Death of the Magnate: Life Expectancy of the Magnatery in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Versus the Demography of the Western European Elites in the Early Modern Age

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present life expectancy calculations for magnates, the elite of the nobility (but not an exact equivalent of European aristocracy) from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th–18th centuries (life tables for women and men). The paper also contains a comparison with the results previously obtained for Western European aristocracy. The author tried to verify if there were differences in life expectancy between men and women from two parts of the Commonwealth: The Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Because only a small amount of data was collected, 95% confidence intervals were calculated from the sample. The calculations were based on genealogical data collected for 8 families from the Kingdom of Poland and 9 Lithuanian families.

Keywords

• life expectancy
• life tables
• aristocracy
• magnatery
• elites
• the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth