Hic liber in archivio conventus asservandus or about the archives of the monastery of St. Martin of the Discalced Carmelite Sisters in Krakow (1612–1655)

Abstract

The early modern archives of Polish female monasteries have not yet become the subject of in-depth studies, although many publications have already been devoted to the history of the religious communities themselves. However, the researchers' attention was primarily drawn to the history of female orders and religious congregations, the literary work of nuns, their epistolography, the functioning of books in the monastic environment or monastic theatre. The archive appeared in all these works only as a repository of historical documents constituting the source basis for the undertaken research, but never as a separate area of activity of modern female monasteries. The article discusses the functioning of the archives of the oldest Carmelite nunnery in Krakow, founded by nuns from Louvain, Mons and Antwerp, in the years 1612-1655. The analysis of the preserved archives showed that the studied archive was an area of creative activity of Carmelite nuns, expressed, inter alia, in making decisions about preserving selected archival materials for the next generations. The Dutch founders, by transferring to Poland the practice of creating and storing monastic documentation known to them from autopsy, at the same time laid the foundation for the development of their native document culture and, at the same time, the culture of remembrance.