Personel kancelarii miasta Chełmna w XVI–XVIII wieku
The Personnel of Town Chancery in Chełmno in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Summary/Abstract: The research undertaken in the article is put in the context of the social, administrative and economic transformations undergone by Chełmno (Kulm), which had been a bishop’s town since 1505. These changes also had a significant impact on the organisation of the town’s chancery, which carried out tasks and duties entrusted by municipal authorities. This was reflected in an increase in the number of town officials working in the chancery, to which court secretaries belonged. They formed a professional group, which was characterised by their economic, political and cultural activity against the background of Chełmno community in the early modern period. The main research objective of the article is to create a comprehensive picture of the social environment of Chełmno town chancery from the sixteenth century until 1772, the personnel of which constituted the intellectual elite of the town, and to present the characteristic traits of this group. At the same time, the text presents the profiles of town secretaries and clerks previously unknown or rarely mentioned in the scholarly literature. Methods applied in the research involve critical analysis of the preserved town books and individual documents, both manuscript and edited. On the basis of data collected from the primary sources, a prosopographical analysis has also been conducted. The result of the studies is an overview picture of the professional group formed by the secretaries and clerks of early modern Chełmno, which includes their social origins, family ties, non-professional activity and wealth.

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