions of late eighteenth-century Augsburg (i.e., Roman Catholics and Lutherans), where the taboo against mixed marriage was one of the main determinants of the “invisible border” throughout the early modern period.*** Clergy—and often parents—may have had misgivings about mixed marriages, but they were a fact of life, sometimes a strategy in network building that weighed competing risks and benefits. Promises such as those suggested for the vows in the Agenda cited above could

also be written into individual marriage contracts. In 1636, nobleman Jan Alfons Lacki owned two houses in Wilno’s “noble ghetto.” The first at St. John Street 31.07 was his own, and the second at Troki Street 37.09 he had inherited from his wife. He was an ardent Roman Catholic who would rise from starosta of Dyneburg to chamberlain of Wilno (1618-1630), castellan of Minsk (1630) and of Samogitia (1634), and finally starosta of Samogitia (1643). Before he married Joanna Talwoszowna, daughter of Calvinist nobleman Adam Talwosz (starosta of Dyneburg and Radun, castellan of Samogitia, and a frequent lay director of the synods of the Wilno district of the Church*®*) and Marianna Frackiewiczéwna Radziminska, he signed a contract dated 10 May 1612. In it he vowed “not to draw [his future wife] away, not to dissuade, not to impede [her]” in the practice of her “Evangelical religion and faith.”**° (It is quite another matter that she would eventually convert to Roman Catholicism and raise her children in that faith.)?®” We have few such written contracts. Still, each mixed marriage must have been accompanied by formal and informal negotiations of this sort. Two constellations stand out in what we have seen among the topographic endogamies sketched above: the Lutheran-Calvinist alliances of Castle Street and the Orthodox-Uniate unions of Subocz and Horse Streets. The first one makes a kind of socioeconomic sense. The Calvinist Church in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was composed largely of nobles. The elite Lutherans of Castle Street were on their way to

entering that estate. Lutheran and Calvinist merchant and magistrate sons and daughters could easily contemplate alliances that allowed them both avoidance of conversion to Roman Catholicism and entry into the Lithuanian szlachta, with hopes for holding regularly bestowed offices. The cases I have found suggest that these people remained loyal to their confession of birth but also that they occasionally participated in the life of their spouses’ Churches.

Clergy seem to have taken all this in stride. The extant marriage record for the Jesuits’ Church of St. Kazimierz—it deals mostly with German Catholics—notes the marriage on 20 November 1677 of Roman Catholic Thomas Bader with Lutheran Anna Fichbathin in the presence of a single witness, a Lutheran by the name of Christophorus Schwenert. All seem to have been Germans. The record was silent about the confessions of the participants. I have supplied this from other sources.*®®

Marriages between Orthodox and Uniate Vilnans seem somewhat more surprising if we look at the matter from the point of view of the prelates and the polemical pamphleteers. This was, after all, the most recent division (1596), and it had happened within one “family,”

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the “Ruthenian nation” (narod ruski) and the “Ruthenian faith” (wiara ruska). But while the hierarchs and the polemicists were insisting that only one confession, either the Orthodox or the Uniate, was the true representative of, and heir to, Ruthenian faith, rights, liberties, and privileges, many Vilnans seem to have felt comfortable with membership in communities formed by social and neighborhood networks that were pan-Ruthenian and set in opposition to the Romans, including the Roman Catholics, with whom, after all, the Uniates were supposed to be in communion. One pattern here would seem to be that of the wife who remained Orthodox while her husband was a member of the Uniate Church. This might suggest a public/male version of Ruthenianness in Wilno (the Uniate Church) and a private/female version (the Orthodox Church), an especially likely scenario after 1666, when access to magisterial office was blocked to Orthodox Ruthenians. In addition to the Otroszkiewiczes, we have seen the marriage of Orthodox merchant’s daughter Maryna Iwanowiczowna (d. after 23 December 1668) and Uniate (at least in the latter part of his life) burgomaster Grzegorz Kostrowicki (d. after 13 May 1685).*®? We may assume that Orthodox merchant Piotr Iwanowicz had raised both his daughters in that Church. Maryna’s sister Eudoksja would also marry a Uniate member of the ruling elite—Samuel Szycik Zaleski.*°° Unfortunately, the sources do not indicate whether she, like her sister, remained Orthodox until her death.

In both these neighborhoods and networks—the Lutherans and Calvinists of Castle Street and the Orthodox and Uniates of Subocz and Horse Streets—we are dealing with elites: wealthy merchants and magistrates, some of whom (at least among the Protestants) were allied with, or making their entry into, the szlachta. Was this sort of confessional border crossing characteristic of the elites only? Caution is necessary here: we have the most information about the elites, so this may be why we see this phenomenon here. Still, the family trees I was able to sketch for the middle-level Buchners and Rejters suggest less of this sort of openness below the upper reaches of burgher society, at least among the Lutherans: the Buchners and their kin may have made regular appearances at the baptismal fonts of the local Roman Catholic and Calvinist churches, but their marital strategies seem to have admitted only the one Calvinist cousin and to have focused on the formation of strictly Lutheran family alliances. The record for the modest to poor neighborhoods of the horodnictwo and the Roman Catholic Chapter is relatively thick and also suggests less crossing of confessional boundaries in the formation of matrimonial alliances: Lutheran in the former, Roman Catholic in the latter. And yet Barbara Szwandrowna, with her two Roman Catholic husbands, may not have converted to their Church; in any event, her first husband felt the need to threaten her with disinheritance should she marry a Saxon or an Evangelical, and yet her second husband named only Lutheran guardians for her. My impression is that most neighborhoods, of whatever estate and wealth, admitted not only inhabitants of another confession but also occasional kinship alliances with them. This does not mean that religion was a matter of indifference. Atroszkiewicz and Otroszkiewiczowa might have shared a marriage bed, but they insisted on resting eternally in the

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hallowed grounds of the archrivals across the street from each other beneath Sharp Gate. Both had been married before. The question was not addressed in the wills, where it was common to do so, but it is entirely possible that one or both were in fact asking to be buried with a previous spouse. Here, again, we see the coupling of indifference and its opposite: this couple was willing to cross confessional boundaries in marriage but not at death. Moreover, even if the extant sources suggest a certain normalcy and easiness to LutheranCalvinist and Orthodox-Uniate marriages to the point where we might almost treat such unions as confessionally endogamous, all the other combinations were nonetheless present, including the more surprising Lutheran-Orthodox (Vorbek-Lettow and Dorofiewicz6wna; Kuszelicz and Zaleska) and Uniate-Calvinist (Lebiedzicz and Baranowiczowna) unions. All of this adds to a growing picture of neighborhood and network formation largely along confessional lines but with considerable crossing of those lines possible.

Absolute Taboos, and Some Final Thoughts One constellation that could not normally be formed without either conversion or criminal scandal was between Christians and non-Christians. Anti-Jewish and anti-Tatar tracts raised the specter of Christian-infidel marriage and also of conversion to Judaism and Islam. Bartlomiej Groicki’s 1559 treatment of Magdeburg law in Polish allowed no doubt about the matter: “There can be no marriage between a Jew and a Christian. And if they should be joined in matrimony, they are not to be considered as other than those who live in adultery.”*°* In spite of some antisemitic literature that sounded the alarm over alleged Christian conversions to Judaism, the fact remains that, for all practical purposes, conversion across this divide was in the direction of Christianity.*°? What remains unclear is how often Jews actually did convert. Matriages of Christians and Muslims raised similar concerns, even if the road to acculturation in Christian society seems to have been much easier for Lithuanian Tatars than for Jews. A famous anti-Tatar pamphlet first published in Wilno in 1617 warned against TatarChristian cohabitation: not only did the Tatars themselves work on Sundays and holy days and force their Christian servants to do so as well, but they also converted their Christian wives, children, and wet nurses to Islam.*”? Let us consider one marriage across the bounds of religion as an example of what was at stake. On 1 July 1670, a Christian citizen of the royal city of Nowogrodek (Belarusan, Nauharadok) named Heliasz Jewczyc registered a complaint with the local castle court that was subsequently refiled with the Wilno magistracy.*°* His protestation was against three men who turn out to be his brothers-in-law: “infidel Jews, and murderers truly never satiated with Christian blood and themselves the chief principals of the deed named below, who live in the Wilno city of His Royal Majesty—Jozef, Hirsza [sic], and Nochym Izraelewicz by name—the brothers of the deceased wife.” The charge was murder: that “the wife of the said

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Heliasz Jewczyc, Katarzyna IzraelewiczOwna Heliaszowa Jewczycowa [“Catherine, daughter of Izraelewicz, wife of Heliasz Jewczyc”] by name, was done away with through shameful and unheard-of murder by those traitor Jews.”

The story unfolded this way. Katarzyna—this was no doubt her baptismal name—was born of Wilno Jews Samuel Izraelewicz and wife. Having become aware that she was in manifest error and unbelief, having been baptized and having received the holy Catholic faith, having entered into the estate of matrimony with the plaintiff, Heliasz Jewczyc, living with him for some ten years in the true Christian faith, having given birth to several children, they remained in holy matrimonial concord until those traitors, infidel Jews, both the parents of that Jewczycowa as well as the ac-

cused brothers and various friends, found out various methods how they, through various Jews, in any place, having stolen her away silently, secretly, treacherously, on account of the fact that she had abandoned their foul Jewish faith and had become a Christian woman, might wreak vengeance upon her. Thus, you see, all these Jewish traitors who live in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania had their particular councils and committees, and they sought diligently throughout all those years to find a way secretly to catch that Jewczycowa by any means possible for torture and murder.

They found the appropriate moment when, on 19 June 1670, Katarzyna Jewczycowa set off for Kleck in the Nowogrodek palatinate to buy some articles of necessity at the fair that began after the tenth Friday following Easter according to the old calendar.**? Jewczycowa took with her more than 4oo red zi and some of her “accessories,” valued at 600 Polish gr (i.e., 20 zl). She was traveling in a one-horse cart with a servant named Siemion in the direction of Nieswiez when they encountered some bad weather and the horse became tired. The servant went back to Nowogrodek with the horse, and Jewczycowa herself hired a Nieswiez burgher named Iwan Mazurek to drive her to Kleck, where she arrived on 22 June, taking a room with a local burgher named Tomasz Horkun. As Jewczycowa was buying goods in the market, a Jew named Hoszko Ceperski noticed that she was carrying a number of red zlotys with her, whereupon “he invited her to his house in the city of Kleck, promising to exchange the red zlotys for shillings, promising to give generously for each red ztoty without any detriment to her.” Not expecting anything untoward, “especially since it was fair time, and many people of various conditions were present,” she moved, together with her money and her belongings, from her room with Horkun to take up residence with Ceperski. And that Jew, Hoszko Ceperski, gave her room and lodgings in his house, in the room where malt is dried. And she, feeling safe in her lodgings, not expecting any danger to herself, confidently remained in those quarters. But interim [in the meanwhile], the accused Jews, Jozef, Hirsza, and Nochym Izraelewicz, the brothers of the wife of the

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plaintiff, took lodgings in the very same house of the Jew, Hoszko Ceperski. And having attacked at night, in treacherous fashion, the lodgings of the deceased wife of the plaintiff in that city of Kleck, having a conspiracy [namowa] with all the Jews of the city of Kleck, having taken that Jewcezycowa from her bed at night by force, and having brought her secretly by day and by night to the city of Wilno, they tyrannically tortured unto death the poor Christian woman, wife of Jewczyc, in their secret dungeons that are in the cellars

in the earth under their houses. And thereafter, working unto the disdain of the holy Christian religion, they made mockery of this act of murder in many places, saying that we punished that wife of Jewczyc, the apostate from our law, as ever we saw fit. Namely, they said, that, having cast her into a deep well, they cast great rocks upon her and stoned

her, promising to do just the same to each one who should dare to have himself baptized from the Jewish faith into the Christian faith.

As usual with this forensic genre, the reader is left with the impression that some of the real issues have been blurred and perhaps on purpose. What was the role of money and property in the story, which are integral to the complaint and come up at every plot turn? Do we believe the assertion that the couple lived in “matrimonial concord,” which would seem necessary to mention only if someone had asserted otherwise? Was it a normal move for a Jewish convert to Christianity—especially a woman traveling alone—to take lodgings in a Jewish house? To modern readers, though, the story appears as a gothic tale of fears and horrors. From the Christian side were the fears that “all the Jewish traitors”—not only of the city of Kleck but of the entire Grand Duchy of Lithuania—could conspire to locate one woman and help place her murderous brothers in the room next to her; that the houses of the Jewish quarter of Wilno were riddled with private dungeons, cellars, and wells in which apostates could be stoned (or perhaps just random Christian victims incarcerated and converted or killed); that the Jews were mocking the Christians and threatening to do the same to all converts.*°° And although the narrator did not try to see anything from the Jewish side, one Jewish fear stands out clearly: the fear of losing members of the community to conversion. In other words, this was a story about the fear of treason from both sides ofa great divide. The Third Lithuanian Statute of 1588 (XII, art. 7) decreed that “should a Jew or a Jewess

join the Christian faith, such a person and his or her offspring shall be recognized as nobles.”*°’ Although this provision remained law until 1764, it seems to have been implemented extremely rarely, if ever. When Jews did convert, it was only through a radical break with the Jewish community. Jakub Goldberg has provided a fascinating historicalsociological survey of Jewish converts in old Poland-Lithuania, tracing the many trajectories that such people might take: into the peasantry, the bourgeoisie, the nobility, the clergy.*”® Although we can find examples of conversion to the several confessions, it is clear that Jewish converts, too, were drawn in greater numbers to the majority religion, which was Roman Catholicism.

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Katarzyna Jewczycowa converted to Catholicism. (The term “catholic” might be used in other contexts more closely connected to confessional polemics by adherents of any of the Christian confessions in attempts to claim universality for their Churches, but here it referred to Roman Catholicism.) Her husband was a burgher, but, judging by the family’s lifestyle, he would seem to have been in the upper realm of that estate, where many aspired to affect the szlachta lifestyle. He was in the employ of a member of the gentry and petty functionary of the Nowogrodek palatinate named Teodor Kiersnowski (who entered a similar complaint with the castle court in Jewczyc’s name’*?’), and his wife may have been on some estate-related business when she went to market in Kleck. The two had been living in Kiersnowski’s Nowogrddek manor for some time. Goldberg’s survey tells of several cases in which relatives and community members sought to prevent conversion or to reconvert the apostate by force.*°° This particular case is remarkable for its apparent extremity and also for the palpable sense of fear on the part of the Christian complainant vis-a-vis the Jewish presence around him. But for modern readers, probably some of the more remarkable things about the story are those left entirely unaddressed. Above all, How did it happen? This was not an anonymous poor Jew who converted with the help of various Christian poor relief programs (discussed in chapter 13). Jewezyc knew the names of all his nearest Jewish in-laws, and his wife was identified by a patronymic taken from her father’s Jewish family-name/patronymic.”” Had there been a courtship? Or was the marriage arranged? How? Why? Where did they meet? Were they accepted in the world of the small-town burgher elite and the minor rural gentry, which seems to have been Jewczyc’s estate and environment? When non-Christians married Christians, they most likely accepted their spouses’ confession. I am able to document some conversions of Jews and Tatars in Wilno to Calvinism.*°* Perhaps adoption of the other confessions—less well documented for these sorts of things—was not entirely unheard of in Wilno. Even the more easily and frequently contracted mixed marriages of Vilnans from the various Christian confessions must have necessitated some delicate negotiations. The cases of Krzysztyof Wiktorzyn Vorbek-Lettow (a Lutheran with an Orthodox wife) and Henryk Mones (a Calvinist with a Lutheran wife) suggest that the old rules applied: the groom fetched his bride from her parish, which in the case of mixed marriages meant that he took part in a wedding ceremony outside his own confession. One odd case raises the question of repeated vows in the presence of the clergy of first one and then the other confession. An entry for 22 November 1672 in the Catholic register of marriages records the nuptials of Jan Sadowski and Zuzanna Klineberkowna.?° The wedding took place “in a private dwelling [in aedibus privatis].” The couple was married by Aleksander Poniatowski, “parish priest [that is, of the Church of St. John] and deacon of Wilno [parochus et decanus Vilnensis],” a cleric who presided over many church weddings and baptisms in those years. Not only did the venerable Catholic man of the Church go to a private

dwelling to administer the Catholic sacrament; he also recorded the presence of four

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witnesses, all men—all of them Lutheran! What is more, he did this without any comment about their confession, about which he must have known: at least two of them—Pawel Meler and Arnolf Zaleski—were prominent figures.*°* This was no doubt a mixed marriage in which the wife was Lutheran and the husband Catholic.*® In mixed marriages, the wedding usually took place in the bride’s church. Was this couple married twice? Was that why the Catholic ceremony was performed in a private dwelling? If it became a troubled marriage, would Lutheran attitudes toward separation and divorce have played some role in addressing the problem?

~CHAPTER NINE~

Marital Discontents

octrine on the nature of marriage had direct implications for official positions on sepa-

D ration and divorce in the various confessional communities. According to Roman Catholic teaching, divorce was an impossibility; a marriage was dissolved only with the death

of one of the spouses. Otherwise, it could only be declared invalid and thus annulled (because it had never legally happened) and even then only for a short list of “diriment [i.e., nullifying, invalidating] impediments.” These included insufficient age, impotency, an already existing marriage, abduction, marriage within prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity, and disparity of religion. For the Protestants, divorce was a theoretical possibility, although the permissible reasons were limited: for Luther and Calvin, only adultery and, with various qualifications, desertion. Neither Reformer allowed divorce on grounds of spousal incompatibility or cruelty. The Genevan case studies recounted by Robert Kingdon show how reluctant the early Reformers (with the exception of Martin Bucer) were to dissolve a marriage.* For the Orthodox, marriage was a sacred union, blessed by the Church and

in principle indissoluble. Nonetheless, when problems arose between couples, Orthodox marriages were governed by secular courts, which did ultimately accommodate the concept of divorce and developed over time a wide range of more or less restrictive reasons to grant it. In Rus by the sixteenth century some lists of grounds reached more than twenty and included adultery, leprosy, desertion (even if involuntary), and various sorts of spousal cruelty and incompatibility.* Further, in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Ruthenians had long seen marriage as a civil matter between two individuals, and they continued to do so well after the Age of Reform; thus as late as the seventeenth century couples had relatively easy access to divorce without ecclesiastical help.? In what follows, I look first at complaints of spousal cruelty, infidelity, and abandonment with an eye to what caused problems and how Wilno communities sought to resolve domestic strife. Then I turn to four case studies involving separation, divorce, and charges of bigamy in an effort to uncover what role Wilno’s confessional landscape might have played in creating practical expectations about such issues among those who lived in communities where neighbors (and spouses!) may have been subject to conflicting norms.

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Marital Complaints The many protestations registered with the courts of Wilno were largely concerned with harm to property, health, and honor, among which the latter was certainly not the least concern. Some complaints appear to have involved complete strangers seemingly brought together by chance, although in several of these cases a reading of other documents reveals what the protestation, apparently purposefully, obscured: that there were close links between the plaintiff and the defendant. In other cases the relationship is made clear: it was two members of some smaller society—two feuding guilds or members of the same guild or, more frequently, inhabitants of one house—who had come into conflict in the course of work and daily life. In several cases the parties to the litigation were in fact family members, even husband and wife. In most instances, we do not get beyond the first act of the drama. In the section that follows, I examine three stories of couples in conflict. In one of them the spouses seem to have reconciled; I know nothing about the fates of the others. These stories give a sense of what spouses in seventeenth-century Wilno deemed worthy of complaining about in their partners’ behavior before a court of law and how they formulated such complaints. They also make clear what common sense would suggest to any observer of these dramas: that confession was not the only thing and not even the first thing spouses could feud about. In fact, confession plays no overt role in any of the protestations I have seen brought before any of the jurisdictions by one spouse against the other. What is more, there is no direct evidence that any of these three troubled marriages was confessionally mixed.

“If, in the First Place, the Lord Most High. . .”

In the later seventeenth century, a furrier named Bazyli Zawiski lived in the Wilno suburb located just beyond Troki Gate. On 21 December 1676 he came before the magistracy with a complaint “against the honorable Lord Matyjasz, butcher, and Lady Agata [actually, as we know from another text, it was really Jagnieszka] Safinowska Ginelewiczowa, spouses and Wilno burghers, as well as against Lady Agata [correct this time] Ginelewiczowna, their daughter and his spouse.”* On 21 December 1676, the plaintiff's wife and parents-in-law, together with their accomplices, had allegedly attacked his domicile (presumably also the domicile of the accused wife), “beating, and breaking, and cutting out the windows” (the latter a commonplace of the genre). Zawiski produced before the court a half-saber as proof of his claim. But the story did not end here, for, as we read in the continuation of the furrier’s accusation, not contenting themselves with even this, and wishing only to wipe him off the face of this earth, their aforementioned daughter, Agata Ginelewiczowna, served her spouse and

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the current plaintiff poison on two occasions, once in his vodka, the second time in his bigos [hunters’ cabbage stew]. And if, in the first place, the Lord Most High, and if Lord Ubryk, the apothecary, had not offered succor, he would certainly have departed this world, together with his children.

The protestation ends with a short and general inventory of property, clearly in preparation for conducting extended litigation with a murderous wife and the accomplice parents-inlaw. The choice of vodka and bigos as the instruments of poisoning proved premeditation and intent beyond a shadow of a doubt. In this particular drama we get what is almost always missing: a glimpse of the final act. I have no idea what happened before the intermission, but by curtain fall the parties had been reconciled. On 16 September 1689—thirteen years after his original complaint—the same maltreated husband was drawing up his last will and testament.’ As he was now “approach-

ing the end of [his] life . . . and no longer having any hope of returning to [his] former health,” he found it was time to make a will so that there be no disputes among his eventual heirs. He had two of them. The first was a son, also named Bazyli, although this was the monastic name he had chosen when he took holy orders with the neighboring Franciscans at the Church on the Sands. This was a son from a previous marriage, presumably one of the survivors of the bigos-poisoning episode. The name Bazyli suggests Ruthenian origins, and the father’s trade—that of a furrier—was heavily Ruthenian in those days.° But the father would ask to be buried with the Dominicans, at the Holy Spirit Church a bit farther away, and the son—even though he had chosen his father’s Ruthenian given name as his monastic name— was a Franciscan monk. Perhaps there were recent converts to Catholicism in the family, and residual ties to Ruthenian culture revealed themselves in the choice of professions and names. But we should recall that Catholic Vilnans sometimes chose Ruthenian names for their children. Anastazja, for one, was popular among Catholic parents. Bazyli was a much less common name for Polish-Lithuanian Catholics; in fact, I have not encountered it in my reading of baptismal records. Its acceptance here as a Roman Catholic monastic name may have had something to do with the meeting of Eastern- and Western-rite Christians in Wilno streets.

Zawiski’s other heir was his second wife, Agata Ginelewiczowna, the same who had served him and his children poisoned vodka and bigos thirteen years earlier. He left her virtually everything, “since,” he wrote, “I have experienced the great diligence, keenness, and

effort of my current wife for earning bread and the means that I have, by God’s grace.” Zawiski removed his son Bazyli from any claim upon his wife’s portion, but he obliged her to provide her stepson with certain minimal things, such as his monk’s habit on an annual basis for five years following the testator’s death. True, Zawiski wrote of “the great diligence,

keenness, and effort . . . for earning bread,” where another might have mentioned his spouse’s “care and loving-kindness,” but still, things seem to have sorted themselves out for

the most part. Perhaps the original discord had arisen in part from the fact that he had

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brought children from a previous marriage into the household; perhaps there were some disputes over the property Zawiski inventoried in his protestation. In any event, the story shows that marital reconciliation was possible, that the public forum of the civil courts might play some role in maintaining domestic tranquility, and—above all—that we should be careful not to infer from the violence described in the many protestations, which is usually

all that remains from what was no doubt an ongoing story, that violence was rampant in Wilno society: public registration of complaints about violence was one of the mechanisms whereby peace, including marital peace, was fostered. “T Will Shoot Her in the Head with a Pistol”

In 1636 a Lutheran swordsmith named Melchior Ilis (Iglis) owned the house at Glass Street 21.03. Like many Vilnans—and not only German Lutherans—lIlis and family would seek refuge in K6nigsberg when Muscovite armies occupied their city in August of 1655.’ And like many of the exiles, they would return when the city was liberated in 1661. By the summer of 1663, the head of the household had died, leaving his estate, which now included at least two houses in the neighborhood, to his widow Katarzyna Szmitowna and their three daughters.* Over the next twenty years mother and daughters would take each other to court with great frequency alleging fraud against the estate.° One part of that litigation was the complaint that by 1665, two years after Iglis’s death, Szmitowna had remarried—“a young man, hurriedly and injudiciously,” according to a protestation brought by daughter Marianna as late as g May 1679.*° The daughter was apparently worried that her stepfather or his heirs would attempt to take over her portion of her father’s estate. This “young man” was Hans Pecelt the younger, who, like his father, Hans Pecelt the elder, was a Lutheran locksmith from the Glass Street neighborhood. The younger Pecelt seems to have had a quick temper. In August 1665, two Jews of Wilno, who were holding the lease of “his” (probably it was Szmitowna’s) house on Glass Street,

came before the court of the bench to charge their landlord with violence and theft.** He himselfhad “beaten and slapped” his lessee Lazarz Michatowicz and, “taking the bedclothes violently from the bed, he threw a little child of three years upon the ground, ... which is why it fell into a severe illness, because it was terrified.” Further, part of his entourage had come to the Jews’ dwelling and “made a great ruckus and broken out the windows.” Four years later, on 25 May 1669, Pecelt would be the object of a protestation brought by barber-surgeon Andrzej Hoffman and Jan Stefanowicz.’* The former was Szmitowna’s brother-in-law, the latter her son-in-law, the husband of the same Marianna IlisOwna who would later litigate so long and eagerly with her mother. Both men were Lutheran, as was the rest of the family. (The husband of the other daughter, Anna, was Zachariasz Hubryk, a Lutheran merchant and a Dreifsigman in the local church.)** They brought the complaint against Pecelt on behalf of Szmitowna. Like other objects of protestations, Pecelt had “forgotten the fear of God and the severity of common law.” But more specific to this case were matters of

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matrimonial vows and issues associated with becoming the de facto head of a rather wealthy widow’s household: Not recalling his vow, by which he was to demonstrate all respect and spousal love to his spouse, especially since he had experienced great acts of good will and was living in her own house, immediately upon entering into the state of matrimony he began to revile and

to beat her at various times, as last year, without giving any cause, having no regard for the fact that she was pregnant, he beat and tormented her so cruelly that she was covered with blood, and on account of that beating and tormenting, she had to lie constantly in her bed, not rising for six weeks. And if I, the plaintiff, as her son-in-law, had not come to the rescue of my Lady mother, certainly the aforementioned Lord Pecelt would have tormented her to death. As indeed, after the event, boasting of his evil deed, he himself said in these words: “If you, Your Grace, Lord Stefanowicz, had not come to the rescue of my wife and your mother, she certainly would no longer be alive.”

The plaintiffs in the case included in their brief an explanation of why they were bringing what was in some sense a private, domestic matter before the magistracy, which they clearly saw as a sort of last resort. It was because the accused, being admonished frequently about the beating and frequent tormenting of his wife by various people and friends, and even by the preacher of our religion himself, not only did not cease, but, having conceived an even worse intent after this frequent and cruel beating, began so to attack the health of his spouse and my Lady mother-in-law, that he wished to bring about her death.

The violence grew in the wake of the failed attempts at mediation and counseling, first by circles of friends (no doubt also Lutheran in this case) and then by Lutheran clergy: On Friday last, that is on the 24th day of May, in the evening, having returned drunk from

somewhere, without giving any reason, he beat, tormented her with a piece of wood, from which beating her whole body is bruised and covered with blood, such that she is not in control of herself; rather, remaining in great danger to her health, she lies even now in bed. Seeking then to prevent further danger and wishing to halt such an excess of Lord Pecelt, her spouse, who has set his sights entirely upon her health—for during [her] frequent beating and tormenting, abusing and defaming, he spoke these words: “I will shoot her in the head with a pistol, and I myself, having taken the horse, will ride away from here,” [the plaintiffs decided to go to court].

Hoffman and Stefanowicz now asked that their protestation be entered into the acts—the first step in any further litigation and often seen as a deterrent to further aberrant behavior

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on the part of the accused—and that a conspectio, an official in situ survey of damages, be conducted and entered into the acts. The deputies sent by the magistracy to Szmitowna’s bedside reported that they had indeed found the former Lady Ilis and current Lady Pecelt lying “sick, beaten, in bed,” and that they were able to attest to the following wounds: “both arms beaten black and blue, also her back beaten black and blue, blood flowing in places, black and blue under the left eye, . . . which beating and wounds, the current ones and the previous ones, she claimed had happened to her at the hands of her current spouse, Lord Jan Pecelt.” This testimony was recorded according to the expectations of the genre. The conspectio was typically appended to protestations,

written by a different hand, either at the bottom or in the margin at ninety degrees to the main text or using both spaces, and entered by the sworn servants of the court dispatched to the victim’s house and/or to the scene of the crime.

As is usually the case, this is where the extant litigation breaks off. What interests me most in this protestation is the prehistory, the account of the measures taken before the plaintiffs decided to come before the magistracy. They had, in fact, attempted to resolve the matter by appealing within the Lutheran community—to “various people and friends, and even the preacher of our religion himself.” It was only when it became clear that Pecelt would not be ruled by his co-confessionals that Szmitowna’s in-laws resorted to the supraconfessional forum of the magistracy. It is worth noting that one of the plaintiffs would be involved in another dispute over domestic violence later on. Andrzej Hoffman’s own son-in-law Jerzy Gross would include similar details concerning social disciplining in his own protestation in defense of his father-in-law’s honor. As in the case of strife between Pecelt and Szmitowna, Gross came to the court of the bench only when private measures proved ineffective in controlling the behavior of one of Hoffman’s renters, a widow by the name of Dorota Zebertowska, wife of Hrehor Tomkowid: “Guarding the honor of his father’s house, that such deviations not occur in their dwelling, he asked various friends, especially noble Mrs. Rychter, wife of a burgomaster of Wilno and sister of the accused, as well as the renowned Mr. Jakub Leszczewicz, burgher and merchant of Wilno as her curator [women could not be independent legal actors], that they might deign confidenter [confidentially] to rebuke her for her evil and dissolute life.” There may have been some sexual elements in the background of this story: “Having forgotten the honor of the widow’s state, she had begun to lead a dissolute life.” And she showed her displeasure at being censured in such a fashion by her landlord’s sonin-law by baring—“si licet cum venta dicere [if one may be given leave to say so]”—her rear in a

show of disrespect for him. The Hoffman/Majer house at Castle Street 2.05 may have been Lutheran, but the troublesome neighbor was apparently Catholic, and it was her Catholic friends that the Lutheran plaintiff first approached in an attempt to modify her behavior. Katarzyna Szmitowna would outlive her violent second husband by a number of years and go on to litigate with her daughters by her first husband over his estate. Pecelt the younger

did not, however, take the horse and shake the dust of Wilno from his feet in 1669.

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He disappeared from the record only around 1677, but all indications are that he remained in the city, where he may well have died some normal Wilno burgher death. We do not know anything more about the married life of Szmitowna and Pecelt, but it is entirely possible that they continued to live together, more or less peacefully, for the eight years or so from the date of the protestation until his apparent death around 1677. In any event, both he and his father continued to appear in the rolls of Lutheran offering givers during that entire period, making their solidly middle-level contributions. After 1677 only Pecelt the elder appeared on the lists; hence my guess that the son had died by that time.** In this period, Pecelt Jr. served at least twice as a Dreif$igman in the Lutheran church. We find his name in 1672 and 1675 (the first time with his father’s, both times with the name of Zachariasz Hubryk, his stepdaughter’s husband), well after the events in question, which would seem to indicate that he had gained (or regained?) a certain amount of respect and authority among his confessional peers.*° This suggests a society in which a fall from grace could be precipitous, but in which a rehabilitation and full return to community—even after alleged drastic behavior—was entirely within the realm of the possible, even of the normal. Whether he was returned to community with his wife remains an open question, but it is not an impossibility. After all, furrier Zawiski, once served poison in his vodka and bigos by a murderous spouse, eventually left everything to his poisoner. No doubt Pecelt’s friends and the Lutheran community continued their efforts to talk reason to the young husband even after they had resorted to the authority of the magistracy. Here, too, transfer of property in a household with a new spouse and children from a previous marriage was at the heart of family conflict—certainly between the mother and daughters but perhaps also between a wealthy widow and her new, younger husband. After all, as the plaintiffs claimed, Pecelt “had experienced great acts of good will and was living in her own house.” By 1690 the hearth-tax surveyor knew nothing of any Ilis properties. He did find in the Glass Street neighborhood, however, one house of “Lady Hubrykowa, widow” (i.e., Anna Ilisowna) and three houses formerly owned by “Pecelt” (i.e., no doubt, the original Ilis properties), at least one of which had also passed to Hubrykowa.*® Again, all of the players in this family drama were Lutheran.

“She Sings Ribald Songs”

Muscovite armies entered and occupied Wilno on 8 August 1655. Nonetheless, some institutions continued to function in some temporary mode throughout the period. One of these was the magistracy. On 7 April 1658, “Lord Matys Jodeszko, burgher and maltster of Wilno,” recorded in its books a complaint against his wife, Anna.*’ A blank space was left for her last name. Presumably he knew it, and an overly taxed court recorder simply forgot to register it in his notes, although—as we will soon see—there were cases of amnesiac hus-

bands who could not remember their wives’ names when they came before the court. Jodeszko claimed that his wife, “having forgotten the fear of God and the matrimonial oath

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with which she vowed to preserve love and virtue, frequently makes quarrels, ruckuses, various unpleasantnesses, boasts upon [his] health.” According to the aggrieved husband, her “boast” took the following form: “You are not worthy of me, you common peasant. I advise you to leave me in good time, together with your children, the bastards that you brought to me, for you yourself will not realize how quickly you will perish. After all, you heard how that [other] Matys the maltster perished. That is how you too will perish.” The incident Anna referred to may have been famous for a time around town, but we can only try to imagine what sort of end had awaited Matys’s professional colleague and namesake. Presumably his wife had also been the perpetrator of the violence. Our maltster’s surname—Jodeszko—might suggest Ruthenian origins. Since we do not know Anna’s surname, it is impossible to speculate whether this marital spat had any ethnic or confessional aspects. The fact that she, so Jodeszko would allege, was fraternizing with Muscovite soldiers might suggest that she, too, was Orthodox: it seems to have been easiest for Orthodox Vilnans to have personal relations with the occupying forces. By this time, during the occupation, all Uniate Ruthenians of Wilno were required by the tsar’s decree either to leave town or to convert to Orthodoxy. Social differences, on the other hand, do seem to have played some role. Jodeszko’s legal estate was that of burgher. Was Anna claiming noble birth? Such mixed marriages did occur. It was clearly not Jodeszko’s first marriage if he had “bastards” to bring into it. His complaint against Anna included marital infidelity. Was she, in his representations, perhaps suggesting that he was an inveterate cuckold and that his children were not his? More than one scenario, after all, would have made his children bastards. Whatever the case may have been,

the long-suffering maltster went into some detail in his account of his wife’s dalliances. I quote the words of Jodeszko’s complaint: And so, executing her evil and rabid intent, transgressing God’s commandment in every way, godlessly and shamelessly, in broad daylight, having gone down into the basement with a retainer of the Lord Lieutenant, this identical spouse performed the indecent act, for which act the complainant spouse remained [sic]. This same rabid lady made a shout,

speaking to the aforementioned retainer: “I beg you, kill this peasant.” And so, hearing her voice, the Lord Lieutenant, having drawn his sword, wished to kill him onthe spot..., and if the plaintiff had not turned tail and run away, he would certainly have killed him on the spot, and he would have breathed his last on the spot; but the Lord God made certain that he hit him in the left shoulder blade very injuriously, from which blow, whether he will remain among the living, the Lord God knows. The text is a draft, full of syntactic corrections and hesitations. I suspect he meant to say “in which act the complainant spouse discovered [her/them]” (na ktdérym uczynku zatujqcy maz [ja/ ich] zastat) and not “for which act he remained” (na ktorym. . . zostat), but the text quite clearly has the latter, and it is missing the expected direct object “her/them.” Either version must

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have been a painful blow to a husband’s honor. But what is most striking here is that she was committing these acts with a member of the Muscovite army, surely an extreme case of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Worse, how many were present to witness this drama? In addition to the main actors, it seems there was an audience of at least two: the Muscovite lord lieutenant and the cuckolded husband. In any case, the basement was crowded on the day in question. Jodeszko felt secure enough to bring this complaint in April of 1658, less than three years after the invasion of Wilno and while the city was still under occupation. He included in his complaint a simple inventory of his possessions, “so that the belongings protestantis [of the plaintiff] be known and not come into the hands of that same spouse in just any way, so that the children of the plaintiff produced with his first spouse not become orphans for all time.” His entire estate consisted of 300 zi in cash, 210 zi in grain, 112% zi spent for his house, 30 zi fora horse, and 20 zl for a cow. The maltster complained that “that same spouse had brought the plaintiff to no little poverty in a short time, as soon as the regiments of His Majesty the Tsar had come to Wilno; having abandoned the plaintiff and his children, having intercourse with the lieutenant, having appropriated 350 zi in ready money, she engages in drinking bouts day in and day out, she sings ribald songs.” The Polish term obcujac z, or “having intercourse with,” is ambiguous, but it could certainly also imply sexual intercourse. Was Lady Jodeszko “performing the indecent act” with both the lieutenant and a member of his retinue?

Finally, we read, Jodeszko brought “this his plaintive protestation to the books of the court and noble office of the Wilno burgomasters and councillors, so that it be made manifestand known to all people.” As in most protestations—and this one adheres to the rhetorical norms of the genre—the complainant came before the court to make a preemptive legal move in protection of life, property, and honor. There is often a paradox here, at least for modern readers: the wronged individual sought to defend his reputation by making certain that it be “made manifest and known to all people” not only that his honor had been defiled but also precisely how it had been defiled. But in this case, in addition to alerting the court that it might later be called upon to save Jodeszko’s life and to restore to him his property and good name, the protestation also asked

it to regulate the behavior of a married person. The objects of most protestations were charged with forgetting the “fear of God and the severity of common law”; this one—like Pecelt the younger—had also forgotten “the matrimonial oath with which she vowed to preserve love and virtue.” Jodeszko used the Wilno magistracy in an attempt to solve a marital dispute. As is often the case, the outcome remains obscure to us. Was the couple reconciled, and did they live out their days together in Wilno (amid occasional laments on the part of the wife that she had married beneath her station)? Or did Anna N.N. follow her lord lieutenant and his retinue, singing ribald songs and drinking day in and day out as the armies retreated to Moscow in the early 1660s? In any case, it was property in a household with children from a previous marriage that once again had played a role in a marital dispute. Here again confession had no overt part in the proceedings.

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Abandoned Spouses Some matrimonial problems were in fact solved—or, perhaps better put, some problem marriages were dissolved—by the disappearance of one of the spouses. In most recorded cases it was the husband who had fled the scene, but in at least one case it was the other way around. Skop Street, as we have seen, was a litigious place, and Jan Kostromski’s brother-in-law (from his first marriage), tailor Pawel Arcimowicz (49.10), was one of the more frequent litigators. His last recorded court appearance came on 30 June 1649, twenty-six years after the wars between the tailors and the lutenists, when an older, maybe wiser, and clearly weary Arcimowicz appeared in person before the lower instance of the chapter court, twice that same day, to bring complaints against his second wife.*® He seems to have been a boy in 1623, perhaps about fourteen, when his older sister and mother were feuding with their Skop Street landlords, so by now he was an “old man” of around forty. At the first appearance on the day in question, he told the court that in the year 1641, the 18th day of April, I received into my house to look after my children and the household some Helena or other [niejaka Helena], who claimed she had once been

the wife of Jurewicz, a tailor from Troki. And having been with me about 10 weeks, she acquitted herself well at first, but perhaps it was only until she could catch me. And seeing her old age, and supposing that she would be well disposed toward me, I had pity upon her and took her to myself for a wife. But once she had taken wedding vows with me, immediately she changed, such that she brought my poor household, which I had entrusted unto her, to utter ruin in the course of eight years.

She did this, above all, through mismanaging the in-home tavern that Arcimowicz had put in her hands, the szynk that many property owners used to supplement their household incomes. Helena, it seems, paid out 400 zlotys for malt, but Arcimowicz took in barely 100 since his wife was drinking up the profits: “Every day she would drink so terribly much hard liquor [gorzatka] that she was delirious in her head. .. . She walked, ran on the rooftops, as is well known to God and man.”

Arcimowicz listed specific losses caused by his wife: she broke three one-gallon glass demijohns full of liquor; she carried, who knows where, and sold more than a hundred ziotys worth of linens that he had kept for his poor children; she lost two English pewter platters; now she had “pawned six platters with a Jew, the Jew says he gave them back, but [Arcimow-

icz didn’t] know where she put them.” The unfortunate tailor brought his complaint to a pathetic close: On account of the aforementioned excessive drunkenness, in which she did not wish to restrain herself through those years, until now I always had to accept all of her nastiness.

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Every night she soiled the bed, and during the day as well... . And I saw no profit, since, with such stench, not only I myself, but I could not attract other people to our place to this day. And now, without giving any reason, she went away, having caused me much harm. Which I, the plaintiff and the one suffering harm, submit for inscription in the books. About which, God willing, will be narrated more broadly.

And indeed, “that same Pawel Arcimowicz, tailor,” was soon back in court—the Polishlanguage entry begins with the Latin inscription eadem die, “on the same day”—to submit a second protestation, this time in writing. By now his agitation had gotten the better of him, and what shaky mastery he once had over the intricacies of Polish syntax was long gone. Here he provided a more detailed inventory of the losses he had suffered through his wife’s stewardship of his household. But above all, he asked the priestly judges to share in his pain, which, one suspects, they probably did. She has brought me to utter ruin and poverty. To great debt have I come with her, and this

is all because of her drunkenness, and it is with her that I have this entire debt, which I never had before. Where am I, a poor man, to get this? And she went off, leaving me. Creditors are harassing me for what she took. What is more, her head swims, the stench from her is overpowering, she always sleeps, her undergarments are rotting and all her linens. Just how am I supposed to live with such a one? And I cannot live with her anymore, in any way.

In the end, the reader is uncertain whether the troubled tailor was relieved she had gone or was complaining of abandonment. And why did he complain of her stench in the present tense when she was already gone? The main purpose of this protestation, however, was most likely to protect the plaintiff against creditors and to provide an inventory of lost property. Arcimowicz was in effect attempting to disown his wife for legal purposes and to lay claim to her possessions, if any, should she turn up in order to recoup some of his losses. But in the process he seems to have been using the court as a regulator of married life. He complained that she had abandoned him—“without giving any reason,” a rhetorical commonplace in the genre of complaints more often concerning violent deeds and words—at the same time asking how he could be expected to live with such a one. Was his goal a sort of divorce? There is a hint of an allegation of marital fraud here: tailor Arcimowicz clearly sought a professional helpmate in his second wife, but she had only “claimed” to have once been married to a practitioner of the tailor’s trade, conveniently long ago buried in “far-off” Troki. Or was his goal at least some sort of separation that might provide protection from his wife’s creditors? The end of the story remains unknown. Arcimowicz disappeared from the extant record after these two court appearances on one June day in 1649.

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When abandoned wives came before the court, the main goals were essentially the same as those of Arcimowicz: to put their finances in order. But they also sought to settle thorny questions of ownership and to establish their right to appear before the court as legal actors and to dispose of the property left behind. They were, after all, in a weaker position both financially and legally: the husband was most often the practitioner of the money-earning trade, often the owner of the bulk of the movable and immovable goods in question, and women faced disadvantages in the courts.

Separation, Divorce, Bigamy In some cases, marital problems were resolved through recourse to separations imposed by the spiritual courts—the quite legal if infrequently granted separatio a mensa et thoro (separation from board and bed). In other cases we encounter what look like self-administered ad hoc divorces, with the remarriage of one of the parties and resultant allegations of bigamy from the neighbors. I examine four of these cases below. In the stories of marital strife and abandonment we have seen so far, all the marriages appear to have been monoconfessional. The only role played by confession was that of providing the context, the circle of friends and clergy in which first attempts at intervention and reconciliation were launched. Much the same applies to the four cases of separation/divorce that I present below. A crucial difference, however, lies in the role confessional identity may have played in expectations about the necessary conditions for and terms of separation and divorce. “In Which Separation We Remain until This Day”

Maryna Iwanowiczowna was the wife of burgomaster Grzegorz Kostrowicki and the daughter of Orthodox merchant Piotr Iwanowicz. It is the complaint against her husband that she registered in her will of 1668 that serves as the central source for the following story.*° With the names Iwanowicz and Kostrowicki we find ourselves in the solidly Ruthenian circles of Subocz Street. In 1655, Piotr Iwanowicz and wife Anastazja Konstantynowlczowna Dobrzanska bought a house there, probably the one at 78.03.”° In 1652 he had affixed his Cyrillic signature to the Polish-language will of his neighbor, Akwilina Stryludzianka Dorofiewiczowa. She was an Orthodox merchant’s wife, herself Orthodox and mother of

Wilno’s last Orthodox burgomaster, Prokop Dorofiewicz.** The Dorofiewicz house was across the way at Subocz Street 79.11. Piotr Iwanowicz’s daughter Maryna was also certainly Orthodox. On 23 October 1668, she had her own last will and testament witnessed, and she asked to be buried at the neighborhood Orthodox Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit. She gave her money to a number of Wilno Greek institutions, both Uniate and Orthodox, although, unlike some others, she silently excluded all the Romans (Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists) from her deathbed largesse.

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But her husband, Grzegorz z Kostrowic Kostrowicki, was Uniate, at least by the date of her will, although he may well have been Orthodox for a considerable period of their marriage.’ By royal decree, all Ruthenian members of the magistracy were Uniate after 1666, and the last Orthodox burgomaster, Prokop Dorofiewicz, must have been nominally Uniate when he again held that office after that fateful year. The couple had long lived in discord, but if Maryna wrote her husband out of her will in 1668, it was not over religious differences: My remaining husband, Lord Grzegorz Kostrowicki, burgomaster of Wilno, is not by any proper right to make any claim to any succession after my death, because he did not merit it and did not work to earn it, on account of the great cruelties that he inflicted upon me, and on account of this very thing: his turbulent living [with me], with regard to which the spiritual court by its decree separated [him] several times from spousal living and intercourse [with me], lest something worse happen, in which separation we remain until this day. And yet, not recalling these evil acts of his—and this not out of any obligation, but from a particular Christian compassion—and looking upon his great indigence, I forgive him my dowry, which he received in 1,000 z! in cash from my deceased father, and I also forgive what he was supposed to provide on an annual basis for me myself, as well as for his little daughter borne by me, according to the consistorial [spiritual, i.e., not of a secular court] decree at the time of separation. Let him content himself with this. But if he should lay claim to more of my remaining goods than what I bequeathed him of my own good will, then also this dowry or importation of mine should return [to my estate], and my guardian... should recover the entire annual provision for me and for his little daughter, reckoning over all the years from the time of my separation. Among many interesting things, we hear in this passage of something like a Ruthenian consistory that had repeatedly passed judgment in the matter of Kostrowicka v. Kostrowicki. Perhaps the court in question was Orthodox: in mixed marriages the husband regularly went

to his wife’s church for the wedding; this would then be the natural forum for any subsequent separation or divorce. In fact, the marriage may not have started out mixed: Kostrowicki may have converted from Orthodoxy for the sake of a career in the post-1666 magistracy. Unfortunately, no record books for either Orthodox or Uniate consistories have survived. We know of the existence of such courts only from echoes in the records of other jurisdictions like this one entered into the books of the Wilno bench. “Separation from spousal living and intercourse” sounds like the judicial separation from bed and board known to Western canon law from England to Poland-Lithuania.7? This was a court-regulated separation that placed financial obligations upon the husband and behavioral expectations upon the wife. It did not permit remarriage for either spouse. The wording of Kostrowicka’s account seems to suggest that the couple had been reconciled a few times, and each time again separated by church decree. Kostrowicki had been

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required to provide some sort of alimony (support of wife and child) as a part of this separation—also a feature of Western practice; and according to his wife, he (like so many others) had failed to meet these financial obligations. Finally, we should note that these provisions of the Orthodox (or Uniate) consistory were adduced in a testament registered with the secular court of the magistracy. The wife’s dowry was ultimately her property, and she was within her rights to bequeath it to her heir or to “forgive” it to her husband. In Magdeburg law—unlike the land law that governed the Polish-Lithuanian szlachta and left gentry wives in a relatively weak legal position—the burgher husband merely “managed” his wife’s dowry (posag, wniesienie—generally cash and real estate).** IwanowiczO6wna was renouncing

her right to her portion of the dowry under the condition that her estranged husband make no further claims upon the rest of her estate. Though a merchant’s daughter, Iwanowiczéwna was associated with the city’s ruling burgher elite. Her husband was just reaching that pinnacle at the time of her death. The witnesses of her will were members of the bench. One of them, Piotr Szdstak, came from a moderately prominent Ruthenian family.*° She chose as guardian of her daughter and heir— identified as “Miss Anna”—the highest city functionary, “His Grace, Lord Pawel Boim, secretary of His Royal Majesty, wojt of Wilno,” who was a Roman Catholic by definition (it was

a requirement for holding the office). She felt confident enough of her status to call upon the entire body of the magistracy as a sort of corporate guardian of her will and protector of her daughter’s interests against any claim brought forth by her estranged husband, even though he had occupied high office in that institution and would go on to a distinguished career: And I humbly entreat by God’s mercy the most noble magistracy of Wilno, as the foremost guardian of all orphans, that they not allow my spouse to intrude upon these goods and their guardianship, since he is one without fixed abode [nieosiadty], and one who through all those times took no care for me or for my little daughter, and who, being a squanderer, ran up quite large debts with creditors and has not the means to pay them, unless it be he hopes to gain control over this poor succession of my child.

Should the magistracy shirk its duties and allow Kostrowicki to take control of the estate, such that “he should later squander and waste [it],” then the daughter and heir when she should come of age and marry—the future husband was to be her legal representative—was to “seek all this upon the possessions of those same Lord annual [councillors and burgomasters].” Once written and properly witnessed, a legal instrument such as a will had to be entered into the acts of the appropriate jurisdiction or jurisdictions. The document could be “submitted to the acts” by the primary party to the document or—as was frequently the case with wills—by a family member or other friends after the death of that party. In this case we find the latter pattern. Iwanowiczowna had her will drawn up and witnessed on 23 October 1668. Over two months later, on 29 December, by which date she had died, it was entered into the

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acts by two very much interested individuals: the estranged husband Grzegorz Kostrowicki himself and one Samuel Szycik Zaleski. Samuel Szycik Zaleski was the grandson of Orthodox burgomaster Iwan Hawrytowicz Szycik Zaleski. He was also the son of councillor Zachariasz and brother of councillor Stefan. The Szycik Zaleskis were one of the few real “dynasties” among the Wilno ruling elite, a family that maintained its connections to the Greek rite until the end of the century. Samuel and Stefan were royal secretaries.*° Samuel had a long career in the magistracy. He had already been annual councillor in 1665; he would go on to be burgomaster (by now, Uniate by royal decree) in 1670, 1676, 1682, and 1688.7” He was also Maryna’s brother-in-law, since he

too had married a daughter of Orthodox merchant Piotr Iwanowicz. Her name was Eudoksja.”®

Kostrowicki’s participation is more difficult to interpret. Like his brother-in-law, he would go on to a long career in the magistracy. He had been an annual councillor in 1652 and again in 1662 and thus a member of the first magistracy elected after the liberation of Wilno from Muscovite occupation. He was burgomaster in 1667, 1673, 1679, and 1685. The fact

that he was elected burgomaster every six years, beginning in 1667, the year before the writing and recording of his wife’s will, suggests that he enjoyed the esteem of his colleagues. It was he who in 1682 set down for posterity (for future historians, in particular) the list of the four annual councillors and two burgomasters who occupied the highest Wilno city offices for each year beginning in 1516. He gave ita good baroque title: The Eternal Memory [Wiekopomnosc¢] of the Noble Individuals Who Have Been in the Most Noble Wilno Magistracy, Expressed by Names and Surnames, Who Fortunately Carried Out the Government and the Judgments of

the City of Wilno, Beginning in the Year 1516, through Annual Alternations, until the Year Expressed Below, with the Multiplication of the Praise of God and the Keeping of Faith with Their Graces, the Kings,

Our Gracious Lords, the Maintenance of the Integrity of the Laws, and the Love of the Common Good, Thereby Earning Never-Fading Glory. Submitted by Me, Grzegorz z Kostrowic Kostrowicki, Burgomaster

of Wilno, in the Year 1682, to the Knowledge of the Citizens of the City of Wilno, with a Registering of the Succeeding Years.*°

To modern eyes and ears, the situation seems incongruous. After all, we are invited to imagine Kostrowicki appearing before his peers, seeing to it that his estranged wife’s last will and testament—a document so unflattering and prejudicial to his honor—be written into the books and thus made public. Moreover, the angry last public words of his estranged wife threatened the judicial body that was receiving them with divine judgments should it engage in malfeasance, and they declared loudly that last year’s burgomaster and the very man submitting the document was one given to violence who gave no thought for the welfare of a wife and young daughter, a squanderer, a man of no fixed abode and no financial means and indeed of large debts. This was a strange and serious allegation, since osiadtos¢, the possession and occupation of real estate, was one of the minimal requirements for basic citizenship, to say nothing of attaining the highest ranks in the ruling elite.*° However this may be, we may conclude from this story that the magistracy had room among its ranks for a man

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living under a cloud of suspicion about his morals and in a state of church-imposed separation from his wife.

“He Ordered Me to Bark Back My Words”

A case from 1672-1674 tells of the attempted “divorce” between Roman Catholics Katarzyna Siemaszkowna and her second husband, Bartlomiej Krogulicki. Siemaszk6owna was the widow of a certain Mikolaj Kostrowicki. The Kostrowickis were a significant Ruthenian family among the Wilno elite. Burgomaster Grzegorz, a more prominent figure, was, as we know from the preceding story, living in separation from his wife Maryna Iwanowiczowna, allegedly well behind on alimony payments at the time of her death in 1668. The children of Wasyli Kostrowicki were active in the Ruthenian networks of Subocz Street

in the second half of the seventeenth century. His son, city councillor Jan Wasylewicz Kostrowicki, lived with his wife Helena Juszkiewiczowna in a house given them by her parents in an unnamed side street off Subocz Street at 77.02-77.03.** Jan was asked in 1663, along with his brother Daniel Kostrowicki, to serve as a guardian of the orphans of his neighbor and brother-in-law, Uniate councillor Samuel Filipowicz, whose second wife was their sister, Regina Kostrowicka. Filipowicz lived at Subocz Street 79.08.** Burgomaster Grzegorz Kostrowicki was probably a relation, perhaps some sort of cousin: he witnessed Filipowicz’s will alongside yet another son of Wasyli, Kazimierz, brother of Daniel, Jan, and Regina.*? Katarzyna Siemaszk6wna’s husband Mikolaj Kostrowicki had once been the notary of the Communitas mercatoria, the influential merchants’ guild. Iam unable to place him more precisely in Kostrowicki family networks, but he was probably Orthodox or Uniate. Judging by her surname, Katarzyna was also from a Ruthenian family. Siemaszkos owned houses in

the Greek-Roman border neighborhood of Rudniki Street in the early seventeenth century.°**

But she herself may have been Catholic. In any event, her second husband, Bartlomie] Krogulicki, was of that confession, and their marriage, however irregular it may have been, was performed by a Roman Catholic priest. Documents from 1672 and 1674 tell us something of the details of the marriage, their married life, and eventual separation or divorce. First, her side of the matter. On 13 May 1672, she registered the following complaint against her new husband with the Wilno magistracy: I, Katarzyna Siemaszkowna ... in my great and inconsolable grief, submit this my protestation against my current husband, Lord Krogulicki, that he, having conspired with several persons, constantly sought to seduce me with his persuasion and instigation that I might take him to myself for a husband. And having forgotten the fear of God and the marital vow, having set his sights on my health and pittance, after entering into the state of matrimony, he began to try to convince me to sell or bequeath to him my bricked

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house. And right away he began to beat and torment me, for no other reason but that I do not wish to sign it over to him, nor do I allow it to be sold (after all, it does not yet entirely belong to me). And when I criticized the fact that, not having any means to support me or himself, he wishes to sell the house and to bring me to poverty, then he began to beat and torment me all the more and all the more frequently. As on the previous Wednesday, that is, on the eleventh day of the month of May, having abducted me and locked me in the basement, so that no one would hear a woman shouting for help, he used me tyrannically, for, having removed from the dog the chain with which the dog had been tied down, he placed it on my neck, and having bound my hands with this same chain, he closed it with a lock, and having fastened it to a rod with a cord close by that same chain, he beat, tormented me there, and tortured however he himself wished. . . . Nor does it befit me to keep silent about this too: that he always used me not like a spouse but worse than some slave. For when I censured an apprentice on the grounds that he had manifestly hidden several shillings, then, having abducted me on account of this, he ordered me to bark back my words after him, speaking these words: “What I spoke against the apprentice,

I barked like a dog, and I take them back into my snout,” which words I had to speak, avoiding beating and tyrannical behavior, standing and shaking before him in the presence of that apprentice. . . . Having fled my house, I must wander about alien corners, since I angered my friends and benefactors, in that, without their knowledge, at the bad counsel of certain individuals, myself also proceeding stubbornly and rashly, I married

him, who I now see strove not for marital friendship, but to take my health and property. .. . Wishing then to litigate with him over such a cruel and tyrannical beating of me as described in common law in the secular court, and also in the spiritual court in the matter of divorce [rozwod], I submit this my protestation.*°

Siemaszk6wna’s goals were clear: this was a first step in litigation in the magistracy over

physical and economic abuse and in the consistory—presumably Roman Catholic—for divorce/separation. She used the term rozwod, which nowadays means quite definitely “divorce with the right to remarry.” But Polish-speaking Roman Catholic laity of the early modern period used it as well, and at times so did their priests, even though everyone certainly knew that the most that troubled Catholic couples could hope for was an annulment (uniewaznienie).2° By contrast, in our previous story, Maryna Iwanowiczowna, wife of burgomaster Grzegorz Kostrowicki, had written that she and her husband were in a state of separation—trozlaczenie—imposed by the consistory (probably Orthodox). The use of the term rozwod throughout this case may be indicative of attempts by Catholic laity, but perhaps also with some guidance by clergy, to negotiate around Catholic restrictions on separation and divorce.

In any event, Siemaszkowna’s protestation laid out the grounds for that separation/ divorce. They included, in addition to spousal cruelty, the possibility that the marriage was

invalid. Or at least this is how I interpret certain aspects of the case documents. At the

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beginning and the end of her protestation, Siemaszk6wna sought to cast procedural doubts upon the road to marriage that she and Krogulicki had followed. Krogulicki, as we read at the beginning, had “conspired with several persons,” had “seduced [her] with his persuasion and instigation.” This was not exactly abduction, but at the least she was alleging a kind of fraud. By the end of the account, Siemaszkdowna had taken some of the blame upon herself. It was, however, the sort of blame that could help her to raise further questions about the marriage: she had nowhere to turn once she had fled home and her abusive husband because she had angered her friends and benefactors; and she had angered them because she had married, “herself also [acting] stubbornly and rashly,” without their input and participation. “Friends” (przyjaciele, amici) was a technical term of some customary legal standing, denoting the circle of advisers and helpers one drew upon at key moments in life, including the disposing of one’s goods and the making of arrangements for the care of widows and orphans, as well as the contracting of marriage. It was the lack of the friends’ participation that might have lent added credence to an eventual claim of invalidity. The couple seems not to have remained together. I have found no further account of Siemaszk6wna’s case against her husband. Perhaps the secular allegations about physical abuse were settled, as so often, out of court. Other matters were apparently still pending about two and a half years later. On 19 November 1674, Krogulicki registered a draft of a “voluntary, conciliatory, eternal letter” with the magistracy.*’ This was a forensic genre used to sort out differences, transfer property, and record other arrangements reconciling two or more parties. In it he gave his side of the story, picking up—as if in agreement with his wife, at least on these issues—on some of the potential grounds for divorce. Krogulicki wrote that he had married Siemaszkowna “on the advice [this was a correction in the draft

for an original “incorrect information”] and persuasion of several of my friends, .. . not only in the hope of spousal friendship and love, but also for the acquisition of a better fortune, for she was commended to me for many reasons for her fitting customs and morals and for all her endowments.” Krogulicki entered into the marriage despite the fact that he had received contradictory advice from the bride’s own friends, above all from her brother-in-law and curator, burgomaster Stanistaw Gawlowicki, who “himself for his own part, but also through various people privately and publicly warned and admonished me that I not allow myself to be deceived and that I leave this marriage alone for certain reasons, about which he told me.” According to Gawlowicki, Siemaszk6wna was “unsuited for housekeeping,” and he assured Krogulicki that he would not achieve his material goals. Krogulicki did not believe the warnings, and the couple decided to marry. They finally received permission from the “bishop of Gratianopolis”?® in spite of the objections of their respective groups of friends but only under the condition that the wedding take place in the presence of those same friends. “Not having met which condition, however,” Krogulicki continued his account, “we got married, and at the wedding there were none of the closest friends and kin of my wife. I was only barely able to entreat a few strangers [to attend].” The

Roman Catholic priest who officiated at the wedding was a Father Zachorski, canon of

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Wilno. It is unclear to me why the canon did not see to it that the bishop’s conditions were met. In any event, the honeymoon was short and bitter: And after that marriage, wedding, and matrimony, in a brief time (for it was a few weeks)

great discord and eternal ruckuses arose between my wife and me, as is sufficiently described and expressed in the cross-examinations and decrees of the consistorial court, where I twice went to law, and two decrees resulted by which divorce was made between my wife and me.... And as far as the state of matrimony itself and the divorce made twice between us is concerned, since there is now no means, hope, or likelihood that there could ever be common living [spoleczne pomieszkanie] between us in the state of matrimony

with this same wife of mine, who not only herself set about with all her strength to achieve a divorce, but I, too, especially desired for myself that I might be able to free myself from such a life and state of matrimony, being in which we have given ourselves up to the derision of men and offended the Lord God.

The divorce mentioned here may have been a sort of separation. After all, how could the couple have been granted two divorces? Still, it may have been a question of two decrees in a larger process, the goal of which was an annulment with the possibility of remarriage. Both spouses had sought to raise questions of validity. So perhaps it was first a separation and then an annulment. Spoteczne pomieszkanie, or “common living,” had to do with “intercourse,”

with all the ambiguities of that term. Was Krogulicki suggesting the marriage had remained unconsummated??? I know nothing about the fate of this particular unhappy couple. Before his marriage to Siemaszkowna, Krogulicki was inscribed on 26 July 1666 as an “elder from the burgher estate” and a secretary of the Brotherhood of St. Anne “the One of Three” at the Wilno Bernardines. And on 18 June 1670, he paid 25 zi “from a bequest of his deceased [first] wife” to the Brotherhood of the Holy Scapular at the Calced Carmelites’ Church of All Saints.*° In that same year he stood as witness to a Catholic marriage performed at the Church of St. John, and in 1668 and 1673 (the latter in the period between Siemaszkéwna’s protestation and his own statement on the marriage and divorce) he received Catholic babies from the font at the same church.** A financial record entered into the books of the magistracy in 1678 suggests that he was still present in some way in Wilno society four years after his last statement about his marriage with Siemaszkéwna. I do not know what his marital status was at the time.*” There is, of course, nothing contradictory about a man who was both violent and pious, or at least churchgoing. Without diminishing Krogulicki’s blame, I would note that he had

not invented this particular punishment of eating one’s words. The Polish phrase was odszczekac, or, literally, “to unbark,” “to bark back.” The penalty of the unbarking of an accusation from “under the bench” (under the bench was, after all, the dog’s proper place) had been a recognized part of legal practice. As we read in an authoritative history of PolishLithuanian law, “[T]he retraction of an accusation was applied in the case of defamation.

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It took place publicly, and it was often not limited to the withdrawal of the accusation, but included the assertion that the accusation was a lie. Especially degrading for the perpetrator of defamation—a punishment sometimes encountered in the record—was the threefold ‘unbarking’ of the accusation from beneath a bench.”*? Krogulicki—if we accept Siemaszk6wna’s charge, and it has the ring of truth to it—had gone to the root of the expression, tying his wife up like a dog and forcing her to “bark back,” to “take back into her snout,” her unsubstantiated allegations about the apprentice’s behavior. In fact, Krogulicki may have been acting within the law: the punishment was one foreseen by Polish-Lithuanian law in cases of defamation, and husbands often felt they had the right to exercise the law unilaterally upon their wives. The fact that she felt free to take him to court over it suggests, however, that legal practice was in the process of change. “He Gave, or Sold, or Contracted Him to People of His Majesty the Tsar”

On 7 June 1657, about two years after the initial invasion of Wilno, Jan Gilewicz, “merchant and citizen of Wilno,” appeared in person “before the temporary [natenczas bedacy] office of the wojt, burgomasters, and councillors of Wilno” in order to register a complaint against “noble Lord Piotr Tulkiewicz, patrician of Wilno.” The ultimate goal was to recover the property of his sister-in-law, Maryna Witkowska, and he appended a detailed inventory of her estate to this complaint. But the story he told in support of his claim included allegations of bigamy, which is why it is of interest here.** Gilewicz spoke in his own name but also in that of his wife, Anastazja Witkowska, and of his brother-in-law, Jan Witkowski. The last two were the siblings of the Maryna Witkowska in question. He complained, first, that just as, having information in Kénigsberg that his brother-in-law, Lord Marcin Pozarko, burgher of Wilno, is alive, he employed every means by himself and through his friends, that the same Lord Tulkiewicz not proceed to the union of matrimony with his sister-in-

law, Lady Maryna Witkowska Marcinowa Pozarkowa, and not manifest himself in this before God, inasmuch as the first spouse, the aforementioned, is still alive, so also now, having received more certain information from the kin and friends of that same Lord Pozarko who had arrived in Wilno, and from his own letters, that he is alive, Lord Gilewicz, together with his spouse, makes solennem [a solemn] protestation with regard to the marriage tllegitime [illegally] concluded with her. Second, Tulkiewicz “gave, or sold, or contracted” the son of Maryna Witkowska and Marcin Pozarko, Kazimierz Pozarko, “to people of His Majesty the Tsar,” with the result that “he was carted off from Wilno to Moscow, and the Lord God knows whether he will ever return from there.” Third, Tulkiewicz, “hiding such actions of his that are contrary to secular and spiritual law,” began to take charge of his wife’s affairs. And when she took sick, without informing her sister, the plaintiffs wife,

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in the current year, some day in February, he brought an Office to her that is improper according to the law and privilege of the city of Wilno to record her will (about which the plaintiff even until today has been unable to find out and cannot find it in the books). That is, bypassing the Lord Burgomasters, His Grace the Lord wojt, the Lord Benchers, as well as the Lord Bench Notary, those who were present in Wilno at this time, and before them [i.e., the “improper Office”], not so much the sister of Lady Gilewicz, but rather Lord Tulkiewicz himself made the testament in her name, forgetting out of his great love even the surname of his spouse. It is worth noting that Gilewicz was unable to find the will in any of the city books known to him and that his information was based on hearsay and rumor. But those rumors were quite detailed: how else did Gilewicz know that Tulkiewicz “out of his great love” (the turn of phrase was intentionally ironic) had been unable to remember his new spouse’s name? Were competing magistracies functioning during the occupation? Or—more likely—had Tulkiewicz gone to the castle to record his wife’s will with the Muscovite authorities? But the crux of the matter—and here too Gilewicz’s information was quite precise—was that Tulkiewicz had “shortened [i.e., undervalued] her estate by 6,000 z! plus vel minus, as will be shown from the register expressed below, such that very little of her property was mentioned, as the plaintiff has information.” Further, he, Tulkiewicz, had divided the shortened estate equally between his “stepson,” presumably the same one he had sent into Muscovite slavery, and his daughter. Gilewicz did not specify whether this daughter was the product of a previous marriage; but since he did stipulate that Kazimierz Pozarko had been born to his sister-in-law in her first marriage, we are left with the impression that she may have been the infant daughter of Witkowska and Tulkiewicz, a child who could have been of questionable legitimacy. If Witkowska and Pozarko lost contact with each other, for instance, on the day the Muscovite forces entered Wilno, there would have been enough time for this scenario to have played itself out. Had Maryna Witkowska lived, the protestation might have been directed against her as well. After all, she too was guilty of an act “contrary to secular and spiritual law.” But since she had died, the complaint was against Tulkiewicz alone because he had usurped the role of legal guardian naturally belonging to a legitimate husband and he was wrongly disposing of his “wife’s” property and purporting to take her child into his care. The circumstances of Gilewicz’s narration are evocative of the confusions of the wars and the Muscovite occupation. Brother-in-law Pozarko evidently had fled Wilno. Perhaps he had sought refuge in K6nigsberg, or perhaps it was simply that K6nigsberg served as a clearinghouse for information about the fates of Vilnans in exile. It is not obvious when he had become separated from his wife. Jan Gilewicz had put his signature to the oath of loyalty to the elector of Brandenburg during his exile in K6nigsberg on 16/26 February 1656 together with the other

“Poles of Wilno”; he signed for himself and his wife and household.** The Gilewiczes, or at

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least Jan, soon returned to Wilno (certainly by 7 June 1657) and continued to receive word from Prussia about their brother-in-law. Maryna Witkowska either had remained in Wilno or had soon returned, perhaps to look after family property. Her son Kazimierz had become a prisoner in Muscovy. These fates were common enough, and we find them repeated in several Wilno families. Maryna used the occasion to remarry, quite quickly—between 8 August 1655, if it was about this time that she lost sight of her husband, and February 1657—and earlier rather than later in this period of some nineteen months if she did indeed give birth to a daughter with Tulkiewicz. She may knowingly have committed what we might term a “slight bigamy,” as she must have been aware of the allegations that her first husband was still alive. But it is also possible she considered herself eligible for a secular divorce, especially given the extreme circumstances of war, which may have made her a de facto abandoned wife. She was probably Orthodox, which could have shaped her attitude about marriage and divorce. Her sister Anastazja certainly was of that confession. An inventory of her possessions, entered into the acts on 19 October 1684, included a detailed “Register of Funeral Expenses.” Jan Gilewicz had predeceased her, so this was at least partly also a survey of his estate. The funeral in question here, however, was definitely hers, and the accounting of expenses included 4 florins “for 4 pallbearers for carrying the body to the [Orthodox/Uniate] church” and 4o florins “for the Basilian Fathers [Orthodox in this case!] of the Church of the Holy Spirit for the sorokoust [the forty-day liturgies].”*°

Anastazja’s husband, Jan Gilewicz, was probably also a Ruthenian. In 1663, together with merchant Jan Markiewicz, he took on the role of executor of the will of an Orthodox woman named Anna Danielowna. She had requested “that her body be buried in the Church of the Holy Spirit according to the rite and the custom of our Greek religion, wherever the Fathers who are in the monastery at that same church locate the most appropriate place.” She was

the wife of tailor Harasym Prokopowicz, whose name also suggests that we are among Ruthenians here.*’ Anastazja Witkowska’s inventory told of “a bricked house on Horse Street on the corner, lying ex opposito [across from] the Church and monastery of All Saints” and a “garden with a little house lying beyond Rudniki Gate on the street called Azarycz” (which would have been a stone’s throw away, just over the wall from their Horse Street house). The Gilewiczes lived in a neighborhood that formed a sort of borderland between Greek and Roman Wilno. It was in fact the Witkowski family house. Kasper Witkowski, probably the father of Anastazja, Maryna, and Jan, had owned the house at Horse Street 8.02 in 1636.** Perhaps Maryna had

also remained in the neighborhood. Her first husband’s surname—Pozarko—again suggests Ruthenian networks. Maryna Witkowska may have drawn on customary Ruthenian views of marriage and divorce when she justified to herself and her community a quick remarriage. In any event, she seems to have considered herself eligible for a second marriage when she must have known that she might indeed still have a living first husband.

240 CHAPTER 9 “In the Hope That He Had Mended His Ways”

Finally, another case of alleged bigamy in Orthodox circles, this one from the 1670s, in-

volved Anastazja Polikszanka and her two husbands, Teodor Orzeszyc and Stanislaw Dziedzinski. Polikszanka’s mother had been a Minkiewiczowna. In the years 1636-1639 the family house at Subocz Street 78.06 was in the possession of Hreory Minkiewicz.*° Hreory had two sons, Mikolaj, a merchant, and Wawrzyniec, a “Roman conciliary secretary” for the

Wilno magistracy,°° and three daughters, Dorota, Marianna, and Krystyna. None of the daughters survived the period of the war and Muscovite occupation. Wawrzyniec, so it would seem, had converted to Roman Catholicism. But the family had remained largely Greek, some of them Orthodox. And in the next generation, a certain Piotr Minkiewicz, a Uniate,

would hold the office of annual councillor in the 1680s, rising to that of burgomaster in 1694.°*

Anastazja Aleksandrowiczowna Polikszanka was a niece of Wawrzyniec and Mikolaj Minkiewicz, the daughter of their sister Marianna Aleksandrowa Polikszyna. Anastazja was Orthodox, as were presumably her parents. The family had fled Wilno in the 1650s to K6nigsberg—a haven not only for Lutheran Vilnans!—to wait out the occupation. Anastazja was already married by that time. Her parents died during the period of exile. In order to protect family property, she would return to Wilno, without her husband, sometime before the city’s liberation. On 29 November 1663, her brother Samuel registered a complaint in her name with the Wilno magistracy against her first husband, Teodor Orzeszyc.°* It is this document that serves as the main source for the first part of this story. According to the protestation, Orzeszyc had abandoned her for nine years, but he had recently returned to Wilno and was now persecuting her. Anastazja asserted that her family, including her husband, had fled to Ké6nigsberg “before the conquest of Wilno.” They must have gone there already by 1653-1654, as only rumors of war were reaching the city, if we are

to allow that Orzeszyc remained with them at least briefly—which the account seems to suggest—before setting out on his own, abandoning his wife for nine years. Here is part of the rest of her story as recorded in the protestation: And having returned to Wilno from exile, after the death of my parents, defending my house with its household goods, which I had on my hands yet under the Foe, with danger to my health, not without great cost and tribulation, when my husband arrived from K6nigsberg to Wilno in great indigence, at the urging and counsel of my friends, for greater and better household economy, in the hope that he had mended his ways, I received him, together with my Lord brother, into my house, where he was to correct certain things and look after the household. And yet, yielding to wantonness, reveling in constant drinking bouts, not having the least care for me and the household, arriving home at night drunk, he causes ruckuses and unwonted furies. . . . Fearing greater beating and tormenting, having fled my house and household, I moved to the house on

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Subocz Street, where a portion belongs to me, left me by my grandmother. But even remaining there, I am not certain of my health, for he often makes ambushes upon me as | am going to the [Orthodox] church, . . . as even in the previous month of November, the fourth day, returning home on Sunday after Vespers in a group of many people, having a saber at his side, he began to chase me and, fleeing to a convent, to chase me among people, and certainly with no other intent than to bring about my death. Having noticed which, the elder of that same convent began to reprimand him for such an excess and attack upon a convent.

The syntax is tortured, and the end of this particular episode remains unclear. Nonetheless, Polikszanka would continue to appear in the record, and her estranged husband remained on the margins of the story for some time. Four years later, on 12 October 1667, uncles Mikotaj and Wawrzyniec Minkiewicz entered a sort of contract into the books of the magistracy, outlining a detailed division of the family house at 78.06 Subocz Street (no doubt the one to which Anastazja had fled in 1663).°? It fell

to the older brother, Mikotaj, to make the divisions, “and to the younger brother, Lord Wawrzyniec, to choose from the divided portions.” Anastazja’s estate will play an important role in the rest of the story. Wawrzyniec, “in accordance with the consensus ofall,” chose for his part “a downstairs

chamber off the gate, with a recess and a little shop, in addition the basement under that chamber off the street.” The older brother Mikolaj, “for the quicker concord and agreement among the following co-successors,” took as his part “the garden in the back of the house, enclosed by brush, and the brewery by the shop, with a portion of the courtyard, beginning from the shop up to the wall of Lord Siericzytos’ house [Subocz Street 78.07], however with free passage for all to the back.” The third part went to a nephew, Demiter Koltczanowicz, and niece, Helena Kolczanowiczowna, children of Dorota Minkiewiczowna, “in the presence of their father [rodzic].” They were to receive the “great downstairs

chamber with an alcove, a bricked vestibule with a kitchen, a basement on beams.” The fourth portion went to another niece and nephew pair, children of Marianna Minkiewiczowna, Lord Samuel Aleksandrowicz Poliksza and Lady Anastazja AleksandrowiczOwna Polikszanka, who was further identified as “wife of Teodor Orzeszyc.” (It is only here that we learn Anastazja’s maiden name; in other documents she was identified by patronymic alone.) They were to receive “the upstairs great chamber off the street, with an alcove over the gate, which has not yet been completely bricked, a great vestibule before the chamber, a basement on beams under the lower chamber, the middle one, next to the bricked basement, the door from the courtyard.” The fifth portion was to be reserved for yet another

pair of children of yet another deceased sister, Bazyli Pawtowicz and Anastazja Pawlowiczowna, children of Krystyna Minkiewiczowna, “who had been captured alive dur-

ing the taking of Wilno by the Foe (as the news had it) and carted away no one knows where, so that later, if, God grant it, they should ever return from the hands of the Foe, they

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would have a place to nestle down.” Their portion was to be “a store with a bricked basement beneath that same store.” For the time being the fifth part would be given over to the use of Uncle Wawrzyniec for up to ten years or whenever the captives should return from Muscovy; and if by ten years they had not returned, “then that fifth part should fall to all of us and be divided, with the stipulation, however, that, after even the longest time, when, God grant it, they return [to Wilno], that part is to be returned by us to them.” Wawrzyniec was further to receive from them all reimbursement for his expenses, since, “renovating it after the burning of this house, as also after the conquest of Wilno, in various manners, not without risk to his health, remaining above all for the defense of this house during the occupation by the Foe, he incurred expenses and paid 354 zl.” Older brother Mikolaj could afford to be modest in his claims to the family house. He took not a chamber, the core living space for a family unit, but the garden, the brewery, and a shop. In fact, he already owned a house in another Ruthenian neighborhood, in nearby Sawicz Street (probably 71.17), and presumably he lived there. That property abutted that of the “brotherhood antiquitus [as of old] called the Lords,” which was a gathering place of the Wilno Uniate elite. A deed of 4 August 1670 defined the boundary between the two properties and thanked Minkiewicz for “his kind-hearted disposition toward the Church [in this case, the Uniate Church],” so perhaps he was himself a Uniate.** But niece Anastazja Polikszanka was Orthodox. The church she was going to when her violent and drunken husband Teodor Orzeszyc ambushed her in November 1663 was most likely the Orthodox Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and the convent where she hid herself for a time would have been on the large grounds of that establishment. The Minkiewicz house on Subocz Street was across the street from houses that backed onto those lands. We do not know where Anastazja’s own house was, but probably it was in the neighborhood. In 1670, she sold a “house beyond Subocz Gate.”°>° In any event, she would ask that her “sinful body, as earth to earth, . . . be buried in the [Orthodox] Church of the Holy Spirit.” This we learn from a last will and testament dated 15 March 1671.°° Wealso learn there that she had anew husband, acertain Stanislaw Dziedzinski, who was her sole heir and to whom she entrusted the burial of her body. The arrangements— with all the usual syntactic hiccups—add a few details to our picture of her family life: My pittance I dispose of thus: that after my death, inasmuch as my first husband, Fiedor

Orzeszyc, who, having brought nothing into [the marriage], but having drunk away and devastated my entire pittance, has left the city; he, should he be alive, I remove him [from all claim upon my estate], and my brothers, as well as him, both my own and the kin of my first husband, since the Lord Minkiewiczes, my brothers, left me, their sister, with nothing, having given me nothing from the house, and they never helped me at all in any matter; to the contrary, it was as if they did not hold me for their sister. And if they should wish to trouble my husband, Lord Dziedzinski, I summon them before the terrible Divine

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Judgment, and I ask humbly that those promissory notes [notes of obligation, obligi] that are being kept by my Lord uncle, Lord Lawryn [i.e., Wawrzyniec] Minkiewicz, that [the proper] portion be given by my Lord brothers to my husband.

The estate was indeed small. In addition to the “obligations” of unspecified and perhaps doubtful worth mentioned above, Polikszanka bequeathed to her husband the right to seek payment of a debt of 21 Lithuanian k from Stefan Krylowicz, burgher and merchant of Wilno, as well as some indeterminate debt from Stefan Kuszelicz, “as the lessee of this house.”

There are several curiosities here. First, although this, like the vast majority of documents from the Wilno magistracy in the seventeenth century, was written in Polish, the names were “Ruthenianized” in this instance: Teodor has now become Fiedor, and Wawrzyniec (Lawrence) has become Lawryn. Further, Polikszanka referred to her uncles as her “brothers”— not such odd usage in itself—but then in the same sentence she named one of them, Lawryn, and more precisely identified him as an “uncle on the mother’s side” (wuj), which was genealogically correct. And she asked that Uncle Lawryn see to it that her brothers (i.e., Wawrzyniec/ Lawryn himselfand Mikolaj) give the proper portion to her husband. The sentence must have confused anyone not familiar with the family tree. More surprising is the tone she took with her brothers. After all, they had made a reasonably good impression with their division of the family property, in which Anastazja and her brother Samuel would seem to have received fair treatment.

But the real question was the identity and status of that second husband. Who was he? Where had he come from? And if Anastazja had no idea whether first husband Orzeszyc was still alive (she had written: “he, should he be alive. . .”), then how could she be certain she had not entered into a bigamous relationship? Surely she would have referred to a decree of divorce and permission to remarry, which was a possibility in the Orthodox Church, if she had obtained one. This would have been useful in disinheriting Orzeszyc and his kin and in bolstering Dziedzinski’s claim to her estate. The protestation of a certain Roman Kolczan registered with the magistracy on 14 October 1671, about half a year after Polikszanka’s will, sheds a little light on the question.*’ As usual in this forensic genre, the core of the conflict remained unexpressed, somewhere in the deep background. Kolczan (in other documents he was Kolczanowicz) was in fact a former brother-in-law of the Minkiewiczes, although we do not learn this here. He had been mentioned, though not by name, in the deed of 1667 in which Mikotaj and Wawrzyniec Minkiewicz divided up the paternal house. He was the parent in whose presence his children begotten with his first wife, Dorota Minkiewiczowna—Demiter Koltczanowicz and Helena Kolczanowiczowna—had received their portion. (Kolczan’s second wife was Domicella Dorofiewiczowna, a daughter of Wasyli Dorofiewicz at Subocz Street 76.01, which property, as we know, would be the object of another Ruthenian family struggle.)°® On this recent occasion, Kotczan had gotten into an altercation with Dziedzinski when

the latter came to the Wilno town hall to press his claim to his wife’s portion of the

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Minkiewicz estate. But one has to have read other court documents in order to understand that the participants in the incident described below were in fact in-laws of sorts and that the issue was family finances. Here is the beginning of the complaint: I, Roman Kolczan, burgher and merchant of His Royal Majesty’s city of Wilno, protest sollenniter [solemnly] against Lord Stanislaw Dziedzinski, burgher of Wilno, that he, having arrived not long ago in the city of Wilno, no one knows from where, or of what occupa-

tion he had been before, and not having made any act of service [to the city], as others do,

began to revile and to beat people, as also me, the plaintiff, in the current year, the month of October [blank space for the date], when, coming down from the town hall, conversing with the accused, I censured him for the fact that he, having no proof, accusing my son-inlaw and daughter over some sort of deposit, on the grounds that it allegedly was given for safekeeping to my first wife, troubles and summons them [to court]. And when I reminded

him on this occasion that the first husband [of his wife], Lord Teodor Orzeszyc, was still alive, and if it were a matter of litigating over some deposit, then it would rather belong to him [Orzeszyc] to reclaim it than to the accused, having become enraged over those words, since I spoke the truth (as is indeed the fact), he grabbed me by the beard and jerked it. And

then he struck me in the neck with his fist such that I rolled to the ground and around in the mud. ... And after this beating and tormenting he went for his cutlass, wishing to bring about my death (which cutlass, since he is a burgher and a merchant, it is unfitting for him to bear, and he has it by him only to frighten people), and so, having beaten and tormented me, he made boasts upon my health, but being most angered when I said that he was living with someone else’s wife, who even now has a first husband; but that first husband does not dare to return to the city, since he [Dziedzinski] makes threats against

him [Orzeszyc]. Further, that she has a first husband, hardly anybody even knew, . . . except that they themselves made this manifest, and especially the accused, Lord Dziedzinski, when his spouse, on his own information, guaranteed in her testament, that, after her death, if he [Orzeszyc] should show up, he should have no access to any of her goods, as is shown in the testament of the year 1671, March the [blank space] day.

Kolczan attempted to weaken Dziedzinski’s legal status, first by questioning the legitimacy of his marriage to Anastazja. If Orzeszyc was still alive, how could Dziedzinski be a party to this matter at all? Second, Kolczan questioned his social estate. He had identified him in the preamble to the protestation as a “burgher of Wilno,” only to proceed immediately to cast doubt upon that status: he was a recent arrival, had not sworn his oath of citizenship (the “act of service”), and was of uncertain profession. Later we learn that he affected gentry airs, walking about with a cutlass at his side (which was “unfitting for a burgher and merchant”). And the plaintiff ended his complaint with one more attempt to deny him the status of citizen: “And since such danger meets me through the boasts and declaration of

MARITAL DISCONTENTS 245

vengeance upon my health made by him, who, having no settled residence here, but only lives in a rented alcove, then, avoiding further harm, I submit to the books this my protestation, both concerning the beating and his boasts upon my health.” “To live in a rented alcove,” komorq mieszkac, still means to live in a rented corner of someone else’s apartment. Having “settled residence” (osiadtos¢)—in fact, owning real estate—was a requirement for citizenship. Anastazja Polikszanka had identified her second husband in her will only as “Lord Stanislaw Dziedzinski” without any specification of estate or occupation. But perhaps he was in fact some sort of petty gentryman. A document from June 1669—the first time we learn that Polikszanka had remarried—tells us that he was the “standard bearer of the dragoons of His Noble Grace, Lord [Benedykt Pawel] Sapieha, Esquire Carver of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”°? So perhaps he had some right, perhaps an obligation, to wear a sword even if he seems not to have had any property and was attempting to make ends meet by laying claim to his wife’s slender estate. It is worth noting that Kolczan had “gone to the books” (i.e., the acta of the magistracy), looked up his niece’s will, and discovered there that she had admitted that she might still have a living first husband. Kolczan alleged this was not general knowledge, although it was there in the acta for the curious to see, and he did his best to draw public attention to the fact. Kolczan was exaggerating on at least one issue. He had known Dziedzinski for more than two years at the time he registered his complaint. The document of June 1669 that tells us that Polikszanka had sold a piece of land “cum assistentia mariti sui [with the assistance of her husband], Stanistaw Dziedzinski, standard bearer of the dragoons of His Noble Grace, Lord [Benedykt Pawel] Sapieha, Esquire Carver of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” also tells us that her curator was a certain Krzysztof Demitr Kolczanowicz. This was her cousin, the son of Roman Kolczan, previously identified as Demiter Kolczanowicz. Anastazja was still alive when the beard-pulling incident took place on the Wilno town hall steps. In fact, she would live another four years after that, apparently suffering various diseases that kept her in bed most of the time. On 10 September 1675 she had a new will witnessed. She was illiterate. If Dziedzinski had married the “widow” for her money, he must have been sorely disappointed. She would once again ask him to see to it that she receive a “fitting burial in the Christian manner in the Ruthenian [Orthodox] Church of the Holy Spirit, according to [his] capabilities, by his spousal grace and love, and perform the Church rites according to custom for the salvation of [her] soul.” The qualification “according to capabilities” was the crux. Polikszanka left behind for the burial of her body “no money of [her] own, silver, gold, garments, pewter, copper, for whatever there was went for the paying off of the debts incurred by [her] deceased first husband, Fiedor Orzeszyc, and by [her]self, after his death, having become a widow, during Muscovy [i.e., during the Muscovite occupation of Wilno, which Polikszanka spent mostly in Ké6nigsberg] and after Muscovy [i.e., after the liberation of Wilno].”

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Polikszanka was being imprecise about chronology, apparently purposely so. We, the readers of the court record, know that Orzeszyc was still alive some years “after Muscovy.” After all, she herself was not sure he was dead even after she had married her second husband and was drawing up the first version of her last will and testament. This was as late as 1671—Muscovy had pulled up stakes and left a decade earlier! The phrase “having become a widow”—especially given the sloppy chronology and syntax—arouses the lingering suspicion that she had not become one or was not sure that she was one and that she knew that she had once been and perhaps still was a bigamist. Less than six years had passed between her original protestation and the first mention of her new husband, but we do not know for how long she had been abandoned and thus whether she would technically have been eligible for a Church divorce. Abandonment for some minimum period of time could have justified an Orthodox divorce, but Anastazja had apparently not bothered to obtain one. In fact, allegations of bigamy seem to have followed these family circles. A volume of the acta of the Wilno magistracy from the period of the Muscovite occupation that has survived in the Russian State Historical Archive tells the story of the litigation in the winter and spring of 1661 that Anastazja and her brother Samuel had conducted with their new stepmother, a certain Maryna Serafimowna. The stepchildren complained on 7 March of that year that “the aforementioned stepmother, in the year 1659, the month of November, the 15th day, after the death of her first husband Jankowski, in a short time, of her own and through various individuals, solicited [solicytowata] our father to take her for a wife.” The plaintiffs did all they could to convince their father, “who was old and had already outlived two wives, to forgo the third.”

They were, of course, unable to speak reason to him. At the moment of the wedding, charges of bigamy would suddenly surface—but against the bride-to-be: But when it came to the marriage itself, the fathers did not wish to grant the marriage, since she had had three husbands, and now would marry the fourth. Then, during the marriage in the [Orthodox] church, before the gathered people, she swore that she had had only two lawful husbands [mezow szlubnych], and the first one, if she did have him, then he hadn’t been lawful [tedy nieszlubnego]. After such an oath she was granted marriage with our father as her fourth husband. Immediately after the wedding party, within a few days, having abandoned his house and us, he moved in with her with all his belongings.

Thus she was about to take a third or fourth husband (depending on how we look upon that first “unlawful” one), he a third bride. Orthodox usage did not distinguish between a “bigamist” and one “twice married” (in succession). Canonists devoted much attention to the legality of third and fourth (and more!) marriages.°* The father soon died. Here, too, the main issue in the litigation was the estate of a party who had allegedly been living in a bigamous relationship.°*

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Untying the Knot in Seventeenth-Century Wilno The stories of marital discord, abandonment, separation, and divorce recounted here offer a basis for some observations and further questions. These thoughts lead in seemingly opposite directions but may in fact be reconcilable. The first direction is that of Ruthenian exceptionality. The second is that of a certain leveling in attitudes and customs across the confessions within the city. The first and last of the stories about separation and divorce took place among the Ruthenians of Subocz Street. In fact, the two family stories were playing themselves out in one small neighborhood and within human networks that had considerable overlap. The first story appears to have gone according to the rules: a consistory-like court (probably Orthodox) decreed a “separation from bed and board.” There is no indication that either spouse sought to remarry while the wife was still living. The fourth story had been irregular enough to raise some questions of bigamy, not only in the mind of one contemporary with a financial interest in the matter but also for any later reader of the court record. Story number three, the other instance of alleged bigamy I have encountered, took place in a different neighbor-

hood (Horse Street) and network of people, but the setting and actors in that drama were also Orthodox, and we have seen ties of family and networks between the two neighborhoods. Are we dealing here with peculiarly Ruthenian attitudes toward marriage and divorce? Did some of these people think in terms of relationships that were only slightly bigamous? In his now classic work “The Customary Matrimonial Law of the Ruthenian Populace of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (XV—XVII Centuries),” Juliusz Bardach painted a picture of the secular

nature of marriage and divorce in the views and practices of the Orthodox (and perhaps Uniate) inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the Ruthenians the practice embodied in customary law conflicted with, and often trumped, the strictures of both Orthodox canon law and the secular Lithuanian statute. In this practice a secular marriage—something called an “uncrowned marriage” (niewienczone malzenstwo)—in other words, not taking place under the wedding wreath (wieniec) and in church and without the participation of a priest (or presumably the consent of the parents)—was treated as a private contract between two people. In a society with this view of marriage, divorce—which was possible in Orthodox canon law—was often also in the hands of the married couple, which, of course, was not in accordance with that same canon law. As Bardach noted, If among the higher and middle levels of West Ruthenian society, the freedom of divorces

found expression in the dissolving of marriage with the agreement of the parties in the form of a bilateral written contract, sometimes entered into the [secular] official books, then among the common people an even greater freedom obtained. Perhaps it was an echo of an earlier state when the freedom of dissolving marriage went so far that the will of one of the spouses, expressed publicly, was sufficient to dissolve [the marriage] .°?

248 CHAPTER 9

Bardach saw the reason for the predominance of customary law over canon law and the Lithuanian statute in the extreme decentralization of secular and ecclesiastical power for the Ruthenians. And he saw a slow reversal of the situation only in the course of the seventeenth century, with some pockets of resistance still to be met in the eighteenth century. The second story might suggest some confluence of attitudes toward marriage and divorce across the confessions of Wilno. Siemaszkowna may have come from a Ruthenian family, and her first husband, Mikolaj Kostrowicki, was probably Orthodox or Uniate. The Kostrowicki family networks were also located in the Subocz Street neighborhood. But in any case, Siemaszkowna’s second husband was Catholic, as was the marriage for which both spouses so eagerly sought divorce. Given the possibility of divorce available through ecclesiastical channels among Lutherans, Calvinists, and Orthodox and given Ruthenian secular attitudes toward marriage, could it be that early modern Catholic Vilnans had expectations

about separation and divorce that differed from those of their co-confessionals in more “normal” countries and cities? It may be that Ruthenian attitudes were the decisive factor here: Protestants did not seek divorces in these days on the grounds of incompatibility or cruelty. The provincial synods of the Lithuanian Calvinist Church heard three divorce cases of which I am aware, in the years 1615, 1623, and 1624.°* In the first two cases, the argument was made on the basis of adultery, and the divorces were granted. In the third case, the argument was impotence, and the synod, “seeing that this was not a vitium naturale [innate defect], but a causa accidentalis [accidental cause], which justis medtiis aliquando curatur [is cured sometimes by the appropriate means],” directed the couple to give it a try for another year. And if by the next synod “Deus hoc malum non avertet [God has not removed this evil], we will use other means proper to the Church.”°° Perhaps other divorces were granted at the level of the local church.

~CHAPTER TEN~

Guild House, Workshop, Brotherhood Altar

lergy left no direct instructions for their flocks commanding them to avoid fellow Vil-

Ce. of other confessions and religions in the workplace, as they did in contexts like baptism, education, and marriage. For many other Polish-Lithuanian cities, such strictures would have been largely superfluous. Lwow offers a good comparison here: it was another eastern royal city, equally diverse, of similar size. Secular authorities and guild statutes themselves had seen to it that the workplace there was to a great extent monoconfessional.* This was not the case in Wilno. Although one confession might predominate in a given profession (for example, Lutherans among goldsmiths and barber-surgeons, Ruthenians among sheep shearers and furriers, Roman Catholics among red- and black-leather tanners), almost all of them were mixed to greater and lesser degrees over the course of the seventeenth century. And since the guilds functioned in part as religious brotherhoods, the clergy in question—and this meant mostly Roman Catholic, although on rare occasions also Uniate— sought ways to impose confessional discipline upon the guilds. We see some attempts to use guild membership as a confessionalizing tool, to bring non-Catholics into the Church by making participation in the life of the guild altar the key to full participation in a chosen profession. But we also see approaches less focused on confessional discipline, a willingness to let the guilds work out their internal systems of keeping order and peace among the confessions—so long as, at a minimum, guild money made its way to the proper (again, almost always Roman Catholic) guild altar.’ As we have seen, a royal decree of 1666 limited participation in all levels of the magistracy to Roman Catholics on the Roman side and to Uniates on the Greek side, although the old principle of Greek-Roman parity would remain in place. A few echoes of this imposition of confessional limits were to be heard in guild statutes and other acta beginning soon after 1666, on occasion couched explicitly as an imitation of the new rules imposed upon the magistracy. The most sweeping attempt at a clergy-led, top-down imposition of confessional order upon the workplace came in a decree from before 10 November 1673 promulgated by King Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki. At the request of Gabriel Kolenda, Uniate metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus, the king called for a stiff fine—1,o00 zi to be leveled against any guild in Wilno that dared elect to its highest office, that of “annual elder,” a dissident (usually

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Protestant) or a Disuniate (usually Greek Orthodox). That document invoked the model of the magistracy: “Just as now [juz] in the Roman and Ruthenian bench no Disuniate or dissidents may take office, so let no Disuniate be elected to the eldership in the guilds of the city of Wilno.”? Eleven years later, the guild that brought together four related subprofessions—makers of “Magyar hats” (magiernicy), dressmakers (kiecarze, also derived from a Hungarian word and

signifying a dress ofa certain cut worn by wealthier women), stocking weavers (ponczosznicy), and clothiers (sukiennicy)—seems at first glance to refer to the royal decree of 1666 in statutes its elders presented to the magistracy for ratification on 19 August 1684: “Just as all the rights are conferred upon the two nations that are in this city, the Roman and the Ruthenian, so the Lord masters of the above-described trades ought not receive masters, journeymen, and apprentices of any other religion in their guild but the Catholic and the Ruthenian.”* But this was not the story in other guilds, even in this period—from ca. 1666 through the first third

of the eighteenth century—thought to mark the triumph of the Counter-Reformation in Wilno society. As we will see later, many guilds quietly (some not so quietly) ignored the decree of 1673. Moreover, I have found no evidence that the penalty of 1,000 zt was ever imposed. What is more, even in the royal decree of 1673 concerning the guilds, and in the clothiers’ guild statute presented for royal confirmation in 1684, there are ambiguities not found in the edict of 1666 concerning the magistrates. That of 1673 began with the language of the decree of 1666 but ended by excluding from the eldership only Disuniates and not dissidents, although there could be some overlap in the terms in certain contexts. The language of the statute of 1684 began with the old notion of two “nations” (narody) that in the past had included the five confessions. It then narrowed this notion by making the shift so easy in contemporary usage from categories of nation to those of religion, and it quite clearly now—in imitation of the royal decree of 1666—excluded Lutherans and Calvinists from this concept of a “Roman nation.” But the language was less clear about the “Ruthenian nation.” In the right context, a confessional polemicist writing in defense of either Orthodoxy or the Uniate

Church might be able to speak of the Ruthenian nation/religion without a qualifier and expect his readers to understand he meant one confessional version of that identity to the exclusion of the other. This was not the case in other contexts, such as this one: we would have expected some further identification such as “the Ruthenian nation/religion that is [or is not] in unity with the Roman Catholic Church” (if that limitation was indeed to be imposed). In fact, although a few guilds showed an interest in excluding those not in communion in Rome (and at times quite simply all non-Catholics) from participation, or at least from exercising power in the brotherhood, most, even after 1666, were first of all interested in establishing a trade monopoly: by excluding, and imposing penalties upon, nonguild artisans of all religions and ethnicities—including Roman Catholics; by drawing stricter definitions between guilds practicing related trades (e.g., various types of tanners, who were organized in

GUILD HOUSE, WORKSHOP, BROTHERHOOD ALTAR 251

at least four separate guilds), and by setting fines for encroaching upon the professional territory of the other trade, in both production and sale.* Competition from both groups—the nonguild artisans, or bunglers, and guild members from related trades—caused financial harm to individual masters and to the activities of the guild, which included poor relief and religious obligations (typically, provision of candles and upkeep for a guild altar and its priest). Second, the guild statutes attempted to impose order and discipline on guild members. This meant, among other things, determining what range of confessions could be represented and, more important, how they were to be represented, and what sorts of compromises could (and could not) be made that would provide both for a guild altar ata Roman Catholic Church and for the peaceful and productive presence of “brethren of another religion.” In some cases, the dissidents continued to hold positions of authority even while the guild fulfilled its obligations to its Roman Catholic altar and participated, in guild garb and under guild colors, in public processions that included the annual Corpus Christi celebration. This was one of the moments in the calendar in early modern Polish-Lithuanian society that regularly set confessions and religions at odds with each other and led to violence between Catholics and Protestants and Catholics and Jews. We will find a range of strategies

for forcing the participation of non-Catholics, as well as for excusing them from the obligations. In this chapter I first examine how Wilno’s various guilds drew a line around their areas of monopoly and whom they left on the outside. The topic of the second section is the strategies the guilds employed in their search for order among brethren of various religions within the professional and trade boundaries they attempted to enforce. A separate section looks specifically at strategies the guilds adopted for reconciling multiconfessional memberships with participation in activities surrounding the guild altar. Finally, I look at a few questions of stricture and laxity in the application of confessional discipline in guild life.

Defining the Outside In articles confirmed by the Wilno magistracy on 1 October 1688, the guild of the morocco

tanners (safianisci) attempted to lay out what a group of potential competitors could and could not do in Wilno without infringing upon their guild monopoly for the production and trade of this fine leather. That list of outsiders comprised the following: tanners (garbarze), a specific type of “white-leather” tanners (baltusznicy), retailers (przekupnicy), Tatars, and Jews.°

The first two had their own guilds; the latter three were, in this instance, outside such structures. A second case: statutes for Wilno’s haberdashers (passamanicy) confirmed on 22 July 1633 by King Wiadyslaw IV excluded “merchants, Scots, Jews, and other people [i.e., nonguild members] of whatever condition [wszelakiej kondycyjej ludziom].”’ The restriction was repeated in articles confirmed on g August 1650 by Wiadystaw’s brother, King Jan Kazimierz.®

A third case: on 28 May 1664 the magistracy confirmed articles for the Wilno fishermen’s

252 CHAPTER 10

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guild that attempted to put restrictions on “Jews, Tatars, and butchers.” Jewish and Christian butchers had their own guilds (and were themselves in frequent conflict with each other). Christian butchers were “forbidden to sell retail [szynkowa¢] any sort of fish, both summer and winter, except for two days.”° The articles did not specify which two days these were, but they were no doubt connected with high fasts. Articles confirmed by King Jan Kazimierz for the butchers’ guild the following year on g March 1665 granted them more extensive rights to poach in the fishermen’s waters: “We allow Wilno elder and younger butchers the right to conduct every sort of fish commerce [wszelakie handle rybne] during Lent without the least hindrance from fishermen and other persons.”*° The kings and the Wilno magistracy frequently confirmed such statutes with conflicting articles that did of necessity result in intraguild strife. In fact, the guilds (like the Jews) often tried to play one authority off against the other. We should treat guild statutes as a sort of index of the goals of individual corporations and not always as reflective of what those groups were able to achieve. And the list goes on. In 1509, the barber-surgeons’ guild [balwierze] had stipulated that “masters are not to have any intercourse [obcowante] with bath keepers [laziebniki], nor are they to receive them into their community as journeymen, or take on their children as apprentices.”** But by 1721, alow point for the guild system in Wilno, the barber-surgeons and bath keepers formed one contubernium (Latin for “tent,” the smallest unit of the Roman army,

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one of the terms frequently used for guilds and brotherhoods in early modern Wilno) in common, and they attempted to place restrictions on yet another set of competitors: “old beggar men and old beggar women [dziadowte 1 baby], who make bold to heal the sick through whispering and other acts of sorcery forbidden by the Roman Church,” in addition to a list of

unlicensed “bloodletters” and other bunglers. That guild, on the other hand, now grudgingly accepted the notion that “Tatars, Jews, and other Disuniates [referring here not to Greek Orthodox but to all non-Roman Catholic Christians], although they cannot be participants in God’s praise, nor are they fit for God’s service,” might be adjunct members of the brotherhood—if they paid doubled fees (and if they did not do so, then they were to be subject to a penalty equal to four times the guild fee, as well as confiscation of their goods).*” And further examples of such exclusionary lists could be adduced. Two groups were named as belonging to the outside far more frequently than all others: Jews and bunglers. The first term is, of course, quite specific. The second was generic, embracing all the “others” (including “Scotsmen, Tatars, and people of whatever condition”), since its basic meaning was “one who engages in the production and commerce associated with a protected profession without membership in the applicable guild.” But by default it was often used in tandem with those other groups that were more easily and clearly defined (Jews, Tatars, Scotsmen, members of established guilds in related trades). The term most often referred loosely to local Christians who were not paying dues and had not been given any status in a guild (apprentice, journeyman, master). And paying dues to the guild box in support of its own internal programs such as poor reliefand, either from it or from a separate box, to the guild altar for candles and upkeep of the priest who said Mass at that altar was the whole point here. (The guild box contained the privileges, statutes, and other official documents, such as the guild register with the inscriptions of the members.) The sticking point was not so much the religion, confession, or ethnicity of the other as the fact that guild finances suffered. In addition to being outside guild discipline—as were, for the most part, the Jew, the Tatar, and the Scotsman—the bungler also hurt commerce by producing goods that were portrayed as (and probably were) both cheaper and often of inferior quality, al-

though these aspects seem to have been subordinated to concerns about discipline and finances.*?

Attempts to exclude the bungler and the other named groups (largely “ethnicities”) were present from the beginning of the guild system; they formed a major part of the entire enterprise of seeking confirmation of guild articles from authorities like the king and the magistracy. But the complaints became louder, more prominent, and more frequent toward the end of the seventeenth century as the guild system in Wilno underwent a period of crisis. The language of the articles of the glaziers’ guild that were confirmed (most likely reconfirmed) by the magistracy on 3 December 1663 was typical on this issue, and other statutes echoed it, often nearly verbatim: “And since there are very many bunglers in the glazier trade, which works to the detriment of poor masters, to the detriment of ecclesiastical offices, and causes the diminishment of benefits to the city, therefore [we demand] that such idle and loose

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people [luzni ludzie] and bunglers be punished and their goods confiscated, with the knowledge of the city office, or of that to which they are subject.”** The glaziers went on to devote the entire final article, number 47, to regulating relations between the guild and their Jewish competitors. It is worth quoting at length: In compliance with the privilege of His Royal Majesty, Our Gracious Lord, we wish that Jewish glaziers do no work under any Christian unto the detriment of the guild masters, inasmuch as they are not in the guild register nor in the community of the brethren. Likewise, that they not send their apprentices about the wooden and bricked houses with their goods, [for they are] subject to confiscation [of goods and tools] with the knowledge and aid of the magistracy. On the other hand, those [Christian] apprentices who have spent their years until now in training with the Jews cannot become journeymen of the entire glaziers’ guild, just as those who trained with a bungler, until they first serve their years and finish their apprenticeship [cejtowac] with a trained guild master, for bet-

ter understanding of the trade and for order in the guild. Finally, we stipulate that from the date of these articles of ours no Jew dare to receive an apprentice of the Christian faith for training in the glaziers’ trade, and that if any Christian should present himself to a Jew for training as an apprentice, in order that the scandalum [inducement to transgression] not be multiplied, he is to be taken away from him cum adminiculo officii [with the assistance of the office], and such a trade is to be forbidden to Jews.*° The final sentence calling for a ban on the Jewish presence in the trade was a case of wishful thinking. The problem here was again one of competing and conflicting privileges, in this case, those granted to the Jews by the Polish kings and this one for the Christian glaziers granted by the Wilno magistracy. In 1633 King Wladystaw IV had allowed Jews to engage in trades not organized into guilds in Wilno, and he named specifically “furriers, haberdashers, and glaziers.”?© King Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki reaffirmed this privilege in 1669, again naming the same three trades.*’ (It is worth noting that in Lwéw, toward the end of the seventeenth century, the lace makers’, glaziers’, and tinsmiths’ guilds were Jewish monopolies.)*8

The articles for the Christian glaziers’ guild were dated 3 December 1663. In reconfirming the Jewish privilege some five years later and in repeating the language of the original patent, the king was putting Jewish and Christian glaziers into a situation of necessary conflict. It is unclear whether the guild had existed before the date of the statute, but there are some indications that here too, as with so many other reenactments of privileges and contracts soon after the liberation of the city in December 1661, this was a case of acquiring a reconfirmation of a grant that had been lost during the recent wars and the Muscovite occupation of the city. The Latin prologue to the articles (they were themselves recorded in Polish) gave as a motivating factor the recent cessation of hostilities and the desire to see that worship at the (apparently already existing) guild altar at the Bernardines (i.e., at the

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Church of St. Anne) again thrive “according to ancient custom” (juxta antiquum morem).*° In any event, for some time before the reconfirmation of the Jewish privilege in 1669 it had no longer been the case that the Christian glaziers of Wilno had lacked guild structures. But the

more interesting thing the final article suggests is that although the Christian glaziers were now well organized with detailed prescriptions and proscriptions on a wide range of activities, both religious and secular, and had excluded Jews from their brotherhood, they seem not to have been able to convince all future glaziers not to seek training with Jewish master glaziers. Professional competition may have been the unarticulated motivation in an altercation between a Christian glazier called Lukasz Rycewicz and a Wilno Jew of unspecified profession by the name of Mejer Jakubowicz. On 12 October 1679, Jakubowicz—so alleged his complaint before the court of the magistracy—was “walking peacefully with his companion [kompan], also a Jew, expecting nothing bad, along a public way,” when, “without giving the least cause,” he was attacked by Rycewicz. The Jewish plaintiff offered a psychologizing explanation for the event: the Christian glazier had had a falling out—itis unclear with whom— during the popis, the annual mustering of Wilno guilds under their colors in a field outside the walls. Unable to “achieve what he had planned, . . . jumping out with a drawn sword, drunk,” he attacked the innocent Jew.*° I am uncertain just what it was Rycewicz “had planned,” but it may well have had to do with settling scores with Jewish professional competitors. In any event, Jakubowicz’s complaint situates the event and its motivations in the realm of the glazier’s profession. Christian and Jewish butchers had parallel guild structures, as well as statutes—partially conflicting in their claims to a monopoly, as was so often the case with Christian and Jewish privileges—which, together with litigation in the courts between the two bodies, established how many Jewish butchers might practice the trade, as well as where and when.’’ A royal decree of 4 June 1667 provided for six Jewish butchers and their stalls near the main synagogue (in this it reconfirmed terms of a Christian butchers’ guild statute of 1665), and it required—“since they do not contribute... to the altar of the [Christian] butchers’ guild”— an annual payment on St. Martin’s day according to the Roman calendar of half a stone (about fifteen pounds) of good tallow to the Jesuits’ Church of St. Kazimierz.** The same documents also specified where and when Christian butchers were allowed to slaughter animals and sell retail. The two bodies were to exist separately and in parallel, although here, too, the Christian side seems to have been unable to keep Christian apprentices from learning the tools of the trade with Jewish masters. In one case—it is the only one I have encountered—Christian and Jewish artisans agreed to a sort of limited, carefully structured, coexistence under one guild statute. On 22 April 1673, representatives of the Christian needle makers’ and tinsmiths’ guild came before the magistracy, together with two named Jews (Kalman Aranowicz and Ulf Jozefowicz), as well as two other Jews whose names were not recorded. They together signed a “voluntary letter of concord.” This forensic genre was a sort of contract in which two parties registered with

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the magistracy an agreement they had worked out among themselves. It might be many things: a contract for sale of real estate, an easement between two adjacent properties, a dispensation of family wealth between husband and wife. This particular provision came in response to “the ancient great harm” the Christian guild had suffered from Jewish competition. It now granted four Jewish tinsmiths—“and no more”—a kind of adjunct guild membership. The Jewish artisans would pay as a corporation 30 z} (or 7/2 each—the contract allowed either solution) to the guild for the upkeep of its altar at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity. The Jewish tinsmiths were to be granted the right to sell door to door. The document further freed them from the obligation to join in the guild’s public processions, both secular (greeting the arrival of the king or the bishop) and religious (Corpus Christi).*?

These provisions echoed those the guilds would work out for reconciling non-Catholic Christian brethren to the guild’s religious mission. In sum, the guilds sought to exclude people not so much on the basis of religion or confession as on professional grounds and specifically in order to limit competition. The list of those placed on the outside by the goldsmiths’ articles of 1664 brings together this seemingly disparate group nicely: the goal was to exclude “licentious and hole-and-corner [pokgtnych] Christians, and especially Jews and Tatars.”7* The Jews presented a special case in

all this because they had royal privileges for some of their commercial activities, possessed guilds that were structured in parallel with Christian counterparts, and offered competition not only in the marketplace, where finished goods were sold, but also by attracting Christian apprentices. Thus the negotiations on the Christian side ranged from the wishful thinking of a total ban on Jewish competition through strictly established quotas of separate guilds (as in the case of the butchers) to the limited participation of Jewish artisans as adjunct members of Christian guilds (as in the case of the tinsmiths).

Ordering the Inside Avery few guilds attempted to limit membership on the basis of Christian confession. For

instance, the white-leather tanners’ (battusznicy), glove makers’, and chamois tanners’ (zamesznicy) guild declared in its articles of 18 January 1680 that it would not receive any heretical or schismatic brethren “under penalty of losing the rights and freedoms that had been

granted the guild,” nor was it to “receive any other apprentices but those of the Catholic faith, or of an honorable bed and free birth.”?? Similarly, the bookbinders, in articles approved 8 June 1664, saw “great disorders” in their trade, “especially since they [the nonguild bookbinders and booksellers] import to our city of Wilno heretical books and those of other various sects, and sell them in their stalls, since Jews bind Christian books.” They sought to address the issue by, among other measures, limiting participation in guild power (the an-

nual elder’s office) to those “who are in the Holy Roman faith, good people, and no dissidents.”7°

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But even in these two seemingly straightforward cases, one wonders just how confessionally exclusive the guilds had become. The motivation for the bookbinders was the mainte-

nance of orthodoxy in the book market (“let no one be permitted to import any heretical books to our city of Wilno”), as well as a trade monopoly for reliable people—guild members, presumably Roman Catholic, if they desired to exercise power in the guild. In fact, Protestant printing had largely moved out of Wilno by the first decade of the seventeenth century. Lutheran and Calvinist ministers of Wilno (Sch6nflissius, Labedzki) published their

Polish-language funeral sermons for Wilno burghers in nearby Protestant centers— Lutheran K6nigsberg and Calvinist Lubcz (a Radziwill family holding).*’ After a temporary ban in 1610—a royal expression of displeasure over the publication in Wilno of Melecjusz Smotrycki’s infamous Threnos of that year—the Orthodox had reestablished a modest presence among printing shops in the city by 1615.7 But it is difficult to believe that the threat of confiscation of book stocks had entirely removed “heretical books” from the Wilno market. And the only named bookbinders I have encountered (other than the two elders named in the

prologue to the royal privilege of 1664) were Lutherans. The local offering rolls for that church listed professions in the earlier part of the extant record; thus we find two bookbinders’ widows and two bookbinders in the church pews around 1640, and by lucky chance, we also find a certain Gotthardt Heuel, Buchbinder, who gave his 2 zi to Lutheran coffers in 1667, well after the royal privilege that had attempted to limit Protestant, Orthodox, and Jewish participation in the local book trade.”° The Lutheran participation in the trade of chamois-leather tanning is even easier to document, at least for the period before the wars of midcentury, when the local church more frequently listed the professions of its offering givers. But the family names remained in the

record in the second half of the century, and scattered pieces of information suggest the continuing presence and concentration of Lutheran zamesznicy/Samischmacher clustered on both sides of the little branch of the Wilenka separating the city from the Szerejkiszki suburb on the northeast below the castles. By far the more common pattern among guilds that addressed the issue of confession was the explicit reception of brethren of other religions. A couple of examples give a sense of the language of inclusion. In a statute approved by the magistracy on 27 November 1614 for the red- and black-leather tanners, we find article 3: “Those two above-mentioned elders will

be permitted to inscribe and receive into this brotherhood whoever might request this of them. Only let such ones be of good birth, making no distinction [braku zadnego nie czyniqc] with regard to religion [religiia] or nation [narod].”?° In a passage that reveals the remarkably strong position of non-Catholics in the period that was supposed to be their nadir, the masons, in articles approved by the magistracy on 3 December 1687, wrote, “Let the aforemen-

tioned Lord elders of the society of masons receive into their congregation journeymen well trained in the trade, unsuspect, making certain above all that they be of free and honorable birth, making no distinction [nie brakujqc] in this matter with regard to nation, even if it bea foreign one, so long as he not be opposed to the Catholic faith.”** Now in some contexts a Catholic

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polemicist might argue that only a Catholic was not “opposed to,” “in contradiction with” [przeciwny] the Catholic religion, but the articles do not specify this, and in the Wilno context non-Catholics could easily position themselves as not opposed to Catholicism. Or finally, consider the cobblers, whose three elders (one “from the Roman side,” one “from the Ruthenian side,” and one “of the Saxon confession”) came before the magistracy on 9 July 1689 and declared the guild’s willingness to receive “wandering journeymen of whatever religion [jakieykolwiek religiey]] who have come to Wilno,” so long as they produce documents proving

“free and honorable birth,” and “completion of an apprenticeship” (wyzwolenie).?7 But for most guilds—even after the attempts at restrictions in the 1660s—1670s—the presence of a spectrum of confessions and ethnicities was simply a more or less silent point of departure. Thus the second major goal of guild articles, after defining the outside, was to provide for good order on the inside. And one aspect of this process—alongside strictures on feasting, drinking, and general behavior in the guild house and in the public sphere—was the attempt to regulate relations between brethren of various confessions in a way that would both put people in their place and allow for the presence of others. In fact, we can follow a narrowing of usage in the language of intraguild toleration that ran somewhat parallel to that of interpretations of the “peace among dissidents in religion [dissidentes in religione]” first put forth as a desideratum for Polish-Lithuanian society by the Confederation of Warsaw in 1573.°° At first, the state of being in dissidence characterized the entire society, and there were no “others” among Christians, because Roman Catholics were every bit as dissident as the Orthodox or the Protestants; each was equally in a state of dissent with the other confessions. Eventually, as in the usage of subsequent pacta conventa affirmed by successive Polish kings and Lithuanian grand dukes, Roman Catholicism became the “nondissident” confession, and the guild charters began to treat Catholicism as the default norm and to speak of “people of another religion” when they attempted to define the position of non-Catholics in the life of the contubernium. In a few cases from later in the century, we find guild charters that no longer address the issue of the confessional mixture present, as if in reaction to topdown restrictions calling for exclusion of non-Catholics at least from power, if not from membership; but other sources tell us that the annual elders who presented the articles in

question were of various confessions and that the guild silently continued to practice its time-honored methods of parity arrangements in power sharing. The guilds’ control (or at least attempts to exert control) over the behavior of their members reached into the public sphere. In their articles of 1665, the bookbinders set out specific regulations on such matters: Let no journeyman dally in the inns, except on holidays, which also applies to the taverns;

in the summer only until one o’clock at night, in the winter until three o’clock, except if any of them were invited to a wedding, or to someone’s honor, under penalty of a fine of fifteen gr. And returning home, let him not rattle at the gate, if it should be closed, as if in empty places, nor strike with his weapon. Let him not cry out on the street or before his

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house, nor should he make any commotion before his house, as people without reason are wont to do. Rather, when he comes home, he is to behave honorably toward everyone, from the least to the greatest, in word and deed, harming no one, for no one will be able to excuse himself on the grounds that he did this in jest, having recourse in his argument to drunkenness and jests.**

And other statutes contained similar strictures against offensive behavior. The more general search for order began, however, not in the street in the early morning hours, but in the regularly scheduled, closed—indeed, secret—gatherings of the guild at the guild house. Guild after guild established penalties for carrying professional secrets beyond the threshold of the guild house: the tailors (1560), bell founders (1595), weavers (1604), locksmiths (1663), and tanners (1672). Articles of the tailors’ guild, also from 1665, give a good picture of the call to order once the brethren had arrived and the doors were closed: And when all the elders and those who sit at the table are already collected and gathered, then first the elder from the Roman side and then the elder from the Greek side are to ask in this manner: “Is it now time to call the guild to order?” And when other elders answer

“it is,” then they order the younger [master] to take their swords from them [l.e., the brethren], and having taken them, he will place them under the table where the elders sit. Then the Roman elder and also the Greek will say “be silent,” and in that silence they will

order that all remove their caps from their heads. And then the elder will call the guild to order in this manner: “I call the guild to order by the power of His Majesty the King; I call

the guild to order by the power of the lord secretary of His Majesty the King, the wojt of Wilno; I call the guild to order by the power of their lords the burgomasters and the entire council; I call the guild to order by the power of all the masters sitting around the table. If any should transgress in deed, he will be subject to penalty, as the law of the city will have it, and whoever [should transgress] in word will be punished according to the judgment of the masters.” And one of the masters asks “Has the guild now been called to order?”; the other elder answers “It has now been called to order.” Then [the first] asks

“Can anyone stand without permission?”; the second answers “No, he cannot, rather he must receive permission.” Having finished this, the elders are to say to all the brethren “You hear well, good brethren, that if anyone has something to place before us, or a complaint, let him stand before the table, and let each present his matter, that no one should come to harm.” This is to be the method for calling the guild to order.*°

And other guilds seem to have followed similar procedures, placing penalties upon arriving after the guild box had been opened (the ultimate sign that the session was in order) or brandishing weapons during the meeting.?’ The goldsmiths—they shared power between Catholics and “another religion” (here almost always Lutherans, although there were a few Ruthenians)—in a prologue to a statute

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confirmed by the magistracy in 1627, made that good order into the guiding theme of their articles: What the soul causes in the human body, good order does for every congregation. For wherever there is turmoil or confusion, there is disharmony, and thereafter quick destruction. Therefore, we the elder and younger brethren of the goldsmiths’ guild, through God’s grace and our striving, wishing to bring to its old order the service of God that had been neglected for several years by our ancestors, have already built from the ground up, and at no little cost, a chapel at the parish Church of St. John, and we have provided it with other needs pertaining to it.?* There was, of course, a problem here that will recur throughout the guild system: ifthe goldsmiths’ guild had considerable numbers of non-Catholics (and it did and would continue to do so—that was precisely why “the service of God... had been neglected for several years by our ancestors”), then how was good order to provide for the maintenance of guild altars that were almost solely in Roman Catholic churches? The details of those negotiations are the focus of the next section. I remain here in the secular sphere: how did the guilds address the question of power sharing among brethren of various confessions? Parity arrangements in the guilds grew up following the introduction of such a system in the magistracy in 1536. At first they imitated the practice of that body quite closely, and later, as the confessional spectrum became more complicated, they would continue to use the magistracy’s division of offices between Greeks and Romans as a general model. For instance, the maltsters and the cobblers (these were, of course, two guilds), who had their separate articles approved by King Zygmunt August on 9 December 1552, called for the annual election of four or six elders in the first case, six in the second, with equal numbers “ex Romana fide [from the Roman faith]” and “ex Graeco ritu [from the Greek rite].”?? (Curiously, both charters used precisely those locutions.) This was just before the Reformation was to gain footing in the city and well before the Union of Brest (1596); thus the terms may have been unambiguous in identifying the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox confessions, although certainly more than one ethnicity might have been included under the heading of the Roman. But only a few years later, in articles approved by King Stefan Batory on 30 May 1579, the weavers’ guild of Wilno felt the need to give greater articulation to their arrangements. They were to gather and elect four elders every year on St. Nicholas Day (6 December—the same day elections to the magistracy were held). The language is somewhat ambiguous, but it would seem that it was to have been one each from the categories of German, Pole, Lithuanian, Ruthenian, although the text could also be read to imply that there was always to be one German and three others total from the other three groups. In any event, there was to be an annual alternation among the four groups (or between the German and one from the other three) for the office of chief elder, whereby two from the groups not wielding that office in a given year (e.g., Pole, Lithuanian, or Ruthenian) were to stand and elect one who would hold

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the office that year (in this case, the German).*° The Poles and Lithuanians were presumably both Roman Catholics; Ruthenian was both a marker of ethnicity and confession (at this point, still uniquely Orthodox); but the German might represent an ethnicity (either Catholic or Lutheran) or a confession (only Lutheran). Whatever the case was here, we see the beginnings of attempts to share power across a spectrum of ethnicities and confessions, and the usual way to do this was by parity, sometimes coupled, as here, with alternation in the position of supreme power. The situation was much clearer in the articles approved for the cobblers’ guild on 1 July 1579, and from here on the German (or “Saxon”), at least in the guild articles, was always a Lutheran. The cobblers were to elect six annual elders, two “from the Catholics” (ex catholicis), two “of the Greek or Ruthenian rite” (ritus Graeci seu Ruthenici), and two “from the German

faith” (ex Germanicae fidet).** By now the latter quite clearly signified the Lutheran confession,

and non-Lutheran Germans (they remained a presence in Wilno and were still seen as German) would have competed for power as Catholics. Other guilds followed suit, with greater and lesser precision as to ethnicity and confession. The goldsmiths (1627) chose two elders, one from the Catholics and a second from “another religion” (z inszej religit). Cap makers and furriers (1636; it was one guild at the time) chose two Romans and two Greeks.** This was precisely the system that had been adopted by the magistracy about a century earlier; one wonders whether here, too, as in that body, the two terms now potentially embraced the five confessions. The weavers, who had had sucha minutely articulated system of power sharing in 1579, simplified matters greatly by 28 May 1639, when they called for the election of two annual elders, one of the Roman Catholic faith and the second of the Augsburg religion, and two caretakers (szafarze), “one Catholic, and the other a Saxon.”*? The Pole and the Lithuanian from the earlier dispensation have been quietly subsumed under the rubric Roman Catholics, the German is now quite clearly a Lutheran, and the Ruthenian has departed the scene. In articles of 23 January 1641, the barber-surgeons called for elections of two annual elders, one Roman Catholic, the other a dissident.** The locksmiths (before 1663) called for three elders, two from Lithuania, and the third a German.** The opposition was clearly between locals and foreigners, but it was also between Roman Catholics (probably including Poles and Polonized people) and Lutherans, many of whom might have been in Wilno for a generation or more. The tailors (1665) were to be led by six elders, “three of the Roman, and three of the Greek religion.”*° The morocco tanners (1666) elected two elders, “one from the Roman and the second from the Ruthenian side.”*’ Two final examples from the later seventeenth century: in articles of 30 March 1672, the tanners called for the election of six annual elders—“two from the Roman, another two from the Greek, and two from the German faith”; and on g July 1689, the cobblers called for three annual elders, one each among the Romans, Ruthenians, and Germans. The articles later referred to these groups alternately (and interchangeably in some instances) as “religions” (religie) or “faiths” (wiary) and as “nations” (narody).**

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There is sporadic evidence of tension within the guilds arising along confessional fault lines. In a few guilds, the Lutherans seem to have been in positions of such strength that it was the otherwise dominant Roman Catholics who claimed to be the victims of unfair treatment. In 1666 a Roman Catholic goldsmith named Jan Rohaczewicz brought a complaint against Lutheran elder Mateusz Grejter for “favoring the dissidents” (the guild was heavily Lutheran) by blocking access to power in the guild to anyone but the Lutherans.*° Confessionally motivated strife arose most frequently from conflicts between Orthodox guild members, who remained an important presence in many trades, and Uniate brethren and their clergy. The latter argued that the rights and obligations long granted to, and imposed upon, the Ruthenians in the provisions of the various guild charters now applied only to Uniate individuals and institutions. The bone of contention here—as sometimes between Lutherans and Catholics—lay rather in the religious sphere. But far more frequently the complaints that reached the magistracy targeted guild members who refused to be subject to discipline and engaged in acts of disrespect, and sometimes violence, that had no apparent connection with confession. This means that these matters—and no doubt many more—had already been raised in closed guild sessions inaccessible to us now. In 1689 the annual elders of the haberdashers’ guild, “Tomasz Krumbeich” and “Henricus von Benging,” brought a case against “famatus Michael Angel” for the greatest of all acts of license: practicing the trade without belonging to the guild.°° The offering rolls for the Lutheran church tell us that Tobias Krumbein (this was the correct form of his name, judging by the frequency of this form in other, Polish-language documents as well) and Michel Engel were of that confession; von Bengin’s name is missing in the Lutheran rolls.°* Thus we see that the guild, silently honoring the practice of giving power to multiple confessions in a parity arrangement, had sent a Lutheran elder and (in all likelihood) a Roman Catholic—even if German—to the magistracy to complain about the behavior of a Lutheran, but without any reference whatsoever to the confession of the interested parties (because that was immaterial). The guild articles typically established times for meetings and times and procedures for opening the guild box, which was the signal for the beginning of the session. Brethren were to arrive sober, in some cases on an empty stomach, without drawn weapons. In some instances, the members were to be seated by confession, Catholics on the right, non-Catholics on the left, as in the glaziers’ articles of 1663 and the coopers’ articles of 1664.°? Frequently— as in the articles for the cap makers and furriers from 3 December 1636—parity arrangements extended to control over the guild box, as well as the money itself that the brethren paid into it on an established regular basis: “The brotherhood box is to be kept at the house of the elder for that year, who has his seat in the city, under the city jurisdiction, and not ina suburb. There are to be two keys to the box, one at the house of the elder master who will be chosen from the Roman side, and the other at the house of the other elder from the Greek side.”°? The weavers made similar arrangements in their articles of 28 May 1639. Although the elders were to be “one Catholic, and the other a Saxon,” the Catholics clearly exercised

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the power in the guild. The monthly meetings were to be held “at the house of the year’s elder of the Catholic religion under the city jurisdiction.” Rather than pay all dues for all programs

(e.g., both for poor relief among members and for support of the guild altar), this brotherhood kept two separate boxes. The church box was to have two keys held by “two Catholics, and no Saxon”; the (secular) guild box, on the other hand, was to be opened by the two keys held by the two elders, one Catholic, one Saxon. The same article stipulated that “privileges of His Grace the King, Our Gracious Lord, ordinances, statutes, registers of income and expense, written in the Polish language and not another,” were to be kept in the second box.°* Power sharing and alternation between Romans and Greeks or between Catholics and Saxons thus also meant alternation in physical control of the box, as well as the collaboration of the elected official of each side in order to open it, even where (and this was almost always

the case) the Catholic side had a stronger set of rights. Above all, good order required the brethren to avoid “reviling and shaming” one another with “dishonoring words” (stowa uszczypliwe). These were precisely the same turns of phrase that appeared over and over in the protestations recorded in all the jurisdictions in which Vilnans of all estates, confessions, religions, ethnicities, and jurisdictions defended attacks upon honor. The guilds had the right to take an unruly member to the next instance, in this case, the magistracy, and we will see a few of these cases. But they also had the right to impose punishment within the guild, usually beginning disciplinary proceedings there, and some of the charters specified penalties for “dishonoring words”: for unruly goldsmiths (1596), one entire day in prison at the town hall until sundown; for licentious cap makers (1636), a flogging at the guild meeting; for fractious glaziers (1663), a penalty that all the masters together deemed fitting or an unspecified term of incarceration in the prison under the town hall.°° The goal was first of all to maintain the proper respect of juniors toward their elders, but it was also to maintain peace among the brethren, who, as we have seen, were frequently of a variety of confessions. The articles of the weavers’ guild, approved by the magistracy on 13 November 1578, wrote circumspection in religious discourse into its charter: “And if anyone, whether a master or a journeyman be found using dishonoring words, and especially concerning the word of God [a zwlaszcza okoto stowa Bozego], such a one is to pay a penalty of one

Lithuanian shock, of which half [goes] to the glorious councillors’ office [1.e., the city magistracy], and the second half to the guild, and this as often as he should do it.”°° And recall that this was the first guild, in its similar articles approved the next year by King Stefan Batory, to acknowledge the presence of a broader ethnoconfessional spectrum among the brethren by creating a parity system among Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and Ruthenians.

Negotiating the Guild Altar The problem that has been lurking in the background of all these considerations is the fact that the guilds behaved in part like religious brotherhoods to the extent that they

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undertook a number of acts of church service, typically through support of a guild altar and participation in public processions not only of the secular sort (reception of dignitaries upon their arrival in town) but also religious.°’ The altar in question was almost always Roman

Catholic (rarely Ruthenian, which meant Uniate after 1596), as was the chief public procession—the annual Corpus Christi celebration—which divided Vilnans in at least two ways: Catholics from Protestants over doctrine on the divine presence in the Host, and Western-from Eastern-rite Catholics over the calendar (at the very least). In the rest of my comments here, I seek to present a picture of the range of strategies various guilds adopted in reconciling multiconfessional brotherhood with nearly exclusively Roman Catholic religious obligations. Let us begin with two case studies, from two guilds in which Lutherans long predominated: the barber-surgeons and the goldsmiths. In a document of 23 January 1641 we find articles presented by Catholic prelates in the name of the mostly Lutheran barber-surgeons (apparently after a mutually acceptable solution was reached between the two parties); they were directed not to the king or the magistracy for ratification, as was the usual practice, but to the bishop of Wilno: Unto the magnification of the honor and glory of God, likewise for the adornment of the altar of the surgeons’ guild at the Church of St. John of the Wilno parish, and of God’s saints, Cosmas and Damian, to the service of the capital city of the Grand Duchy of Lith-

uania, Wilno, for the healing of illnesses and infirmities upon human bodies, in mutual agreement we established these articles. . .. So that the praise of God might more easily be magnified in Roman Catholic fashion at the surgeons’ altar, also so that the Catholic clergy might have their trusted surgeons for their defects, also so that local Catholic journeymen, as well as those coming from Poland and from foreign lands, might be able to go to Catholic masters, in accordance with this agreement the lord surgeons are to receive four Catholic masters into the guild, and thereupon there will be alternation in accession to the office of master between Catholics and dissidents.*® This statute gives us a glimpse of the confessional relations then reigning in the guild. As late as 1641 (the year after the Calvinists had been banned beyond the walls), the Lutherans were still something of a practical power in the burgher landscape of Wilno, enjoying, it would seem, aspects of professional and cultural capital. Although the Catholics had managed to establish a surgeons’ altar, they, too, like the goldsmiths, clearly had trouble with its upkeep.

The barber-surgeons’ guild seems to have been a dangerous place for Catholics. The Catholic elder for the year was charged with “taking care for the Catholic boys who will be learning the trade from dissidents, that they hear holy Mass and Catholic teaching on holy days, and, at certain times, take the holy sacraments prescribed by the Church.” A further article revealed a fear that crypto-Lutherans might become elders under the Catholic quota or that—more troubling—Catholic surgeons might find reasons to convert: “If anyone, who

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is a Catholic or who pretends to be, should join the guild, and then should leave the Roman Catholic faith, from such a one a great penalty is to be taken, and he is to be expelled from the guild until he come to his senses.”°? The latter stipulation suggests that practicing the art of surgery might bring with it pressures and temptations to take on the dominant confessional identity in that profession. In a decree of 8 February 1638, King Wladyslaw IV had permitted the dissidents of all Wilno guilds who did not wish to serve the Roman Catholic guild altar to “buy out” (okupowac) of that obligation. The barber-surgeons’ articles, as drafted by Roman Catholic prelates and submitted to the bishop, referred to that decree (it is only from these articles that we know of the decree’s existence) in permitting any of the brethren “who might wish to be free from serving the altar” to absent themselves in this manner.°° In fact, one of the keys to the good order in any society that the goldsmiths (also heavily Lutheran) likened in 1627 to the role of the soul in the human body was precisely the “buying out” provision: “all those brothers who are of another religion, and who do not provide chapel services and thus absent themselves” were to pay to the goldsmiths’ chapel box (they, too, had a separate box for church matters) three Polish zi each per annum “and not more.” Here we come full circle back to the bunglers. In this state of affairs—a guild with a large number of non-Catholics and with provisions for buying out—it had become “difficult to begin the church service, because there are not many Catholics who are supposed to do service in the chapel.” This was the reason for requiring the “bunglers and the various wanderers from the various jurisdictions” (presumably they were thought here to be Roman Catholic) to be inscribed into the guild.°* Negotiations over service to the goldsmiths’ guild altar had a history predating Wiladyslaw’s decree—he had simply confirmed one existing solution to the problem—and they would continue to evolve after his pronouncement in the matter. The nature of the conflicts and the strategies for their solution varied across the guilds, each with its slightly different confessional makeup, and through the tightening and loosening of confessional discipline in the course of the seventeenth century. Earlier, in the later sixteenth century, there seems to have been something closer to parity in service to both Greek and Roman altars, which may explain the strength of the lingering Orthodox-Uniate and Orthodox-Catholic conflicts in some guilds. In a sort of contract dated 18 December 1575, the brethren of the cobblers’ guild made specific arrangements to provide in common for two altars, one Roman Catholic, the other Orthodox (this was before the Union of Brest), in an arrangement that if not quite one of parity nonetheless undertook substantial obligations to both. In particular, “all the brethren, both younger and elder, both of the Roman and of the Greek congregation [but here, zbor, the word regularly used for the Calvinist Church and individual Calvinist churches],” agreed to “pay on an annual basis from the brotherhood box four Lithuanian k for a priest of the Roman faith, and they are to give money for wax to that same [unspecified] Roman church for candles as much as necessary from the brotherhood box, in common, both from the brethren of the Roman congregation as also of the Greek faith.” But at the same time and in similar fashion, “as far as the father or pop [baciek

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albo pop] of the Greek faith is concerned,” the brethren of both rites were to “give from the brotherhood box every year two Lithuanian k... and [money] for candles or wax to [the then still Orthodox Church of] St. John the Baptist of the Greek faith.”°” Articles granted on 10 May 1582 by the magistracy to a guild that brought together cap makers, coat makers (siermieznicy, makers of a kind of simple overcoat), and stocking makers (nogawicznicy) provide a picture of a rare monoconfessional guild, where “all of the inscribed brethren are of the obedience of the [Orthodox] Church of the Christian Greek order.” (They shared power across the specializations: two elders were to be elected annually from the cap makers, one each from the coat and stocking makers.) Since they were all Orthodox, they were to support only one Orthodox altar, at the Cathedral Church of the Holy Most Pure, where they were also to worship and to pay for the upkeep of the affiliated hospital.°? Over the course of the seventeenth century, the trend was away from monoconfessional guilds (even if, as in the case of the barber-surgeons and the goldsmiths, one confession predominated). Moreover, we see fewer and fewer provisions in guild statutes for an altar of the Greek rite (and never for Protestant institutions). But where we do see them, they were invariably a matter of controversy. Let us follow up here on a few moments in the intraRuthenian conflict in the guilds over the course of the seventeenth century. After the Union of Brest of 1596, Uniate clergy, supported by Uniate guild members, argued that all provisions made for the Ruthenians or Greeks of Wilno— including those found in guild articles—now applied solely to those who adhered to the Union with Rome.” An early indication of increased tensions over Church obligations came on 17 August 1609 in a decree from King Zygmunt III to the wojt, burgomasters, councillors, and benchers of Wilno. At the request of Uniate metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus Hipacy Pociej and Uniate archimandrite of the Holy Trinity monastery Jozef Rutski, the king ordered the Orthodox brotherhoods of Wilno to give their service to the Holy Trinity establishments (which had been Orthodox but now were Uniate), as had always been their obligation and obedience, and to cease their service to the new Orthodox Holy Spirit monastery, which causes “rebellions and disturbances harmful to the common peace.”°° Similarly, in a decree of 7 September 1614, the king ordered the Orthodox brotherhoods to direct the money they had gathered for the rebuilding of Wilno Ruthenian churches (this was after the major fire of 1610) to the Uniate Holy Trinity complex: half for the keeping of the monks and half for the rebuilding of the church.°° In a decree of 17 June 1615, the Lithuanian assessor’s court declared that Wilno tailors of both the Roman and the Ruthenian rite should serve their altar at the Jesuits’ Church of St. John. This decree displeased the Uniate archimandrite, who stipulated that the decision did not free the tailors from their old custom of providing candles to the Holy Trinity Church for processions.°’ (Neither decision would have pleased Orthodox tailors, whose allegiance was to the Holy Spirit Church.) Uniate prelates continued to use the courts in their attempts to force Orthodox tradesmen to fulfill their altar duties at Uniate churches. Jozef Welamin Rutski, Uniate monk, archimandrite of the Wilno Holy Trinity monastery, and later metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus,

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tried on several occasions over the period 1608-1633 to impose discipline on Ruthenian members of various brotherhoods. Usually it was over the issue of supporting a Uniate rather

than an Orthodox altar with money and wax and of taking part in processions under the guild/brotherhood colors to the Uniate rather than the Orthodox church.®* On 19 February 1641, King Wladyslaw IV published a decree in response to a complaint of the Uniate Holy Trinity monastery against the elders of the tailors’ guild for not taking part in a public procession or providing candles to that church.®? And on 24 July 1645 the king found in favor of the Uniate Basilians’ complaint against the cobblers’ guild and directed them to provide candles every year on the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit to the altar of St. Luke of the Uniate Church of the Holy Trinity. ’° One of Rutski’s successors, metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus Gabriel Kolenda, was fighting much the same battles in the 1670s; it was he who would obtain from King Michal Korybut Wisniowiecki the apparently largely ignored decree of 1673 imposing stiff penalties on the election of dissidents and Disuniates to the office of elder in any Wilno guild.”* While the clergy took the lead in this conflict, there are a few, somewhat ambiguous indications of attempts originating from within the guilds to impose confessional discipline in the Ruthenian conflict. Representatives of the cobblers’ guild came to the magistracy on 29 March 1629 to complain about infractions of their statutes, which foresaw power sharing between “the Roman, as also the Greek and Saxon religion,” and which called for the contribution of the “third grosz” for the upkeep of an altar at the Uniate Church of the Holy Trinity.’? This latter provision seems to have been ignored of late; worse, many of the “Ruthenian brethren” had remained loyal to the Orthodox Church. In view of this, the “cobblers of the Roman religion” (the Saxons seem to have remained mostly silent here) petitioned the fathers of the Order of St. Basil (the Uniate monastic order) to impose far-reaching church discipline upon the Ruthenian guild brothers, demanding that none of their brethren of the Greek religion be present at church services of the schismatics, baptize their babies there, get married, make confession and take Communion, bury

their dead there; rather, everything that belongs to the church service and the sacraments—they are not to have any of that there, but they are to perform everything in the [Uniate] Church of the Holy Trinity that is in union with the Roman Church. And if any brother of our guild of the Greek religion should be discovered and noticed, and what is more [if he be] evidenter convictus [manifestly demonstrated] to have received any sacra-

ments in that church, or had been at services, he must... give half a stone of wax in the guild... which penalty is to go to the Church of the Holy Trinity.

But note that it was the Roman brethren who brought the petition (not any Uniate brethren, assuming there were some), and it was the “fathers” (Uniate monks), not the brethren or the magistracy, who heard it and approved it. There may in fact have been some priestly ventriloquizing going on here.

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On 28 March 1672, the newly incorporated furriers’ guild came before the magistracy with complaints against the hatmakers’ guild. Part of the matter had to do with the crossing of monopoly boundaries: the hatmakers—so the complaint alleged—were not satisfied with making their allotted “Hungarian hats” (magierki) but were also making fur-lined caps, which was the sole purview of the furriers. But more interesting for us here is the allegation that there were more schismatics than Romans among the cap makers, and that Rus even had its own box: “They divide [their collections] into two contributions, one to the altar of the Bernardine fathers, the other to the [Ruthenian] church, and since there are more schismatics than Romans, the greater contribution goes to the schismatics, and there is the adornment, rather than at the Roman altar. And quod majus [what is more], there is no [other] guild in which Rus had its separate box, and the Romans theirs.” The furriers, by contrast, shoul-

dered all the obligations of serving their altar at the Roman Catholic Holy Trinity through common contributions to one box by “Romans, Disuniates, and foreigners.” ”? In any event, imposing confessional discipline upon the Orthodox tradesmen and artisans, from without or within the guild, seems to have met with only mixed success. A complaint brought in 1666 by the cap makers’ guild against one of their own, a certain Piotr Poskrobysz Koztowski, alleged that he caused disruptions “from the Greek side” during guild meetings (“he reviles the brethren and shames them with dishonoring words”) and that he did so by shouting, “Why should we support the Catholic church? We have our Orthodox [or Uniate?] church and our brotherhood. We prefer to give our money there.””* Kozlowski was most likely Orthodox, but we should not rule out such vociferous defense of Uniate difference; we will find it in other contexts, too. He used the ambiguous term cerkiew, which could refer to either a Uniate or an Orthodox church. As the guild altars became more and more uniquely Roman Catholic, compromise solutions became ever more elaborate. The weavers, who over their history continued to have a strong Lutheran presence with provisions to give masters of “the Augsburg religion” access to power within the guild, noted somewhat laconically in articles presented to the Wilno Roman Catholic Chapter on 8 October 1604 that, for the sake of unity in the guild, “master craftsmen of the various religions” [mistrzowie réznego nabozenstwa] had agreed to give from their dues “the third grosz” to the church box of the Catholic religion for the upkeep of the guild altar at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene. A penalty of one grosz to the church box was to be imposed upon any master or journeyman who did not attend Mass “without a proper reason.””° Similarly, the red- and black-leather tanners, in articles confirmed by the magistracy on 27 November 1614, had agreed to receive into the guild “whoever should demand this of them... making no distinction in religion or nation, so long as they be of good birth.” They saw no contradiction, however, in establishing only one, Roman Catholic, guild altar: Since every brotherhood has its beginning in the Lord God and His saints, therefore we must first strive that his grace the father prior of the Church of St. George, together with

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his brothers of that convent and his elders, whomever it befits, might allow us to have, as it was previously before the fire [of 1610], our special chapel in that Church of St. George, in which the brothers of this trade might have their church services according to the determination of those fathers.’°

In this case, no provision was made for a penalty for absence from the Mass. By 1627, as we have seen in the articles for the goldsmiths, what was originally a penalty for absence from the Mass had now become an institutionalized system of buying out for the brethren of another religion.’’ The cap makers and furriers, in articles approved by the magistracy on 3 December 1636, went further in relieving non-Catholics from altar service. The guild statute shared power between two elders of the Roman and two of the Greek religion. It did not attempt to specify whether the term “Greek religion” was limited to the Uniates, but it did free the Greek side from Catholic religious obligations: As far as the altar is concerned, which is at the Bernardine Fathers, only the Romans are

to take care of it, and if anyone from the Roman side should not come to a Mass for the dead, he must be subject to the same penalty as was named above. But the Greeks, since they have their own other rite, are to be free from caring for the altar, according to their privileges and our decrees.’”*

This was an unusual provision; most of the other statements sought to find some means of imposing on the whole multiconfessional guild some sort of service to a Roman Catholic altar.

In 1636, the goldsmiths reiterated the provision allowing “those of various religion” to buy out of their obligations to the guild altar at the Jesuits’ Church of St. John. The fee remained 3 zi.’° In articles approved by the magistracy on 28 May 1639, the weavers, who in 1604 had simply imposed a penalty upon all for absence from the guild Mass, now adopted the institution of buying out for masters, their wives, and their journeymen “of a different religion”: the price was 1 zl per quarter for the master and 12 gr for ajourneyman (itis unclear what the price was to be for the master’s wife). Here we encounter a limitation that would be placed time and again upon the practice of buying out: a guild member might absent himself from various religious observances connected with the brotherhood’s altar, but he must participate in funeral services for a brother.®°

In articles approved by the magistracy on 3 December 1663, the glaziers’ guild provided both for a general penalty for the absence (apparently of Catholics) from service to the guild altar at the Church of the Bernardine Fathers (6 Lithuanian gr; 3 gr if the offender should arrive when the Mass was half over). But it also established a far-reaching system of buying out for “every brother who is of another religion and not of the Roman Catholic.” A payment of two zi would free him “from all church obligations, that is from the Holy Mass, both the fourth-weekly and the quarterly, as well as from going with candles for the elevation and for processions, with the exception of funerals.”**

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An extension of the system of penalties—eventually even of the institution of buying out of church obligations—to Roman Catholics may suggest some further loosening of confessional discipline within the guilds. In articles of 1663 approved by the magistracy, the locksmiths (who numbered Lutherans among their masters) placed a penalty of one Lithuanian kupon “anyone... but especially of the Saxon religion... who did not come” to the quarterly Mass at the Church of St. John. Similarly, “both Poles and Germans” were to be fined for each absence from a public procession, including Corpus Christi.** By 28 May 1664, when articles for the coopers’ guild were approved by the magistracy, the system of penalties had been reformulated as a provision for buying out that all could use: But if any brother, being of another religion and not the Roman Catholic, refuses to perform church service, he is to give 5 Lithuanian k to the masters’ box. And whoever—even if he is of the Roman Catholic religion—should give 5 zi on account of his obligations, he is to

be free from all [other] Church duties.*?

“On account of his obligations” (dla swoich zabaw)—the implication is that these were secular, perhaps professional demands upon the Catholic guild member’s time. But on 3 March 1675, the elders of the locksmiths’ guild—among whom we find fractious husband Lutheran Hans Pecelt the younger—put their signatures to an agreement that stated simply: At the quarterly gathering of all the brethren, both of the elder and of the younger table, there was a harmonious determination between the brethren of the Catholic religion and the brethren of the Saxon faith—that the brethren of the Saxon profession ought and are obliged to go to our guild altar, which is in the Church of St. John, for all obligations: that

is, for funerals, for Masses, and offerings, and other services according to the granted privileges and rights given to this locksmiths’ guild by their majesties the Kings of Poland, Our Gracious Lords.**

No mention was made in this short announcement of any provisions for penalties or buying out for those who did not wish to attend. Finally, the cobblers—in articles affirmed by the magistracy on g July 1689—seem to have

ruled out compromise. The statute was presented by three annual elders, one Roman Catholic (Jan Skiba), one Ruthenian (Andrzej Fiedorowicz, who may have been Uniate or Orthodox), and one Saxon (Michal Fratesztela). In it, the elders, in the name of the guild, established that brethren of all three confessions were to attend regular Masses at the Dominicans’ Church of the Holy Spirit and to take part in public processions, including Corpus Christi. The penalty for any journeymen and apprentices of all three “nations” who were absent from the—apparently weekly—guild Mass at the altar of St. Mary, the One of Three, was set at 3 zi per quarter. Although the guild explicitly received journeymen “of whatever

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religion,” it also set store in discipline in both the secular and religious spheres and penalties

for broader infractions greater than those for simple absence from the Mass or Corpus Christi processions: Every journeyman, namely of those three nations, who would disdain the current articles and statutes, and would not come to the church for Masses, votives, and services, and would not behave according to these articles and be disobedient to the elders, such a one is not to have a place and work with any master; to the contrary, he is to be turned out from the city from community with the others, lest he scandalize them, and if he should not leave the city, he is to be taken to prison.*°

These requirements place the cobblers in 1689 at one end of a continuum—at least as reflected in the desiderata of the statutes—between rigorous confessional discipline and compromise.

Stricture and Laxity Although there were certainly some attempts in the later seventeenth century to place limits upon participation in guild life similar to those established for the magistracy after 1666 (i.e., by excluding all but Roman Catholics and Uniates), the confessional landscape of the workplace remained highly mixed and required constant attention to demands of conformity and negotiations of compromise. I find some of the things left unsaid highly significant here. Two sets of articles for the haberdashers’ guild confirmed by the magistracy on 3 November 1688 declared that, since “all guild gatherings are established for no other ends than for the praise of God,” the haberdashers’ brotherhood would undertake “according to old customs and rites” to maintain its church service with the Bernardines and to participate in all public professions ordered by the magistracy. The guild altar was to be, as always, in a Roman Catholic church, in this case the Bernardines’ St. Anne, “according to ancient customs and rites.” No further mention of confession was made anywhere in the articles, either in the election of elders or in the reception of journeymen and apprentices. Nor was there any mention of Corpus Christi obligations; it is not necessarily the case that these would have been among those imposed by the magistracy, which was more interested in seeing the guilds turn out to receive arriving dignitaries and for annual mustering of guild units in a paramilitary exercise.®° And yet, through all this, the guild seems quietly to have continued to organize its life around parity arrangements for power sharing among the confessions. Both documents were presented by two annual elders, Henryk von Bengin and Tobiasz Konrad Krumbeink. We have met them before. I know nothing further about von Bengin and have argued (on the basis of his absence in key Protestant lists) that he was Roman Catholic. The rolls of Lutheran offerings tell us that Krumbeink (Krumbein) was a

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member of the Augsburg confession.*’ In other words, old habits of parity representations obtained.

The goldsmiths’ articles from around the same time (approved by the magistracy on 30 November 1687) were equally circumspect about religious duties and confessional politics in the guild. Money was to be collected from members for deposit “in the guild box for both

church and guild needs.” This was certainly a reference to the goldsmiths’ altar at the Jesuits’ St. John, although this fact was not made explicit. The guild was to take part in “public acts,”

but no mention was made of Corpus Christi. And although nothing was said about how elders were to be elected, this guild also quietly continued to adhere to old ways: the articles were presented for confirmation by two annual elders, Stanislaw Danielewicz and “Lorens Willatestejn.” Danielewicz was no doubt Roman Catholic—his name appears on no Lutheran or Calvinist lists, and he baptized a daughter in the Catholic church on 24 February 1672; “Willatestejn” was the Lorentz Willantz who contributed to Lutheran coffers in the years 1667—-1691.**

What we see here, I suspect, is a quiet adherence to old patterns of power sharing across the confessions and ethnicities, even in the period following the 1673 royal decree that had sought penalties for the election of dissidents or Disuniates to the office of elder in any of the Wilno guilds. Other documents suggest that the minimum requirement in all these cases— guild support of a Roman Catholic altar, sometimes also presence at the Mass—remained a bone of contention and was often only grudgingly fulfilled. On 26 September 1669, Maciej Klarowski, the syndik (legal representative) of the Wilno Bernardine monastery at St. Anne’s, brought a complaint in the name of Father Stefan Romanowicz, the custodian of that monastery (clerics, like women and minors, could not represent themselves in court), against Piotr Szretter and Henryk Fonbegen, Lutheran masters of the haberdashers’ guild. The allegation was that they had obtained under false pretenses (i.e., they lied) a certificate of presence at that quarter’s Mass from that same Father Romanowicz.*° The case dragged on fora bit, reaching the assessor’s court of King Michat Korybut Wisniowiecki, who, on 26 November 1669, imposed a penalty of a stone of wax for the guild altar in the Bernardine church for absence from the Mass. He also required that the guild elect elders—not necessarily Roman Catholic!—who would see to its church obligations.®° On g August 1670, in accordance with the royal decree of the preceding year, an agreement was reached whereby Szretter would pay (no doubt in the name of all the other dissidents mentioned in the earlier documents) 150 zl in three installments to the guild box. All master haberdashers, Catholics and dissidents, were to attend the quarterly Masses at the Church of St. Anne; but—and here we see continuing “give” in the strictures—journeymen were to be free from that obligation.** Clearly, some Lutheran guild members, and probably also some Orthodox, continued to attempt to do no more than the minimum of service to the Roman Catholic guild altar—and not even that if they could get away with it—focusing whatever religious life they had on their own churches and religious brotherhoods. A complaint brought a century later, in 1766, by Roman Catholic carpenters against their Lutheran brethren offers a nice picture of what

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could be seen as either a stalemate or a compromise. The Catholic brethren addressed the Lutherans: “Although you are summoned to brotherhood Masses, you do not come. And even if a few of you do sometimes appear at the brotherhood Mass, you do not make the proper adoration of God, rather you wander about the chapels, and in your consultations you forge [conspiracies] for the betrayal of the Roman religion and for its contempt.”?” And yet the conflicts and the negotiations again reveal a picture of coexistence of the confessions and religions, even in the highly charged and competitive context of the workplace. Work brought

members of all the confessions into one guild house (where rules of secrecy vis-a-vis the outside applied), on occasion in uniform guild dress under one guild banner in public processions. And even if they did not always show the proper respect, it sometimes brought non-Catholics into the presence of Catholic devotions, if not on a weekly or quarterly basis for the celebration of the Mass, then at least for funeral services for deceased brethren.

~CHAPTER ELEVEN ~

Going to Law: The Language of Litigation

mong the central sources throughout this study have been the acta of Wilno’s various

Ane forums and in particular the complaints, or protestations, that Vilnans were so quick to bring against each other—neighbor against neighbor, in-law against in-law, spouse against spouse. I have urged caution in their interpretation. Here I examine the question of Vilnans before the law and look more closely at the rhetoric of the linguistic artifacts their litigation left behind. Even if not all could afford to go to court, the habit of constant vigilance over property, health, and honor was central to the attitudes of many. One of the arguments of this book is that “constant litigation” was one of the things that made this highly mixed society function relatively smoothly and relatively peacefully: the society that litigates together stays together.* I begin with a more detailed examination ofa protestation we have encountered in a number of contexts by now.* On 2 December 1675, Wilno burgher Jerzy Gross came—“in his unbearable harm and insult”—to the city magistracy with a complaint against a certain Dorota Zebertowska, widow of Hrehor Tomkowid, also burgher of Wilno, alleging that, when the accused, having rented through a certain contract a dwelling place in the house [at Castle Street 2.05] of Lord Andrzej Hoffman, burgher of Wilno and fatherin-law protestantis [of the plaintiff], and living there for no little time, having forgotten the fear of God and the severity of common law [zapomniawszy bojazni Bozej i surowosci prawa

pospolitego], as well as the honor of the widow estate, began to lead a dissolute life, then the plaintiff, guarding the honor of his father’s house, that such deviations not occur in their dwelling, asked various friends, especially noble Lady Rychter, wife of a burgomaster of Wilno and sister of the accused, as well as the renowned Lord Jakub Leszczewicz,

burgher and merchant of Wilno, as her curator, that they might deign confidenter [confidentially] to rebuke her for her evil and dissolute life. And the accused, having conceived a resentment on this account [zawziqwszy stad rankor] against the plaintiff, frequently re-

viled and shamed him, diminished his honor and good reputation [lzyla, sromocila, na honorze 1 dobrej reputacyjej ujmowata]. And although she was rebuked for this more than

GOING TO LAW: THE LANGUAGE OF LITIGATION 275

once by her friends, still she did not cease; rather, even more, postpositis legum poenis [with

disregard for the penalties of the law], being constant in her obstinacy, in the current year, one thousand six hundred and seventy-five, the first day of December, having found out about the arrival of the plaintiff in his father’s house, wishing to disrespect him all the

more, and having accomplices for that purpose, she came to the chamber of the aforementioned Lord Hoffman [przyszta do izby pomienionego Pana Hoffmana], where, without giving the least cause [bez dania Zadnej najmniejszej przyczyny], having given herself leave to

use licentious words [slowa wszeteczne], she reviled, shamed, and disrespected the aforementioned plaintiff with dishonorable words, harmful of good reputation [Izyla, sromocila 1 stowy nieuczciwemi, stawie dobre szkodzqcemi, despektowata]. And what is more, not being

satisfied with this, having cast her entire shame to the side, having lifted up her skirts (si licet cum venia dicere [if one may be given leave to say so]), she uncovered her body up to the

waist with great abuse and derision [urqganie i nasmiewanie]. Furthermore, she made a threat and a boast upon his health [odpowiedz i pochwatke na zdrowie], promising to do this

[i.e., to harm the health of the plaintiff] through certain individuals, wherever they might encounter him. Therefore, feeling “reviled, disrespected, and shamed” (zelzony, zdespektowany i zesromocony), and being disinclined to suffer and bear further “disrespect and disgrace” (despektizhanbienie),

and wishing to reserve for himself free access to litigation (salvam actionem) in the matter of the widow Tomkowidowa’s dissolute life, the plaintiff presented his complaint for inscription in the books of the Wilno bench. This document is a typical example of the protestations (called in Polish protestacje, mani-

festacje, or simply zaloby, complaints), with which the litigious populace of the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth filled the court records of all jurisdictions in their attempts to defend property, health, and honor. Like others, it offers a nice combination of highly formulaic language and a glimpse of living individuals and their particular material and social environments. The language and the goals were everywhere the same—from the venues of the szlachta before the land and castle courts through the city magistracy and the suburban horodnictwo to the several courts overseen by the Roman Catholic Chapter, which, taken together, made up the patchwork quilt of jurisdictions and legal systems of Wilno and other early modern Polish-Lithuanian cities. Seventeenth-century Vilnans were no less litigious than the rest of their contemporary compatriots. In this chapter, I place Vilnans of the various confessions and religions before the courts. I provide first a rhetorical lexicon of the early modern protestation, based solely on the acta of the various Wilno courts. I then turn to the question of the swearing of oaths in court and

then of Jews before Christian courts. Throughout I ask what such documents can tell us about the interactions of the confessions and religions in this highly mixed city. How were the confession and religion of the litigants treated before Wilno’s many courts of law?

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“With Great and Inconsolable Lamentation... ” “Z wielkim a nieutolonym zalem ...” Thus did the citizens of Wilno preface their complaints—however specific they may have been to individual cases—in a language replete with commonplaces. In fact, the prelude to the complaint was itself a key formula, used to establish the gravity of the situation. Lutheran Jerzy Gross had complained “in his unbearable harm and insult.”? A Ruthenian merchant of Wilno, Afanas Iwanowicz, and wife, feeling insulted by his sister-in-law in 1671—she was Marianna Safianowiczowna, wife of Uniate merchant and councillor Aleksander Ihnatowicz, and both couples lived in the same house at Market Square 4.05 (that was the problem!)—brought their protestation “with great and inconsolable lamentation.”* But most litigants simply “complained and protested solenissime [most solemnly],”° or “quam solenissime [as solemnly as possible],”° or they “complained and brought a solemn manifestation.”’ The point, of course, was to make it clear that the plain-

tiff appeared before the court because the potential harm to prosperity, health, and honor (and most often it was just a question of honor) was so serious that he or she simply could not remain silent. The rest of the protestation sought to justify this basic claim. I have marked some of the recognizable commonplaces that Jerzy Gross employed in making his case. Let us look at a few of them more closely.

“Having Forgotten the Fear of God and the Severity of Common Law”

Many protestations began with some version of the phrase zapomniawszy bojazni bozej i surowosci prawa pospolitego, the purpose of which was to establish the key fact that, in the opinion of the plaintiff, the actions about to be described were crimes against both divine and human law. Note that this was solely the opinion of the plaintiff—not necessarily that of

the court or even of the court of public opinion, which the plaintiff sought to influence through his or her protestation. A few examples will help to establish the status of this commonplace. Dorota Zebertowska Tomkowidowa had forgotten “the fear of God and the severity of common law, as well as the honor of the widow’s station” when she began to lead her dissolute life.* Two Tatar brothers, the princes Roman and N.N. (the space was left blank in the recorded document) Dawidowicz, had forgotten “the fear of God and the severity of common law as it is written against such audacious and reckless people” when they attacked a poor Tatar by the name of Jan Bohdano-

wicz in his temporary dwellings in the Wilno suburbs beyond Sharp Gate in 1680.” Stanistaw Szwabowicz, a Wilno burgher and butcher, had “no regard for the severity of common law as it is written against audacious and criminal people” when, in 1676, he alleged that his neighbor, Barttomiey Strokowski, a Wilno burgher and carpenter, had stolen a dog and then used that allegation as a pretext for raising a tumult, apparently also in a suburban neighborhood.” Kazimierz Barszczewski and Pawel Czajkowski, annual elders of the gray- and white-leather tanners’ guild had forgotten “the fear of God and the severity of common law as it is written

GOING TO LAW: THE LANGUAGE OF LITIGATION 277

against such audacious, reckless, and licentious people” when, in 1675, they started a tavern brawl against Tomasz Gajdziewicz, a member of the black- and red-leather tanners’ guild. Gajdziewicz had had the misfortune to choose this watering spot in the intramural bricked house of magistrate Grzegorz Stroczynski when he decided that he would like to “treat his auntie to a vodka” (chcqc ciotkq swojq wodka traktowac). The fight, apparently motivated by the

desire to protect guild secrets from professional competitors, ended badly enough—“if Mr. Stroczynski himself and other people, including the aunt of the plaintiff, had not come to his rescue, they certainly would have crippled him”—and the ruckus led to a season of street fights between members of the two guilds.** And the examples can be multiplied. In no instance do we know whether the allegations of criminal activity were in any way accurate; indeed, only in rare instances do we discover whether the given forum was convinced that the alleged activities merited action. The purpose here was for the plaintiff— often in a sort of preemptive strike, since he or she might soon be the object of a reprotestation—to influence opinion: that of the court but also of the public, since the court books often functioned a bit like a newspaper. “Perhaps Having Some Sort of Resentment from of Old”

“Snadz majac z dawna jakis rankor.” It was important to address the motivation of the accused, but that motivation should be unjustifiable or at least inexplicable—in any event, one that worked to increase the accused’s culpability. Dorota Zebertowska Tomkowidowa had conceived her resentment against Jerzy Gross because he had admonished her not to lead a dissolute life (stad rankor, thence the rancor).** But mostly the actions of the accused were simply groundless. Bartlomiej Strokowski charged that Stanislaw Szwabowicz had made his allegations of canine thievery “without having any cause against us, his neighbors, rather on account of some resentment conceived against us, who knows why.”*? In 1678, Symon Romanowicz, a Roman Catholic member of the Wilno bench, made allegations of witchcraft against Mr. Jan Gilewicz, merchant and burgher of Wilno (Horse Street 8.02), “who knows for what cause” (nie wiedzie¢ z jakiej przyczyny).** And so on.

Consequently, the complainants, as the objects of verbal and physical abuse, often described the course of events as one of great surprise and themselves as unsuspecting (and, of course, entirely innocent) victims. The poor Tatar Jan Bohdanowicz was sitting quietly in his temporary dwelling just outside Sharp Gate, “not expecting anything bad, and not giving anyone even the least reason or cause for an altercation” when he was attacked.** And Dorota

Zebertowska revealed her disrespect for Jerzy Gross “without giving the least cause.”*° “With Acrimonious Words, Harmful to Good Reputation and Honor, They Reviled, Shamed the Plaintiff”

“Slowamt uszczypliwemi, stawie dobre 1 honorowt szkodzqcemi, lzyli, sromocili.” Thus did Jan

Bohdanowicz bring his charges against the brothers Roman and N.N. Dawidowicz. The

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allegation contained many of the fixed phrases we find in various combinations throughout the protestations against loss of honor. The verbs “to revile and shame” (Izy¢ i sromoci¢) occurred in tandem with great frequency. In fact, we meet them again in the following sentence of the same protestation: “And the accused Dawidowiczes, not satisfied with this, trusting in their wealth, having reviled, shamed [lZywszy, sromoctwszy] the complainant, a man in no wise

guilty.”*” Jan Engler, a confectioner hired in 1678 by Mr. Jan Krzysztof Donat, burgher and merchant of Wilno, to help make candies and marzipans, had the temerity to challenge the accuracy of his employer’s scales, whereupon Donat, “on account of the resentment caused by his checking of the scales .. . reviled, shamed him with acrimonious words [stowy uszczypliwemi] ..., calling him the son of this and that sort of mother, and what is more, showing contempt for the holy Roman Catholic faith and deriding it, called him a popish dog.”*® In 1663, merchant of Wilno Daniel Hartman, “perhaps having from of old some sort of rancor,” upon encountering the in-no-wise guilty merchant of Wilno Jakub Desaus II (Castle Street 1.26), “immediately began to revile and to shame him, using words greatly harmful to good fame [stowy wielce szkodzqcemi dobrej stawie].”*° Wilno patrician and secretary of the city scales

Cyprian Gawlowicki (whose father’s house was at Rudniki Street 15.08) went in 1663 to the house of Kazimierz Leszkiewicz, merchant and burger of Wilno (across the street at Rudniki Street 12.11), during the latter’s absence, and, employing “acrimonious words, harmful of good fame [stowy uszczypliwemti, dobre stawte szkodzqcemi],” he “reviled, shamed, and deprived of all good reputation [zelzyl, zesromocil i wszelkiej dobrej reputacyjej odsqdzit]” both Leszkiewicz’s

wife and his mother-in-law, “calling them witches and dishonorable women.””° And one final example from the many that could be cited on this topic. When students of the Jesuit Academy, accompanied by their prefect, Father Jerzy Inkiewicz, S.J., came to the Glass Street dwelling of goldsmith Jozef Barczynski to complain about an act of violence committed upon one of the students by the goldsmith’s wife, they were dismissed without honor. As they were departing, Barczynski “reviled, shamed, and disrespected (them) [Izyt, sromocit, despektowal] as he saw fit, whatever the saliva brought to his tongue.”**

“Whatever the saliva brought to his tongue” was (and is) a Polish expression meaning “whatever came to his mind, and in whatever order.”?? The point here was to portray the accused as guilty of verbal license. (Recall Dorota Zebertowska’s stowa wszeteczne, or “licentious

words.”)?? Afanas Iwanowicz had brought his complaint in 1671 against his sister-in-law, Marianna Safianowiczowna, for the acrimonious words with which she “reviled and shamed as she saw fit” the plaintiff and his wife, “whatever the saliva brought to her tongue” (including the more specifically recorded taunt that Mrs. Iwanowicz “ought rather to be selling whipping branches [wientki] in the public bath than to be making herself at home in the Safianowicz family house”).** Stowa uszczypliwe—which I have translated, somewhat inadequately, as “acrimonious words”—were so-called because they “nipped” (szczypac) at a person’s honor. Other complainants (such as Jerzy Gross) wrote, in a sort of rhyming parallel, of stowa nieuczciwe or “dishonoring words,” which might also serve as a translation of slowa uszczypliwe.*> Not all

GOING TO LAW: THE LANGUAGE OF LITIGATION 279

plaintiffs went into details about the content of the acrimonious or dishonoring words; some even switched into Latin—not to translate the offending language but to explain to the reader

or auditor that his or her gentle ears had been spared. But at times the complaints were somewhat more specific. Men were called “sons of this and that sort of mother””® or of a “dishonorable mother.”?” Men and women could be accused of witchcraft. And in the logic of the protestation, this charge could work equally well in either direction: you could go to court to accuse your neighbor of witchcraft, but you could also go to court to accuse your neighbor of accusing you of witchcraft (and thus of dishonoring you).*® Husbands com-

plained on behalf of wives whose heads had been uncovered’? or whom a neighbor had termed a murwa (a euphemism for whore).*° It is worth noting that Donat’s alleged taunting of his employee as a “popish dog” was

practically unheard of in protestations in multiconfessional seventeenth-century Wilno. Christian litigants were identified before the court by estate (e.g., “citizen of Wilno”) and by profession (e.g., “chamois tanner”) but never by confession. It is other types of documents— such as last wills and testaments and various church record books—that sometimes allow

me to assign confession: Jerzy Gross, Andrzej Hoffman, Jan Krzysztof Donat, and Daniel Hartman were Lutherans; Jakub Desaus II was a Calvinist; Jozef Barczynski, Symon Romanowicz, and Cyprian Gawlowicki were Roman Catholic; Aleksander Ihnatowicz was Uniate (although his wife, Marianna SafianowiczOwna, may well have been Orthodox); Afanas Iwanowicz was Uniate or Orthodox. But confession (again, with the exception of Donat’s case) was never an overt part of the complaints in which they were involved. Many complaints, as we have seen, occurred “in the family” (and we could include the complaint among Tatars in this general category), which may be one reason for the general lack of confessional taunting: the litigants frequently came from the same milieu. Confessional or religious identity played a role only in the litigations between larger groups of Vilnans that followed in the wake of infrequent anti-Jewish and anti-Calvinist riots.

“She Made a Boast and a Declaration of Vengeance against His Health”

“Pochwatke i odpowiedz na zdrowie uczynila.” Verbal abuse usually led at least to promises of

physical abuse, which could in turn become an argument for the acceptance of the protestation at court. It was under this general heading that Catholic furrier Bazyli Zawiski, who lived in the suburb beyond Troki Gate, had brought his complaint on 1 December 1676 against his Catholic wife, Agata Ginielewiczowna, alleging that she had conspired with her parents to steal his material goods, to ruin his health (na zdrowiu zgubi¢c), and to devastate his house: “Not being satisfied with this, and wishing simply to do away with him [z Swiata zgtadzi¢], the aforementioned daughter, Agatka Ginielewiczowna, gave her husband and the current plaintiff poison on two occasions, once in the vodka and a second time in the bigos [raz w gorzatce, drugi raz w bigosu], and if the Lord Most High and if Mr. Ubryk, the apothecary [gdyby wprzody

nie Pan Najwyzszy 1 nie Pan Ubryk, aptekarz], had not come to his aid, he would certainly

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have departed from this world together with his children.”?* Protestations often culminated in phrases like “not feeling certain of his health,” which then served as the crowning argument for the acceptance of the protestation by the court. For instance, on 13 November 1654, Lady Reina Weselowna, who lived in the street leading to the royal mill, made complaint against her husband, Sir Jacynt Strzalkowski, for hiding his wealth from her and for making “boasts against her health and that of her children”; “not being secure in her health, she submitted this account of hers for inscription into the books.” Fourteen days later, on 27 November 1654, the husband alleged before the same court that, “not wishing to oppose the female clamor [bialogtowskie hatasy],” he had felt compelled to withdraw from his wife’s house

and to seek abode in “foreign corners.” And above all, “not being secure in his health,” he submitted his account for inscription in the books of the reverend Wilno chapter.? Odpowiedz (what I have translated as “declaration of vengeance”— literally reply or answer,

an attempt to translate the German Absage or Absagebrief) was a contemporary legal term. It

referred to the declaration made by a wronged individual, together with his family and friends, that he intended to exact private punishment upon those who had harmed him. It was entered into the acts of the castle court by the aggrieved nobleman, and it warned the adversary “to beware of the answering opponent at home, in church, in the bath, in the open field, eating, sleeping, on the road and in every place, because he will have his vengeance upon him, and he will sit upon his neck.” Although a sanctioned and practiced aspect of the legal system of the nobility in the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, these boasts against the health of one’s adversary were never granted legality in the city courts of Magdeburg law, and the odpowiedz eventually disappeared from the land and castle court books of the gentry.?? But by the seventeenth century the concept had spread from the szlachta to lower levels of society, and the allegation of all sorts of answers, taunts, and boasts was a standard element of the protestation at all social levels.

“She Came to the Chamber of the Aforementioned Lord Hoffman”

When she sought an opportunity to show her disrespect for Jerzy Gross, Dorota Zebertowska “came to the chamber of the aforementioned Mr. Hoffman” [przyszta do izby pomienionego Pana Hoffmana] (Gross’s father-in-law). The scene of the crime was routinely described

with some precision: it was quite often in or around a particular house, and the participants in the altercation were often neighbors (renters of dwellings in the same house); frequently they were related by blood or marriage. In this particular case, Zebertowska was a tenant in the house of Mr. Hoffman, where the alleged crime took place, and the plaintiff was the house owner’s son-in-law. A large number of the complaints were thus domestic. We frequently find husbands and wives accusing each other of disrespect and beatings, husbands defending wives shown disrespect by neighbors and relatives, feuds among in-laws, disputes between neighbors and their landlords or between two neighbors of one landlord. Even in some cases of strife between seemingly unrelated citizens, chance information from

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disparate sources reveals a family tie. For example, after Roman Koltczan complained against Stanistaw Dziedzinski, the men turned out to be brothers-in-law. In any event, other docu-

ments often tell us that attempts by plaintiffs to distance themselves from the accused and thus to remove any possible reasons for discord belonged to the realm of fiction. “Espectally Since Honor and Life Walk with Equal Step”

“Zwhaszcza kiedy honor et vita pari passu ambulant.”?* The complainants often felt moved to

point out that loss of honor was just as dire as loss of health and life. At times it seemed that the plaintiff had added loss of honor to a complaint essentially about physical abuse because the physical harm might not have been truly life-threatening. Allegations concerning physical abuse frequently ended in the conditional mood with statements suggesting that had it

not been for certain events, the accused certainly would have done great harm to the plaintiff.?° I do not mean to imply that complaints of physical violence were necessarily exaggerated or that people were not threatened with violence in daily life. Rather, I mean to point

out that some plaintiffs revealed insecurity on this issue and, most important, that in fact these complaints were as much about words as about deeds. Injured honor was frequently the sole or main reason for going to court with a protestation.*° “Wishing to Bring Criminal Charges about This Entire Matter”

“Chcac o to wszytko criminaliter czyni¢.”?” With this and similar phrases, plaintiffs con-

cluded their protestations, announcing that the reason they had come to the court was to open the door to future litigation (cf. Jerzy Gross’s salva actio). But in fact such statements may have been the end of litigation for most complainants. The point often seems not to have been to take your neighbor (or spouse, or in-law) to court but to make the first claim to innocence (by alleging the suffering of injury). A skeptic will find frequent evidence of some shared guilt—or at the very least some sense of vulnerability to accusations of guilt—on the part of the complainants themselves. In my reading of the books of the Wilno magistracy, I have encountered very few protestations about which we learn something of the outcome. One such exception may serve as a cautionary tale for those who would use these documents as historical sources. On 28 June 1646, Polonia Siemionowna, wife of Ruthenian councillor Stefan Krasowski, came to the Wilno bench to complain in the name of her husband, who was licking his wounds at home in bed (in the family house at Horse Street 5.02). That day Krasowski had attended some sort of dinner party at the home of Uniate burgomaster Bogdan Zakrzewski in the Wilno suburb of Lukiszki (a very short walk from the walls of the old town), where members of the urban elite had their dachas to which they would retreat from their town houses. (Zakrzewski’s intramural residence at Horse Street 8.08 made him a neighbor of the Krasowskis from across the way.) While Krasowski was sitting there peacefully with the burgomaster and the other guests, a certain Jan Korzenkowski, also a Wilno councillor, together with his accomplices,

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Bazyli Sielawa and Jan Ohurcewicz, attacked him “without giving any reason, first with acrimonious words, harmful to his reputation and honor [stowy uszczypliwemi, stawie i honorowt jego

szkodzqcemi]” and then with blows. Wishing to finish him off, Sielawa chased his prey through

the open fields from Lukiszki to Wilno, and he would easily have carried out his intentions “if a common man [pospolity cztowiek] living in the suburb had not stopped his efforts.” As was usual in cases of alleged physical abuse, the bench sent delegated officers of the court to Krasowski’s house to perform a conspectio of the victim’s wounds, which was then appended to the written protestation: “We saw Mr. Stefan Krasowski, lying in bed, moaning; on his right elbow a little sword wound and a bruise around it; also a bruise on his left elbow; next to his right eye, on his forehead, signs of... or of blows. He himself complained that he had received blows all over his shoulders. He alleged that this had occurred at the hands of Mr. Bazyli Sielawa, the son-in-law of Mr. Korzenkowski, and of Mr. Korzenkowski himself.”?®

But here, atypically, we learn something about the outcome of the litigation. In a decree of 25 September 1646 from the Wilno bench, we discover that a wounded Korzenkowski had brought similar charges against Krasowski (which protestation I have not encountered in the extant books) and that the court had in fact found for Korzenkowski. In its decision, the bench ordered that Krasowski apologize to Korzenkowski before a public session of the Wilno magistracy; that he go to Korzenkowski’s home “together with good people” and that there, in the presence of “friends” (presumably those of Korzenkowski but perhaps also his own circle), he make a deprecatio (prayer for pardon) to Korzenkowski and his wife; that he “sit” in the town hall (i.e., in its jail) for a quarter of a year from the date of the decree; that he give up his functions as town councillor for that same period; that he pay 200 zi to the barber-surgeon for his treatment of Korzenkowski’s wounds plus 50 zl in damages; and finally, that—under a penalty (walata) of 100 talers (halfto the magistracy and the other half to the offended party)—he not brag and boast of his evil deed.° This case highlights several important points: that few cases seem to have proceeded beyond the initial stage of registering the protestation; that there was probably another side, or other sides, to many protestations, some of which may have been recorded but are no longer extant; that the real issue was often obfuscated by the complainant, perhaps programmatically so; that crimes against honor—here, more specifically, the ban on boasting and bragging—were as serious as crimes against person and property; that a goal of the court was conciliation, a restoration of peace between feuding parties. And, most striking, the restoration of the “convicted criminal” to full participation in society. After paying his debt, Krasowski returned to the Wilno magistracy, rising to the office of burgomaster in 1650, just four years after the crime.*° He continued to add to his fortune, which survived the Muscovite invasion and occupation, and was the object of much litigation between Krasowski’s second wife, Katarzyna Maszanska, and his son Heliasz in the 1660s.** Once again, there is no indication that confession played a role in the altercation. The players in this case were all Ruthenian—most likely all Uniate—all of them from the Horse

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and Rudniki Street neighborhood. They were also brought together by ties of family and friends. This was once again a case of domestic violence, although none of this is made clear in the court documents directly concerned with the affair.

Swearing on All That Is Holy Members of all the confessions and religions of Wilno had occasion to come before all the Christian courts, not only the burghers’ magistracy and the nobles’ castle court or the suburban horodnictwo but also those of the autonomous legal jurisdictions ruled by institutions like the Roman Catholic Chapter, where canons served as secular judges. These smaller jurydyki were islands within the larger Magdeburg jurisdiction of cities and their suburbs.

Practically everyone (not just members of the szlachta but burghers, poor tailors, poor Tatars, and Jews) felt that they possessed honor and that it was necessary to defend it in the forum available to them. Anyone who went to law could be asked to read a prepared oath, or rota, swearing that something was or was not the case. In Polish-Lithuanian courts, the oath served as an independent proof. A judge would declare one of the litigants “closer to the proof” (blizszy do dowodu)—in other words, one of the parties in the judge’s opinion was in a better position to know the truth and to be able to substantiate the claim. That party would then be ordered to appear before the court, often in three days’ time, in the company of two co-jurors (samotrzec) and to read a prepared, usually quite detailed oath, ending with a phrase like “so help me God and the Holy Cross.”*? Here is one example, sworn before the Wilno magistracy on 12 January 1680: “I, Anastazja Klezina, swear by the Lord God almighty and all the Saints that, when I was serving Her Grace, Lady Zofia Ohurcewiczowna Szperkowiczowa, I did not wring the neck of her little doggie, and I did not throw it at the feet of that same Lady of mine, nor did I bewitch that same Lady in that manner or in any other. .. . May the Lord God and His Holy Passion help me, and if I have not sworn truly, may the Lord God kill me.”*?

Quite often the very imposition of the oath and the fear of giving false testimony were enough to bring feuding parties to some kind of agreement before the allotted three days had expired. I have found no reference to confession in such litigation in Wilno: all Christians were considered equally capable of swearing upon the same Lord and God. (Tatars accused by other Tatars had also been accused of “forgetting the fear of God.”) In giving oaths before Christian courts, individual Jews were forced to negotiate two sets of constraints. Jewish authorities sought to place limits on appearances of individual Jews before Christian courts (and to ban entirely recourse to those forums in litigation between Jews**). In a regulation of 1623, the Va'ad of the Chief Lithuanian Jewish Communities ruled that Jews must appear before the court of the local kahal before proceeding—as plaintiff or accused—to the Christian courts in litigations with non-Jews. If the Christian court should call a Jew to give his oath, “the shammash [Jewish bailiff] must not bring him to give his oath

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before he turns to the elders for permission. If they are convinced there is no desecration of the name of God in this matter, then they will permit him to take the oath. But if not, then they do not allow him to give his oath; rather they attempt to settle the matter as they see fit, by way of some sort of compromise.”*°? Once they came to give their oaths, the Jews of Poland-Lithuania were not usually subjected to the sorts of humiliations sometimes encountered in the courts of western Europe: they were not forced to stand on a shaky three-legged stool or on a swine’s skin—as the term rodale from royal privileges was sometimes translated—in attempts to make the witness stumble over his words and thus weaken his credibility. King Zygmunt IT August had made it clear that the rodale upon which Jews were to give their oath referred only to the Torah scroll.*° And, as we have seen, King Zygmunt III had extended to Jews the same sorts of freedoms from court appearances on Jewish holy days that Batory had accorded to the Ruthenians of Wilno for Greek holy days. Still, the simple formula “So help me God, who illumines and observes, as well as the Books of Moses”—a Jewish equivalent of the Christian “So help me God and the Holy

Cross”—was often elaborated into a lengthy series of self-imposed curses against the swearer in case of false testimony. Christian oaths, too, were becoming more and more baroque, as we see from Klezina’s simple testimony, but the Jews—whether by will or by necessity—were the leaders in this particular forensic competition. I have found two Jewish oaths in the Wilno archives. The more elaborate one was registered in October 1683, at the end of a lengthy trial before the Wilno Roman Catholic consistory in which two Jews had been charged by a Catholic priest with the theft of a ciborium—the chalice-shaped vessel with a lid that contained the sacramental bread of the Eucharist—from a village church in nearby Gieguzyn. The oath was offered before two officials of the Wilno consistory (the instigator, or prosecutor, and the notartus, or clerk) in the synagogue, apparently the main synagogue in Wilno, and upon the Torah scroll (supra rodale suum).*7 The oath is worth citing in its entirety for its rhetoric (the narrative parts of the consistorial books were kept primarily in Latin, although this sort of first-person testimony was cited in Polish), but also for the picture it offers us of Jews swearing on all that is holy before Christian authorities (although in Jewish space). The fact that this testimony was recorded in Polish in a lengthy Latin document suggests that these two Jews spoke Polish, at least well enough to read or repeat the words of a prepared oath: I, Aleksander Mojzeszowicz, and I, Lejbo Mojzeszowicz, do swear upon the One Lord God, God and Lord, who created heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible, that we were wrongfully accused by His Grace, Father Pawel Toloczko, deacon of Kowno, vicar of Gieguzyn [a nearby village], of theft of sacred property, which we never did; that we never urged Marcin Szlawanski to give us the keys to the church, nor did we bribe him, nor did we give him drink in order to take those keys away, nor did we cast any spells upon Marcin Szlawanski, as His Grace the Father deacon alleges, nor did we seek any means to bewitch Marcin Szlawanski; and we never opened the church in Gieguzyn, nor were we

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there, nor did we take any ciborium from it, nor did we dare, nor have we seen it. And that

we have sworn truthfully, let the Lord God help us. But if we have sworn falsely in any single point, may we be oppressed and destroyed by the Lord God, who, in the ark during the time of the flood, saved eight people; who burned the five cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, with infernal flame; who conversed with Moses from the burning bush; and who wrote the Law given unto Moses with his own finger on tablets of stone; let God destroy us, who destroyed Pharaoh in the Red Sea and led the Jews freely to the land flowing with milk and honey, who fed the Jews with manna for forty years in the desert; let God cast us into hell, soul and body; let the earth swallow us alive, which swallowed Dathan and Abiron; may the leprosy fall upon us that, having left Naaman, fell upon Gehazi; let us be removed from the Law that the Lord God gave to Moses on Mt. Sinai through the Ten Commandments; let there come upon us the punishment for perjurers that is described in the Five Books of Moses; let us be turned into stone, as Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt; let the bloody sickness never leave us. And if we swear falsely in any point at all, let us never come to the bosom of Abraham and let God shame and condemn us for eternity, may the Lord God help us.** The first, affirmative part of the testimony was detailed and specific to the case at hand. The second part—beginning here with “But if we have sworn falsely ”—which described what should happen to the co-jurors if they had given false evidence was a variation on the oath more judaico (“in the Jewish manner”) spelled out in the legal handbooks of the time.*? A footnote: the oath appears to have been accepted and the case dismissed. The second oath I have found was offered on 8 June 1676 by two elders of the community, Salomon Jakubowicz and Mojzesz Dawidowicz, and two bailiffs (the Polish word for the Jewish shammash was szkolnik), Mojzesz Jakubowicz and Lewek Izraelewicz. This time the proceedings were quite clearly not in the synagogue but before the Wilno castle court (Ruthenian: Na vrade hospodarskom" khrodskom" vilenskom). The testimony to which they were giving their oath was a census “of all the Jewish heads of both sexes, both male and female, children, servants .. . except for those not yet ten years of age and beggars too infirm to work”

who were living in the jurisdictions of the nobles’ castle court and that of the bishop of Wilno—in other words, all those who were not living in houses once subject to the burghers’ magistracy, where most of Wilno’s Jews lived. The Jewish census takers reported 922 “heads” in the houses subject to the castle court and 84 in those subject to the bishop. The Jewish authorities had been directed to conduct this census, the Jewish capitation (pogtowne zydowskie), by the twelfth constitution relating to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that had been promulgated at the Sejm of 1676.°° Their oath was a much more straightforward affair than that of the brothers Mojzeszowicz. They began by swearing “to the Lord God almighty who created heaven and earth” that they were presenting truthful evidence. And they concluded just as simply: “That we truthfully swear to this, may the Lord God aid us. And if untruthfully, let God kill us in soul and body.”>*

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Jews in Court Jewish authorities tried to mediate between individual Jews and Christian courts in order to avoid “the desecration of the name of God,” imposing penalties of exclusion from the community (herem) upon those who did not obey the community decrees (takanot) that all private litigation be conducted through the intermediary of the Jewish bailiff.°* Or at least that was the goal. Practice in Wilno, as elsewhere, was frequently different.>*? Christian judicial records of all jurisdictions were careful to set the stage—to state, almost always as a sort of preamble and in a piece of boilerplate (which could be in Latin, Polish, or Ruthenian), who had come before the court, when, in what matter, whether he had come personally or accompanied by a legal representative, and in whose name the legal actor was speaking. In theory (there were some exceptions, especially in the lesser jurydyki), single women, minors, and clergy could not be independent legal actors; they regularly appeared in court represented by curators (kuratorzy, curatores) and guardians (opiekunowie, tutores); of-

ten it was a relative or kinsman who played that role, as for example, in the protestation from 29 November 1663 of a wife against her husband: “I, Anastazja Aleksandrowiczowna, wife of Teodor Orzeszyc, with the presence of my brother, Lord Samuel Aleksandrowicz, protest

against Lord Teodor Orzeszyc, that...” The parties here were all Ruthenian Orthodox.°* Another example, this time from Lutheran circles, comes in the protestation of g May 1679 of a daughter (Marianna Ilis6wna) against her mother (Katarzyna Szmitowna) in which the husband was the legal actor: “I, Benedykt Bialonowicz, captain of His Royal Majesty, in my own name and that of my spouse as her conjugalis tutor [guardian by right of marriage]... ”°° Both of these cases were heard before the court of the magistracy. In spite of the attempts of Jewish authorities to limit the appearance of individual Jews in Christian courts, some Wilno Jews had direct recourse to the law, apparently unaided and unaccompanied by a community official; and they adhered to the same rules as the Christians—including following the rhetorical rules of the forensic genres. The evidence suggests several things: a willingness to ignore the takanot on occasion; some knowledge of the Lithuanian statute and Magdeburg law, an ability to use Polish for legal purposes; a desire to press private Jewish concerns before legal forums, some of which (such as the burghers’ magistracy) were seen as less than sympathetic to Jewish claims; and a high measure of faith in the various jurisdictions that made up the Commonwealth’s legal systems. The record of a court appearance in which Zelman Izakowicz sold the family shop to the Christian merchant Teodor Belmacewicz begins with the expected boilerplate, this time in Polish, indicating the presence of a legal actor speaking in his own behalf: “Appearing in person [osobiscie stanqwszy] before the noble office of the Wilno burgomasters and councillors, infidel [niewierny] Zelman Izakowicz, Jew of Wilno, voluntarily, out loud, manifestly, and in express words testified that... ”°° In another case, we find an analogous Latin introduction to a Polish narration. Two Jews had come to the court with a written protestation

against their Glass Street landlord, Lutheran ironsmith Hans Pecelt the younger, over

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damage to property and health: “Appearing in person [personaliter veniens] before the court and the acta of the Wilno bench, infidel [infidelis] Lazarz Michatowicz, Jew of Wilno, together with Foltyn, likewise Jew of Wilno [presented their complaint that... ].”°’ Here is another similar case with a Latin prelude and Polish testimony: “Appearing in person [personaliter veniens] before the acta of the noble Wilno court of the bench, infidel Mejer Jakubowicz, Jew of Wilno... presented his protestation in prepared written form [in parato scripto] ...”°® The fact that in these last two cases the Jewish plaintiffs offered written testimony suggests that

they, like many Christian litigants, had sought legal advice before coming to court. And probably that lawyer or notary had been a Christian, since these Jews appeared in court alone, without a Jewish intercessor such as the bailiff or the shtadlan [appointed Jewish intercessor before Christian courts and rulers]. This certainly does not mean they were unable to speak

Polish: Christians, too, even those who held office in the magistracy, sometimes presented their cases in parato scripto.”° These three cases happen to come from the courts of the magistracy. Similar cases can be cited from the castle court and the court of the Roman Catholic Chapter. A glance at one case from the acta of the Roman Catholic Chapter gives a hint of the slightly different rhetorical flavor of those books: On 23 March 1629, Szmula Mojzeszowicz, Jew of Wilno, complained against and related

about Mr. Jachim Kondratowicz, that, at the instigation and command of that Jachim, students of the [Jesuit] Academy of Wilno, having come to my dwelling, a half-blue fur cap lined with sable, demanding to retrieve some two k or so of Lithuanian gr, then he snatched and took the aforementioned fur cap, which cost forty Polish zt.°° The syntactic hiccups are typical of the books of this lower instance of the chapter court and may reflect miscues between the agitated oral presentation of the complainant and a court

notary who was having difficulties keeping up. In their dealings with their Christian neighbors and clients, Jews, like Christians, went to the court that had jurisdiction over the individuals involved in accordance with the principle actor sequitur forum ret (in essence, the plaintiff must go to the court of the accused).®* Here, too, the entry indicates that an individual, unaccompanied Jew was pressing his case before a Christian court, in this case, the Roman Catholic Chapter court. This jurisdiction, as we have seen, behaved like a secular court and ruled according to the Lithuanian statute in the cases it heard, which involved anyone living in houses subject to the chapter, regardless of the religion or confession of the litigants. The protracted case of one Jew and his heirs bolsters my argument that individual Jews functioned as independent legal actors in the courts of Wilno. On 17 March 1675, “infidel [perfidus] Fisiel Fajbisiewicz, Jew of Wilno,” appearing personally (veniens personaliter) before

the court of the Wilno bench, presented in writing his protestation against a burgher of Wilno. The document he offered for entry into the acts was a perfect example of this forensic

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genre in Polish. His complaint was against “illustrious Lord Stefan Radkiewicz, merchant and burgher of Wilno,” who, like most objects of a protestation, had in the current year on a certain day and month “forgotten the fear of God and the severity of the common law that applies to all.” The Radkiewiczes were Uniate in the seventeenth century. The family house was “in Market Square, going toward Sharp Gate, lying between the Procewicz Town House and the public Guests’ House” (i.e., somewhere in the neighborhood of Market Square

3.24-3.27).° The details in the case were these. When Fajbisiewicz came to Radkiewicz’s house to demand repayment of a debt of 30 zl, the merchant grabbed the Jew’s cane, with which he, as “a man of advanced years,” was propping himself up, and beat him “mercilessly with that cane,” such that he lost a cloth and two strings of pearls worth 120 zl. Radkiewicz then imprisoned Fajbisiewicz in his basement. The conspectio appended to the protestation confirmed the presence of wounds on Fajbisiewicz’s body consistent with those he claimed to

have received from Radkiewicz. The case dragged on through April with repeated summonses to Radkiewicz and his lawyer to appear before the bench and with a declaration of contumacia (here, an obstinate refusal to appear in court) against both of them for failure to comply.

By 21 June Fajbisiewicz had died—we are not told whether he died of his wounds—and the case was now being pursued by his widow. On that day, “infidel Sara Kopylewicz, the remaining widow of the deceased Fisiel Fajbisiewicz, Jew of Wilno,” appeared before the bench “with her curator [cum curatore suo], infidel Natan Jozefowicz... and with Bernat Kopylewicz, Jew of Wilno, as the guardian [tanquam tutoris] of the son.” Apparently Fajbisiewicz had appointed a curator and guardian on his deathbed, as was also the standard practice in Christian society. These individuals were not identified as bailiffs or any other kinds of officeholders in the Jewish community. Jozefowicz was most likely a friend or relative of the deceased, and Kopylewicz was apparently a brother-in-law. But note that although Faybisiewicz’s widow and orphan could have chosen Christians to represent them, the litigation was conducted by two Jews who formed part of their own network of friends and kin, and they appeared without the direct mediation of the Jewish elders or bailiffs. These were private individuals, part of a family network, pressing a claim to a debt owed to the estate they had inherited.°?

Jews, it seems, were in fact sometimes tempted to seek guardians and legal representatives among Christians. The Holy Jlewish) Community of Cracow (actually it was located in the suburban town of Kazimierz), for example, had decreed that “if a person desires to appoint gentile guardians [apotropsim], he must be opposed and all possible punishments applied.”°* The ban seems to have been ignored on occasion. I have found one curious Wilno

case in which a Jew employed Christian legal representation. This document from 1650 bore the general title “Dominus Jonas cum Polenikowicz.” This is itself worth noting, since the Jew Jonas received the honorific usually reserved for Christians—dominus, the Latin equivalent of

the Polish pan or “lord,” “sir,” or “Mr.” Indeed, the title was often reserved for nobles,

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especially in its Latin form. Perhaps Jonas belonged to the Jewish elite, which often felt a paradoxical kinship with and reliance upon the Christian elite.®° In any event, on 8 January of that year “infidel [he may have been a dominus, but he was still niewierny] Jew of Wilno Jo-

nas Mojzeszowicz, appearing himself in person and through his legal representative [plenipotent], the noble Simon Piotrowicz,”°° complained to the magistracy that he had not received payment from “Marcin Steckiewicz, alias Polenikowicz, merchant and burgher of Wilno,” for seven barrels of herring and a debt of 20 zt in cash, which together constituted a considerable sum. The magistracy found for the plaintiff and allowed him to take possession of Steckiewicz’s goods, “especially his house [lying] in certain limits on Smilinski Street behind [the Church of] St. Kazimierz” (perhaps our St. Kazimierz Alley).°’ Protestations provide detailed allegations about the behavior of Vilnans with glimpses into interpersonal relations. Cases where further litigation and other court proceedings are extant urge caution in the use of individual documents, but they also suggest their usefulness: the story offered by any given document may be one-sided, but still it is one side of a story. The rhetorical sameness of the documents points in at least two important directions. We need to be alert to the real cultural differences of the litigating parties that the uniformity of language may mask at times. But this sameness may also reflect the existence of a community that crossed lines of confession and religion. It was created in the process of constant litigation that both reflected real conflict and built some sense of trust in shared institutions and the customs surrounding them.

~CHAPTER TWELVE~

War, Occupation, Exile, Liberation (1655-1661)

n Sunday, 8 August 1655, between nine and ten in the morning—at least this is how one

Oo: eyewitness account had it—Muscovite armies entered through four of the Wilno gates, beginning an occupation of the city that lasted a little over six years.* According

to that account, Tsar Aleksey Mixajlovi¢é made his triumphal entry around noon on the next day:

He had more than sixty carriages before and behind him. In the middle there were three carriages covered in red and blue, twelve horses harnessed to each one, and three coachmen who had tall hats with black crosses, red and blue coats. These and all who followed progressed through the Sharp Gate [das Scharffe Thor, i.e., Ostra Brama]

to the castle. The tsar followed thereupon in an exquisite coach built in the French manner, embroidered with pearls on the inside and lined with gray velvet. Six light brown Tatar horses drew it. The coachmen were dressed in gray and yellow, had tall coarse hats... . The tsar was wearing a tall hat with nine large precious strings of pearls. At his side sat an old gray man. Next to the coach walked twelve trabants in brown velvet coats and purple-dyed galloons. They carried axes like half-moons on their shoulders. Thus began the three days of pillaging regularly allotted soldiers of armies that had conquered a city that had refused to surrender.” The tsar established certain rules of engagement: “No more men, only women,” were to be killed; men, boys, and girls might be taken captive and sent back to Muscovy. A small guard was left in the castle, remaining until the end of 1661, but the main armies seem to have moved on: “They said that as soon as they had

laid waste to the city, they would depart again hence.”

The occupation would last “six years, three months, and twenty-four days,” in other words from 8 August 1655 to 3 December 1661, on which day the Muscovite garrison (which by then reportedly numbered only seventy-eight) revolted against the second Muscovite palatine of Wilno, Prince Danilo MySeckij.* The word “occupation,” however, is too

WAR, OCCUPATION, EXILE, LIBERATION (1655-1661) 291

strong here. It is also incorrect in implying a more or less constant state of affairs over the entire period. The work of Elmantas Meilus, among others, has begun to call into question some of the more extreme pictures of desolation during the occupation. True, record books tell us that there were I, 200 petty merchants in the city in 1647 and only approximately 40 in 1657. And yet economic activity—extending even to book trade—had quickly reas-

serted itself by spring 1657, just before a summer plague epidemic. A total municipal budget of 44 k in 1657, early in the occupation, had risen to 309 k by 1660. The city magistracy and courts began to function—seemingly independent of Muscovite oversight—

also by 1657, when the municipal executioner once again took up his sword and other tools of the trade. What is more, the city offices engaged in a sort of purposeful denial, conducting themselves as if the occupier were not there: a reading of the extant acta of the magistracy for the period 1657-1661 gives remarkably few hints of an abnormal situation, barely even acknowledging the presence of Muscovite forces; among the reflections of the

unusual situation were occasional interjections like “until the return of the full magistracy.” There are also indications that Vilnans refused to use Muscovite money throughout the period.* We will see evidence that the first Muscovite palatine of Wilno, Prince Mixail Saxovskoj, attempted to facilitate the restoration of order, the functioning of city offices

(according to the old rules), and the rebuilding of local wealth. His successor, Prince Danilo MySeckij, who took office by late 1659, imposed a much less benign, if short-lived, rule. The story of the Muscovite conquest and occupation of Wilno has been told by Meilus,

Rachuba, and others. What I wish to focus on here in greater detail is the confessional aspect: How did the rules of encounter between the confessions and religions, which had been worked out for life in Wilno during a time of peace, change—or not change—during a period of wars with Protestant and Orthodox foes and the occupation of the city by an Orthodox army? I look first at Vilnans in exile, above all in K6nigsberg, for which we have the richest sources. Then I turn my attention to life in the occupied city. Some Vilnans had

remained, others soon returned from exile, and all started the process of rebuilding houses and civic institutions. Which confessions were represented in the occupied city? What was the nature of their coexistence under the new conditions? A more detailed examination of the latter point focuses on allegations of collaboration and treason leveled

against heterodox burghers—Orthodox, Lutheran, and Calvinist—and attempts at confiscation of their property. Next, I look more closely at the status of Ruthenians during the period of the occupation. I conclude with some thoughts about the reestablishment of the status quo in Wilno after the departure of Muscovite forces. Most important here is the

centrality of the experience of occupation, exile, and liberation to the question of the coexistence of the confessions: in a time of wars that could be perceived—were perceived by many in the Commonwealth—as having confessional aspects, how did Wilno’s peculiar convivencia hold up?

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Vilnans in Exile W pobiegach od nieprzyjaciela Moskwicina 1 Szweda: “In flight from the Muscovite and Swedish foe.” Thus did one Vilnan describe in his last will and testament of 1685, thirty

years after the event, how he had managed to lose the wealth he had accumulated as a younger man.° Still, flight was a better choice than remaining in the city that summer. Those more fortunate or blessed with greater foresight sought safe haven elsewhere. We know that a few of them went to Danzig. On 26 February 1660, Lutheran artisans of Wilno—locksmith Hans Pecelt (presumably it was Pecelt Senior) and chamois tanner Piotr

Rer—appeared before the Danzig magistracy to register the information that they had been appointed guardians over the daughter of Wilno Lutheran tailor Jerzy Ros, who had died of the plague in the fall of 1653. That daughter—the guardians seem to have been unaware of this in 1660—had been taken prisoner to Moscow, would marry there, and return to Wilno only in 1672.°

Others fled to country estates. Stefan Dubowicz (Market Square 3.25), a Ruthenian convert to Roman Catholicism and burgomaster, was killed by “bandits” (rozbojnicy)—the choice of words suggests they were not necessarily part of the invading armies—who had attacked the country estate of his brother-in-law Jan Szukszta, castle notary of Kowno. Perhaps this was the Bobcin (a village in the Kowno region on the left bank of the River Niewiaza) where Dubowicz signed his last will and testament on 16 July 1657.’ Lutheran burghess Katarzyna Rejchowicz (her first husband was Lutheran Antoni Szefer, and the second was Calvinist Matiasz Gierlic, with whom she owned the house at 56.05) put her name to her will on 25 April 1658 in Sielec, where she had found refuge.* There were many villages in the general area named Sielec. Perhaps this was the one near the River Niemen in Lida County; she first had the will recorded in the Lida Castle.

But many more sought out relatively nearby Ké6nigsberg, which was the capital of Lutheran Ducal Prussia. Henadz Sahanovyé has called attention to the importance of the oaths of loyalty to elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm and of neutrality toward King

Karl X Gustaf of Sweden that asylum seekers from Wilno were required to sign in the elector’s palace in the winter and spring of 1656.° In the process of freeing Prussia from its status as a vassal of the Polish Crown, Prince-Elector Friedrich Wilhelm had attempted, without success, to maintain neutrality in the Polish-Swedish War that was engulfing the Polish Crown lands at the same time that Muscovite and Cossack forces were laying siege to the cities of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. The peace treaty between Ducal Prussia and Sweden dated 7/17 January 1656 in K6nigsberg laid down the rules for exiles from Poland and Lithuania. As we read in a summary of that document, asylum seekers were granted five weeks within which to take the oath. Those who took the oath were subsequently “to enjoy free withdrawal to their homeland and to their lords.”*° Beginning on 16/26 February 1656, Vilnans came to the ducal palace in groups defined by estates and nations—nobles, clergy of the various confessions, and burghers, Germans and

WAR, OCCUPATION, EXILE, LIBERATION (1655-1661) 293

Poles separately among the burghers. There they affixed their signatures and seals to nearly identical loyalty oaths written in Latin, German, and Polish. These documents were preserved in the acta of the Prussian Etatsministerium (now in the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Preufsischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem). We find here not only the autographs and seals of relatively well-known people, such as Lutheran royal doctor and memoirist Macie} Vorbek-Lettow, but also those of more modest although not entirely anonymous Wilno burghers, and—of central importance to this book—of all five confessions. Other than Sahanovyé's brief description of the volume and its contents (in which he

also published one of the Polish versions of the oath), the only scholarly use to which these documents have been put was in a debate over the Germanness (Deutschtum) of early

modern Wilno that Polish historian of Wilno Maria Lowmianska conducted at the beginning of the twentieth century with K6nigsberg archivist Paul Karge.** The volume of acta contains, among other things, two large clusters of burgher signatures on which the two scholars focused. One follows a German version of the oath, with mostly German-

script burgher signatures and seals (although we also find Latin, Italian, French, and English signatures), all of them under the heading “Reversales der Deutschen von der Wilda und Grodno” (“Declarations of the Germans from Wilno and Grodno”). A second follows a Polish oath, with Polish-script signatures and seals (but also some German, Cyrillic-letter Ruthenian, and Latin signatures), under the heading “Cantio Polonorum Vilnensium” (“Oath [Incantation] of the Poles of Wilno”).?7 In addition to these two lists at the center of the polemic and the other much smaller clusters of signatures grouped by estate (nobles, clergy, etc.) and placed under copies of the oath in German, Polish, and Latin, there were two further long and somewhat chaotic lists of, respectively, mostly Germans and mostly Poles, who signed German and Polish versions of the oath. Karge seems to have drawn on these last two lists only selectively. Finally, we have what appear to be attempts by Prussian officials to collect the scattered signatures in three master lists: one of “Deutsche von der Wilda und Grodno” (“Germans from Wilno and Grodno”), one of “Polnische Leute von der Wilda” (“Polish People from Wilno”), and one, without any heading, of all asylum seekers from the Grand Duchy; this last one was loosely alphabetized by first names, as German municipal records were then kept.*? In his essay on the Deutschtum of Wilno and Kowno, Karge published a selective list of the names of asylum seekers and (mis)used a quantitative comparison of the Polish and German lists in an attempt to establish the percentage of Germans among Wilno burghers.** Although Lowmianska seems not to have seen the manuscripts, she rightly criticized Karge’s methodology. She was certainly correct in arguing that not all Wilno Poles fled the city and that not all Polish exiles sought refuge in K6nigsberg, both of which assumptions were at the base of Karge’s statistics.*° Karge no doubt overestimated the German presence in peacetime Wilno, but Lowmianska underestimated the significance of the fact that Wilno Germans (some of whom were actually Belgian and Dutch, even Polish, at least

from her point of view) were overrepresented in skilled professions (goldsmithery,

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law, surgery, and medicine stand out as Lutheran specializations), by which they made themselves attractive to noble and royal patrons. Both scholars operated with naive assump-

tions about ethnic identities. And neither—Lowmianska was particularly blind to this issue—questioned the nature of the Polishness of these Poles, or noticed that there were many Ruthenians among them, both Uniates and Orthodox. For Lowmianska, membership in the Uniate Church, or any other aspect of what she saw as Polonization, turned a Ruthenian into a Pole. There is no other way to interpret the stunning statement that “the Catholic population of Wilno was on the whole (with respect to language and culture) Polish, as well as—in a small percentage—German and Lithuanian. Among Uniates and Disuniates, who were formerly Ruthenians, Poles now predominated. Likewise a significant majority of Protestants and Orthodox were Poles.”*® The categories German and Pole appear to have been imposed in these lists by bureaucrats in K6nigsberg and were not necessarily selfidentifications. At most, individual Vilnans could choose whether to be Germans or Poles during their exile in K6nigsberg. In fact, these lists of names do offer information about Wilno society in the seventeenth century, and if used more carefully they might even allow some tentative quantifying. But most directly, when coupled with other sources they allow us to piece together some stories about the lives of Vilnans during this period of great disruptions. Among other things, they help confirm the impression that exiles began to trickle back into Wilno almost immediately, and that the city in its ruined and depopulated state continued to rule itself through

a temporary magistracy that functioned in some sort of mutual accommodation with a small Muscovite force located in the Wilno castle and headed by a Muscovite palatine of Wilno.*”

First the numbers. In the “Reversales der Deutschen von der Wilda und Grodno” we find approximately 140 heads of households (a few entries are unclear). A signatory usually represented more than just himself and spoke for wives, parents-in-law, children, widows, servants, and others of his entourage. Of these, I am unable to place only 25 as Vilnans. The rest either identified themselves in their signature (e.g., Hans Klafsen Uhrmacher und Biirger aus der Wilda, Hans KlafSen, clockmaker and burgher of Wilno), or I know about them from other sources. Only one of these 25 identified himself as a citizen of Grodno, so it is possible that some of these people were in fact also from Wilno. Of the definite Vilnans, 71 had managed to bring their personal wax seals with them and affixed them beneath their signatures;

almost all signatures appear to be autograph, pointing to a high level of literacy in this population. We find ca. 170 signatures on the “Cantio Polonorum Vilnensium,” three of which tell us they were not, strictly speaking, from Wilno. Only 44 had been able to bring their seals with them, and signatories frequently commented on the fact that they were without their seals. Eight noted that they were illiterate and had asked a friend to sign for them. There were 24 signatures here in the German language and script. A few of these may

have been autograph, but many were in the same hand, which suggests that these

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individuals were also illiterate and that their presence had been registered by a K6nigsberg bureaucrat. There were other burgher signatures in addition to the lists of Germans and Poles. With a few exceptions, members of the magistracy signed a separate, Latin oath as a group: we find 44 of them together, their signatures all in Latin (regardless of confession), and fully 37 of them had managed to bring their seals with them. Here we find both Roman Catholics and Ruthenians but no Lutherans or Calvinists.*®

In addition to these three perhaps rather elite lists (and a few cases of just one or two signatures under an oath by themselves), there were two more sets of signatures, without any sort of identifying title but again largely Polish in the one case, German in the other, and again under Polish and German versions of the oath, respectively, both dated 23 February/4 March 1656. The titled lists of German and Polish burghers (the “Reversales” and the “Cantio”) were stately affairs with each signature in the form of a small paragraph occupying the entire width of the page, frequently over a wax seal. The individuals on the untitled lists seem to have been of the more modest sort, their names cramped into the smallest possible space, in two, even three narrow columns. Most of them are otherwise unknown to me (and yet they frequently tell us they were from Wilno), and not a one of their names was accompanied by a personal wax seal. Following the Polish oath we find about 70 signatures, at least 15 of

which were done for illiterate persons; others were done in the same hand, once again suggesting illiteracy on the part of the signatories. Still, many were autograph, including, no doubt, the one signature in Cyrillic.*° A similarly cramped and untidy list grouped approximately 75 mostly German (some Polish) signatories, with some done in the same hand.*° While a few of these were not from Wilno (at least 11 on the Polish list, 2 on the German), the vast majority of the names were again those of Vilnans.

Thus we have roughly comparable numbers of Poles and Germans, the former only slightly predominant. I would conclude from this not, as did Karge, that these numbers reflected percentages of inhabitants in peacetime Wilno but that the Germans were disproportionately represented in terms of wealth, skills in trades and professions (perhaps also literacy and knowledge of other languages, especially German), connections with the outside world, and mobility. With about 185 German households now here from Wilno, clearly some substantial portion of Wilno’s Lutherans had been able to gather in K6nigsberg during the

city’s occupation. The offering rolls for the Wilno congregation give us the following numbers of heads of Lutheran households: for 1640, 251; for 1652, 265; in 1661, at the time of the liberation of the city, there were only 97, but there was a steady resurgence after that (125 in 1664, 145 in 1667, 145 in 1669, 146 in 1671, 154 in 1673, etc.). The problem in assessing these numbers is the fact that not all the “Germans” who signed the loyalty oath were Lutherans (or even German, from our point of view). True, we do recognize a considerable number of Wilno Lutherans on these lists, ranging from members of the burgher elites such as medical doctor Pawel Meller and jurist Arnolf Zaleski through

merchants such as Michat Buchner and Hans Magdeburger and goldsmiths such as

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Zacharias and Jakob Sznejder and Hans Rentell to the more anonymous likes of Walter Schade (tailor), Erasmus Ertsleben (locksmith), Bastian Baltzer (turner), Peter Heylandt (harness maker), and Gabriel von Salfeld (confectioner). But we also find here some of the Cal-

vinists who were a part of the circles of Wilno Lutheran elites during peacetime—Henryk Mones, Michal Baranowicz (both of whom had Lutheran wives by this point), and Wilhelm von Piitten; and we also find some whose circles are somewhat less clear to me, such as Faltin

Bister and Marcin Niegowicz. Some of the Scotsmen who formed a part of the local Calvinist congregation were also present in K6nigsberg and signed the German list. David Gilbort

signed in English; he had been described in the baptismal record when he brought his daughter Regina to the font on 16 August 1652 as being “of the Scottish nation” (z nacyjej szkockiej). Robert Gilberdt signed in German; he too would baptize his children in the Calvinist church, where he was identified as a Scot. The two may have been related: “Gilbort” would appear as “Gilbert” as well.**

In fact, non-Germans signed for themselves and their entourages in fluent German language, often in German script. Maria Lowmianska attributed this to opportunism on the part of those with Slavic surnames.*? This is surely incorrect. People like Michat Baranowicz (Calvinist) and Adam Palczewski (Lutheran) appeared in these circles because this was precisely the company they kept in peacetime Wilno, before and after the occupation. Even some Poles and Ruthenians, as we have seen, seem to have been able to use German; this simply made sense for those involved in business beyond the walls of the city.?? And some of these Germans were, in fact, Roman Catholic. (Here again in her polemic with Karge, Lowmianska seems to have thought their Catholicism somehow disqualified them from his list of Germans and made them into Poles.) A certain Peter Gramel, carpenter, signed the oath with the other Germans on the first day, 16/26 February 1656. His name appears in no Lutheran or Calvinist lists, so he may well have himself been Roman Catholic. However this may be, he was in Roman Catholic company: he signed not only for himself but “also for Lady Gertrudt Cornelschin, organ builder’s widow from Wilno [Orgelbauerin von der Wilde wittib] and the three grown daughters she has with her.”** This was Gertruda Szulcowna, Roman Catholic widow of organ builder Korneliusz Krapoliusz, who would return to Wilno and rebuild her house at Bernardine Street 52.03 “after its ruination and burning at the hands of the Muscovite enemy.” It is interesting to note that Gramel signed for SzulcOwna’s “three grown daughters”; the fourth, “Miss Elzbieta .. . upon whom the Lord God had visited incomplete health and understanding”—as we will read in her mother’s will from 1671—was not included in the list of oath takers, presumably because her health and mental condition prevented her from being any sort of legal actor. One of the daughters, Katarzyna, would find her future husband among the exiles in K6nigsberg. He was the “Toussen Begien” (Toussaint Begine?) who signed the oath with the Germans that same day, although he was then fifty-seven positions higher on the list than his future wife. Further, he signed it in French, and he was there with a previous wife: “pour moy et pour ma fame.”*? He may in fact not have been a Vilnan at this time, but eventually this unnamed wife would

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disappear from the scene, and Toussen Begien would join his new wife, Katarzyna Krapoliuszowna, in Wilno. The “Christoff Satriebe,” who signed the oath for himself and his wife (“mit meyner fraw”) together with the other Germans on 16/26 February 1656,”° would appear, when he returned to Wilno and its Polish-language documents, as barber-surgeon Krzysztof Zatryb. His wife (“Chriestof Satri[e]bsche”), would go on to contribute solidly (around 16 z! for each two-year period) to the Lutheran church over the period 1664-1673. Zatryb, although apparently a German, was quite certainly a Roman Catholic. He left 1,100 zi to the Discalced Carmelites at Sharp Gate and asked to be buried there, as we learn from his wife’s testament of 17 June 1692.7’ Her name was Barbara Zagierdwna. She disappeared from the lists of offering givers twenty years before her death because she had remarried, a certain Jan Zant, again a doctor but this time a Lutheran. At church he was Johan Heinrich Zandt/Sand(t), and now the lists reflected only his solid contributions over the period 1671 to 1685. Zagierowna would return to the rolls of Lutheran giving—now as “Johan Hinrich Sandten Wittfrauw [Johan Hinrich Sandt’s widow]”—in the period from 1687 to 1691. Her daughter with Zant, Anna Sybylla, married Daniel Bez, that is, Daniel Bés, also a Lutheran medical doctor, a professional predilection she seems to have inherited from her mother. I will return to these names in a moment. The larger point here is that, although Lutherans may have been predominant, these exiled Wilno Germans were a diverse group, both ethnically and confessionally. And who were those who signed the “Cantio Polonorum Vilnensium”? Of the approximately 170 total signatures, at least 25 belonged to Ruthenians, both Uniate and Orthodox. There were, no doubt, more; these are simply either the ones who signed in Cyrillic (four

cases) or those about whom I know something further from other sources. In fact, the Ruthenians are practically the only ones on the list whom I can place in neighborhoods and networks. From the Horse and Rudniki Street neighborhood, we find Orthodox merchant Kondrat Parfianowicz, three names away from his burgomaster father-in-law Stefan Rzepnicki (whose house was in the side street along the wall between Horse Street and Sharp Street 6.03). (In 1636, a Daniel Parfianowicz lived across the street at 7.05.) Konrad Parfianowicz and Dorota Rzepnicka bought a house in the equally Ruthenian Subocz Street neighborhood “behind the monastery of St. Kazimierz” in July 1660, still during the occupation of the city.** We find Orthodox merchant Krzysztof Sokotowski (Rudniki Street 12.12 in 1664) just ahead of his Orthodox mother-in-law Eudokia Kuszelina (Horse Street 5.14), the two signatures immediately between those of Parflanowicz and Rzepnicki. We find Orthodox merchant Jan Gilewicz (Horse Street 8.02) who would soon return to Wilno and bring charges of bigamy against his former brother-in-law. ”° We also find Subocz Street well represented in the Prussian capital. From the Kostrowicki family there were Grzegorz, Daniel, and Jan. It was Grzegorz Kostrowicki who would be written out of his wife’s will on account of alleged cruelty and neglect. He signed the oath in Konigsberg in his and his wife’s name. She was Maryna Iwanowicz, and her father, Orthodox merchant Piotr Iwanowicz, was one of the four Cyrillic signatories of the loyalty oath.*°

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Uniate councillor Samuel Filipowicz (Subocz Street 79.08) signed the oath one page after Iwanowicz.?* We find three Sienczyto brothers, Pawel, Grzegorz, and Gabriel (Subocz Street 78.07), all of whom returned to Wilno before December 1661. Pawel, as we will soon see, would be charged with collaboration with the Muscovite occupiers. Grzegorz would buy a house in Glass Street in 1667 (20.05) and form networks with the local Lutherans, although he remained Orthodox; perhaps his eventual entry into Lutheran circles in postwar Wilno was eased by the stay in K6nigsberg. It was he, along with his wife and brother, who would

stand next to Lutheran merchant Jan Buchner and family as godparents for Catholic

babies. And there were representatives of other Ruthenian neighborhoods on the list of Poles. We find, for instance, Uniate merchant Afanas Otroszkiewicz and his wife, Orthodox burghess Katarzyna, sharing a house in the suburb beyond Sharp Gate after the liberation of the city.*?

The Catholics on this Polish list, oddly enough—assuming these people were indeed Roman Catholic—are mostly otherwise unknown to me, and Iam unable to place them in wider Wilno circles. A few Lutherans ended up on this Polish list for reasons not entirely clear to me. Goldsmith Michat Sznejder signed in Polish, for himself, his wife, and an apprentice named Pawel Jedrzejkiewicz. Two more members of this Lutheran Goldsmith family—Zacharias and Jakob—had signed in German, and on the German list, in their K6nigsberg exile. Michal was joined on the Polish list by his Glass Street neighbor, Lutheran swordsmith Melchior Ilis (Malcher Iglis, Glass Street 21.03), who registered his presence—together with that of his wife and two journeymen, Kazimierz and Jerzy—in German. Another neighbor, Lutheran goldsmith Augustin Zeligmacher, also affixed his seal

under his Polish signature and with the Poles; he was married to Anna Sznejderdwna, a daughter from the neighborhood’s largest goldsmith clan, whose house was at Glass Street 20.02.77

It is only on the list of forty-four members of the magistracy that I find names of Roman Catholics (next, of course, to their Orthodox and Uniate colleagues) for whom I can sketch some personal networks: Mikolaj Kliczewski, Eustachiusz Szperkowicz, Stanistaw Gawlowicki, and Andrzej Gierkiewicz.*° In thinking of this large presence of asylum seekers, we should probably imagine—in addition to the sense of displacement on the part of the exiled Vilnans—also the impression of strangeness they must have made upon the Konigsbergers who received them in their city. The latter not only took fellow Lutherans (some of whom they no doubt already knew from their studies in and business trips to the Prussian capital) into their midst and their places of worship but also watched as Calvinists, Roman Catholics, Uniates, and Orthodox (accompanied by members of their clergy) re-created aspects of their former lives, including secular and religious gatherings—whether in borrowed space in local churches

or in private dwellings. (K6nigsberg, a center of Lutheran resistance to Calvinism in Brandenburg-Prussia, would be forced by Friedrich Wilhelm to accept Calvinist citizens

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and property owners only in 1668.)?° Paradoxically, it would be the Uniates and Orthodox, mostly foreign to the K6nigsbergers (mostly, since non-Lutheran Vilnans also had frequent business dealings here), who would now be on the same calendar with the locally dominant Lutherans. Roman Catholics, but also Calvinists and Lutherans from Wilno, had long been accustomed to working and worshipping according to the new calendar, and now they were the ones who found themselves in the calendrical minority, although Wilno’s Lutherans were probably mindful of the old calendar habits of co-confessionals outside Wilno. The division into Germans and Poles was clearly the only choice offered Wilno burghers

by local authorities, but in these lists we can sense the presence of the various sorts of networks and alliances that had been formed within and across confessions in peacetime Wilno and that would reassert themselves after the liberation. Vilnans both replicated their usual social networks during their exile in KO6nigsberg and took steps to create new ones that they would bring back with them after 1661. We see this in the clusters of signatories: kith, kin, and neighbors came forward in groups to place their signatures and affix their seals, one after the other. We also see this in the rare glimpses we are afforded of their lives in exile. Marianna Buchnerowna, daughter of deceased Lutheran merchant Marcin Buchner and sister of Michal and Jan Buchner, was married to barber-surgeon Frydrych Cylich (Friedrich Ziilich). She died in 1656 during the family’s presence in Konigsberg, and her last will and testament—provisions formulated “as modestly as can be in this time of our exile”—was registered by the local magistracy on 19/29 August of that year. Executors and witnesses all had connections to the Wilno Lutheran (and Calvinist) communities, some of the elite serving here as patrons; other names came from the Buchners’ own middle-level social group. The executors were the spokesman for the

Wilno Germans in the K6nigsberg exile, Pawel Meller (second husband of Elzbieta Giblowna), and Jerzy Mansfeld, both Lutherans. The witnesses were Calvinist merchants Henryk Mones and Michal Baranowicz, both of whom had Lutheran wives, Lutheran barbersurgeon Andrzej Hoffman, Lutheran jurist Arnold Zaleski, Lutheran Zachariasz Bez (no profession noted), Lutheran vintner Krzysztof Meisner, and “Chriestoff Satrius,” a misreading in this copy for the German Catholic barber-surgeon Christoff Satriebe (Zatryb); the daughter of his Lutheran wife with her second husband, as we have seen, would go on to marry another Lutheran Bez (BO[$).?”

We find in this list of names connections of social class—all those involved with Buchnerowna’s testament were of the middle level with the exception of Meller and Mones (per-

haps also Mansfeld), who belonged to the burgher elite. There were also connections of language and ethnicity—most were in fact some sort of Germans, and even Mones, whose family stemmed from the Low Countries, clearly knew the language well—and connections

of confession—most were Lutherans, two non-Lutherans were nonetheless Protestants (Calvinists), and both of them, as well as the other non-Lutheran, Roman Catholic Satriebe, had Lutheran wives. There were also connections of profession. For example, the Roman

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Catholic Satriebe was brought into the circle by his practice of a Lutheran trade, that of barber-surgeon. This was also the vocation of Andrzej Hoffman, Buchnerowna’s husband Friedrich Ztilich, and perhaps also that of Zachariasz Bez. And Meller was a medical doctor, one step higher on the professional ladder. We also see the adherence to, and (re)creation of, Wilno networks in happier circumstances. Marianna Buchnerdéwna’s sister Anna would marry in K6nigsberg in 1658.?° Her husband was Lutheran royal captain Jakub Trop. He had arrived in K6nigsberg in the entou-

rage of his then father-in-law, locksmith Erasmus Ertsleben.?? By the time Wilno was liberated, he had installed himself in the Buchner family Glass Street neighborhood. The common experience of exile as Vilnans may have facilitated the establishment of future networks. Frenchman Toussen Begien, most likely Roman Catholic himself, who had arrived in Konigsberg with another wife, would find the next one among the Roman Catholic exile circles. Both Begien and his future wife chose to be identified as Germans. Orthodox merchant Grzegorz Sienczyto would move into Glass Street and into the Buchners’ circles upon his return to liberated Wilno. Orthodox merchant Michat Kuszelicz, apparently then still a minor, who had found refuge in Wilno with his mother Eudokia Kuszelina, would share the exile with a future second wife. She was Lutheran Anna Zaleska, sister of city jurist Arnolf Zaleski, both of whom were present in K6nigsberg during the occupation. Arnolf signed (in Latin) together with the Germans. Anna was represented by her first husband, Stanistaw Knapinski, who seems to have been a Roman Catholic and who signed for himself and his wife together with the Poles.*° In any case, these lists of signatures tell us several stories. Germans and Lutherans seem

to have been overrepresented and also perhaps better equipped (with both literacy and personal seals in greater evidence), but Vilnans of all confessions, including the Orthodox, sought refuge from Muscovite armies in the Prussian capital. Vilnans brought with them networks of kith, kin, and neighbors; drew upon them for support in exile; fostered, developed, and extended them there; and brought them back to Wilno upon their return, intact and ready for further development.

Vilnans in Occupied Wilno Some number of Vilnans remained in the city after the dust settled in August 1655. Others returned at varying speeds. Those who ended up in Muscovy seem to have taken the longest to return. Maryna Rossowna—the one whose guardianship Pecelt Sr. and Rer would register in Danzig in 1660—had been taken hostage at age two and a half, together with her aunt, in 1655. Seventeen years later, in the spring of 1672—her freedom purchased some time before by the Lutheran community of the Moscow suburbs—she would make her way back to Wilno with two letters of reference from the minister and other members of that community. In them we find attestations to her legitimate birth, identity, and a recent valid marriage

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(at a relatively young age) to a German “from the city of Gliickstadt in the Duchy of Holstein”—most likely also a Lutheran—named Konrad Ramus. The pastor’s attestation tells us that “quite a number [sila] of prisoners, people young and old, had been brought here to Moscow [after 8 August 1655] to servitude.” Copies of the attestations were entered into the postwar acta of the Wilno magistracy.** In 1679—\ twenty-four years after the conquest of the city—a certain Konstanty Iwanowicz Wysocki would take Grzegorz and Gabriel Sienczylo to court over the family inheritance (the house at Subocz Street 78.07). He would claim to be the long-lost son of a deceased Maryna Sienczytowna and to have spent “twenty-some years” in Muscovite servitude. Wysocki seems not to have prevailed—the Sienczylo family fortune remained intact—but this does not necessarily mean that he had made up the story of his sojourn in Muscovy.*? The Sienczytos were

Orthodox and had been in Konigsberg, at least at the very beginning. Others managed to regain their freedom more quickly. Bazyli Rudomicz, doctor, occasional rector of the Zamosc Academy, city burgomaster, poet, and memoirist (he may well have been a Vilnan himself and certainly had many contacts with the city) recorded in his “private diary” a meeting with “Lord Maciej Korolkiewicz, a Vilnan of a renouned family [stawnego rodu] and of great merits, my kinsman,” which took place on 25 August 1658. His kinsman told him that he had been “taken into captivity to Moscow after the destruction of Wilno,” and that he had “returned home from there after three and a half years”—an obvious chronological impossibility, although the story sounds otherwise plausible. (Maybe it was two and a halfyears.) And since “no one could give him information about his wife, children, and kin, he then went to Danzig.” In that city he discovered that his family had indeed been there (thus our list of Wilno exiles in the Royal Prussian city grows slightly) and that they had just departed.*? Korolkiewicz was indeed from a notable Wilno Ruthenian family. A Fiedor Korolkiewicz was a member on the Greek side of the first sexagintavirate in 1602.** Marek Korolkiewicz was an annual councillor in 1618 and 1623.*° A “Korolkiewiczowa, burgomaster’s wife, widow” lived at Market Square 3.22 in 1636; this was presumably the widow of Marek, although find no record that Marek (or any other Korolkiewicz) held that office before 1636.*° Bazyli Korolkiewicz was a councillor in the middle of the century; both he and another relative named Fiedor would return to Wilno during the occupation.*’ I find no further reference to Michal Korolkiewicz, so perhaps he never made it back to the Lithuanian capital from Zamosc¢. Many others did return, however, and they began to do so early on, joining those who never left in rebuilding life in the occupied city. Acta from after the liberation of the city—sometimes decades later—frequently reflected the destruction of houses and churches. Jan Baranowski—the musician who told of the loss of his wealth and

property “in flight from the Muscovite and Swedish foe”—evoked the “ruin” (this was a commonly used term) of Wilno in his last will and testament of 1685. He had purchased with his first wife a “partly ruined” bricked house on Troki Street (33.02) in 1663; with his second wife, Justyna Kostromska, he had restored her “little bricked house on Skop Street [49.05: it

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had been the property of her parents, tailor Jan Kostromski and Cecylia Szymakowska]... that had been ruined [zruinowana] by the Muscovite foe.”*® A conspectio of the bricked house at Horse Street 8.10 owned by the Domicki family, which was conducted on g May 1657, helps give a clearer sense of the state of the city, shortly after the wartime magistracy had resumed its regular activities. This was a year and nine months after the city had been taken. The delegates from the magistracy came that day to “the entirely ruined and completely desolated” house and recorded what they saw: First of all, having entered through the gate, on the right-hand side, a store, there are no doors, it is full of muck [gndj]. Beyond this store, two more stores, there are no doors, likewise both of them full of muck. Under these stores, two muck-filled cellars, there are no stairs or windows to them, the grates have been broken out. At the back, a brewery, completely ruined and burned out, only the wall remains, without doors and everything. On the left-hand side, a cellar full of muck, without stairs. Over that cellar, a tavern chamber, a table, [all of this] partly rotted from rain, only the beams and the grates are whole. Upstairs—from the alcove, through the dining chamber, up to the chamber on the other side—everything has been burned out, all that is left are the walls. In this alcove off the courtyard, there is one grate, and in the chamber off the street three remain whole. Over all these rooms there is no roof, the courtyard is full of muck and [more] muck.*°

The “muck” in question was probably a mix of mud and excrement, not only animal. The quartermaster had seen something quite different about twenty years earlier: “It has four chambers, one with a cabinet, two stores, two basements, a bakery, a bath, a stable for a few horses, a shed for keeping hay.”°° Thus by 1657, soon after their return to the ruined city, these and other Vilnans were setting about reclaiming property, assessing its value, and making provisions for rebuilding. Recording such an inventory was a first step in the process. The signs of a gradual return to normal life were many. One of the earliest entries in the book of acta of the Wilno burgomasters and councillors for the period 1657-1662 that is kept in Moscow’s RGADA recorded the will of a certain Namszewiczowa. In it she told the financial history of “the house in which I now live, not far beyond Sharp Gate. .. . It was burned entirely to the ground during the current desolation of the city of Wilno, which we fled in our poverty, and nothing more than an empty plot of land remained, upon which plot of land my current husband, Lord Krzysztof Namszewicz, building at his own cost and expense, partly of brick, and partly of wood, spent 400 Lithuanian k.”°* This document was recorded on 17 February 1657, in other words, just a year and a half after the conquest of the city and exactly a year after Vilnans began lining up outside the elector’s palace in K6nigsberg to sign the loyalty oath. If they had fled at all, the Namszewiczes must have returned to

Wilno sometime before this date in order to have had time to do this considerable

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rebuilding; certainly they were present within a few months following the invasion. In any event, they were willing to make substantial investment in property in the city at a time of great uncertainty. I find the mundane actions of nearly anonymous citizens as eloquent as any of the other indicators. Some lucky chance has preserved the following contract dated 1 April 1657 in the sparse set of Wilno acts for the period: “I, Gabriel Lewonowicz, burgher and tailor of the city of Wilno, declare with this writing of mine, that... I have given over my son, Klemens Lewonowicz, for apothecary training with noble Lord Matiasz Szczerbicki, apothecary of the city of Wilno, having indentured my aforementioned son for a period of six years.”°* The book of acta kept in RGADA reveals the sequel to this story. Tailor Gabriel Lewonowicz, a.k.a. “Borodawka” (Ruthenian for facial mole) and wife Regina Swienczéwna both died during the plague in the summer of 1657, a few months after indenturing their son. By 16 February 1658 two Vilnans, merchant Jan Zusinel and apothecary Matiasz Szczerbicki—the same to whom young Klemens had been indentured—had taken on the duties of guardians for the couple’s minor children, and two days later the magistracy carried out an inventory of the estate.°* We see here both the aspiration to return to a normal life and to make plans for

the future, as well as the difficulties posed by the chaos and disease that followed the conquest of the city.

Here and elsewhere, there is clear evidence that the old Roman-Greek parity arrangements for power sharing were being maintained, even as the castles were in Muscovite hands and in spite of the fact that the Orthodox burghers were now in a more privileged position. As usual, two delegates had been sent from the magistracy to oversee the process of assessing the Lewonowicz estate. They were Stanislaw Gawlowicki, a Roman Catholic, and Grzegorz Kostrowicki, a Ruthenian (perhaps still Orthodox at this point). As in the K6nigsberg exile, all the Christian confessions were represented in the occupied city. Lutherans Michal Buchner and Zachariasz Bez had gone back by 30 December 1656 to participate in the inventory of the Glass Street property of Buchner’s brother-in-law, Lutheran Samuel Kalander, another Radziwitt client who had sought refuge in K6nigsberg and apparently died there.** Michat Buchner was to die in the plague of summer 1657, but Bez would be present in the liberated city, contributing handsomely to Lutheran finances and serving as lay elder in the church until his death sometime soon after 1679.°° (The fact that his name first reappears only in the rolls for 1667 even though the books started up again with entries for 1662 and 1664 might suggest that he had once again fled Wilno during the plague and had not returned immediately.) The acta of the magistracy during the occupation occasionally took over the function of church records in attesting to legitimate births. We find the entry on Ig January 1658 of a

certificate of legitimate birth for Albertus Klet, son of Lutheran Piotr Klet and Anna Makarmondowna, who lived on St. John Street and also owned a house around the corner in Glass Street. Klet had been among the asylum seekers in Ké6nigsberg. The legitimacy of the parents’ matrimonial union “juxta ritum Augustianae confessionis [according to the rite of

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the Augsburg Confession]” and the fact of the baptism “in temploque Augustiano [in the Lutheran Church]” were proved “ex metricis ejusdem ecclesiae [from the record books of that same church]” and with the attestation of two important Vilnans, Roman Catholic bencher

Jan Reybert and Lutheran municipal clockmaker Jakub Gierke (Dominican Street 32.01).°°

We also find three different attestations of legitimate births for otherwise anonymous Roman Catholic Vilnans on 25 May 1658.°’”

Jews returned too, apparently rather quickly. Two Jews of Wilno had petitioned the new Muscovite palatine of Wilno, Mixail Saxovskoj, on 28 December 1655, for permission to return “to live in their old houses” within the walls. He seems to have required them to reside outside the city for the time being until the tsar should make a decision in the matter.°® When on 24 April 1658 Wilno burgher elites signed a petition to Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovié asking him to reconfirm their Magdeburg rights and privileges, they included a request to ban the Jews to the suburbs (in effect, the privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis they were never able to achieve in peacetime Wilno): specifically, they asked that Jewish settlement now be “transferred beyond the city, beyond the River Wilia, to the garden where they have their cemetery” (i.e., the Snipiszki suburb).°” But the Jews seem to have returned to their old houses. A survey of income from Wilno town houses for 1658 notes four Jewish arendators.°° Financial records for the city for 1659 list two “Jewesses” among Vilnans who were paying taxes for water flowing to their houses.® A protestation recorded on 23 July 1660 reflects a return to normal: here a Jew named Lewek Majerowicz felt moved, and entitled, to come before the wartime magistracy to complain (as did many Christians) that the possessions he had buried in his basement when he fled the city were no longer there.°” Jewish settlement within the walls would continue to grow after the liberation of the city in December 1661. Still, in spite of the clear attempt to adhere to old methods of maintaining peace and parity among the represented confessions, and in spite of the fact that we can indeed find representatives of all confessions in occupied Wilno, a reading of the acta gives the distinct impression of a city in which Ruthenians now predominated, probably most of them Orthodox or at least pro forma Orthodox for a certain period. Among those Ruthenians who had returned from K6nigsberg during the occupation we find Stefan Rzepnicki, the Sienczyto brothers (Pawel, Grygier/Grzegorz, and Gabriel), Maryna Korolkiewicz6wna, Stefan Krasowski, Kazimierz Kostrowicki and wife Marta Dorofiewiczowna, Krzysztof Sokotowski, Tomasz Brazycz, Stefan Kuszelicz, and many others. The Muscovite-occupied castle was functioning on the old calendar, but the acta of the magistracy were still kept according to the new one, although with a few subtle differences in tone. One main difference was that the use of the new calendar was occasionally pointed out, as if there were now for the first time since the late sixteenth century a doubt about this; still, a check of dates and days of the week reveals that even the individual documents lacking an identification of calendar silently continued to use new-calendar dates. A bigger difference was reflected in the transactions themselves: on several occasions—something found rarely before or after occupation—individual Vilnans made contracts with each other using

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old-calendar dates.°? We also find a much higher percentage of Cyrillic-letter Ruthenian used in the acta in this period than before or after, at least in the extant acta. The somewhat privileged position in which Ruthenian Vilnans found themselves during the occupation would eventually leave them open to charges of treason.

Charges of Treason, Attempts at Confiscation There were in fact a few documented attempts to confiscate the houses and property of Wilno Orthodox and Protestants during the period of the Muscovite occupation and the midcentury wars with Sweden: one against an Orthodox family, one or two directed against Lutherans, and one against Calvinists. All these attempts were based on royal privileges for the alienation of property “by the law of escheat” (jure caduco) from foreigners who had died without a male heir or convictions of treason.” Only one of the attempted confiscations was apparently fully successful. The object here was the house at Castle Street 2.11, which Maciej Vorbek-Lettow’s brother-in-law, Szymon Engelbrecht I, had purchased in 1622 from Zygmunt Andrys Fonderflot. By 1636 the house was in the possession of the widow of Szymon Engelbrecht II, Katarzyna Sztrunk6éwna. And by the time of the next Lustration (1639) she had remarried, and the house was listed as the property of Rejnhold Witmacher.®° All these individuals were Lutherans, and the house stood in the middle of the “Lutheran elite ghetto” of Castle Street, between the Sztrunk family house at 2.10 and the properties of Tomasz and Jakub Gibel at 2.12 and 2.13. As we learn from one of the documents in the confiscation of the house, Witmacher had “once been a Wilno city councillor,” although his name does not appear as one of the annual councillors in Kostrowicki’s list of top magistrates. He did appear in prewar documents as an active local

businessman, at the head of a group (mostly Lutheran) conducting litigation over debts owed them by the estate of Calvinist merchant Marcin Gauter (Castle Street 1.13) in 16441645. He witnessed the will of Jan Sztrunk I (Castle Street 2.10) in 1645 and took on the duties of guardian over Jerzy Lang’s minor children in 1655 (Glass Street 18.01); on that occasion,

he was identified here as a bencher, the lowest rung on a career in the Wilno magistracy. In those same years he was also named guardian of the children of Wilhelm Engelbrecht (Castle Street 2.15).°° All of this points to membership in the prewar society of Wilno’s Lutheran elite and the promise of a career in the magistracy. Witmacher’s name does not appear among the asylum seekers in KOnigsberg. A docu-

ment from 3 March 1663, part of litigation over debts connected with the Witmacher/ Engelbrecht house, tells us of its confiscation in 1661 (“in a certain month and on a certain

day”) by the grand marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and starosta of Brastaw, Krzysztof Zawisza. The document alleges that the one-time city councillor was “now living under the Swede in Riga.” A document from 1667 refers to a royal decree of 28 June 1664 and

calls Witmacher “a traitor to the Commonwealth.”°’ Both documents deal with debts

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connected with the property, and both imply that Witmacher had not come back to Wilno to challenge the confiscation. In fact, the hearth-tax survey of 1690 notes the presence in the

neighborhood of His Grace Lord Zawisza, starosta of Minsk, most likely in that same house.°® This was Krzysztof Stanislaw Konstanty Zawisza, who had succeeded his relative as starosta of Minsk (1685-1704, 1705-1720) and Braslaw (1720-1721). Witmacher had died by 7 May 1670.°°

The other recorded attempted confiscations were apparently unsuccessful. Jan and Jakub Desaus II were the sons of “the Frenchman” (Francuz), Calvinist merchant Jakub Desaus I. Jakub II had signed the loyalty oath in K6nigsberg in fluent German, for himself, his wife, and his mother-in-law, on the first day, 16 February 1656; Jan signed two days later, identifying himself as a “servant of His Princely Grace, Janusz Radziwill.”’° It may have been the Radziwill connections—Janusz (who had died by 31 December 1655) and cousin Bogusiaw would gain the reputation of traitors for their negotiations with Sweden over the creation of an independent Grand Duchy of Lithuania under Swedish protection (and Radziwit! rule)— that caused problems for the Desaus family. (“The Frenchman” himself, Jakub Desaus I, had appeared in 1629 as a “steward of the German congregation [szafarz.. . zboru niemieckiego]” in the Wilno Calvinist church.’*

By 10 December 1660 at the latest, Jakub II was back in Wilno. On that day a certain Mikolaj Rakowski appeared before the now fully functioning magistracy to have read into the acta a privilege signed by King Jan Kazimierz in Warsaw on 4 June 1659; it granted possession of, and “intromission” into, the Desaus house at 1.26 to “noble-born Marcin Jurewicz”

by law of escheat on the grounds that Jan Desaus and his “co-successors” (i.e., coclaimants to the property on Castle Street) were “errant traitors and defectors to Our enemies” (as the royal privilege had it). Such decrees frequently focused on matters of treason and infidelity as reasons for removing property from one party and bestowing it on another: “We consider ita proper thing that those experience Our royal grace and generosity... who, in the current oppression of our afflicted fatherland, were never sequaces [followers] of the enemy partes [party] [and] always maintained indubitatae fidei integritatem [the integrity of undoubted loyalty] to Us and the Commonwealth.” Jakub Desaus II appeared before the magistracy at that same time to challenge the legality of the action, and the case was postponed until the next day. ’*

The only other document I have found in this matter was recorded two weeks later (18 February 1661). In it Jakub Desaus argued that he would “be happy to demonstrate [his] innocence hic et nunc [here and now],” and he pointed out that the privilege lacked the requisite legal precision. In particular, it did not name the co-successors. They were— and Jakub listed them—“in capite [first of all] Jan Desaus, the older brother, then Anna Desausowna, the widow of the deceased Ludwik Bekier, Mikotaj Desaus, who had been for sixteen years in Danzig in obsequtis [in service] with Mr. Daniel Szpal, and finally Antoni Desaus, the youngest brother, who sua exercet mercimonia [is occupied with his wares] in the Principality of Samogitia.” Lawyers for Jurewicz responded, “Not all the Desauses,

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rather principaliter [chiefly] Jan accusatur [is accused], who had been an adherent of the Swedes, and served in the Swedish army, and, now living in Prussia, had condictamina [agreements] and various conspiracies with the enemy of His Royal Majesty and the Commonwealth.””? This is the last document I have come across in this case. It leaves the reader with the impression that the Desauses had lost in their appeal to the courts. But this is clearly a false impression. The house remained in the family: it was still partly owned by Jakub Desaus II on 13 November 1675 when he made dispensations in his will for “the portion of my bricked house that had fallen to me in the inheritance from my parents of worthy memory, now departed in God.” ”* And well before this, the “errant traitor” himself had returned to an honorable position in Wilno society. Jan Desaus served as a lay elder of the Wilno Calvinist church in the 1660s and 1670s, where two of his daughters were married (27 November 1671 and Io October 1674); and he was a godfather to Calvinist babies twice in this period (1669, 1673).” The fact that our first postwar sighting of him is as a godfather in 1669 may suggest it had taken him some time to return to Wilno: he had been in unusually frequent demand in that office before 1655—-seventeen times over a period of eleven years (1644-1655) in a rather small congregation.”° Similarly unsuccessful was the attempted confiscation of the Sienczyto family home and property. On 17 September 1660—less than three months before the challenge to the Desaus property—a certain Karol Marson, “major of His Royal Majesty,” presented to the temporary Wilno magistracy a privilege from King Jan Kazimierz dated 24 August 1620. It conferred

upon “the well deserving Marson,” by right of escheat, the property of “traitor Pawel Sienczyto and his spouse,” who were accused of collaboration with the Muscovites. That property included: “bricked houses [plural!] in the city of Wilno and all real estate and movable goods and all sums of money.” The houses in question were two: the one on Subocz Street next to the Minkiewicz house (i.e., 78.07), and the one on “the side alleyway off Subocz Street” next to the Juszkiewicz house (i.e., 77.01 or 77.03). Here, too, the wealth ofan entire family was the object of confiscation, even though the charges of treason were leveled only against one member: Pawel and wife—“as everyone well knows”—had, according to the allegation, sought a kind of asylum with the small occupying force in the Wilno castle.’” A few months later, on 16/26 January 1661, we do indeed find the couple in the Muscovitecontrolled castle, where they had appeared to register Pawel’s will. The document—and the circumstances of its enactment—raise certain questions. Was the couple really living in the castle and aiding the occupiers? But if so, the ecumenicity of Pawel’s deathbed dispensations must have raised some Muscovite eyebrows: as we will see, Sienczyto not only gave to both Roman and Greek institutions but quite clearly included in his bequests the Uniate churches, which, by decree of the tsar from the summer of 1657, ought not to have existed in occupied Wilno.

Interpretation is further complicated by the fact that the will—recorded according to the castle’s old calendar—was entered into the acta of the magistracy on 12 January 1662 (a

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new-calendar date), after the testator’s death and just after the liberation of the city. It was brought for this purpose by a lieutenant—apparently a lieutenant of the Muscovite army— named Bazyli Aleksiejewicz Kunigam. What is more, this was about a year and a half after the royal privilege of confiscation had been entered in the same forum. Litigation would con-

tinue into October and November of 1662, with Sienczylo’s property and honor now defended by Orthodox magistrates Prokop Dorofiewicz and Samuel Szycik Zaleski.’”* In any event, the confiscation must ultimately have been unsuccessful. The family fortune would

survive the war and apparently grow: the family house on Subocz Street—“handed down from grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents”—was still in the hands of Pawel’s heirs in the 1680s, and the posthumous inventory of Grzegorz’s estate—quite a rich one—began with a list of sacks of coins of various sorts.’° He and his wife, as we have seen, had moved into the house at Glass Street 20.05 in 1667 and had served with their middle-level Lutheran neighbors as godparents for Roman Catholic babies. Half-successful—depending on how we look at it—was the case involving the Buchner

family. In 1661 “captain of His Royal Majesty of the artillery of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania” Jakub Trop presented to the Wilno magistracy a royal decree dated 19 July 1660 in which King Jan Kazimierz granted him possession of half of a house on Glass Street. It had been owned by a foreigner, Frydrych Cylich, who had died without heir, and thus was once again the king’s to bestow by law of escheat. Cylich was in fact a client of Calvinist magnate Boguslaw Radziwill, which may have helped make him a target of posthumous

confiscation of his property. Although the basic motivation here was the death of a foreigner without male heir, as in the other attempted confiscations the rhetoric of the royal privilege presented to the Wilno magistracy was one of rewarding faithful service during the midcentury wars. The king granted the privilege in recognition of Trop’s services in “various expeditions with the Cossacks, Muscovy, and Sweden.” The decree went on to tell its readers that Trop owned the other half of the house in question. What the decree does not tell us is that Cylich was Trop’s brother-in-law (both were married by then to Buchner

daughters) and that the “faithful, constant, and well-disposed” Trop was a Lutheran just like his foreigner brother-in-law, the barber-surgeon Cylich.®° Trop and the Buchners were to return to their Glass Street neighborhood and enjoy a certain respect in postwar Wilno society. One wonders whether the king knew his artillery captain had arrived in K6nigsberg with the first wave of asylum seekers in the company of a first wife, had married another a few years later while still in Prussian exile, and had married into the family of clients of the Calvinist Radziwitls who were the object of the royal decree confiscating their property. In any case, the attempted confiscations were sometimes based on fabricated evidence presented to a perhaps unwitting king in an attempt to exploit the midcentury wars for private gain at the expense of non-Catholics, both Protestant and Orthodox. As they were often fraudulent, they were also frequently unsuccessful. Elmantas Meilus has rightly warned, “It is necessary to look upon all accusations [of treason during the occupation]

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with caution, for it often turns out that people brought charges against each other out of motivations for personal gain.”®*

The “Russian Man” in Occupied Wilno The Orthodox were in a new situation in the occupied city, one that brought them temporary advantages but also the danger of eventual accusations of treason. An oddity in the language of the acta from the time of the occupation provides some access to the issues and a sense of what was at stake in a city where old habits of ethnoconfessional parity remained, but the supreme authority was suddenly not Roman but Greek. Usage in the various lan-

guages of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the seventeenth century drew strict distinctions between Ruthenian (ruski and Rusin, in Polish) and Muscovite (moskiewski and Moskal or Moskwicin). In the local context, “Ruthenian” was a term of controversy. In the language of high culture, represented here by polemical literature, an exclusionary question played a central role: Was the term to be applied to the Orthodox or to the Uniates? An eitheror choice had to be made: Which group was the rightful heir to the Ruthenian religious and political patrimony and thus to the privileges, offices, and property allotted to Ruthenians in the sacred and secular arenas of the Commonwealth?

The daily usage of living Ruthenians, however, at least in Wilno—and I suspect this picture may have broader applicability—was much fuzzier. The two Ruthenian confessions could be seen as markers of one common identity. Mixed marriages (Uniate-Orthodox) were

frequent enough, and larger human networks—formed through testamentary donations, choice of executors and witnesses of wills, and selection of guardians for widows and orphans, among other measures—suggest a local sense of Ruthenian identity that for some (though not all), included both Uniate and Orthodox. And, more important, it often stood in opposition to Roman Catholics. But as far as the Muscovite was concerned, all were in agreement: he was other, definitely not of us. Never did a seventeenth-century Ruthenian (or Pole) refer to people or things Muscovite as ruski. Or at least that is the picture outside the few exceptions considered here. They came in the brief period of the Muscovite occupation of Wilno. The following comments examine four passages from the acta of the burgomasters and councillors kept during the time of occupation in which the adjective ruski—in Wilno usage of this strictly delimited time and context and only here, as far as I can see—quite clearly meant Muscovite. This was a marked departure from the norm.

“Will Take Precautions against the Licentiousness of Russian People”

The recipient of the first document, as well as the central figure in the story it tells, was a certain Jozef Kojrelewicz, “merchant and burgher of Wilno.” He was in all likelihood

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Roman Catholic. In 1639 he entered his autograph inscription in the book of the Brotherhood of St. Anne, the One of Three, at the Bernardines’ Church of St. Anne, where he made a promise of annual contributions to the “brotherhood chest.”®? And he had other Catholic connections, among other things through his wife, who was the sister of Marta Janowiczowna, the wife of a Roman Catholic bencher (eventually councillor) by the name of Marcin Kiewlicz. On 21 July 1634, Kojrelewicz was named executor (together with brother-in-law Kiewlicz) of Marta’s will; that document instructed them to see to her burial with the Bernardines at Wilno’s St. Anne’s Church, “in the crypt where my parents also rest.”®? The Kiewliczes were a Roman Catholic family of some importance in the Wilno magistracy before the Muscovite occupation; the name is absent from the postwar record.**

Although not a member of the ruling elite, Kojrelewicz seems to have enjoyed a certain amount of respect in pre-prewar Wilno society and to have moved in circles that included non-Catholics as well. On 3 December 1646 he was named curator for a certain Maryna Dyszkowska. She was a Szostakowna, wife of Teodor (Fiedor) Dyszkowski and sister-in-law of Stefan Dyszkowski, who was a “council notary from the Greek side” (pisarz radziecki z greckiej strony) in the magistracy.®° The Szostaks were important members of Ruthenian society in Wilno. Finally, on 12 May 1651, together with future Roman Catholic burgomaster Mikotaj Rychter, Kojrelewicz witnessed the deed of sale of a house before the court of the Wilno Roman Catholic Chapter.®° In any event, this was a man of some modest standing in Wilno society, with contacts on both sides of the Greek-Roman divide.

More important for our story, “Jozef Kojrelewicz, burgher of Wilno, together with his wife,” headed a list of signatories of a Polish version of the loyalty oath—the second, more modest, cramped, untitled one—which he signed in the elector’s palace in K6nigsberg on 23 February/4 March 1656.®’ This particular list of signatories included many Ruthenian Vilnans, which adds to the impression that Kojrelewicz was on good terms with the Ruthenian side of the city.** In any event, by 20 April 1657 we find him back in Wilno. On that day, “famous Lord Jézef Kojrelewicz, merchant and burgher of Wilno” was “chosen according

to the order of Magdeburg law... . and confirmed by the magistracy” as the legal curator for Walenty Margonski, who was prior of the Calced Carmelites at Wilno’s All Saints Church.*®°

Plague would soon be added to the list of the trials of war and occupation, and a document of 30 May 1657 contained “Instructions given to famous Lord Jozef Kojrelewicz, wojt and burgomaster during the time of the pestilential air of the plague that is afflicting the city of Wilno, who was chosen by the entire magistracy and the commonality of Wilno, as well as to the five colleagues he should choose for himself.”°° The volume of acta preserved in RGADA shows a gap from 11 June 1657 to 19 January 1658, which suggests that those who could do so left town in an effort to survive the plague. At first, Muscovite palatine of Wilno Mixail Saxovskoj attempted to keep Vilnans from leaving the city, but eventually, after receiving a petition from the “wojt, ... burgomasters, councillors, benchers, notaries, ... and all Wilno

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burghers,” he was convinced to open the gates in exchange for a promise that the citizens would not take up arms against Muscovite forces and would return to the city once the plague had subsided.**

Another document suggests that Kojrelewicz himself perished, most likely of the plague, while carrying out the duties entrusted to him. Whenever they were forced to leave the city, Vilnans sought means to protect their movable property, either by entrusting it to religious orders in the hope that pillagers and thieves would respect the notion of sanctuary or by hiding it, often buried in the ground in the basements of their Wilno houses.®” On 18 February 1658, with the subsiding of the plague, shortly after the return of the citizens to Wilno, a certain Anna Prokopowiczowna, widow of Filip Weselowski, came before the recently reconstituted temporary magistracy to enter a protestation “about the digging up of [her] things” and an inventory of “the things that had been buried in the house when she departed [Wilno],

fleeing the [pestilential] air last year,” some of which were “among the things of the deceased Jozef Kojrelewicz, wojt in the time of the plague [wojt powietrzny].”%?

Plague always brought crime and disorder to cities as citizens weighed risks to health in staying behind against risks to property left to destruction or theft at the hands of “loose people” (luzni ludzie). The chances for theft and destruction were even greater when, as in this instance, plague was coupled with war and occupation. The charge to Kojrelewicz and his five colleagues was to maintain order and protect property in these challenging circumstances. The document assumed that the occupying Muscovite forces would not provide that

order and protection—perhaps some of the Muscovite elite also fled the city for these months. Further, I argue, the authors of the document—presumably it was members of the magistracy who had just received Saxovskoj’s permission to quit the city—saw among individual Muscovites who had accompanied the occupying troops a potential source of crime. The instructions contained seven points. The first called for the formation of a regiment (piechota) of thirty men who, “making their daily rounds, day and night, were to guard houses, shops, and stores.” The second gave Kojrelewicz and his colleagues the power to judge and punish offenders. Third, they were to make inventories of the property of citizens who had died of the plague and to keep that property under lock and key “until the happy return of the entire magistracy.” Fourth, should any of the current substitutes now serving as acting magistrates depart, those remaining “in vivis [among the living]” should immediately elect “a trusted, property-owning [osiadty], and nonsuspect citizen” to take his place. Fifth, they were to make “frequent and daily surveys” (rewizje) of all the houses, basements, empty stores, and shops, “so that rogues [hultaje], nocturnal thieves not hide there and have their gatherings and conspiracies unto people’s harm.” Sixth, only one gate, Rudnilki Gate, was to be the port of entry into the city; it was to be locked early, and Kojrelewicz was to keep the keys to all the other gates in his possession. Finally, since it was now spring and fires had begun to break out in the city and suburbs, “the gentlemen substitutes” (panowzte substytutowie) were to see to

it that “the public [water] pipes remain open for the extinguishing of fires.”

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It was the first point, the one establishing a regiment of thirty men, that contains the passage of interest here: Admittedly, it would have been fitting to have a greater regiment for such a large city, but

since many people left town without making a contribution to this subscription, the current His Grace Lord Palatine promised to add twenty men from his regiment to this city regiment, who will aid this guard and take precautions against the licentiousness of “Russian” people [swowolenstwu ruskich ludzi zabiega¢ bedzie].

The passage is interesting for a number of reasons. The lord palatine in question was the Muscovite prince Mixail Saxovskoj.°* Once the Muscovite forces had taken possession of the

sacked and depopulated city, the remaining authorities were just as interested in law and order as was the magistracy that would soon establish itself. A document of 30 December 1656 (i.e., four months before the outbreak of plague), which bears Saxovskoj’s name and title, reveals this concern: as we have seen, at the new palatine’s behest, Wilno city authorities conducted an inventory of the property of one Samuel Kalander “in the house of the deceased Lord Marcin Buchner” and in the presence of Zachariasz Bez, Michal Buchner, and Dawid Paciukiewicz.®° All were Lutherans, except for Paciukiewicz, who was Roman Catho-

lic, and all but the latter had fled to K6nigsberg in 1655.°° Michat Buchner was Kalander’s brother-in-law. He would also perish in the plague of 1657, but the extended family, perhaps then still in the Prussian capital, would eventually return to Wilno and figure as prominent Lutheran citizens until the end of the century. The Buchners were at the top of the middlelevel of Lutheran society that had gathered in the Glass Street neighborhood.*’ One way or another—and perhaps thanks in part to Saxovskoj’s administration of the city—Buchner family property remained in the family. Conversely, city authorities thought that life during the Muscovite occupation should and would continue largely according to the old rules. If the Polish-Lithuanian Sejm could elect the Muscovite tsar king of Poland, why couldn’t the ruling burgher elite of Wilno submit its ancient charter, given to the city by Wladyslaw Jagietto in 1387 and repeatedly reconfirmed by his successors, for one more reconfirmation by Tsar Aleksej Mixajlovié?*® But—to return to the passage from the first instruction to Kojrelewicz—what is most curious here is the phrase “Russian people” (ruskich ludzi). The editors of the text printed in volume to of AVAK (pp. 273-74) seem to have been unable to believe their eyes. One would, in fact, have expected to see something like luznych ludzi (loose people, i.e., noncitizens, those who owned no property in the city and had no fixed legal estate); it was they who were regularly blamed for unrest in times of plague and war. The editors of AVAK, unlike those responsible for other contemporary document series (e.g., AJuZR), rarely made “mistakes” of this sort in any of the languages they dealt with and certainly not in Polish. They decided to print réznych ludzi (various people), which heads in the direction of luznych

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ludzi, but does not, in my opinion, fit the rhetorical expectations of the genre. And in any case, the original text (it still bears the wax seal of the magistracy) quite clearly reads “ruskich ludzi.”°° This text, with its misreading in the printed version, has long been known. I have found more recently in the volume of acta preserved in RGADA three additional cases of the use of the adjective ruski in reference to Muscovites. They have now confirmed my original suspicions that the word was not unique to the manuscript of the instructions. “He Subordinated and Inctted a Russian Man”

On 17 July 1658, after the plague had subsided and the wartime magistracy had returned to Wilno, a certain Jan Poradnicz, husband of Regina Pekalska, came before that body to lodge a complaint about a saddler named Jedrze} Harasymowicz, who had a son named Jakub. I know nothing further about any of these people, although the name Harasymowicz might suggest that he was a Ruthenian. As foreseen by the rhetorical norms of the genre, the accused and his minions had done verbal harm to the plaintiff's honor and physical harm to his health. This time, as was frequently the case, there was a second act: And not being satisfied with this, after such a shaming [of the plaintiff], he subordinated [i.e., suborned] and incited a “Russian” man [subordynowal 1 naprawit cztowteka ruskiegol,

who, having come to the plaintiffs house, into his chamber, said, “The saddler gave me thirty kopecks to revile you and to beat you up, so you give me more, if you don’t wish to be beaten and reviled. And if you don’t give it to me, you will certainly not avoid this—if not today, then in a short time.”*°° For the moment, I would note only the exceptional use of Muscovite coinage in this account— the “thirty kopecks.” Most Vilnans, even during the period of occupation, kept records in, and seem to have continued using as currency, the Polish zloty and grosz or the Lithuanian

shock and grosz.*°* Evidently the hired muscle wished to be paid in the currency of his homeland. “Having Incited Russian People”

The next text recorded the words of Stefan Kuszelicz, whose family networks we encountered in the Horse Street neighborhood. The widow of Fiedor Kuszelicz, Ewdokia Ihnatowiczowna, signed the loyalty oath in K6nigsberg on 17 February 1656 for herself and her son

Michal, apparently then still a minor.*°* Their names, like those of many Ruthenians, appeared under the “Cantio Polonorum Vilnensium.” The son that interests me here, Stefan, must have been older and on his own by this time. He signed the loyalty oath on the same day as the first exiles, 16/26 February 1656, but together with officeholders in the magistracy,

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both Roman and Greek on the same list.*°? (Their oath, as well as their signatures, was in Latin.) Stefan’s recorded career in the magistracy would begin only in 1678, when he first held the office of annual councillor. His presence on this particular list in 1656 suggests that he had already been elected bencher, the first rung on the ladder of a career in the ruling elite, before 1655. Stefan was probably still Orthodox at this point, but he, too, would have to have converted to the Uniate Church after 1666 in order to contemplate a career in the magistracy. He held the office of annual councillor in 1678, 1682, 1685, 1688, and 1691, although he never rose to that of burgomaster.*°* Family, neighborhood, and personal networks place him firmly among Wilno Ruthenians—both Uniate and Orthodox. On 8 February 1663, Stefan would witness in Wilno the will of Uniate councillor Samuel Filipowicz, whose name we also find among the “Poles of Wilno” in the loyalty oaths signed in K6nigsberg.*°? On 27 August 1664 Kuszelicz took on the duties of guardian for the orphans of Ruthenian city councillor Jan Antonowicz,*°° and on 7 March 1687 he was named executor of the will of an Orthodox burghess named Katarzyna Wasilewska who lived in the poorer suburbs around Horse Market, located beyond the city walls and between Sharp and Rudniki Gates. Among Stefan’s duties in this last instance was to see to it that Wasilewska was buried at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit, “in the Holy Catholic Orthodox Greek faith” into which she had been born.*°” In any event, Stefan Kuszelicz was a Ruthenian. Kuszelicz had returned to Wilno from his K6nigsberg exile by 2 October 1658. On that date he brought a complaint before the temporary magistracy against Wilno soap boiler Afa-

nas Tosznicki. I know nothing further about him, although the name Afanas suggests that he, too, was a Ruthenian. According to Kuszelicz, Tosznicki had “purposefully and maliciously incited ‘Russian’ people” (umyslnie i ze zlosci naprawiwszy ruskich ludzt), who, at his “order and instigation” (za ktorym onego takowym ukazem 1 powodem), had “seized a horse by force and secreted it away who knows where.”?*°8

“Having Subordinated Russian People”

Finally, we have a protestation brought to the magistracy in late 1661 by Piotr Szostak. The Szostaks were members of the Wilno ruling elite on the Greek side of the magistracy. Bogdan Szostak was identified as a Wilno bencher (lawnik) in the Lustration of 1639.*°° Piotr Szdstak himself was still listed as municipal income notary (pisarz komerczany, pisarz prowentowy) as late as 1684, an office he had occupied by 1643.**° Documents from 1667 and 1668 call him a bencher; another from the same year records his advancement to the office of councillor (rajca).***

Szostak was the son of Tacjana Brazycz6wna and Matwiej Szostak. He grew up in Ortho-

dox circles and was probably himself Orthodox until a certain point. His cousin, Bazyli Brazycz, son of Dmitr (Market Square 4.05), was buried at the Orthodox Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit sometime before 10 March 1649.*” By 1654 Piotr Szostak seems to

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have been the owner of the “Brazycz Town House” on German Street in which he had grown up. (The Lustration of 1636 surveyed this portion of German Street as a part of Market Square; the house was at Market Square 3.13.) It was there, on 17 July 1654, that city officials, as well as Orthodox monks, came to inventory the estate of a recently deceased Orthodox merchant by the name of Jerzy Parfianowicz Lamanowski. The inventory was conducted at the request of the two guardians Lamanowski had appointed for his survivors, Szostak and goldsmith Bazyli Omelianowicz.**? Omelianowicz was married to Marianna Sznejderowna, the daughter of a Lutheran goldsmith named Jakub Sznejder, in whose atelier in the Lutheran Glass

Street neighborhood he lived and worked (Glass Street 20.02). The goldsmiths’ guild in Wilno was practically a Lutheran monopoly, but Omelianowicz, whose name points to Ruthenian origins, never appeared among those who gave offerings to the Lutheran church, which suggests he remained Orthodox or Uniate.*** Szostak’s wife was Anna Korzenkowska.**° A document from 1668 tells us that Szostak served as curator for Eufrozyna Korzenkowska (presumably some close relation of his wife), who was the widow of Krzysztof Ihnatowicz.**® In a document dated 26 July 1669 we learn that Uniate councillor Aleksander Ihnatowicz (Market Square 4.05) was the stepson of Eufrozyna Korzenkowska.**’ A year earlier, in April 1668, Szostak and Ihnatowicz had been named curators of the will of Uniate merchant Teodor Kochanski, who charged them “most urgently” with seeing to it that “my children remain in Holy Unity.” By this time, Szdostak and Ihnatowicz were both Uniate themselves: they were “elders of the Brotherhood of the Most Holy Virgin” and the Uniate Church of the Holy Trinity.*** Piotr Szostak may very well have been a recent convert to the Uniate Church. His earlier

family connections and other human networks were largely Orthodox, and he was most likely among those who converted after 1666 for the sake of a career in the magistracy. On 23 December 1668 (by which time he was certainly Uniate) he witnessed the will of Orthodox

burghess Maryna Iwanowiczowna, the estranged wife of by now Uniate councillor and future burgomaster, Grzegorz Kostrowicki. I should also note that in those same years, on g February 1667, Szostak witnessed the will of Lutheran merchant Piotr Klet.**°

I have been unable to find any Széstaks among the asylum seekers in K6nigsberg. On 5 November 1661, Piotr Szostak brought a complaint against Lukasz Kuczarski and his wife, Anastazja Kuszelanka. The accused also belonged to Orthodox circles. We have already met the Kuszelicz family. Anastazja’s first husband was Stefan Dziahilewicz, and their son Stefan

Izaak Dziahilewicz would ask his cousin Stefan Kuszelicz to serve as his legal plenipotentiary.**° Kuczarski was Anastazja’s second husband. Their son was an Orthodox monkat the monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Wilno.*?* Thus, and this is the point here, the story Iam about to recount played itself out within Ruthenian—indeed, largely Orthodox— circles. Szostak, as we know, had been named guardian of the estate of Orthodox merchant Jerzy Parflanowicz Lamanowski in 1654. When he came before the temporary magistracy in late 1661, he complained that Kuczarski and wife, “after the taking of the city of Wilno [by the

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Muscovite armies], having arranged and subordinated (suborned) ‘Russian’ people [przysposobiwszy 1 subordynowawszy sobie ruskich ludzi] in the year 1657, attacked [the little rural estate

(folwarek) called Waka] violento modo [violently], took possession of it, and they took profit from it, and they hold it to this day.”**? Szostak was bringing his complaint by virtue of his guardianship over the Lamanowski estate, of which the Waka folwarek was a part. Whether or not he had fled Wilno at the beginning of the war, he was back in town by 24 April 1658 when

he added his signature to instructions concerning a petition to the tsar.**? It remains a mystery to me why he was so slow to bring his case unless it was that he, unlike others, saw a benefit in waiting for Muscovite control to weaken.

Reestablishing the Status Quo Ante The ruski czlowiek of these documents was civilian but nota citizen of Wilno; he was prone

to license, theft, and thuggery; and—more important—in all but the first example he was the tool of Vilnans in their nefarious dealings with other Vilnans, most of whom, both plaintiffs and accused, were themselves Ruthenian. That is what lends the sense of moral outrage to

the three protestations: a Wilno Ruthenian (or, perhaps better, a Ruthenian Vilnan) had employed an outsider, a ruski cztowiek, to settle personal scores with a fellow Vilnan during a period of crisis. I have been able to identify a few Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists who were present in occupied Wilno, which suggests that at least token representatives of the full confessional spectrum had regathered there early on during the occupation. Buta reading of the acta, especially the more systematically organized volume preserved in RGADA, also gives the impression that occupied Wilno was disproportionately Ruthenian (in comparison with the pre- and postoccupation demographics). In fact, the city may have been disproportionately Orthodox. In the summer of 1657, Tsar Aleksej Mixajlevié decreed that any Uniates unwilling to convert to Orthodoxy were to be expelled from the city, and Saxovskoj communicated the demand to municipal authorities by early 1658.*74 This large Ruthenian presence is central to my argument that the ruski czlowiek of these texts was Muscovite. The documents I have cited here were produced by a legal system that still attempted to function according to Wilno’s old principle of Roman-Greek parity. When Christian Vilnans came before that court during the occupation, they continued to be identified by name, estate, and profession—never by confession or ethnicity. The form for both plaintiff and accused in protestations was the same: “Lord Stefan Kuszelicz, merchant and burgher of Wilno,” for example. Even in the narrative part of the complaints themselves, Vilnans still refrained from identifying each other by confession or ethnicity. The three protestations discussed above reflect the expected usage: a Vilnan (who happened to be Ruthenian but was not identified as such) had brought a complaint against another Vilnan (also Ruthenian but unidentified), alleging evil deeds and the employment of a ruski cztowiek to help him carry them out.

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The phrase itself, particularly the use of the adjectival form and as a modifier for “man”

or “people,” jumps out at the reader. No one, as far as I know, ever referred to Wilno Ruthenians as ruscy ludzie. In the polemical literature, we read of Rus wilenska, lud ruski w Wilnie

(the Rus of Wilno, the Ruthenian people in Wilno).**° In the pamphlets but also in legal documents and guild statutes they were referred to as people of the ruska (or grecka) wiara (of

the Ruthenian or Greek faith). They were members of the narod ruski (Ruthenian nation). They occupied the fawica ruska (or grecka) (Ruthenian or Greek bench) in the magistracy and held the office of pisarz ruski (Ruthenian notary). In the guilds, elderships were allotted to people ritus graeci seu ruthenici (of the Greek or Ruthenian rite), to Rusini (Ruthenians), and so forth.*?° Rusin, yes, but a ruski cztowiek—never.'”’ This was what Vilnans came, on occa-

sion, to call the Muscovite civilians with whom they rubbed shoulders during the occupation. It sounds like the answer to the question of identity that might have been posed to them on the street. “Who are you?” “Ruski czelawiek.” Still, the possibility for confusing a Rusin with a ruski czlowiek suggests that a rethinking of the vexed question of Ruthenianness as it applied to Wilno burghers may have been one aspect of life during the occupation. Did Ruthenians and ruscy ludzie have anything in common? We can imagine both Ruthenian and non-Ruthenian Vilnans asking themselves this question. A consideration of two passages from the acta from those same years where we find the standard usage of Moskal and moskiewski to refer to the occupiers may help shed some

light on the situation. On 26 January 1661, Zacharjasz Kanecki registered a protestation against Krzysztof Ihnatowicz. Both were merchants. Kanecki was probably a Roman Catholic. His father, Piotr Kanecki, had died in 1641, bequeathing money to the Wilno Dominicans at the Church of the Holy Spirit, asking that requiem Masses be said for his soul.**® Krzysztof Ihnatowicz was an in-law of Piotr Szostak and the father of Aleksander Ihnatowicz; both of the latter two were Uniate by the late 1660s, but they may have been recent converts from Orthodoxy. Certainly they at least pretended to be Orthodox for some time during the occupation. The accused in this case was also probably Orthodox. Kanecki’s complaint is worth quoting at some length: In the preceding year of 1660, before the arrival of the armies of His Royal Majesty, during

the temporary absence of the plaintiff, having business dealings and an understanding with the Muscovites [majac handle i konferencyja z Moskalami], nullo juris praetextu et sine con-

sensu [by no pretext of the law and without the consent] of either the plaintiff himself or

his Lady spouse, [Ihnatowicz] rented a shop to a Muscovite in the house of the plaintiff near the stalls. Which Muscovite not only held the shop under his management, dealing in various goods, but he also kept horses and carts in the house itself, and he paid the accused for this. And when His Grace Lord Siesicki burst into Wilno, then the soldiers, having found out about the Muscovite in the house of the plaintiff, did no little harm to the plaintiff in his Muscovite goods on account of the accused. But after the departure of His Grace Lord Siesicki, the Muscovite palatine imprisoned the spouse protestantis [of the plaintiff], together with our children and the servants and neighbors who were living in

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the house, confiscated not a few goods worth 1,000 zl, and worked great detriment and devastation in the house. And although the Lord God saw to it that [the Muscovite palatine] did not torture the spouse protestantis, and did not take her to the castle [nie meczyt 1 do zamku nie wziat], nonetheless the servants were tortured.**°

This story took place against the background of the increasingly frequent incursions by Polish-Lithuanian forces that would eventually lead to the liberation of the city.*°° By 1658 Wilno had become a “borderland fortress” of the Polish-Lithuanian territories conquered by Muscovy, and the Lithuanian troops active in the area were beginning to make “excursions” into the city. By the end of 1659, Saxovskoj had been replaced as Wilno palatine by the feared and hated Prince Danilo Myseckij, whose regime was much more oppressive toward the inhabitants and took an interest in them only insofar as they were useful for the defense of the city. Imprisonment and execution of citizens became more common as anti-Muscovite sentiment rose. In this environment, Vilnans could no longer maintain that the city of Wilno was their first allegiance without a careful consideration of whose city it was. In the spring of 1660, citizens loyal to the Commonwealth informed Kazimierz Dowmont Siesicki—the figure who played a role in the preceding case—of the weakened state of the Muscovite garrison. Siesicki, who was the leader of the troops then stationed outside the city, made his foray into Wilno on g May of that year. He quickly retreated, and retaliations against Vilnans suspected of collaboration with him were severe. From this time forward, the city was under more or less constant blockade by PolishLithuanian forces. On 11 July 1660, troops under the command of Michal Kazimierz Pac occupied the city, and the Muscovite company was forced to retreat to the two castles. The standoff lasted for half a year. At the beginning of 1661, grand hetman of Lithuania Pawel Sapieha arrived with his troops and began to launch attacks upon the city. Around 20 October 1661, King Jan Kazimierz came to the area, and a more concentrated assault on the Muscovite forces began. On 3 December 1661, the Muscovite garrison (which now numbered only seventy-eight) revolted against Palatine MySeckij. The next day Jan Kazimierz made his triumphal entry into the Wilno castles. MysSeckij was executed in Wilno Market Square on 10 December 1661. The story told in the protestation cited above took place in the period immediately before, during, and after Siesicki’s brief “liberation” of Wilno in May 1660. Ihnatowicz may well have been some sort of business partner of Kanecki’s. (As we have seen, most registered complaints turn out to tell stories that had taken place “in the family”—often quite literally.)

The protestation confirms several important things: that there were Muscovite civilians living in Wilno during the occupation, some of them engaged in commerce; that Vilnans had business dealings with them and shared houses with them; and that Vilnans ran the risk of retaliation from both Polish-Lithuanian and Muscovite authorities if they were not cautious in their dealings with them. And we see here what Vilnans most feared at the moment—

being “taken to the castle,” which, under MySeckij’s rule, meant torture and possible execution.

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That same fear lay at the heart of the curious story told by Andrzej Jozefowicz on 20 August 1661. On that day he brought a complaint before the magistracy against Orthodox (later Uniate) magistrate Stefan Kuszelicz: Kuszelicz had been one of those who alleged wrongs inflicted by other Vilnans with the help ofa “ruski czlowiek.” Jozefowicz may have been Roman Catholic. A man by that name was an elder of the Brotherhood of the Scapular of the Most Holy Virgin at the Calced Carmelites’ Church of All Saints in 1667.*3*

The document in question was in fact what was known as a reprotestation. The entry preceding it in the acta for the same day had been Kuszelicz’s own protestation against Jozefowicz.

When Jézefowicz got his turn before the judges, he made the following allegation: During the public [display of the] guard, [Stefan Kuszelicz] dared and had the audacity to make a tumult anda ruckus. Having grabbed some boy from the area around the city wall, and pretending to be a Muscovite himself [uczyniwszy sie sam wrzkomo Moskalem], he asked

him where there were still Polish people [gdzieby lud polski zostawat], and he led him by

force to the Castle [do Zamku], saying, “come with me to the Gorod ” [do Gorodu, to the Castle]. ... And then the aforementioned Lord Kuszelicz went to the Brotherhood House, and when the guard jumped in after him, exiting the house on his own, he said about all of this that he had done it as a joke [Ze zartem uczynit].*9?

The “public [display of the] guard” was probably that of the municipal police force administered by the magistracy, although it could have had something to do with the small Muscovite company stationed in the two castles. In any event, in August of 1661—Sapieha had been encamped outside the city since the beginning of the year, and King Jan Kazimierz would arrive in October—it was possible to encounter members of the Muscovite force in the streets of Wilno but also members of the Polish-Lithuanian troops, who were making more and more frequent forays inside the city walls. This situation, which had probably been a part of the city’s daily life for some months, must have made Vilnans cautious around strangers, mistrustful of each other, and fearful of reprisals from whichever forces were in control of the city at the moment. Here, too, the central fear was of being taken to MySeckij’s dungeon in the castle. This was what made Kuszelicz’s actions a “joke.” Note that in both these examples, it was Roman Catholic Vilnans who had brought complaints against Ruthenian Vilnans—again, neither identified by confession—over their associations with Muscovites. The allegation of impersonating a Muscovite suggests—on the part of both actor and audience—a distance from the Muscovite but also an uncomfortable familiarity with him. Kuszelicz knew how to affect a Muscovite accent and how to introduce Muscovite words into his Ruthenian/Polish (gorod instead of grod or zamek for cas-

tle), and the boy knew enough, maybe just enough, to mistake his speech for that of a Muscovite. Accusations of treason lurk just beneath the surface here, which is why Lutheran,

Calvinist, and Orthodox Vilnans would be the target of attempts at this same time to confiscate their property.

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The period of the Muscovite occupation had turned the tables temporarily, and the Orthodox elite now enjoyed the protection of an Orthodox ruler—much as previously it had been the Catholics who had enjoyed that advantage—even though the magistracy continued to function under its old system of power sharing. For a time there may have been a sense that the city was becoming more Greek than Roman, as reflected, for instance, in the fact that the old calendar was becoming more regularly used. Although we can easily imagine members of the Ruthenian elite exploring what it would mean for their lives if Wilno were to remain subject to an Orthodox ruler, there was no exodus of the Greek side of the city with the return to Polish-Lithuanian rule. (And recall that

members of the Orthodox elite had figured prominently among the asylum seekers in Konigsberg at the beginning of the occupation of Wilno.) The city’s peculiar confessional convivencia soon reasserted itself under renewed Catholic rule. True, after 1666 those who contemplated careers in the magistracy would have to convert to Roman Catholicism or to the Uniate Church, but Ruthenians and Protestants found ways around these impediments to social advancement. First, given the weakness of the cities in Poland-Lithuania, attaining the status of magistrate was simply not as attractive there as in the cities of western Europe, and Lutherans and Orthodox found other paths to wealth and status. Second, some of the conversions to the Uniate Church may have been pro forma, the price paid for membership in the ruling elite after 1666. The curious use of the term ruski cztowiek during the occupation to indicate a Muscovite reflects the situation of a mere few years during which Vilnans of all confessions had the

Opportunity to make firsthand observations of possible links between Ruthenians and Muscovites. What we see in the texts discussed here is a small and local, northern variation on what Serhii Plokhy has described as the misunderstanding-ridden Ruthenian-Muscovite encounter that accompanied a “reunification” of Cossack Rus' with Muscovy in which “neither side. . . fully understood what it was getting into.”*?? In Wilno, the old dispensation (and rhetoric) quickly reasserted itself. At the beginning of the occupation, documents spoke gingerly and impersonally of the recent “troubles” (trwogi) that had beset the city.*** By the end, Vilnans were less circumspect in placing blame for the cause of the troubles. On 2 December 1661, two days before King Jan Kazimierz made his triumphal entry upon

retaking possession of Wilno, Stefan Kuszelicz was once again before the court of the magistracy.*?° This time he was acting as the curator of his Orthodox mother, Eudokia Kuszelina. She was pressing her claim to the estate of her relation, Hrehor Dziahilewicz. She was getting around to pursuing it with some delay as a result of the “troubles and confusion during the rapid and sudden attack of the Muscovite Foe upon the city of Wilno [w tych trwogach 1 zamieszaniu za pretkim 1 nagtym nastqapientem tegoz Nieprzyjaciela Moskwicina na

miasto wilenskie].”

On 21 June 1661 (i.e., about half a year before the ultimate liberation of the city), Uniate

fathers registered a complaint in the acta of the magistracy. The Orthodox fathers from across the street had allegedly exploited the “time of the Muscovite incursion” to take away

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from the Holy Trinity Church all its “splendor,” including, in addition to smaller church apparatus, “a large bell, called Swan [Lebiedz]” that they were using, in the absence of a municipal clock, to beat the hours. The Uniate fathers were concerned that this “constant beating of the bell, every hour, day and night, on one side. . . with a great hammer” (when the Orthodox had other bells of their own) would eventually destroy it. They were doing this—according to the complaint—“to our detriment and to the scorn of our faith, so that for the future, as is the case now, Their Graces the Father Uniates might not have anything with which to ring to call people to the service of God of our Uniate church.” In addition, the

Orthodox had carted off “two bodies together with their coffins.” These belonged to “St. Ignatius, the former patriarch of Moscow, who, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, having abandoned the Disuniate faith, .. . had become a Uniate and had died in that faith and had been buried here in that Church of the Holy Trinity,” as well as “father Weliamin Jozef Rucki, metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus.”*?° A second complaint registered 28 June 1661 alleged more generally that when “the perfidious Muscovite [wiarotomny Moskwicin]” invaded

Wilno, “all God’s Uniate churches and Roman Catholic churches were ruined, but their Disuniate church remains whole and untouched in its entirety.” In addition to carting off the

bell called Swan and the bodies of the two Uniate patrons, the Orthodox had used the opportunity to raid other churches in the desolate city.*?” On 1g August 1661—still three and a half months before the final liberation of the city— the Orthodox fathers entered their own reprotestation. In it they claimed that the Uniates were exploiting the situation, using words of slander and dishonor, solely “unto the destruction and eradication . .. of the Holy Orthodox Ruthenian faith and church.” It was rather the “nerfidious enemy”—the Orthodox fathers also used the phrase, wiarotomny Nieprzyjaciel— who had robbed the Uniate and Roman Catholic churches of Wilno and elsewhere. Moreover,

“more than one knows well” how and when all these things (Swan, the two bodies, altar adornments from the Holy Trinity Church, etc.) “were recovered from the hands of the enemy, not without special expense and labor.” In short, it was the Orthodox who were the local patriots, and they now accused the Uniates not only of ingratitude but also of attacks upon honor.*?8

Wherever the truth lies, these protestations by the Father Basilians of the Holy Trinity and the reprotestation by the Father Basilians of the Holy Spirit—both Uniates and Orthodox were Basilians in Wilno usage—reflect both the tensions of the war and occupation and a return to the status quo ante. A small Muscovite force was still occupying the city (or at least the castle), in theory Uniates had no right to be in Wilno, and yet both Uniates and Orthodox were there, with full access to the local magistracy. The sure sign of a return to old ways was

the two parties’ recourse to the constant litigation that was at the bedrock of Wilno’s convivencia.

~CHAPTER THIRTEEN ~

Old Age and Poor Reltef

n 23 August 1636, King Wladyslaw IV of Poland-Lithuania gave a privilege to the beg-

O}?’ of Wilno allowing them—apparently for the first time—to organize themselves into a corporation following the model of the guilds and laying out rules for the inclusion and exclusion of members and a few guidelines for their social discipline. In fact, the document to which the king gave his signature originated from the Wilno magistracy and perhaps also in part from the incorporated beggars themselves. It was a response to “the great disorder here in the city among the poor and the great disgust that arises from it.”* This charter, along with much of the city archive, was lost in the fires that accompanied the Muscovite invasion and occupation of the city, and we owe our knowledge of it to the great flurry of rerecording of documents such as deeds, wills, and guild charters in the years after 1662. Whoever had a copy of a prewar act came forward to have it once again entered as an official part of the municipal record. The beggars’ corporation was no different, and on 12 July 1663, officers of that group appeared before the magistracy presenting a copy of the privilege of 1636 and asking that it be recorded in the official record, since “the original had been lost through the difficulty of circumstances during the raging of hostilities.”* Similar documents were reentered on 6 August 1729, 14 November 1744, and 11 March 1745.’ Wilno was notalone, of course, among early modern cities in its attempt to aid and discipline the poor. The topic of this chapter—public and private strategies for providing care for the poor,

sick, elderly, and otherwise weak—has been investigated for many early modern societies, Poland-Lithuania among them.* Wilno, however, has not received much scrutiny in this regard.°

As throughout this book, the underlying concern here is to assess the extent to which the strategies for the organization and delivery of poor relief, broadly construed, were limited by confessional, linguistic, and ethnic boundaries, and to what extent they crossed those boundaries. Who gave aid to whom? And how was it delivered? What were the expectations of the giver and the recipient? I focus my attention on the larger Christian community, as this is where the main sources lie, although I refer to some aspects of Jewish and Tatar strategies by way of comparison at certain points.° My discussion moves across a continuum from the public to the more private, from centralized to decentralized approaches to the problem of bringing relief to poor people. Decentralized poor relief may have affected the greatest number of

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people, but by its very nature it remains elusive in the extant sources. To show a range of such possible responses to the threat of poverty, I recount at the end of my discussion a few stories of “self-help,” of the improvised attempts to provide a personalized safety net. I conclude with

some remarks about the topography of poverty and poor relief in seventeenth-century Wilno and its relation to the question of confessionalization and religious toleration.

Bringing Order to the Poor By granting official status to a beggars’ corporation,’ the king, the magistracy, and the incorporated beggars were attempting to accomplish several things at once: to care for a certain number of deserving poor, to limit the numbers of the poor inscribed in the corporation, and to provide rules for their behavior. The program, and the statute itself, was a variant of the highly centralized system of poor relief often associated with Reformation cities (although by no means limited to them). The central feature was a “common box” (gemeiner Kasten), part or all of the resources of which were designated for support of the “deserving poor,” i.e., those unable to work because of age or infirmity and who otherwise might be permitted under certain circumstances to beg on the streets.* In the royal privilege the king decreed that the beggars were to have an established gathering place, something akin to a guild house, “for their meetings, for the keeping of the dues box,” which house was to be “freed from the obligation of housing guests in it at all times.”° The organizational details were provided in the letter from the magistracy to which the king gave his approval and which formed the body of the royal privilege. This document was modeled on guild statutes, which also had to be submitted for the approval of the king or the magistracy. The corporation was to elect four elders each year (roczni starsi). Unlike those of many of the guilds of Wilno, the beggars’ statutes made no specifications concerning the confession of the elders. In those other sodalities, as we have seen, peace was often maintained by distribution and/or alternation of confession among a limited number of “annual elders” who wielded power and controlled finances. The landlord or owner (gospodarz) of the guild house was to occupy “the first place, like a judge, at all the meetings.” The four elected

annual elders, together with the landlord, were to choose as executors of their decisions “four beaters [biczownicy], or more, if necessary, who would drive healthy beggars out of town, report licentious [swawolni] beggars to the elders and punish them, and execute the other below-described articles.” Further, the beaters were instructed to make a survey [rewizja] of all the street beggars, invalids visited by God, and to inscribe

them in a register. They should admonish the healthy to look for a job [stuzba], and that they not make excesses around town under the pretext of poverty and invented defects. And whoever, once admonished, should not refrain from begging—such a one should be driven out of town by the beaters.

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The genuine beggars—those inscribed in the corporation’s roll bobok—were to receive a certain kind of care. If a beggar should become ill, he was to inform one of the elders, whose responsibility it would be to bring a priest to hear confession; the deceased was to be buried, “according to his means,” either near the church or in the open field. If “one of the brothers or sisters” should not have anyone to see to him during his illness, the elders were to find

someone “using common brotherhood funds.” Brothers and sisters of the corporation— like brethren of the guilds—were required to attend the funerals of fellow beggars; this included the obligation to be present at religious services and to carry the body to the grave, under the penalty of half a pound of wax (to be paid to the beggars’ guild altar at the Jesuits’ St. John).

Pilgrims and anyone who should arrive from outside Wilno claiming to represent prisoners—usually this meant those held in captivity by the Turks—and asking for alms for their ransom were not to be recommended for charity from the pulpits in sermons until they presented themselves at the beggars’ corporation house; here they were to render an account of themselves, whereupon they might be recommended by the elders. Beggars were to refrain from “drunkenness, licentiousness, lewd behavior in the pubs, shouting in the streets, singing in the wee hours of the morning or bawdy songs.” Amputated and rotting limbs were to be covered with a clean white cloth, because it was painful for passersby to look at

them. Mothers should not lie around the streets with their babies because this was disgusting. Peasants from the village must not be allowed to beg; instead they must get a job. They should not hire themselves out to lead the blind beggars; rather, the blind should be led by the sighted lame (chromy a widzqcy niech slepego prowadz1).

The beggars’ corporation was required to maintain a book with the names of the inscribed members. The book should be kept in Polish so that simple people might be able to understand. Therefore, one of the members had to be literate in Polish. He also had to be literate in Latin for the translation of letters of introduction when new beggars came to the city from elsewhere. New arrivals among the beggar population who claimed to be members of the

szlachta or soldiers or in the service of some gentleman were nonetheless required to be “inscribed into the brotherhood without any excuse.” The corporation was to meet once every four weeks. Each beggar was to contribute to the corporation box one Polish grosz per meeting, or 13 gr per annum. The box was to have two keys, one to be entrusted to the care of a “church elder” ora bell ringer (i.e., anonbeggar who served as an officer of the corporation) and the other to be in the hands of one of the annually elected elders of the “street beggars.” Two Masses were to be said annually (and funded by the corporation treasury), one for the living benefactors of the poor and one for the dead. All inscribed beggars were required to attend the Mass, which would be at the Catholic parish church (i.e., again at the Jesuits’ St. John); whoever did not attend was required to pay a fine to the corporation box of one grosz. During periods of plague and famine, when there were “great intrusions from all lands,” the elders were to take special care to distinguish the invalid from the healthy; the latter were

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to be driven from the city, “since from that sort there usually arise the greatest larceny, theft, and every sort of license during those times.” Throughout the document, the concern was to make certain that everyone—even those on the margins—was enrolled in some clearly defined corporation with lists of members’ names and guidelines for behavior. The category (or anticategory) of luzni ludzie (loose people) was among the most feared, and these were the people regularly blamed for urban unrest and the spread of contagion.*° Poor people living in hospitals who were able to leave their beds were given dispensation to sit about the streets and beg during Lent and up to the octave after Easter, as well as one week before All Saints and three days at Christmas, during which periods they were “to be left alone by the beaters and all the others.” On the other hand, if some sick beggar should not have a place to stay, and the beaters should find him lying at the base of the wall, he should be brought by cart (kolasa), “according to custom,” to the elders of the hospital of SS. Joseph and Nicodemus. Finally—and here is the only direct reference to the multiconfessional nature of the city and thus of its beggar population—“from each Catholic church [kosciol], Orthodox/Uniate church [cerkiew], and Lutheran/Calvinist church [zbor] that is within the city walls, one bell ringer is to sit with the annual elders.”** This provision was modeled on the various guild charters that provided for confessional/ethnic parity in the elections of annual elders. The text entered into the acts in 1663 was brought before the magistracy by six named beggars: Petrus Rotkiewicz, Bartholomaeus Slowinski, and Joannes Windziul, who were identified as pauperum seniores, or seniors of the beggars’ corporation; Helias Meczyriski, the notarius, or secretary; and Josephus Andruszkiewicz and Gregorius Wolynkiewicz, identified as commensales (perhaps they were treasurers). Beyond this passage, I have found only one reference that may reflect the presence of the corporation in the city during the seventeenth century. In the record of offerings to the Wilno Lutheran church for 1640-1642, we find a certain “Heinrich Juchsche, Bettlersche,” in other words—in the German usage of this particular document—“the widow of Heinrich Juch, beggar” (apparently this identifies his profession, although it may have been a family business), who gave 1 zt and 6 gr (ora total of 36 gr) to the church’s coffers.*” For the sake of comparison, in that particular two-year cycle, the most generous supporter of the church was “Johanes Majus, Medicinae Doctor,” who gave 48 zt (which equaled 1,440 gr, or exactly forty times the contribution of Frau Juch).*? To give a rough idea of the value—an inventory of 1644 listed plums at 2 gr per pound, which would

work out to eighteen pounds of plums for the Lutheran church from Frau Juch and 720 pounds from Doctor Maius;** a testament of 1652 included among the deceased’s possessions shoes worth 2 zt, which would put Frau Juch’s contribution for the year at a little more than one used shoe and Doctor Maius’s at twenty-four pairs.*° I have found no other independent evidence that the Wilno beggars’ corporation played a role in the life of the city. Still, we know that its charter was entered into the acta of the magistracy at least five times, from 1636 to 1745. This fact alone would suggest that this kind of centralized poor relief was of some importance to early modern Vilnans.

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Let us assume for the moment—a reasonable assumption, I argue—that in addition to Herr (and perhaps Frau) Juch, the beggars’ corporation of Wilno also included members of the Orthodox, Uniate, Roman Catholic, and Calvinist Churches. This, after all, is what was implied by the provision for including bell ringers from all these confessions in the administration of the beggars’ corporation. It was, as we have seen, an arrangement typical for public life in early modern Wilno. On the one hand, it took into account the presence of the five legally recognized Christian confessions, and it allowed for a certain kind of representation and power sharing across that spectrum. But at the same time, it clearly recognized the dominant position of Roman Catholicism, and it sought to bring these various confessions together—under the corporation banner—at a Catholic altar. The guilds of Wilno clearly served as the model here.

The Working Poor Centralized providers of poor relief like the Wilno beggars’ corporation typically excluded able-bodied citizens from its rolls—what we would call the “working poor.” And yet almost all inhabitants of early modern cities faced the possibility of slipping into poverty at certain times in their lives. Orphans, widows, and the aged were particularly vulnerable. But even healthy working men were not free from this concern, and the guilds sought to provide a sort of safety net to its members and, to a certain extent, to their families. This was modeled in

some ways on the centralized system of the common box, although it was administered at the level of the individual guild. Care for sick guild members and—for a circumscribed period of time—for their eventual widows was often a specific part of guild charters (and was probably a part of the informal practice of guilds that did not include this aspect of their activities in formal statutes). The fact that practically all the guilds were in some way multiconfessional and multiethnic implied that people of the different communities were bound to aid their guild brethren and their families. The cobblers’ guild, for example, which shared power equally among “Romans, Ruthenians, and Saxons” (i.e., in this context, Catholics, Orthodox/Uniates, and Lutherans), declared the following in articles confirmed on 9g July 1689: Love of one’s neighbor, especially Christian love, demands of everyone that there be respect for the sick, and especially for those who have come here from elsewhere [przybylce],

who do not have either parents, or relatives, or masters with whom they have served. Therefore, if it should happen to any journeyman that he should take sick with some long illness, the master is not to remove him from the shop immediately; rather he is to remain by him for around two weeks. And after the expiration of these two weeks, he is to be given

over to the infirmarium of the monastery of the Bonifratelli fathers. And since all remain

subject to chance, there is to be a special box, into which during every meeting at

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least one shilling is to be placed, and that money is always to be kept for the assistance of the sick. But if that sick journeyman should return to health, he is to work off the expense that had been expended for him by the master through those two weeks during his illness.*°

In this case, the centralized poor relief of the guild box was seen in part as a supplement to aid those who lacked the social networks that typically provided improvised, decentralized aid (“especially for those who have come here from elsewhere”). The statute of the masons’ guild (dated 1 May 1595) accepted into the ranks of the masters “foreigners, Poles, Italians, Germans, as also from this nation of the state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.”*’ Its provisions for poor relief were again quite specific: If anyone from the brethren should fall into a severe illness or poverty, he is to be provided

with the appropriate assistance from the Brotherhood’s box—but in this manner: that he establish two trustworthy men who would vouch for him, that as soon as he should return to health, and acquire money, he would return to the box the assistance that was paid

out for him. But if (God forbid) anyone should die in this illness or poverty, then all that was paid out for him should be remitted.*®

A century later, in a reregistration of the masons’ articles (dated 3 December 1687; they too had been destroyed during the Muscovite invasion), the guild made the following new provisions: Every healthy person must expect illness, and the ill death, and all remain under the control of chance. Therefore, if it should happen that any journeyman of the congregation of

masons should take sick, and could no longer have a livelihood and assistance from work, then the elders are to make good for him with a journeyman who, remaining at work, is to give the fourth grosz of his daily or weekly pay. But the master is not supposed

to take from the journeyman’s weekly quota, which he usually takes from him every week, in view of the fact that the journeyman works for himself and for another who is sick. The same is to be understood about the widow of a journeyman mason, however only for a year and six weeks.*°

And the examples could be multiplied.

Hospitals Early modern hospitals were not, of course, places where people chose to go for medical care: if you were sick, had a place to live, and could afford to pay a doctor and an apothecary,

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you endured your sickness at home. Wilno hospitals were originally foundations of specific churches and religious orders that took in, and sent aid out to, the poor and infirm of the community. As such, hospitals had a natural connection with confessions and neighborhoods, even though some of the hospitals associated with particular churches were administered by members of the magistracy.*° Lutheran pastor Jedrzej Sch6nflissius wrote in his 1638 encomium for his former parishioner Jakub Gibel that, as city councillor and burgomaster for over thirty-eight years, “he gladly served the churches and hospitals, even though they were of another religion, on account of the office and his obligations.”?*

The locations of some hospitals changed somewhat over time, with the destruction of the city through fire and war (the city burned in 1610 and 1655) and through the simple fact that specific churches purchased or received as a bequest new buildings for the use of their hospitals, at which point either the network grew or the hospital changed its address. Moreover, it is not entirely clear whether all buildings described in the various surveys and deeds as “hospital houses” (kamienice szpitalne) were used only, or even primarily, as hospitals. Clearly some of those who are described in our sources as “living in the X hospital” were not necessarily recipients of care. Consider, for example, the case of the 1690 survey of Wilno

properties, which noted that on Sawicz Street there was “one little hospital house of the Holy Redeemer [at this point a Uniate institution], in which [reside] four neighbors [sqstedzi,

i.e., renters of chambers]; a second little hospital house of the Holy Redeemer, in which [resides] one neighbor.”?? The neighbors were hardly residents of the hospital, though they presumably contributed to the support of the specific church’s hospital(s) with their rents. A few locations described in our surveys as “hospital houses of X church” must have been partly or wholly profit-earning properties for actual hospitals/poorhouses located elsewhere. And yet, in spite of these caveats, a picture emerges of a considerable network of hospitals (and hospital-owned properties) in seventeenth-century Wilno. Let us begin with the Roman Catholic institutions. These were first established in connection with specific churches and their immediate parishes and were usually adjacent to the church. In the middle of the seventeenth century there were seven such Roman Catholic hospitals: at St. Mary Magdalene (established 1514), at Holy Trinity (established 1535, deriving income from a tax on crossing Bricked Bridge and administered by the magistracy and the Dominicans), at SS. Joseph and Nicodemus (Jesuits, established 1625), at St. Stephen (established ca. 1600), at Holy Cross (Bonifratelli, established 1635), at St. Peter in the Antokol suburb (established before 1630), and at St. Anne (Bernardines, established 1640). The hospitals were frequently connected with religious brotherhoods, one of whose purposes was to provide care for the poor and infirm. This was true of SS. Joseph and Nicodemus (and the brotherhood under the same patronage), of St. Stephen (Brotherhood of St. Lazarus), and of St. Anne, where German and other foreign Catholics gathered in the Brotherhood of St. Martin.?? The beggars’ corporation had its seat at the Jesuits’ St. John, although there does not seem to have been a hospital building at that location.

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In the seventeenth century three of these institutions—the hospitals at the Churches of the Holy Trinity, St. Stephen, and SS. Joseph and Nicodemus—were under at least partial supervision of secular stewards chosen by the Roman half of the magistracy. The hospital at Holy Trinity drew some of its income from the much traversed Bricked Bridge that crossed the River Wilia to the northwest of the city and led to the Snipiszki suburb; it had a correspondingly large budget.** Presumably, it was oversight of institutions like this one that Schénflissius had in mind when he wrote of Burgomaster Jakub Gibel’s service to non-

Lutheran hospitals. The magistracy seems to have farmed these duties out to Wilno merchants at times. The presence of “M. Fonderflot’—this was most likely Lutheran merchant Matiasz Fonderflot—as steward in 1671 suggests that the ban on non-Catholic and non-Uniate participation in the magistracy after 1666 did not put absolute limits on the participation of the “others” in positions important to municipal governance.” The many Orthodox churches established throughout the eastern half of Wilno (along and to the right of the main axis leading from Sharp Gate to the Lower Castle) were taken over by the Uniates after 1596, along with schools, brotherhoods, and charitable institutions such as hospitals. Records from the middle of the seventeenth century tell of numerous Ruthenian (by now Uniate) hospitals and hospital houses. Notably, the cathedral Church of the Savior (Spas) had two hospital houses and a bath near the cathedral church and the Savior Gate, as well as several “places” (squares, open places of land) in the city. In addition, there were Uniate hospitals at St. Parasceve, Holy Trinity, and the Church of the Resurrection. Holy Trinity was the largest Uniate complex, and it also possessed a Brotherhood of the Immaculate Conception, one of whose purposes was the provision of poor relief.*° After 1596, the Orthodox of Wilno built a new church across the street from Holy Trinity, under the name Descent of the Holy Spirit, on whose lands were gathered a brotherhood, school, bursa for poor students, and hospital.*” The Calvinists had a hospital complex (the Lustrations conducted in 1636 and 1639 note three houses: 56.04, 56.05, 57.057°) near their church within the city walls, but only until 1640, when, after a year of unrest in the city, they were removed by royal edict. They soon rebuilt their church on land just outside the old city walls, where they had previously estab-

lished a cemetery, and here the school and hospital also reappeared. The institution was founded in 1598 and survived until the end of the eighteenth century.”° In the middle of the seventeenth century, the Lutherans had a hospital near the Lutheran church on German Street. They also owned two hospital houses on Rudniki Street (those of Piotr Nonhart at 12.06 and of Halszka Fonlarowna Holownina at 12.10) and one on upper Castle Street (1.18).?° The surviving register of lay offerings to the Lutheran church of Wilno includes a set of rules that were to govern the actions of the lay overseers of the Lutheran hospitals.?* The Jews of Wilno governed themselves through their kahal, under whose aegis a hospital brotherhood supervised a Jewish hospital. In 1795 we read that the Jews had had “from time immemorial a hospital for the poor and infirm on Meat Shop Street.”?* It would seem likely

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that this institution was functioning by the middle of the seventeenth century. It is noted in a survey of the houses in Wilno belonging to the synagogue that was written into the acts on 31 July 1690: “the little house of Rybnicki, divided into two parts, which is a hospital house, in both of which two parts of this hospital house, the landlord and twelve neighbors.”?? Surveys of the city done in 1636 and 1639 indicate that there was also a Jewish hospital next to the main synagogue on Jewish Street.** Tatar poor relief in Poland-Lithuania, as far as we know, was thoroughly decentralized and did not make use of imarets (inns or hostels for pilgrims). It was based on informal, private care for relatives and friends of the sort provided in wills and other improvised self-help methods employed by Wilno’s Christians.*° Although the hospitals were clearly seen as a part of the mission of specific churches and parishes or of the Jewish kahal and were thus tied in some manner to religion, confession, and neighborhood, there is a certain amount of evidence pointing to a mixing of Christian confessions among the recipients of this kind of poor relief. And, by contrast, there is no indication of any crossing of the Christian-Jewish divide in this aspect of daily life, except in the sense that Jewish renters may have occupied some houses owned by Christian hospitals and Christian renters, those belonging to Jewish hospitals. Thus individual Christians and Jews contributed, at least indirectly, to the upkeep of the others’ hospitals.*° And Jews and Christians could have come in contact here in the sense that Jewish money lending may have been in competition with the Christian Montes Pietatis (Mounts of Piety, charitable lending banks) in providing individual poor relief. First let us note the crossing of confessional boundaries in the giving of alms to hospitals, our most direct evidence for which are the last wills and testaments of Vilnans of various confessions. In many cases, the testator specified that money was to be given to a list of hospitals throughout Wilno. These lists are not entirely random, although we do find some who direct that money be given to all hospital institutions; certain types of multiconfessional constellations were formed more easily than others. For instance, Lutherans often included Roman Catholics but rarely if ever thought of the Greeks, whether Orthodox or Uniate. Still, there are some surprises, especially the frequent evidence for a kind of Ruthenian solidarity across the Uniate-Orthodox boundary that is usually thought to have been one of the deepest divides in the confessional landscape among Christians in early modern Poland-Lithuania. There are certain difficulties in interpreting the general phenomenon. Clearly part of the motivation for giving to hospitals and to the poor was one of salvation—for the almsgiver and also perhaps for the recipient. The poor were to pray for the soul of the deceased; if you gave to more hospitals, more poor would pray for your soul. (I will address the thorny issue of belief across the confession in the efficacy of such prayers for the dead in the next chapter.) Conversely, by giving beyond your own confession you were “improving the morals” of the greater Wilno population. We should note the ecumenical aspect of this part of piety in early modern Wilno: the result would be that poor people of the Orthodox church—to choose one

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constellation—would pray that their benefactors would get into Uniate heaven, and Uniates would care for the morals of the Orthodox poor; and many other combinations arise from a reading of the testaments. The stipulation occasionally encountered that after a testator’s death the poor on the streets of Wilno were to receive some alms never limited that charity to beggars of a specific confession.?’” These deathbed bequests may also reflect a mixing of confessions within the poorhouses themselves. Here, too, a funeral sermon by Lutheran pastor Jedrzej Sch6nflissius sheds some light upon motivations. In an oration of 1628, the pastor praised the recently deceased merchant of Wilno, Andrzej von Embden (an immigrant from Antwerp by way of Cracow), because he did good for God’s servants, helped people in need. He gave a bounteous alms to poor little Lazaruses. Witness to his generosity is the hospital at St. Peter’s outside the city [a Catholic church located in the Antokol suburb to the north, between the Upper Castle and the Wilia River], which he built and founded at his own expense, and with this intent: that poor people of our confession might also find refuge there. **

The cobblers’ guild, which shared power among Romans, Ruthenians, and Saxons, specified in its statutes that sick and impoverished journeymen were all to find refuge in the hospital of the Catholic Holy Cross Church of the Bonifratelli. On the other hand, there is also a certain amount of evidence that institutions like hospitals were part of the arsenal of weapons in the interconfessional battles of the Age of Reform and that the receipt of aid came with a certain amount of persuasion to join the confession of the aid givers. For example, in the trying period after 1640, when the Calvinists were forced to remove their church, hospital, and school to just outside the city walls, a kind of purge of the Calvinist hospital along confessional lines was proposed at an annual synod. In article 5 of the acts of the synod of 1642 (“On the Invalid Poor of the Wilno Calvinist Church”)

we discover that there were in the Wilno Calvinist poorhouse “some persons among the widows” of questionable faith: “We establish that... they be examined, and the pious be left in peace and the scandalous [zgorszliwe] be sent on their way; and if any of our confession should be found and, on account of the meagerness of income, could not be accommodated here, we allow that they be sent to Stuck to the superintendent of the Nowogrodek district [of the Lithuanian Calvinist Church].” The article went on to state that widows (apparently here widows of genuine Calvinist faith) who were able to find maintenance with children or relatives should go there to live “so that they not be a burden to the Church of God.”?° This article points to several things: first to the more limited financial means of the Wilno Calvinist congregation after the persecutions of 1639-1640 but also to the presence of people of other

religions in the Calvinist hospital before that time, to an attempt to limit the Calvinist hospital to the confessional community, and perhaps also to the use of the hospital as a confessionalizing tool.

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Dowries for Poor Maidens Other charitable organizations quite clearly limited their ministrations to one narrowly defined group; any crossing of confessional bounds was based on the assumption that the recipient of aid would convert. Such was a program administered by the Roman Catholic Chapter. My knowledge of it is limited to a record book bearing the title “Income and Expenditure of Funds for the Endowing of Poor Maidens” (“Przychdd i rozchdd pieniedzy pro dotandis pauperibus virginibus”).*° The entries begin in 1620 and break off in 1654, a little over a year before the Muscovite occupation of the city. Entries typically contain a date, the name of the couple intending to marry, and the amount of money to be given in Lithuanian shocks. Many entries contain additional information, such as the name of a parent of the bride, the husband’s occupation, where the couple came from (if he or she was nota Vilnan), the circumstances of the recipient’s poverty, any deviations from the normal use of the funds (money given simply to help out a poor person, not necessarily as a dowry, or the fact that one recipient was allowed to keep the money even though she apparently got cold feet about the marriage**), or an attestation by a neighbor or a priest. These attestations served to corroborate both genuine need and good faith. A few entries tell us that the recipient was a convert to Roman Catholicism and imply either that the grant was a reward for conversion or that conversion was the condition for the grant. This little ledger offers some insight into the delivery of a kind of poor relief as a confessionalizing tool and a few details about the nature and causes of poverty in this community. Much of the book points simply to a program to help out poor women (who, we must assume, happened to be Catholic and who in several cases lived in the modest neighborhoods of the chapter jurisdictions). A typical entry took this form: “11 January 1625, to Miss Dorota Milenska and Symon Makolinski, bird catcher, at the recommendation of His Grace, Father

Zyganty, 6 k.”*? This sort and others, only slightly more informative, form the majority of entries. Other entries give us a little more insight into the nature and causes of the poverty that was to be addressed: 17 November 1640, to Barbara Kuzmiczoéwna, living beyond the Wilia River, a poor maiden,

whose mother sits on the steps of the castle church [1.e., begging for alms], marrying Stanislaw Urbanowicz, locularius, at the attestation of the Father Vice-Custodian, 6 k.*?

22 October 1641, to Anna, daughter of Mikoltaj Chometowski, cobbler, living on Glass

Street, who, bedridden with illness, has come to poverty, was given, as she enters into matrimony, as poor relief, 8 k.** 16 November 1641, to Halszka, daughter of Dzienicki the tailor, who lives on Jop Street, and who is in great poverty due to illness and the many children, eight of them, poor relief so that she may enter into matrimony, 6 k.*°

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In some of the entries, the Catholic aspects of this particular program for poor relief were made more explicit. In a few cases (7 of 327, or 2%), the marriage vows in question were those taken upon entering into a spiritual order.*° In a few more instances, the motivation for the grant explicitly included information about the conversion of the recipient (17 of 327, or 5%):

5 August 1622, to Anna, a baptized Tatar woman, marrying [blank space], carpenter, at the recommendation of Father Bokszta and Father Tomasz Jurgiewicz, 3 k.*’ 3 October 1641, to Zofia Frez6wna, who has poor parents, entering into matrimony with Jan the tailor, at the recommendation and attestation of His Grace Father Biatowski, since the parents are very poor, and especially since they have converted from Calvinism, was given 8 k.*®

3 January 1642, to Katarzyna Wejmarin, converted from the Lutheran heresy, marrying

Samuel Cybulski, tailor, also converted from Arianism, both poor, at the commendation of Father Nicholas Hecker, of the Society of Jesus, was given 6 k.*° 4 November 1645, to Barbara Piotrowska, maiden, converted from Arianism, and thus abandoned by her Arian parents, marrying Kazimierz Michalowski, at the testimony and recommendation of Father Koczanowski, vicar at St. John, 3 k.*° 10 February 1646, to Anna Eymanéwna, a poor maiden converted from heresy, and entering into matrimony with Andrzej Latecki, 3 k.>*

The confessional aspect of the program was emphasized by the fact that not all such grants were predicated on marriage: 23 October 1627, to Elzbieta, a baptized Jewish woman, an alms of 2 k.°? 24 April, to Efrosyna, a poor maiden, noble woman from Pogorzel [?], converted from

heresy, and abandoned by her kin, and searching about town for alms for her subsistence, at the commendation of Father Paszkiewicz, her confessor, a subsidy of 2 k.*? g September 1644, to the converted and baptized Tatar woman Anna, at the recommendation and commendation of her poverty by Father Giedroyé of the Society of Jesus, was given an alms of 2 k.**

Nor were all recipients maidens: 28 June 1641, to Zachariusz Krasnowicki, who, being a Calvinist minister, has left Kiejdany [a private town in Lithuania owned by the Calvinist branch of the Radziwitt family], and has converted to the Catholic faith, at the recommendation of His Grace the Most Reverend Lord Bishop of Wilno, are given ro k.*°

A part of the program, and especially early on, seems to have been quite local, focused on

the inhabitants of the poorest streets in the chapter jurisdiction. Here I find names I can

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trace, through other documents, to Skop Street. It sometimes turns out that neighbors were recommending neighbors. Consider the following case: “g September 1622, to Miss Krystyna Chrzanowska and Balcer Kupicki, carpenter, both from Wilno, at the recommendation of Pawel the wheelwright and Bazyli the weaver, a dowry of 2 k.”°° Others sources help identify the two recommenders more precisely. These were Pawel Kotlik and Bazyli Budziewicz, both of whom owned and inhabited houses on Skop Street (Kotlik at 49.05 and Budziewicz at 45.12°”) and both of whom made other appearances in this little ledger. We know further that Pawel died a Catholic and asked to be buried at the Holy Trinity Catholic Church.** Bazyli the weaver was sacristan at St. Mary Magdalene, the small church (and hospital) in the neighborhood at the end of Skop Street, and across from which he owned a house.®” The suspicion then arises that Chrzanowska and Kupicki may have been renters on Skop Street; renters are harder to locate and identify than property owners like Kotlik and Budziewicz, however modest the last two were.

In another case—one involving neighbors of Kotlik and Budziewicz—we again find a local—indeed, a family—network: “8 November 1622, to Miss Maryna Arcimowiczowna from

Wilno and Jan Kostrzqbski, tailor, at the recommendation of Mr. Jakub Szczygielski, 2 k.”°° Other sources, as we have seen, tell us that Szczygielski was the stepfather of Arcimowiczowna, and they indicate that parents and children were renters of chambers in properties on Skop Street. By 1623, Kostrzabski (he appears in other sources as Kostrompski and, most frequently, as Kostromski) and Arcimowiczowna were renting quarters in the house of lutenist Andrys Elmer at 49.07. Kostromski would go on to purchase two houses in the neighborhood, by 1636 the one next door at 49.08 and subsequently, in 1640, one down the street at 49.05 (purchased from Kotlik’s widow).°* All three of the recommenders (Kotlik, Budziewicz, and Szczygielski) spoke in support of other poor couples for support.°” And Bazyly Budziewicz had gotten his own start in married life thanks to the program: “17 February 1626, to Miss Anna Lomciewiczowna and Bazyly Budziewicz, weaver, at the recommendation of His Grace, Father zabinski, 4 k.”° There were, in all likelihood, other such programs of poor relief targeted at communities limited by confession and loosely coinciding with parish and neighborhood. Parish churches typically saw forms of material care for members of the community as part of their mission, and these sorts of aid programs were probably in some ways parallel to the hospitals maintained at the parish level. The same names appear in this particular ledger repeatedly—as

recipients of aid and as sponsors of requests for aid—and the names are those of close neighbors.

Self-Help Anyone could quickly end up in need. This applied especially to those whose ability to provide for themselves and others was structurally limited: widows, orphans, unmarried

OLD AGE AND POOR RELIEF 335

women, and the elderly and infirm. Testaments and other legal instruments often reflected an attempt by departing husbands and wives to care for those remaining and by the elderly to care for themselves. The presence of “Lady Ablamowiczowa, burgomaster’s widow” in a list of “outpatients” of the Catholic Holy Trinity hospital bears witness to the fact that even members of the elite could quickly find themselves on the dole.®* Perhaps she belonged to Wilno’s equivalent of the “shamefaced poor” (poveri vergognosi), those whose sense of honor did not allow them to beg with uncovered faces or to seek “indoor relief” in hospitals.° The concentration of Skop Street names in the ledger of dowries granted to poor maidens suggests that neighbors and families drew on that program as a part of their own self-help strategies. Access to the court seems to have been freer—and no doubt cheaper—in the chapter than in the magistracy, and it is in the former that we can observe relatively modest individuals attempting to find makeshift solutions to impending poverty. We are also able to observe the priestly judges’ attempts to aid the citizens of their jurisdiction (not all of whom were Roman Catholic) in achieving their goals. What follows are five stories from the lives of citizens of the Wilno chapter. They tell not only of the plights of orphans, widows and abandoned wives, and the elderly and infirm but also of improvised solutions to those challenges. In societies like this one, all economic behavior might be seen as part of individual attempts to stave off need. I have selected only those stories in which participants or observers commented specifically on the nature and goals of their activities and situated them in that realm.

“A Child Yet in Diapers”

At the top of Castle Street (1.03), on the corner of an alley described in 1636 only as “the street that goes to His Royal Majesty’s Mill,” lived a haberdasher named Piotr Kwasnicki (a.k.a. Kwasiela, Kwasniewski). This house, like the first few on both sides of Castle Street (I.0I-I.07, I.09, and 2.01—2.04), was under the jurisdiction of the Wilno chapter. It was partially bricked and considerably larger than the single-chamber wooden houses at I.o1 and 1.02. Still, with its six chambers (some large, some small, some wooden, some bricked), three alcoves, and four vestibules, it was considerably more modest than the town houses of the elite farther down both sides of Castle Street. Perhaps haberdasher Kwasnicki helped make ends meet by drawing on the bricked “tavern chamber” that was a fixture in so many houses and provided extra income through szynk, the sale of alcohol on the premises. The surveys of 1636 and 1639 suggest that Kwasnicki did not own the property but rented it from the chapter.°° We know alittle about Kwasnicki because he and his wife, Krystyna Wolska, married their daughter Regina to a tailor named Andrzej Kosmowski. This happened a few years before 1635. But to tell the story we must back up a bit further. Kosmowski himself owned a small bricked house at St. John Street 44.04 (two chambers, an alcove, a brewery, a stable for a couple of horses, a basement). Kosmowski had found his first wife, Barbara Skrocka, right next door. Her father, Wincenty Skrocki, owned the slightly larger bricked house at St. John

336 CHAPTER 13

Street 44.03 (five chambers, a basement, a brewery, a bakery, a shed for two horses).°’ Both houses were also under the jurisdiction of the Wilno chapter, and neighboring houses were either “on the ground of the vicar of St. John” (44.05) or “on city ground” but occupied by Jesuit fathers (44.01 and 44.02). Barbara Skrocka had borne Kosmowski two sons, Jan and Jakub. She died—I am not certain exactly when—and Kosmowski remarried, soon it would seem. He had to search a bit farther afield for his second wife—around the corner and up Castle Street—although he would find her, too, in a house subject to the chapter. That second wife, Regina Kwasnicka, had died by 1634 but not before she had borne Kosmowski a third son, named Stanistaw. At this point the judges of the Wilno chapter became involved in negotiations between Kosmowski and his former father-in-law over care for the half-orphan Stanistaw and over Barbara’s dowry. On 1 October 1635, Piotr Kwasnicki came before the court of the Wilno chapter to enter into the acts a “letter of conciliation” between himself and his wife as the first party and his former son-in-law, Andrzej Kosmowski, as the second.°® The document had been drawn up and signed almost a year earlier, on 11 November 1634, by “Father Kasper Jasinski, Preacher of the Wilno Cathedral Church, Vicar of Swir,” to whom the Kwasnickis and Kosmowski had gone for adjudication. The parties had informed Jasinski that the Lord God had “gathered from this world the aforementioned Mrs. Regina Kwasnicka Kosmowska, leaving in diapers one de-

scendant, a son named Stanislaw, begotten with him, Kosmowski.” The two parties had chosen the route of mediation “since they did not wish for themselves legal disputes from either side, either concerning the costs of the upbringing of the aforementioned child or the dowry of the deceased.” (The document used the term wychowanie, which as we have seen, now means upbringing but then also meant something like room, board, clothing, and instruction.) The parties thus submitted everything to the judge’s “decision and amicable resolution, promising from both sides to be content with whatever should be decided in their case.” Father Jasinski’s ruling formed the main section of the letter of 11 November 1634. First, “since Mr. Kosmowski is a widower and has the children of his first wife, Skrocka, he would not be able to give appropriate upbringing to the aforementioned child yet in diapers, wherefore I determined that it should be kept not with Mr. Kosmowski, but with its grandmother, until the child comes of age.” Second, Jasinski dealt with the matter of Kwasnicka’s dowry and the money already spent by the widower on his son’s upbringing. Since “in accordance with natural law, the dowry of the mother passes to her offspring, therefore all the things belonging to the deceased. .. . belong to this same child.” So that these possessions “not be subject to decay,” Jasinski ordered Kosmowski to have them appraised, sell them, and keep the money until the child should come of age. The letter of conciliation contained the inventory of Kwasnicka’s dowry: a small golden chain weighing 15 red zlotys, worth 83% zl; two silver mugs and two silver belts, the first formed of plates, the second a chain of white silver, all of which weighed 3% grzywna (perhaps about 700 grams); two summer gowns, one azure damask, the other brick-red “Chinese silk,” both well worn, appraised at 100 zl; a cherry-red velvet coat; a violet satin gown; a

OLD AGE AND POOR RELIEF 337

Chinese silk coverlet; a long gown of Venetian mohair, already well worn, appraised at 20 zl. “And after the conclusion of this compact of mine,” wrote judge Jasinski, they are not to trouble [turbowa¢] or to summon each other to court from either side concerning the aforementioned things under penalties described in the law, after payment of which this letter is nonetheless to remain in force in every court, and the aforementioned goods that are with the parents are not to be dispersed until the child should come of age, who will have access together with the other [children] to the goods of Mr. Kosmowski, as his father.

But the peace held for less than two years before Kosmowski troubled his former father-inlaw before the same court and in the same matter. On 8 August 1636 the “canon prelates and the entire chapter in the Cathedral Church of St. Stanistaw at the Wilno castle” heard the case “between Andrzej Kosmowski, plaintiff, and Piotr Kwasnicki, accused, our Wilno burghers belonging to the jurisdiction of the Witold Foundation in our Cathedral Church.” The case had been referred to the court of the highest instance in the chapter jurisdiction by His Grace, Father Wojciech Zabiriski, dean and procurator of the Wilno chapter. The matter concerned “suardianship of a child of the male sex, Stanislaw by name, begotten with him, the plaintiff Kosmowski, as the father, by the deceased, Mrs. Regina Kwasnicka, his spouse and the daughter of the accused, as well as the things inherited from the aforementioned mother belonging to this child.” The problem was this: Kosmowski, “stubbornly wishing to break the compact,” had called his former father-in-law into court on 1 August 1636, alleging “illegality or forgery [of the first contract],” and Zabiriski, not rendering a decision in the matter, had referred it to a full session of the chapter. The chapter rejected the notion that Father Jasinski had drawn up a contract that was “not in accordance with the statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.” As we see here, the court of the Wilno Catholic chapter, which in fact behaved entirely like a secular court as it administered justice to its citizens, both Catholic and Protestant (I have not found Ruthenians living in the chapter jurisdiction, but they too would have been subject to its courts), saw the Lithuanian statute as binding, even though those subject to the chapter were rarely members of the gentry. The fact of the matter was that “in view of the person of the reverend father Jasinski, who had long been in integra fide [in blameless credibility] in the preacher’s office and the courts of his burghers, he, Mr. Kosmowski, had received certain things from Mr. Kwasnicki following [the judge’s ruling] ad rationem [according to] the compact expressed in that letter, which in itself would seem to affirm the compact.” In other words, Kosmowski had at first recognized Jasinski’s authority, and at least part of the exchange of property required by the first letter of conciliation had in fact occurred.

Although the judges might have required from Kosmowski the payment of the penalty stipulated in the original contract for “alleging doubt concerning the letter,” they chose to keep the peace simply by reaffirming the contract’s legality, “leaving it in force for all time”

338 CHAPTER 13

and adding to it a declaration concerning the care of the infant Stanislaw: “First, since he, Kosmowski, also has other small children begotten with his other wife, the child Stanistaw is to remain with Mr. Kwasnicki, or with Mrs. Kwasnicka, his grandmother, until ten years, and this to include the time he has lived with them since his birth. And after the passage of ten years, he is to be apprenticed, with the knowledge of his father.” The court gave both parties two weeks in which to bring the goods and money stipulated in the original contract to the court for registration “so that, since this is a case involving an orphan, the least thing mentioned in the letter of conciliation not be lost... , and the child enjoy in the future the things or money left him by his mother.” Kosmowski would marry again, a certain Agata Tomaszewska, who bore him a daughter, Zofia. He had died by 1647, and Agata married one Aleksander Charytonowicz. The judges of the chapter now assigned legal guardianship of Kosmowski’s eldest sons, Jan and Jakub, to their maternal grandfather, Wincenty Skrocki, and of Stanistaw to his maternal grandfather, Piotr Kwasnicki. Presumably, the child Zofia remained with her mother and stepfather.”

The judges may well have acted in accordance with the Lithuanian statute. They did not appoint legal guardians, in the strict sense of the term, for Kosmowski’s children until he had died. They simply stepped in to make sure that Stanislaw received his mother’s portion, as the law required. But in what was perhaps an unusual move—I have not encountered any others like it—they removed Stanislaw from his father’s home to the care of his maternal grandparents, and perhaps specifically that of the grandmother. This was not guardianship. Children received guardians upon their fathers’ death, not their mothers’. The judges may have improvised a little in this case. Ido not know why it came to their attention. The jurisdiction was rather small—the judge, Father Zabiriski himself, resided a few houses over at Castle Street 1.09’*—so perhaps the canons knew something of the private lives of the citizens living under their jurisdiction. Or perhaps Kosmowski and Kwasnicki took the initiative, coming to Jasinski with a proposed solution to their problem. Although the details differed slightly across the four main jurisdictions encountered in the streets of Wilno, the concepts of legal age and guardianship played prominent roles in all of them. The Third Lithuanian Statute defined the age of majority for boys as eighteen and for girls as thirteen, so it is likely that Kwasnicki was to remain in control of Stanistaw’s inheritance for some years after his apprenticeship, and the “ten years” was either a mistake (the scribe wrote “do lat dziesiqtka” [“until ten years”], when he should have written “do lat dzieciqtka” (“until the child come of age”]), or it referred only to the age at which Stanislaw was to be apprenticed. Assuming Stanislaw was born the year of his mother’s death (1634), he would now have been about thirteen years old and still in need of a guardian according to Lithuanian law.’* The fact that his older stepbrothers Jan and Jakub still required guardianship suggests that the births of the sons (and the deaths of the mothers) had come in relatively quick succession: three children born to Kosmowski between 1629 at the earliest

(eighteen years before the date of this final decree) and 1634 at the latest (the year of Kwasnicka’s death).

OLD AGE AND POOR RELIEF 339

This was a case of preemptive intervention. Regina Kwasnicka’s dowry, though modest, suggests that she was not of the poorest: after all, in addition to her clothing, she did possess some articles of greater value—a little gold and a little silver. The judges had stepped in to make certain that Stanistaw, no doubt also a future tailor or haberdasher, retained his mother’s portion as his modest start in life. Kosmowski’s objections most likely had to do with the legalities of specific aspects of the apportionment and not with basic principles or with the solution of leaving Stanistaw in the care of his maternal grandparents. Hard-nosed materlalism could certainly coexist with sentimental concerns for a child yet in diapers. It is interesting to note that the canons thought the infant needed a female relative to see to his upbringing, and that they intervened, somewhat paternalistically, to order the domestic affairs of their subjects. Or perhaps they were simply giving the stamp of legality to a solution improvised by the baby’s father and grandparents that aimed at making the best private use of what those paternalistic structures had to offer.

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340 CHAPTER 13 “That I Might Have Provisions in My Old Age”

A Wilno general (general, i.e., a general bailiff for the nobles’ land and castle courts) named Jan Dziblewski owned two houses across the street from each other on “the little side street off Skop Street” (that was how it was described in the sources), at numbers 47.03 and 48.03. His name figured on several extant depositions (kwity) from the period, including those surrounding the altercations with Wilno Calvinists in 1639—-1640.”? Collecting such testimony was the main job ofa general. Dziblewski and family were citizens of the Monwid Altar and of the Roman Catholic Chapter. Dziblewski had two daughters, both of whom lived in the Skop Street neighborhood with their husbands. One of them seems to have had a problem marriage. On 20 April 1649 a certain “Lord Jan Mikolajewicz Szkil, a cobbler” came before the lower instantiation of the Wilno Roman Catholic Chapter and “told his tale and plaintively protested” against his wife, “Lady Jewa Dziblescanka Szkilowa, a cobbler’s wife,” that she, “the aforementioned Lady Szkil, living in discord with her husband, made declarations of vengeance and boasts upon the health of him, her spouse, at various times in the past and at present and has not ceased making them.”’* The main reason for the marital trouble, according to Szkil, was the fact that “he refuses to allow his wife to lead a dissolute life and to maintain debauchery in his dwelling.” As a result of his resolute defense of domestic order “he has suffered harm to his health at the hands of dissolute loose people known and familiar to her.” The last straw for this long-suffering husband had come about a week earlier, on the night of 11 April 1649 “when people were already quieted in sleep, wishing now to bring to final effect and to execute that evil undertaking and those impious plans of hers, the aforementioned spouse of his, with conscious intent, at her instigation and permission, several people, having broken into his dwelling unexpectedly, wished to slash him, and perhaps even to kill him, such that he was barely able to flee and take refuge.” (The syntactic misdirections are typical of the genre, especially in this particular legal venue.) Szkil registered his complaint as a first step in potential further litigation, concluding his protestation (or perhaps that was the work of the court recorder) with an abbreviation any reader of the genre could have completed: “wishing to have recourse to law...” The ellipsis in the original was to be supplanted by “he submitted this his protestation to the official books to be recorded” or any of a few other frequently met variations on that theme. Three and a half months later, on 2 August 1649, the frustrated profligate, Lady Szkil, appeared before the same capitular canon with her own complaint against her ill-used husband.” The charge was wife beating: The aforementioned Szkil, today, at a morning hour, it could have been 11 by the clock, having come drunk to the house of his aforementioned wife and there in her house, the property of Lady Dziblewszczanka, belonging to the jurisdiction of the Wilno chapter on Skop Street, without any fault on her part, not saying anything to her, just as soon as he

OLD AGE AND POOR RELIEF 341

had broken in, with conscious intent, did beat her with a staff cruelly and mercilessly about the ears, the head, the shoulders, such that at that very time, in that very hour, the aforementioned plaintiff came [to show] in the Office [i.e., the chapter court] the great bruises heavily gorged with blood, and among other signs she showed her left arm, on which arm [she showed] also a wound swollen and flowing all around it with blood and her shoulders and sides all cruelly and mercilessly beaten. Premeditation—“with conscious intent”—is a familiar legal concept. The phrases “without any fault on her part” and “not saying anything” were also a part of the legal rhetoric of the time. They and variants such as “expecting nothing bad” and “without giving any cause,” asserted the innocence of the plaintiff and the unprovoked nature of the crime in question. As was usual in cases of physical violence, the official servants were dispatched to the home of the injured party to assess the veracity of the allegations and the state of the wounds: “which beating is recorded, described together with the protestation and added to the record.” Had this complaint been brought before the castle court and not the Catholic chapter, the “servant of the Office” dispatched to make the conspectio could have been her father, General Jan Dziblewski. By 28 May 1654 (about five years after the mutual complaints of husband and wife), Ewa Dziblewska seems to have been a single woman, whether abandoned or a widow is unclear. On that day she returned to the court to register a complaint against her sister Dorota and her brother-in-law Matiasz Sawaniewski, who, like their father, was a “general of His Royal Majesty.”’° Thirteen days earlier, on 15 May 1654, the Sawaniewskis had entered Jan Dziblewski’s will into the acta of the Wilno chapter. Dziblewski had provided for himself a sort of old-age pension and healthcare plan—“so that I might [have] in my old age provision in viands, as well as clothing and the upkeep of my garments” was how he put it. He did this by willing to Dorota and Matiasz one of his two houses on the little street off Skop Street (the one at 47.03 on the more pungent side of the street nearer the river) and by allowing the couple to live in it while he was still alive in exchange for their continued care of his person. He would be living, after all, right across the street from them at 48.06.’” The will was dated 6 November 1652, about a year and a half before it was entered into the acts. Ewa Dziblewska complained that her sister and brother-in-law had perpetrated a fraud. She may have had a point. It is, in fact, a little odd that the will was entered into the acts so long after it was written and witnessed. Jan Dziblewski had died—without a will, in Ewa’s argument—in Wilno “during the pestilential air” at which time Ewa, “fleeing the Lord’s scourge and punishment,” had left the city. From other sources we know that Wilno was visited by plague in the fall of 1653.’* Sawaniewski had remained with his father-in-law and— this was the crux of the allegation—used the opportunity to lay claim to his possessions. The chapter seems not to have favored Ewa’s claim. She was, after all, in possession of a small house in the neighborhood, around the corner from her father’s house on Skop Street proper (49.03).”° In fact, their properties may have backed onto each other. Perhaps she had

342 CHAPTER 13

received it from him as a part of her dowry when she married. Her husband Szkil, as we saw above, had attributed his wife’s churlishness to the fact that he would not allow any dissolute living in “his residence,” but her subsequent complaint was more forceful on that issue: the event had taken place “in her house, the property of Mrs. Dziblewszczanka.” Part of Dziblewski’s motivation in making Sawaniewski the beneficiary of his will was that “I had promised and bound myself to give 200 Lithuanian k in ready dowry money, which dowry I have not surrendered until this day.” Testators often used deathbed reckonings to set right precisely these sorts of debts. Ewa, so it would seem, had been given a proper dowry when she married; Dorota had had to wait until the final dispositions. Perhaps Ewa was the older daughter. In any event, thirteen days before she made her allegations, on 15 May 1654, the same day Sawaniewski had registered Dziblewski’s will with the higher instance of the Wilno chapter court, Ewa Dziblewska also made an appearance before that body to register the sale of her “half a little wooden house” on Skop Street to His Grace, Mr. Jakub Miglinski Michalewicz, lieutenant of the castle of His Majesty the King, and his wife, Mrs. Halszka Totkaczéwna, making the Migliriskis neighbors of Cecylia Kostromska/Winska.®° (The acta suggest she was heard just ahead of her brother-in-law.) The reason she sold the house was certainly lack of funds, but it also had to do with the fact that she had left Wilno the year before to avoid the plague, “wherefore that building had to succumb to ruin and plunder, as it now stands.” These were not exactly impoverished people. After all, Dziblewski owned two houses and

had perhaps settled a third upon his older daughter at the time of her wedding. But the neighborhoods at the foot of the castles were poorer than others, and the houses in question were quite modest. The building on the river bank at 47.03 in which the Sawaniewskis were to set up house was wooden and contained nothing but “chambers two.” The one across the street at 48.03 where the general had expected to spend his last days before the plague carried him off was likewise a wooden house of only two chambers but with a stable for twenty horses (perhaps a requirement for the job). Ewa Szkilowa’s house at Skop Street 49.03 was also wooden, with four chambers, a stable for four horses, and a basement.** Generals, although by definition members of the gentry, occupied the lowest reaches of the szlachta and sometimes entered that society only thanks to their office.®? They were among the early modern forerunners of the intelligentsia and made their modest livings only thanks to the fact that they were at least minimally literate. Dziblewski put his care in the hands of his married daughter and her husband (also a general) not necessarily because of doubts about Ewa’s reliability but because he owed a dowry to Dorota, and also because Ewa was now a single woman.

“So That There Not Be Further Suspicion about Us”

At issue finally in Ewa Dziblewska’s case, the reason she was forced to sell her house, was

the difficulty single women faced in their attempts to function as heads of households. Society and the courts viewed the situation as unnatural. Single women were not supposed to be

OLD AGE AND POOR RELIEF 343

heads of households, and even widows faced distinct (if surmountable) challenges. As they made their preparations for the journey to the next world, husbands sought to make provisions for their widows and orphans that would offer them some protection before the law and in society. Such provisions took the form of property and money, as well as guardians and curators to help manage them. One such case had occurred two houses down from the “half a little wooden house” Ewa Dziblewska sold to Jakub Miglinski in 1654. The address was Skop Street 49.05. It was there, twenty-two years earlier, on 12 February 1632, that Pawel Kotlik, “wheelwright, burgher of the Monwid Altar,” had put his name to his last will and testament.** He was in fact literate,

at least literate enough to write his own name, if somewhat clumsily, and he had acquired some modest wealth—above all, three little houses, all of them in the poorer neighborhoods of the chapter and related ecclesiastical jurisdictions clustered around the little branch of the Wilenka at the foot of the castles. Modest, but still—he had three of them! The purpose of his will was to prevent the occurrence of “all conflicts, disagreements, and discords after my death between my wife, Lady Ewa Zorawska, and our children, Adam Kotlik and Anna Kotlikowna Bartoszowa Zarebina, and other of my friends, kin, neighbors, and relatives, over my poor belongings.” Seeing that “none of my neighbors, kin, or relatives aided or offered succor to me in my needs and afflictions, except for my dear spouse, Lady Ewa Zorawska,

and having experienced very great respect from her, both during my happy life with her, my spouse, for no little time, as well as great solicitude, labors, and many other acts of kindness during this my present severe illness,” he decided to leave all three houses to her as well as all his movable property—“that is, silver, pewter, copper, brass, and every sort of domestic implement”—barring all kin and in-laws from claims upon his property. Unlike Magdeburg law, which allowed spouses to inherit a certain portion of each other’s estates, the Lithuanian statute that was binding for the nobles’ land and castle courts—and apparently also for the chapter—made it difficult for husbands and wives to bequeath to each other property in perpetuity. In fact, it was forbidden. Still, couples sometimes sought ways to circumvent the ban. Spouses often left their goods to each other for lifetime use (including usufruct), often with the stipulation that the “lifetime use” (dozywocie) would cease if the spouse remarried. Upon the death (or remarriage) of the remaining spouse, the estate would revert to the original property owner’s heirs, frequently to be settled upon a son or some other close male relative.** As we have seen, the chapter court adhered to the provisions of the Lithuanian statute, and Kotlik adopted the strategies employed by the nobles. Zérawska

was to have the use of her husband’s houses and movable goods for the duration of her life. During her lifetime, their son Adam would have the free right of residence with her “but only if he were to hold his mother and my spouse in all honor and respect.” Upon her death, the real estate would fall to the son “by natural law.” From this eventual inheritance, Adam was to give his sister 200 Lithuanian k, “and she is not to trouble him for a greater sum from this house.” Here again, it would seem likely that the father had already provided a dowry for his daughter and did not feel a need to consider her further in his will.

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After Zérawska’s death the movable property was to be “divided evenly’—presumably this meant between the two children—with the exception of “the kettle and the alembic, which are to remain with the houses.” Kettles and alembics were used to produce the beer that the members of the household drank as their normal daily beverage and the vodka that was sold to help maintain the household. Such equipment was thus frequently seen as an integral part of the real estate. Further, upon Zérawska’s death two silver belts were to be the lot of the daughter Anna. If the son, Adam Kotlik, “should marry and depart this world without heirs,” the executors were to sell the houses and to return to his wife—“should he have one”—her dowry. The rest of the money was to go to the Bernardine Fathers, to the Roman Catholic Holy Trinity Church

(an important local hospital institution), and to the hospital at the Catholic Church of St. Mary Magdalene (located in the immediate neighborhood at the end of Skop Street) “so that they pray to the Lord God for my soul, that of my wife, and my son.” Son-in-law Bartosz Zareba, it would seem, was to take responsibility for providing for the soul of his own wife, Kotlik’s daughter Anna. At the very end of this disposition of goods we learn that son Adam was to receive—apparently immediately upon his father’s death—“the workshop of the wheelwright’s trade, and also all my gowns and clothes.” Kotlik chose two Skop Street neighbors—tailor Jan Kostromski (whose first wife had been one of the “poor maidens” provided a dowry by the local Roman Catholic charity) and weaver Ambrozy Marcinowicz (in 1636 the ownerofthe Skop Streethouseat4g9.03 thateventually becamethe property of Ewa Dziblewska), both also Roman Catholics—to be the executors of his will and guardians of his minor son. Kotlik’s testament offers a few glimpses into the life of what seems to be a caring and well-functioning family of some modest means. He thanked his wife for their life together (while making a few complaints by way of comparison about the behavior of the more extended family), and he sought ways to care for her after his death. He made certain that his hard-earned though modest wealth would ultimately pass to his lone male heir, making provisions for that son’s professional future on the assumption that he too would become a master of the wheelwright’s trade. And he admonished him to “honor and respect” his mother, making a veiled threat that he could be thrown out of the house if he did otherwise. Some things went right, others not quite. As we learn from a deed of sale that Kotlik’s widow registered in the acta of the Wilno chapter on 11 May 1640 (eight years after her husband’s death), Adam Kotlik had indeed become a wheelwright and was in fact married. But he and his brother-in-law, ironsmith Bartosz Zareba, had abandoned their wives and mother: Having deserted me, their mother, who is an invalid and has no deliverance from any source, since for several years now I do not leave my chamber, likewise also having aban-

doned their wives, they have departed the city of Wilno without notice. Being admonished for such a long time by me, and even by Their Graces themselves, the Fathers of the Wilno Chapter, and being soundly showered with letters at no little cost, wandering from place to place around various villages and towns, it is not known where they live, they do

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not return to us and to the aforementioned house, against the will and commandment of Their Graces, and they do not give, and do not wish to give, any sign of life to me their mother and wives, or to the Brother officials.®° The Office, the canons of the Wilno chapter, again took a paternalistic interest in the case, no doubt partially seeing their role as falling somewhere between those of marriage councillors and the marriage police. But they were also functioning as landlords. Zérawska “owned” (i.e., had the right of usufruct of) the house on Skop Street for the duration of her lifetime. But she also paid a kind of rent/tax to the jurisdiction to which the house belonged, in this case to the Wilno chapter and its Monwid Altar. In 1636 the house at Skop Street 49.05 was a wooden structure with “six chambers, a forge, a shed, a basement full of water, a brewery.”°° By 1640, the house, “especially because it was without a master of the house, [had] quite declined in its structure and fallen into ruin; moreover, it was encumbered with debts by [her] son, Adam Kotlik.” This situation gave rise to problems for the abandoned women, because “both the Office as well as the neighbors [the renters of chambers in the house in question] have great suspicion concerning [them], the white sex [i.e., women] living in the house without a man and without a master of the house.” And in fact, “[they] were commanded to sell the house without fail by an official admonition [of the chapter].” The two women heeded the admonition: And thus, seeing to it that there not be further suspicion about us, and that the house not

rot to the bitter end and succumb to ruin, whereby the rent would decline for His Grace the Father Priest of the Monwid Altar, as well as for Their Graces the Fathers of the Chapter, and we would have lost our source of nourishment, wherefore, unable to maintain this house on our own, to provide for it and to pay the rents, and having such a consent and permission, both from His Grace the Father Priest of the Monwid Altar, as well as from Their Graces the Fathers of the Wilno Chapter, we sold this above-mentioned house irrevocably and in perpetuity for the removal of debts and for our source of nourishment.

If Lithuanian law made it impossible for husbands to bequeath property to wives in perpetuity, then how—the question naturally arises—were Kotlik’s widow and daughter in a position to sell the house? The deed of sale from which I have been drawing the second part of this narration provides some clues. The two women guaranteed the buyers that both we ourselves, in our own names and in those of the aforementioned Adam Kotlik, wheelwright, and Bartosz Zareba, ironsmith, [the latter two who have been] cut off from this house by a decree of Their Graces [the canons of the Wilno chapter] on account of their dissolute life, as well as [in the names of] all our neighbors, kin, and relatives, and especially of strangers, are not to, and will not be able to make any hindrance or obstacle in the tenancy of this house.

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In other words, the chapter, as the holder of jurisdiction over this house, saw itself in a position to take title away from the eventual owner, Adam Kotlik, and to give it to his mother, at least to the extent that she now had clear title to transfer ownership to the buyers. The remainder of the contract contained detailed language about how and in what legal forums the sellers undertook to guarantee the clear title of the buyers, Jan Kostromski (one of the witnesses of Kotlik’s will) and his second wife, Cecylia Szymakowska, as well as their heirs, to the possession of the house should anyone from the seller’s side challenge it. This was the standard legalese of the time, and all wills and deeds of property specifically removed any future claims from “neighbors, kin, relatives, and strangers.” But the boilerplate took on more urgency in this case in view of the sellers’ somewhat tenuous claim to ownership. In fact, the sale was never successfully challenged. As we have seen, tailor Jan Kostromski moved down the street from 49.08 to the Kotlik house at 49.05 in 1640. His widow, Cecylia Szymakowska, bequeathed the Kotlik house to her daughter Justyna Kostromska, who still owned the house at her death in 1696.

“Wishing to Have a Place to Nestle My Head in My Old Age”

Across Castle Street, more or less at the latitude of Skop Street, was Bernardine Street, which was also under the chapter jurisdiction. Here, at 53.04 Bernardine Street, lived boilermaker Adam Mikolajewicz. On 17 April 1639, he put his name to a last will and testament, which his widow Zofia Galuszczanka would bring to be written into the chapter acta on 10 May.®’ He decided to draw up his testament, knowing that “all things created by God on Earth and man himself... are subject to decay, . . . taking care lest wary death catch me unawares, though I am at the moment, by God’s visitation, in weak health, nonetheless with good memory and a sound mind.” The purpose was one of the usual ones: “so that, after my departure from this world, no squabbles and disturbances over my property, both immovable and movable, arise between my dearest spouse and my in-laws and kin, as well as my sister Zofia, who is in the state of matrimony with Mikolaj the white-leather tanner.” He left clear title to—not just lifetime use of—his house on Bernardine Street, together with the household brewery and his boilermaking shop, as well as “pewter, copper, silver, gold, my gowns,” to his “dearest spouse, Zofia Gatuszczanka Adamowa Mikolajewiczowa, for her kind and faithful living with me and her sincere and courteous service, both in health and in my sickness.” He removed his sister as well as all kin and in-laws from any claim, settling his remaining wealth upon Wilno Catholic churches and hospitals, and asking to be buried across the street with the Bernardines. He named two neighbors as executors of his will and as the guardians of his widow: Krzysztof Zyburtowski (Skop Street 49.11) and Stanislaw Zurowicz (Mill Street 50.08). Two other neighbors acted as witnesses: organ maker Korneliusz Krapoliusz (just across the street at Bernardine Street 52.03) and tailor Jozef Nacewicz (next door at Bernardine Street 53.05).°*

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But Zofia Galuszczanka seems to have been able to look after herself. In fact, the reason Mikotajewicz left the house to her in perpetuity was probably because it was hers in the first

place. As we learn from another document of almost ten years later (18 May 1648), Gatuszczanka had been married before.®? Her first husband, Jan Stefanowicz, had also been a boilermaker. Together they had purchased the Bernardine Street house in 1610. It burned twice—in fact, most of the city burned in 1610, so it was most likely destroyed the first time almost immediately after they bought it—and twice she would rebuild “at her own no little expense.” After Stefanowicz’s death, she had, along with Adam Mikolajewicz, “annulled the

not insignificant debts of my first spouse.” In 1636, her Bernardine Street house was a wooden structure containing “two chambers—one of which including an alcove—a shop, a boilermaker’s forge, brewery, bath, shed for a few horses.”?° After Mikolajewicz’s death in 1639, Gatuszczanka had the misfortune, or bad judgment, to marry a certain Waclaw AmbroZejewicz, occupation unknown (at least to me). In any event, by 1648 she was—as her complaint had it—“in [her] dotage and already in an advanced age, abandoned by [her] spouse, Waclaw AmbroZejewicz, who has been living in Minsk for a few years, and bereft, on account of him, in all of [her] poverty, and not having any source of maintenance and succor in [her] old age.” Thus, being yet in good health, she began to look for a road to survival for a single woman of some years—for, as she put it, “a place to nestle [her] head in [her] old age.” She did this, first, by proving clear title to the Bernardine Street house and, second, by removing all claims to it by “my spouse, Waclaw AmbroZejewicz, his children and kin, who, in my old age, having deprived me of my entire poor pittance, has abandoned me for some years now and does not wish to and does not take any pains for me.” Her solution was to transfer ownership of the house to a younger couple, who throughout all the years nourished me, as a reward for their services and no small expense, which they did for me and do not cease to do, encouraging them to further effort and care for me in my dotage and advanced age, so that, until my death, I might have provision and a place to nestle my head with them, and after my death also the burial of my body with the Bernardine fathers in Wilno next to my dear first husbands. The couple and their heirs were to receive clear title and the ability to do with the house what they would—as the boilerplate of the time had it, “to rule and dispose of it as their property and to give, bequeath, sell, exchange it with whom they will, to build, brick, and enjoy all

fruits of commerce.” This included, of course, the stipulation that the obligatory rents of four k were to be paid to the chapter “every year, on Michaelmas [29 September], together with the other citizens [of the chapter].” The recipients of this largesse were “noble Lord Stanistaw Pisanka and his lady spouse, Lady Anna Ambrozejewiczowna, my niece [on the sister’s side].” (The largesse was not

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without conditions, of course, since the goal was “to encourage them to further effort and solicitude.”) Gatuszczanka appeared before the court in 1648 as “Mrs. Zofia Galust6wna Adamowa Mikolajewiczowa, a boilermaker’s wife,” as if denying legal status to that third marriage. She was illiterate. Her witnesses were again her close neighbors, some of them signatories to her second husband’s will: Korneliusz Krapoliusz, organ maker from across the street (52.03); neighbor on the one side, Jozef Nacewicz (53.05); and another who signed his name in German and in German script as “Ludewichtt Fakinetth,” a painter, who also owned a house in Bernardine Street.?*

“Upon Whom the Lord God Visited Incomplete Health and Reason”

Just across the street from Zofia Galuszczanka, at Bernardine Street 52.03, lived a certain

Gertruda Szulcéwna. She was the wife of our organ maker, Korneliusz Krapoliusz, and mother to four daughters. Although apparently German, the couple was Roman Catholic. Korneliusz had died either at the very beginning of the period of exile or sometime before the family fled Wilno. In any case, she—“Gertrudt Cornelschin, Orgelbauerin von der Willde, wittib [Gertrud, former wife of Korneliusz, organ maker’s widow from Wilno]”—figured alone as head of the household among the Vilnans of all confessions who had sought asylum in Lutheran K6nigsberg during the Muscovite occupation.®°* Szulcowna rebuilt their bricked house on Bernardine Street, “already being in the widowed state, after the death of my lord spouse, Krapoliusz Korneliusz, after the ruination and burning [of our house] by the enemy Muscovite, at no small cost and with great expense, by my own labor.”°? Perhaps she was the

first to have the house bricked. In 1636 it was still a wooden structure, containing “two chambers, a workshop, a basement, a brewery, a stable for one horse, a second for hay, a shed for six horses.” Szulc6wna was a determined woman. She did not remarry, and she would live and conduct her own affairs as a single woman at least until January 1671, when she put her name to her last will and testament. Or rather, she had her legal guardian put his name to it, as she was illiterate. Her entire estate—all that “the Lord God has deigned to give me upon this miserable vale of the world, from the labor of my hands and bloody sweat”—was the “little bricked house” on Bernardine Street, together with a few household furnishings, including the beer kettle in the brewery, some linens, and some clothing. It was difficult—as we know from the cases of Ewa Dziblewska, Ewa Kotlikowa, and Zofia Mikolajewiczowa—for a single woman to manage a household. And yet many widows did just that, surviving, some indeed prospering, for many years. Szulcowna was one of them. As was customary and foreseen by the Lithuanian statute, Szulcowna named guardians for her daughters. Three of them had been married, and two of them were still in the company of their husbands. Perhaps the third had been widowed or abandoned by 1671. Szulcowna left her entire estate “to my dearest four daughters, by name, Lady Anna Gramel, Miss Elzbieta, Lady Katarzyna wife of Tusyn [the “Toussen Begien” who had arrived in K6nigsberg

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by 1656 with a previous wife], Lady Zuzanna wife of Antoni, on account of their well-disposed and faithful attendance, for their exertions and diligent care during my illness.”

In fact, the married daughters would not have had to receive legal guardians other than their husbands, the “natural guardians” of married women.®? Szulc6wna saw her married daughters and their husbands as informal guardians of the unmarried daughter. Her intent was that the legal guardians exercise a kind of check on the behavior of her daughters and sons-in-law. The beer kettle formed an integral part of the real estate and was to be sold with the house,

which Szulc6wna thought might fetch in the neighborhood of 2,000 zt. The three married daughters had all received dowries and were thus to be contented each with one-fifth of the proceeds. As for “Miss Elzbieta,” not only had she not married, but “the Lord God had visited

upon [her] incomplete health and reason.” Still, she too seems to have ministered, as she was able, to her mother’s needs in her final illness. In any event, her mother included her along with the other daughters in her words of gratitude. Many of the provisions of the will were crafted to provide care for Elzbieta for the rest of her life. Szulcowna entrusted her daughter “to the guardianship above all of the Lord God, and then of her other sisters and Their Lords, the guardians.” In lieu of a dowry, “Miss Halszka”— from this point forward Szulcéwna used the diminutive form of Elzbieta in referring to her

daughter—was to receive 300 zl, plus the 50 zi given her by her godmother (and apparently held in trust by her mother up to that point). In addition, she was to receive two-fifths of the proceeds from the sale of the house “so that she might be able to have her subsistence from this.” The linens and clothing, “all of this of my own good will, remembering her infirmity/ incompetence [niedoleznos¢], I grant and bequeath to my daughter Halszka.” The inventory was short but specific:

old bedclothes, namely ten pillows, two old featherbeds, with covers and coverlets, twenty skeins of yarn, four sashes, four hand towels, four sheets, three of them with lace and one without lace, four shirts and all the other white linens, an old turquoise dress, a cherry-red woolen undercoat lined with old fox fur, an old black camlet petticoat and an old, unlined camlet undercoat, an old, black, half-velvet cap with marten-fur edgings.

“Miss Halszka, the poor orphan,” was “to be done no harm.” The guardians were to see to it that “every year Miss Halszka was to receive provision [i.e., food and drink] and clothing from these several hundred ziotys.” When the linens and clothing bequeathed to her by her mother “should become tattered,” then the older son-in-law, Mr. Gramel, was to provide new garments out of the principal sum. Szulcéwna’s circle of friends included one influential German Catholic: burgomaster Mikolaj Rychter, who would appear in German circles, both Catholic and Protestant.°° He signed the testament in her stead (since she was illiterate), and he was one of the witnesses of the document. Probably he was also one of the guardians, although the promised list of

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those individuals does not appear in the acta. Szulc6wna would ask to be buried in the Bernardine cemetery on which her property abutted. Perhaps her family, like the Ludewichtt Fakinetth, who had placed his German signature next to that of Krapoliusz in witnessing Galuszczanka’s deed, was drawn by the congregation of German Catholics at the Bernardines’ nearby Church of Saint Anne.?’”

Topographies of Poor Relief Brian Pullan has offered one formulation of the “standard questions” that invite attention in “any analysis of poor relief in any early modern European society.” They include

- the motives for providing poor relief - the means by which poor relief was to effect social improvement ¢ the extent to which it was to bring spiritual benefits to the giver and to the recipient of alms ¢ the extent to which poor relief was administered discriminately * the extent to which poor relief was the concern of churchmen versus laymen ¢ the relationship between state action and private initiative.”®

The consensus of the last decades of research has been that the expected differences along confessional lines do not appear in practice. We do not find, to use extreme formulations, mostly indiscriminate, individual almsgiving in Catholic societies, more for the salvation of the almsgiver than for the good of the poor, organized (however loosely) by Church institutions; nor do we find that rationalized, centralized poor relief, organized by the state or municipality for the good of the poor and of society was a monopoly of Protestant communities. As Pullan put it, generalizing upon his conclusions on Venetian poor relief: “General attitudes to the poor were often determined by a rather similar mixture of pity and fear, of genuine humanity and brutal paternalism, and by a similar determination to eliminate criminals and social parasites—whether a given society had remained Catholic, or whether it had severed its allegiance to Rome.””® Still, one senses in Pullan’s discussion of Venice a reluctance to abandon all notion of confessional particularity, and five years later, in a short study devoted to Catholic poor relief, he was phrasing the same idea more cautiously: “The conclusions of every local study are clouded by the suspicion that its people were acting, not as Catholics, but as Parisians, or Lyonnais, or Venetians.”*°° Here he noted, however, some

important differences (Protestant societies did not include pilgrims among recipients of alms, for instance), and, in a cautious revision of the currently accepted revisionism, he returned to the traditional “hoary question,” rephrasing it, more provocatively than hitherto, as a strong suspicion about Catholic particularity:

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Can we find in Protestant Europe—and before the days of General Booth—a situation in which the practice of mercy becomes a tactic at once in a personal quest for Christ and a war against sin, a campaign for the conquest of souls conducted by lay brotherhoods and

sisterhoods, clerically inspired and bent on self-sanctification through the salvation of others in the greatest possible numbers?

As Pullan has suggested, Protestant cities may sometimes have transformed monasteries into hospitals and redirected their budgets for charitable uses, but Catholic cities “extended monasticism and imposed it upon the poor.”*°* Catholic attitudes toward good works could easily be incorporated into “rationalized” systems for the delivery of poor relief: giving to the Monti di Pieta of Renaissance Venice not only made for more effective care of the impoverished; it also maximized the “store of merit” accumulated by the almsgiver.*°? To what extent can we answer questions like these for early modern Wilno? Our assessment will be intricately linked with our view of the ways in which seventeenth-century Wilno

society (or societies) functioned. My working assumption has been that poverty in seventeenth-century Wilno—as in other early modern European cities—was both marginalized and “verticalized.” Early modern cities did not have the sorts of social zoning that characterize their modern counterparts.*°? Still, Kiechel, our German visitor to the city, did note the existence of a “better” district in the still largely wooden Wilno of 1586, in which two “more fashionable streets or ways” formed a notable exception: the houses there were mostly bricked, and prosperous German Lutheran merchants inhabited them. As we have seen, the streets in question were probably Castle Street and German Street. Fifty years later the city

was more thoroughly bricked, but those two centrally placed streets, both leading to the town hall, remained the location of some of the largest and most opulent town houses. Conversely, poor people tended to crowd the smaller, usually wooden structures just inside the city walls and in the suburbs. As elsewhere, we find these poorer settlements clustered under the royal castles in Wilno, in Skop and Bernardine Streets under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Chapter, but also across the little branch of the Wilenka from them. And the Antokol and Szerejkiszki suburbs were not the only sites of poverty. Occasional stories in the magistracy court documents give the impression of similar penury and squalor in Transfluvia and in the suburbs outside the other town gates where some of the lowlier and dirtier trades had concentrated. Indeed, in some instances practitioners of those trades (e.g., butchers) had been banned to those locations from within the city walls. In other cases, some of the dirtier trades gravitated naturally to the banks of the Wilenka on the northern edge of the city and the Wilia to the north and west, the waters of which they dirtied through their work (furriers, tanners, papermakers).*°* These areas were still mostly wooden at the end of the seventeenth century. But in addition to finding a home on the margins, in early modern cities poverty often lived side by side with wealth—or rather, above and below wealth, in attics and basements,

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perhaps also in courtyard outbuildings and little rooms off gates to houses. Thus poverty was not only marginalized; it was also verticalized. Here, too, we are at the mercy of anecdotal evidence from sources like protestations that allow us to situate the neighbors in specific houses. And even when we do encounter the neighbors in the extant sources, it is difficult to

form an impression of their wealth. Still, protestations involving owners and neighbors, some of them containing quite drastic descriptions of violent acts and allegations of witchcraft and other deviant behavior, may lend some credence to the suspicion that relatively affluent owners of buildings lived across the wall with poorer renters, whom they occasionally sought to remove from their buildings by going to court. After all, an apothecary, a tailor, a tailor’s widow, a baker, a cobbler, an embroiderer, and a furrier were all living in rented chambers in the Castle Street house of apothecary Jarosz Jablko (1.37), right next to a house owned by Radziwill princes, important dignitaries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and— most important—one in which they resided while in Wilno (1.38).*° There were separate neighborhoods where wealthy, middle-level, and modest Lutherans

congregated, Catholic nobles and Catholic poor, setting themselves apart not only from other confessions but also from other groupings of co-confessionals defined by estates and professions. But just as we found confessional exceptions to the rule among owners and neighbors, so we also sense the presence of modest, perhaps also impoverished, renters of attics, basements, and outbuildings in better neighborhoods, as well as nobles residing temporarily during trips to the capital in places like Skop Street. In examining poor relief, among other issues, Joke Spaans has argued that the “pillarization” (verzuilung) that occurred in Holland in the nineteenth century—the division of society into separate, self-governing communities peacefully coexisting side by side—offers clues to understanding Dutch religious toleration in the seventeenth century.*°° She points to two main facets of life in the Republic. First is the highly decentralized nature of that state: “Arrangements were concluded ata local, rather than a central, level.” Second is the fact that the Dutch Reformed Church “probably never encompassed a clear majority of the population,” which made it “an ambiguous partner of the political power in the construction of a confessional state.” The result, she argues, was “a society that was free and ordered.” Spaans comes to the conclusion “that it was not Erasmian tolerance or magisterial laxity’—the two param-

eters that had shaped the discussion in the past—“that produced public recognition and relative freedom for dissident groups”; rather, the main cause was “a rather strict disciplinarian regime and a considerable amount of social engineering.” As R. Po-Chia Hsia notes in his introductory appreciation of Spaans’s essay, “This genius in mapping social topography ensured that religious and civil identities were anchored in separate spaces, which allowed for a nuanced articulation of the individual, the communal, and the civil in different representations.” *°’ Centralized forms of poor relief in seventeenth-century Wilno, such as those delivered by the beggars’ corporation and the guilds, were not founded on such notions. These sodalities brought together all of Christian Wilno, or at least that is what their statutes indicate. In all

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other regards, the statute of the beggars’ corporation resembles other Catholic plans for centralized, rationalized poor relief: begging and individual almsgiving were limited but not entirely banned; pilgrims might be included as recipients of aid; able-bodied men were excluded and put to work; a beggars’ altar was established in a Catholic church. The differences here were that the recipients of this sort of aid were of all five Christian confessions represented in the Wilno landscape and that all five confessions were brought together in one beggars’ corporation. Church-related poor relief would naturally tend toward parallel structures separated by confession, and there are many indications that priests and pastors sought to use hospitals and other eleemosynary programs as confessionalizing tools. But there are also indications that these goals were difficult to achieve and that they were not necessarily the goals of all involved (perhaps not even of all the clergy involved) with these institutions. The Calvinist synod of 1642 had to call for a purge of non-Calvinist residents of their newly relocated Wilno hospital. This was just two years after the Wilno Calvinists had been banned from within the walls and forced to reestablish their church, school, and hospital just outside. We may wonder how successful the clergy was in its attempts to distinguish the sheep from the goats among the poor Calvinist widows. The Uniate metropolitan of Kiev and All Rus Antoni Sielawa conducted a similar purge of the hospital at the Uniate cathedral Church of the Most Pure [Virgin] in 1652, although its goal was to weed out able-bodied malingerers and not, for instance, the crypto-Orthodox.*°? Catholic and Uniate hospitals were at least partially administered by the magistracy, and we know of at least one instance when a Lutheran merchant was overseeing one of the more important Catholic poorhouses. Lutheran merchants gave to Catholic hospitals not only out of charity and perhaps the desire that the poor pray

for their souls but also so that “the poor people of [our Lutheran] confession might find refuge [there].”*°° All the churches also organized bursae for poor students, although the Catholic institutions were the most numerous and best endowed. Catholics and Lutherans, under the rubric of the Mons Pietatis, established banks to lend at modest interest to poor parishioners, and the other confessions provided similar services, if under different names, through their confraternities.**° Presumably, most borrowers were expected to be parishioners of the church administering the loan, but there may have been exceptions here. The attitudes of Orthodox and Uniate Vilnans toward poverty and charity remain especially elusive. According to tradition, the Orthodox of Muscovy did not stigmatize the poor, and they viewed charity as a purely voluntary and private matter, eventually in overt opposition to Western—Protestant, but also Catholic—approaches.*** It is unclear to what extent this Opposition functioned in the minds of Ruthenian Vilnans. But even if such attitudes were a part of local Ruthenian identity, and this cannot be ruled out, we may certainly suspect that in this matter, as in so many others, the Uniates at Holy Trinity and the Orthodox at Holy Spirit were busy emulating and competing with each other, and with their Catholic and Protestant neighbors, in creating networks of hospitals and brother- and sisterhoods to aid the poor.

354 CHAPTER 13

Jewish institutions largely paralleled the Christian ones.*** The hospital, or hekdesh, was similarly both a poorhouse and a place to care for the sick. Like their Christian counterparts, they were part religious institutions, part secular, administered by overseers called gabbaim, appointed by the kahal. Polish-Lithuanian Jews formed funeral brotherhoods (chevroth kadisha) and charitable brotherhoods (chevroth tsedaka). They laid down rules for the behavior of Jewish beggars, and they established societies for endowing impoverished Jewish brides.**” In addition to reflecting the attitudes of the Jewish community toward poverty and charity, these institutions also served, for example, to deter poor Jewish girls from converting to Roman Catholicism in exchange for an alms or a dowry (with or without a Gentile husband). The Mons Pietatis first grew up as a reaction to, and in competition with, Jewish bankers

to whom poor Christians sometimes turned in need.*** I have found no contemporary Wilno voices on this question. Still, it is possible that the various Christian loan funds we encounter in seventeenth-century Wilno arose in similar circumstances. In any event, Christian wills and testaments indicate that Jews and Christians held goods in pawn for each other (in both directions!), and they suggest that this kind of Jewish-Christian lending may have played some role in individual attempts to provide for economic survival, perhaps in both communities.

In all communities—including here the Tatars**°—it is likely that the most important type of poor relief, at least at the practical level, was of the thoroughly decentralized self-help sort. Most studies of poor relief have not included “improvised poor relief” in their analyses. Robert Jtitte’s work of 1994 remains an important exception here. I see no reason to exclude these sorts of personal retirement accounts and private health care funds from the context of the Montes Pietatis, guild boxes, and other more institutionalized delivery systems. I would guess that many Vilnans sought to make use of as many sources as possible in time of need. Improvised poor relief is one context in which to assess the extent to which the relatively peaceful coexistence among the confessions and religions in Wilno was founded upon something like pillarization. The five stories about self-help I chose to recount here came from two related neighborhoods under one jurisdiction, that of the Roman Catholic Chapter. More important, they played themselves out in a set of interrelated human networks, all of which seem to have been nearly exclusively Roman Catholic. Other such stories could probably be situated in nearly exclusively Lutheran, Calvinist, Orthodox, and Uniate networks. This might suggest something like the pillarization of Wilno society, and there are good reasons to suspect that this aspect was one important facilitator of religious toleration in Wilno.

But there were also many networks (and neighborhoods) built across confessional lines. Uniates and Orthodox shared a neighborhood around Subocz Street and elsewhere, and they frequently intermarried and looked to each other for guardians and executors of wills. Lutherans and Calvinists lived across from each other on upper Castle Street, intermarried, and chose each other as godparents and guardians. Surprisingly frequent—and here is where we are able to do some limited quantifying—were the appearances of non-Catholic godparents

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at the baptisms at Wilno’s Roman Catholic parish Church of St. John (and the parents of the babies in question were both Catholic in most cases). Even Jews may have been tempted to look across boundaries of religion in their attempts to help themselves. At least that is the inference I draw from a decree of the Holy Community of Cracow (Kazimierz) that “if ‘a person desire to appoint gentile guardians [apotropsim], he must be opposed and all possible punishments applied.”**° So yes, Vilnans congregated and organized their self-help around pillars. But they also formed constellations of pillars, some more frequently and easily than others, but all combinations were possible. Godparenthood was not only, perhaps not even primarily, about reli-

gious upbringing: it was also about forming networks of people in a “relation of formal amity,” who could be called upon in time of need.**” Wilno’s religious toleration depended upon the willingness of confession-specific communities and networks to live peaceful lives in parallel, but it also stemmed from the willingness of families and individuals to look beyond confessional limits for aid to material and physical well-being and from the willingness of people of another confession to provide it. This should not cause us to be blind—to return now to Pullan’s “cloud of suspicions”—to possible differences, subtle or not, in the expectations of individuals and confessional communities about the social and spiritual goals of poor relief, even if all made use of the same institutions and strategies. An evaluation of last wills and testaments will shed further light on this issue. Is it only coincidence that several of the cases of “indiscriminate almsgiving” I have come upon—to all “the poor who lie about the streets and beg for money”—are found in the wills of Roman Catholic Vilnans?**® Still, when Lutheran Andrzej von Embden gave to the Catholic hospital in Antokol, we have to ask whether he was acting only as a patron of Lutheran paupers. Or was he building a better civil society? Or did he harbor some expectation of salvation, his own and that of the recipients of his largesse? In spite of the opposing Catholic and Protestant teachings on good works (and, no doubt, the development of Orthodox and Uniate positions on these questions in response to the Protestant-Catholic debate), itis hard to rule out any of these motivations in individual Vilnans, and we will find certain unexpected “Catholic remnants” (or perhaps syncretisms) in the attitudes of Protestant Vil-

nans in their preparations for death, including in their provisions for posthumous almsgiving.

~CHAPTER FOURTEEN ~

Death in Wilno

ompa funebris (funereal pomp) was the order of the day at the castle church in Wilno on

P 20 July 1592. The wife of the palatine of Wilno and hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was to be laid to her eternal rest. She—Katarzyna z Teczyna Radziwillowa—was a

Roman Catholic. Her husband, Prince Krzysztof Mikotaj Radziwill “the Thunderbolt” (1547-1603), the son of Mikolaj Radziwill “the Red,” was the leading patron of the Lithuanian Calvinist Church in its second generation. Presiding over the ceremonies was Father Stanislaw Grodzicki (1541-1613), a Jesuit and a vociferous confessional polemicist, one of the stricter doctrinalists in the first generation of Jesuits native to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.* It was they, among other orders, who made the Roman Catholic reconquest of the Polish-Lithuanian elites a central part of their mission. Grodzicki used the occasion to lecture a captive audience—one that included a certain number of Calvinists—on the nature of purgatory and the differences between Roman Catholic and heterodox teaching on the subject. When he published his sermon soon after the event, he dedicated it not to the bereaved Radziwiti but to Prince Lew Sapieha, then chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who would eventually succeed Radziwill in the offices of palatine of Wilno and hetman. Sapieha was in fact the son-in-law of the deceased and the widower, married to their daughter, Halszka (Elzbieta) Radziwittowna.? And although he had made the journey from Eastern Orthodoxy through Calvinism to Roman Catholicism— or perhaps precisely because of this biographical fact—Grodzicki chose to identify him only as “a constant and ardent Catholic.” Moreover, he made no mention of the dedicatee’s relationship to the deceased. In his dedicatory preface, Grodzicki set the stage for the battle of homilies that was to arise from the event.* Present at the funeral, in addition to Sapieha (and no doubt the widower, although Grodzicki kept silent on this issue), had been “intruders [who had] insinuated themselves among the listeners.” The “intruders” were, of course, co-confessionals of

the grieving husband, chief among whom was Calvinist pastor Andrzej Chrzastowski (ca. 1555-1618), Krzysztof Radziwitl! I’s “court minister” in Birze. According to Grodzicki, the minister soon thereafter—the title page tells us it was on 26 July 1592, six days later— preached a sermon to the flock in Wilno rebutting Catholic teaching on purgatory, which he

DEATH IN WILNO 357 published under the title Psychotopia: Or, the Purgatory of Father Stanislaw Grodzicki (Wilno, 1592). That work was dedicated to Radziwill. The nitpicking with which Grodzicki began his self-defense betrays some unease over the

profound differences that were at play here. Chrzastowski had claimed that Grodzicki had worked on his sermon for three and a half months. It seems likely that he had indeed spent some time in preparation for the event, given the lengths to which he went to deny this mundane allegation. After all, Grodzicki insisted to Sapieha, “just how could I have done this, not knowing whether I was to give the sermon at this funeral, indeed whether this funeral was to take place in Wilno or somewhere else (since there were various reports about this).” Just four days before the funeral, a servant of Radziwill had approached Grodzicki, and “somewhat before that”—the phrase is perhaps purposefully vague—the bishop’s assistant had come to the academy on a mission. He brought back the news that the Calvinist prince wished to have “someone ex Societate nostra [from our Society] give the sermon.” Thus the

pastor had turned “four days into almost the same number of months.” What is more, Grodzicki made a special point of the fact that he had in fact preached without a written text, “for this is nothing new with me.” It was only in response to the Calvinist minister’s printed attempt at a refutation of Catholic doctrine that he had felt moved to produce a written text “from memoty, from a few little notes that I had made for myself.”° The stakes were clearly high for the two clergymen, as one would expect in the context of ultimate matters such as death and the afterlife. Grodzicki’s published sermon took up fortyfive quarto pages, to which was appended a sixty-six-page refutation of Chrzastowski’s Psychotopia entitled A Weighing of the Psychotopia. He followed it up with a Second Sermon on Purga-

tory (Wilno, 1593), which he published the next year on the occasion of the funeral for Albrycht Radziwill (1558-1592), who was Krzysztof’s cousin and the Roman Catholic son of the first patron of Lithuanian Calvinism, Mikotaj Radziwill “the Black” (1515-1565). (All the Lithuanian Calvinist patriarch’s children would revert to Roman Catholicism.) Doctrine on purgatory ought to have had direct influence on practices surrounding prepa-

rations for death, for the ritual of death itself, for funerals and burial, and for the further relationship between the living and the dead. The crux of the differences here was the Protestant rejection of the efficacy of works and the assertion that the Christian was justified by faith alone, solely through the unmerited grace of God. As a result, Lutherans and Calvinists— and some of the Orthodox polemicists in the period immediately following the 1596 Union

of Brest—would argue that purgatory was a Roman Catholic innovation and that therefore there was no need for prayers (and no need to pay for Masses) for the souls of the dead. The prayers were in fact useless.° Roman Catholics and Uniates (and, as we will see, the actual practice of the Orthodox) held just the opposite—that there was some third place, whatever it was called and whether or not it was a place of purging fire. Thus requiem Masses and other liturgies and prayers for the dead and commemorations were an important part of life and something for which people made provisions in their wills. This remained the case after the Tridentine reforms.’

358 CHAPTER 14

To return for a moment to the scene in the castle church. Grodzicki argued before that audience—or at least in the printed version of the sermon—that “from the beginning of the world, almost all the peoples, Jewish, pagan, Catholic, apostate, Mohammedan” made some sort of offerings for their dead: prayers, alms, torments of the body. All believed in the temporary purification of the souls of the sinful dead, and “all prayed for them, either to false gods, or to the true God.” As visible proof of the inconsistency of heterodox teaching, Grodzicki took his audience on an imaginary walk to the local Lutheran cemetery, where the gravestones were full of epitaphs, that is to say, tablets, or funereal pictures (for among other wonders the new faiths have brought it about that people, having cast images and commemorations of the lives of Christ the Lord and His saints out of their churches, have set up pictures of their parents or kin, with descriptions of their lives) usually with this inscription in German at the end: Welcher selbe Gott genedig sei, that is, “for whose soul may the Lord God be merciful.”®

This was something all Vilnans could see for themselves—Grodzicki, so it would seem, had done so—by taking a stroll in the Saxon garden located just beyond Wilia Gate. Grodzicki had noted, somewhat scornfully, the presence of non-Catholics at a Catholic funeral. His Jesuit colleague Jakub Wujek—their tenures at the Wilno Academy had not quite overlapped—had argued that “our Catholics sin when they dare to have contact with heretics in matters that have to do with the faith, being at their baptisms, weddings, and funerals.”° Albrycht Stanislaw Radziwitt (1593 or 1595-1656), chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithu-

ania, memoirist, and propagator of the cult of the Virgin—he was the Roman Catholic grandson of Mikolaj Radziwill “the Black”—had worked out a compromise: he wrote in his

diaries that it was his practice to accompany the funeral processions of his non-Catholic acquaintances only as far as the church doors and then, as a good Catholic, to turn his back and return home. But he also noted, with a certain amount of disdain, that many of his fellow Catholics took full part in heterodox funeral services, probably, he thought, out ofa desire to ingratiate themselves with the likes of his cousin Krzysztof Radziwill II (d. 1640), palatine of Wilno, grand hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and patron of Lithuanian Calvinists in the third generation. *° Krzysztof II was the son of the Katarzyna z Teczyna whose Roman Catholic funeral had been held by the Jesuit Grodzicki. Similar ties bringing Vilnans of various confessions together at the hour of death were not limited to noble families. Among burghers as well, relationships based on blood, kinship, neighborhood, and membership in secular corporations (the guilds, for example) gathered Vilnans of various confessions around deathbeds, at funerals, and in processions to final resting places. Still, the stakes were great, and we will see a range of attitudes and practices— from the most exclusionary to the most inclusive—reflected in wills and other pieces of evidence. Among the questions to be considered in this chapter are the rhetorical norms for the

DEATH IN WILNO 359

writing of wills across the confessions and religions; the circles of friends, guardians of surviving minor children, curators of widows, executors and witnesses of wills whom the dying gathered around their deathbeds—either literally or by naming them in the will; the rules worked out for public funeral processions of members of the various communities through the streets of Wilno from places of death to the churches and in some cases, from churches and temples to intra- and extramural gardens or cemeteries; and the provisions for bequests of property and for last rites and posthumous commemorations that Vilnans made for themselves in their final days and hours.

Testamentary Rhetoric Although there was some variation within the limits of the literary genre of the will, that range was narrow. Not all rhetorical building blocks were present in every case. Still, there was a certain predictability to the progression of what was frequently a lengthy prologue.** A catalog of an ideal type of testamentary rhetoric might go something like this: an invocation to God; an acknowledgment that while all are mortal, no one knows the time and circumstances of death; a declaration that things not committed to writing will eventually sink into oblivion; a statement of purpose, typically to avoid conflict between the survivors; a dispensation of one’s soul to God, with requests for forgiveness of sins, and of one’s body to the earth. All of these set the stage for detailed provisions for bequests of property to individuals and institutions and the naming of guardians, curators, executors, and witnesses. This second part, of course, was quite different in each individual case, and usually much longer than the prologue. The reader is struck more by sameness than by difference in the sometimes quite detailed prologues. In fact, if we skip over the hints provided by the names of the “author” of the testament (most of the dying were aided by a notary, which complicates the question of author-

ship), these texts arouse a certain suspense in the reader as to the confession—indeed, sometimes as to the religion—of the testator. In rare instances a separate statement of religious belief was inserted between provisions for the soul and for the body. But in most cases we discover confessional allegiance only in a laconic instruction that the deceased be interred, “according to Christian rite, honorably and fittingly,” in a particular Wilno church. In some cases, knowledge of the confession of the church in question is simply assumed. This rhetorical leveling creates a first impression—a partially mistaken first impression, I argue—of sameness across the confessions in attitudes toward and preparations for death and the afterlife. A brief survey of prologues to wills drawn from the various communities both reveals the rhetorical leveling and points to some of the differences that will become more pronounced further on in my discussion and to which I devote more attention in subsequent sections. “In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the One God in the Holy

Trinity. May this matter remain for eternal memory”: thus did Calvinist merchant

360 CHAPTER 14 Jakub Desaus II (Castle Street 1.26) begin his will of 13 November 1675. Uniate salt merchant Afanas Otroszkiewicz, who lived in the suburb outside Sharp Gate, had his will of 5 April 1666 entered into the same books of the Wilno bench: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Soon thereafter his Orthodox widow, Katarzyna Kurylowiczowna Otroszkiewiczowa, would have her own will of 18 November 1666 placed in the identical acta: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Roman Catholic

wheelwright Pawel Kotlik, burgher of the Roman Catholic Chapter jurisdiction (Skop Street 49.05), who signed his will on 12 February 1632, began, “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one God in the Trinity. Let this be to the execution and completion of all things written below in this testament of mine. Amen.” And his neighbor in the chapter jurisdiction, Anna Rejchowiczowna Emplowa (Skop Street 49.06), Lutheran widow of organist (or perhaps organ builder) Hans Empel (Hempel), had her own will of 19 May 1655 written into the acta of the Monwid Altar (the lower instance of the chapter jurisdiction) in spite of the fact that she made provisions for the burial of her body according to Saxon rite and in the Saxon cemetery: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, God the One in the Trinity. Amen.” ** Lutheran minister Jedrzej Sch6nflissius would emphasize just this community of belief in his funeral sermon for longtime burgomaster Jakub Gibel (Castle Street 2.13): He died as a Christian. Perhaps someone will think: “But he was a heretic.” Oh, for God’s

sake, judge nothing before its time, until the Lord should come. That is not your judgment. Lord Jesus will judge us. Is this a heretic who confessed God the One in the Trinity? And this is no less a consolation in view of the coming resurrection.”

The minister seems to suggest that Vilnans of all Christian confessions who believed in the same God in the Trinity could expect the same resurrection in the body. The first reason for putting testamentary dispensations into writing had precisely to do with that eternity, with those unending years for which the will was to make provisions. Calvinist merchant Jakub Desaus II spelled it out: “Since all things that can be found under the sun are subject to change and decay with time, so also all human matters not explained properly and delimited in writing fall from memory in future time.” And he would go on to elaborate, “Considering and seeing that there is nothing in this world more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than its time and hour. . .”** The reason was similar for Roman Catholic Pawel Kotlik: I, Pawel Kotlik, wheelwright, citizen of the Monwid Altar, confess with this testament of my last will that, knowing the changeability of this miserable world and the uncertainty in it of all human matters, in which every living man is more certain of nothing more than

death, but the time and end of his life is hidden from his eyes and knowledge, likewise also understanding well that all human matters and decisions, not made certain and

DEATH IN WILNO 361

stipulated in writing, in time come to oblivion together with the change of human ages, whence various perplexities, disagreements, and hatreds arise, [therefore I make this will]. *°

Both Vilnans were paraphrasing a commonplace that appears in the writings of various Doctors of the Church. St. Augustine wrote in his Narration on Psalm XXXVIII, “Wherever you

turn, all things are uncertain: only death is certain. .. . You are born: it is certain that you will die. And in this, although death itself is certain, the day of death is uncertain. Among these uncertain things, while only death is certain, yet its hour is uncertain.”*° And St. Anselm wrote in his Meditation VII, “Nothing is more certain than death, nothing more uncertain than the hour of death” (Nihil certius morte, nihil hora mortis incertius).*” This phrase, or variations upon it, appeared time and again in testaments of Vilnans of all five confessions.** Vilnans besought God not to judge them according to their merits but to forgive them their many sins. Similar phrasings appear in a responsorium found in the Roman Catholic Office of the Dead—“Lord, do not judge me according to my deeds”—which was itself based loosely on Psalm 25:7: “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions: according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord.” Similar entreaties were also a part of the Eastern-rite liturgy.

Lutheran minister Jedrzej Schénflissius described the preparations that merchant and immigrant from Antwerp Andrzej von Embden I (Castle Street 2.14) made for his death in 1628 in these terms: The Lord placed a dangerous sickness upon him, such a sickness that the doctors were unable to understand or to prevent. And so, feeling weaker from one day to the next, confessing his sins to God, he poured hot tears over them, he called and sighed to God, [asking] that He treat him not according to his justice, but according to His infinite mercy. He consoled himself with the sole merit of his Savior, after confession there followed holy absolution and the taking of the most holy Sacrament, which he received with great devotion.*°

There might seem to be an undercurrent in this particular instance of Lutheran teaching on justification through God’s grace alone, without regard for merits or works. In fact, I do find the same commonplace in the wills of two other Lutheran Vilnans. Barber-surgeon Jerzy Dames (Rudniki Street 15.19) asked of God in his will of 7 April 1655 that “not remembering the greatness of my sins, but rather having forgiven [them] mercifully according to His infinite mercy and for the sufferings of His Son, Jesus Christ, He might deign to receive [my soul] to His glory.”*° His neighbor across the street, Wilno horodniczy Piotr Nonhart (Rudniki Street 12.06), asked in his will of 14 February 1633 that God, “not treating me according to His holy justice, but having forgiven my heavy sins according to His infinite mercy, might deign to be a merciful God and receive me to His holy glory.”7*

362 CHAPTER 14

But I also find close variants of the same phrases in the wills of three Roman Catholics: musician Jan Baranowski and his wife Justyna Kostromska (Troki Street 33.02) in their wills of 4 October 1685 and 28 December 1696, as well as that of burgomaster Mikotaj Kliczewski (Subocz Street) from 8 January 1667. And I find similar phrases in one Orthodox will, that of burghess Anastazja Polikszanka Dziedzinska (Subocz Street 78.06) from 10 September 1675.°* Thus here, too, in an area that could be theologically sensitive, we find a certain rhetorical sameness across the confessions. These kinds of phrases were, after all, a familiar part of both Roman Catholic and Eastern-rite worship. Lutheran and Calvinist Vilnans, however, no doubt heard the phrase “merits” and “sole merits (of God)” differently than their non-Protestant neighbors did. One subtle but notable difference is the fact that, with the exception of Catholic musician Jan Baranowski, the nonLutherans, both Roman Catholic and Orthodox, coupled the plea to “God’s majesty” for mercy and grace with invocations of the saints. This was lacking in the testaments of the Protestants. Orthodox burghess Dziedzinska, for example, begged the “intercession of His Mother, the most holy Virgin Mary, God’s angels, and all my patron saints.” Indeed, the nonProtestants seem to have seen the possibility of obtaining the desired divine mercy and grace as being directly dependent upon that intercession. This difference—subtly expressed in the formulaic prologues—becomes more striking in the detailed provisions of non-Protestant Vilnans for funeral masses, endowed religious commemorations of the deceased over the months and years following their deaths, and other provisions whose goal was to ensure that the living say prayers for the souls of the dead. The reader of an imaginary anthology of the prologues to testaments of Vilnans of all five confessions would be struck first by the rhetorical sameness: variation only within narrowly defined generic boundaries and little or no indication of confessional allegiance. The prologue to the testament signed 27 July 1690 by Roman Catholic salt merchant Mikolaj Szczasnel Sienkiewicz, who resided in the suburb beyond the Troki Gate, is both typical of the genre and an example of some of the range of its permitted rhetorical variations: I, Mikolaj Szczasnel Sienkiewicz, burgher and salt merchant of Wilno, born of my father

Jakub Szczasnel Sienkiewicz, squire [ziemianin, a gentryman of limited noble rights] of His Royal Majesty’s palatinate of Minsk, who had his estate prior to Muscovy [i.e., before the Muscovite invasion] between Minsk and Radoszkowice, having observed on a daily basis that people, flowing away like water from this transitory world, pass over to the other eternity on a sailing voyage from which there is no longer any return, and also having this in mind—that death is a certain port, but there is no information about when and who will be ordered to arrive in it, and since every man, both in the flower of life and in old age ought to be ready for that sea voyage, however as they commonly say, old men stand with one leg in the grave and the other on earth—therefore I, too, having my advanced years by the grace of the Lord Most High, not waiting until death trips up my other leg, to the contrary, wishing that, having found me prepared, it [1.e., death] might bring

DEATH IN WILNO 363

me happily in its ship to the desired port of eternity, and since fora different readiness the disposition belongs to me of the things entrusted to me by the Lord God yet during my

lifetime, fearing that death might suddenly fall upon me, although I am not bedridden, nonetheless, since old age itself is a sickness [senectus ipsa morbus—from Terence’s Phormio, 575], I dispose of my things in this manner, with this written testament for all time after my departure, whether it come soon or late.*?

The rhetorical sameness across the confessions is no doubt partially due to shared visions of the transitory nature of life on earth, the ubiquity of death, the necessity to provide for surviving family members, the desire for a proper funeral, and the need to prepare one’s soul for the journey into eternity. But that sameness is also due to the use of a limited pool of trained notaries (most likely themselves of a range of confessions) who provided legal aid to Vilnans as they prepared for death. And yet those notaries were apparently sensitive to differences in the attitudes of their clients, which they tried to reflect in the wills they drafted. I end this section with a short collection of formulas from Tatar wills registered in the Wilno castle court. My point here is that this community of testamentary rhetoric embraced not only Wilno’s five Christian confessions but also the Muslim Tatars. (I have not found any Jewish will registered with the Christian courts.) In the will of a Tatar woman named Abrahimowa, dated 6 August 1598, we read “that in this world there is nothing more certain for every man than death, for the healthy person must expect sickness, and the sick awaits death.”** In a testament of 31 December 1643,

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