Archives of marshals of the Polish Crown. Definition, characteristics and typology of the documents

Abstract

Adam Sędziwój Archives of great marshals (hetmani wielcy) and field marshals (hetmani polni) of the Polish Crown and of the Great Duchy of Lithuania functioned within an organisational framework very different to archives of other ministerial offices within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Marshals' archives should be regarded as belonging to private archives and, to be more specific, as fragments of archives belonging to clans and families from which marshals descended. The documents written by marshals while they were in office were considered their private property and they were entered into archives as their personal, private files. This is how a paradox occured because documents written by a person holding one of the most important offices in the country, and who was often seen as dangerous for the nobility's and the ruler's own interests and for the country's security, could not be made known to the public and existed beyond any control. Various documents survived amongst the archives of the marshals of the Polish Crown, different in terms of form, sender and subject matter. The first criterion that we can adopt while characterising the documentation found in marshals' archives is its form. Here, the first place definitely takes correspondence, followed by documents set out in tabular form, case files, books, and finally documents. Other criterion which can be applied is the sender and the addressee. According to this criterion, the documents can be divided into these incoming, addressed to marshal or people close to him (e.g. people working in his office), and these outgoing, written by marshal or people working with him. Another criterion used for typology of documentation found in marshals' archives is the subject matter, usually dependent of the function of marshal of the Polish Crown. And so the documents can be divided into the following categories: military, financial, judicial, diplomatic and private (these include documents related to the office held but referring directly to marshal, e.g. papers appointing to the office of marshal, documentation regarding remuneration, correspondence). Taking into consideration the fisical form in which the documents can be found at the moment, we can describe them as loose, glued or bound together. Certainly, all those forms could well be found in the past but it is important to remeber that the condition that the documents are in at present does not always correspond to their original form. They were usually produced as loose documents and were later bound into fascicles.