Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej (Jan 2015)
„Ostatniej tej woli mojej rozporządzenia” — testamenty Jana Haliskiego (zm. po 1741), pułkownika wojsk królewskich — analiza porównawcza treści
Abstract
THE TESTAMENTS OF JAN HALISKI (D. AFTER 1741), COLONEL OF THE ROYAL ARMY — A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS In Old Poland, the major duties of a virtuous nobleman were to serve the Lord and to serve his country. They were eulogised in occasional literature, which set role models and socially acceptable standards of behavior. The model of a heroic soldier was praised in didactic and moralistic texts (e.g. funeral sermons, epitaphs, funeral diaries, laments and threnodies). A less idealised picture, firmly grounded in the harsh reality of soldiering, emerges from legal documents, such as testaments and records of court proceedings. Testaments, which were often written down just before military expeditions, in the face of danger, contain valuable data on the legal and fi nancial standing of the moribund, his relationship with relatives, friends and servants, his attitude to religious and eschatological questions; sometimes they also mention his military experiences. Although disposing of one’s property by a will had been practiced since antiquity, the importance of testaments greatly increased in the 17th c., as a result of the Council of Trent. Since 1726 the validity of a will was contingent upon its written form, but this regulation did not concern testaments made during military campaigns, which could be made orally in front of witnesses and only later written down under oath in the appropriate offi ce. In exceptional circumstances a testament could be approved in the place of the testator’s death or in another office, according to his wish. Despite the generally acknowledged rule of writing testaments at home, soldiers’ last wills were often written down in a camp, just before the action, or in a field hospital where wounded soldiers landed. The article discusses a rare case of a double testament. The two wills in question were drawn up in 1732 and 1741 by Jan Haliski, colonel of the royal army, allowing us to trace his fi nancial standing and family situation, as well as decipher his attitude to religion and ultimate matters. Furthermore, they provide the basis for some hypotheses about his life. The testaments (especially the first one) suggest that Haliski died childless, while his wife Anne nee Janicka, daughter of Ewa nee Lachowska and Krzysztof Janicki, a municipal clerk in Kamieniec, must have died before him, since she is not mentioned in either document.There is not much information on Haliski’s military career. At the beginning of the 18th c. he was a lieutenant in the guard regiment of Adam Mikołaj Sieniawski, voivode of Bełz, the field hetman, and then the grand hetman (from 1706). Sieniawski must have trusted Haliski enormously, since the latter carried letters between the hetman and his wife, Elżbieta nee Lubomirska. The people whom the moribund named as his heirs or the executors of the will (including members of the Sieniawski family, the Jewish creditor Icek Brzeżański and, Stefan Humiecki, voivode of Podolia) suggest that he came from or lived in Ruthenia or Podolia. The wills also indicate interesting details about the testator, e.g. he bought a coffin several years before this death and he was illiterate. They also confirm that editing Old-Polish testaments is worth the effort, since they are an excellent source to studying the genealogy and mentality of the inhabitants of the Commonwealth.
