(An abridged version of this article was published in Rodziny – Winter, volume XLVII, number 1, the journal of the Polish Genealogical Society of America. This is the complete and updated version of the study.)
Introduction
In the feudal (or pre-industrial) world, initially all land in the state belonged to the ruler and all inhabitants were his subjects. Over time, the ruler granted individual estates, along with the subjects living there, to his trusted associates: knights who later became nobility, the church, cities, and various institutions. There developed four main types of land ownership: royal, noble, ecclesiastic and municipal (individual cities, as separate legal entities, could also own their own land).
These types of landed estates could consist of many villages and towns inhabited by thousands of people (peasants, townspeople and nobility) and cover large areas of hundreds or even thousands of square miles of arable fields, pastures, meadows, forests and wastelands. On the other hand, there could also be very small estates including, for example, one or just part of the village. Larger estates were even termed “states” or “principalities” and had their own names, usually derived from the name of the main town or region. Nevertheless, all landed estates in Poland, whether noble, ecclesiastical, or otherwise, were an integral part of the Polish state and, like their owners, were subject to royal authority. However, all of them also had a great deal of economic and judicial autonomy and, therefore, their own extensive economic and judicial administration.
The following study is to present how typical large noble estates functioned in general and, on that basis, explore the common life, work, and organization of peasant and townspeople communities within such estates in Poland in the early modern period (the 16 – 18th c.). As a basis for this article, I largely used my own research on the history of one of the large landed estate, which lay in what is now southeastern Poland (see the location on the map: Lesko). The Estate of Lesko, to which we refer here, covered a large area that included the towns of Lesko, Ustrzyki Dolne, Bukowsko and at least 76 villages inhabited by more than 29,000 people in the mid-1780s. The history of this single large landed estate will serve us as a general representation of the political, economic, and social system which prevailed between the 16th and the 18th century.
Administration of the Estate
The Estate of Lesko was established at the beginning of the 15th century when the King of Poland, Władysław Jagiełło, granted the area to his trusted associate, Piotr Kmita. For the next more than five hundred years, the Lesko estate passed into the hands of various magnate families through inheritance or maritial relationships*. Throughout this time, the boundaries of the Lesko estate have undergone numerous changes as a result of the purchase or sale of individual areas or family divisions. Subsequent owners founded new villages and towns, in addition to the existing ones, and organized and developed their administration on the land they owned. The final end of the estate’s existence came in 1944 when the communist regime issued the so-called Land Reform Implementation Decree and confiscated all large land estates in Poland.
Administration of the Estate of Lesko had changed over the centuries depending on the needs of the developing economy and social changes. I will briefly describe the system that operated in the Lesko estate in the 18th century, when the estate reached the largest territorial scope and, therefore, its internal administration developed and expanded.
The capital of the Lesko estate, the administrative center and the residence of the owners was the town of Lesko and the Lesko castle (initially the seat was the nearby castle on Mount Sobień). There were central offices in Lesko, including the general management of the estate, the main court called the castle court (chaired by the supreme judge – supremus iudex), the castle militia, the treasury and the armory. The nearby monastery of the Discalced Carmelites in Zagórz housed the main economic archive of the Lesko estate, under the care of the local monks.
The general management of the estate, called “superintendency”, consisted of higher-level officials. These included the bursar general and three other central officials subordinate to him, the income scribe, the propination scribe and the burgrave of the Lesko castle. The task of the central officials was to administer, manage, plan and control the entire territory and all aspects related to functioning of the estate.
The entire area of the estate was divided into smaller economic and administrative sub-estate units called keys (klucze). One key (a sub-estate) consisted of two to six villages. In the seat of each key there was a lord’s manor, which was the seat of the local administration, and a manorial farmstead, which was the local center of agricultural production for the owners of the Lesko estates. The administration of each key was managed by a lower-level, field official called a sub-stewart (podstarosta), who was assisted by his own officials, farm staff and the local authorities of a given village. The sub-stewart was responsible for the management of the entire key (sub-estate), safety and order in the area under his control, proper functioning of the manorial farmstead, collecting taxes, rents, tributes and timely performance of field and economic works, transport of goods to designated places, road maintenance, etc.
The manorial farm staff consisted of workers and supervisors of peasant origin and farm officials of noble origin. Peasants, the inhabitants of the village, were subordinate to the office of the sub-stewart, and the sub-stewart was subordinate to the general management of the estate of Lesko.
Peasants living in villages were subjects of the owners of the Lesko estate and had their own rights and obligations. Each village had its own board composed of an alderman and sworn officials and its own kind of law enforcement. Members of that law enforcement were called dziesiętnik which literally meant a decimal officer (each decimal officer was responsible for every ten or so farmsteads).
The alderman and those subordinated to him, the decimal officers, supervised and controlled peasant farmsteads, enforced the provisions of the local manor (local administration of the sub-estate) and central castle administration in Lesko and kept order in the village. Among other things, they conducted investigations and together, with a sub-stewart, they chased criminals in their area. The inhabitants of a given key were subject to the local court, which was located in the seat of each key, i.e. in the manor. The court was presided over by the sub-stewart, and next to him sat village aldermen and sworn officials. It was possible to appeal against the judgments of the local manor court to the castle court in Lesko. In very serious matters that concerned entire rural communities, one could even try to appeal to the owners of the estate themselves.
The entire local and central administration, both economic and judicial, was controlled by middle- and higher-level officials who traveled to the field for this purpose. All peasants could submit their complaints about the operation of the local administration, corruption and abuses to the officials. These types of complaints were called supplications (suplika). Although the sub-stewarts had considerable power over the peasants directly subordinated to them, both judiciary (first instance) and executive, and enjoyed the support of the central authorities, such supplications and the accompanying negligence could result in the official being admonished, punished or even dismissed.
Depending on the needs and situation at a specific time, certain villages could be leased. In this case, control of these villages was significantly limited. They were leased for short periods, usually one to three years. Peasants living in these villages could still submit complaints, in this case against the tenants, and the owners could bring lawsuits against the unfavorable tenant who enforced the terms of the lease agreement. Leases were usually financially attractive, so there was no shortage of people willing to sign this type of contract. The tenants were selected, they were usually people from the surrounding of the owner’s of the Lesko estate, his confidants, co-workers and officials. This created a kind of court around their patron (clientelism). If necessary, they supported him politically, materially and even militarily. Therefore, it was not in the tenant’s interest to fall out of favor with his patron due to conflicts in the lease agreement. Despite such conditions, abuses of tenants towards peasants and even crimes committed against them, destruction and neglect were commonplace.
*The House of Kmita (c. 1401 – 1580); The Houses of the Stadnickis (1580 – 1742); The House Ossoliński (1742 – 1786); The House of Mniszech (1786 – 1802); The House of Krasicki (1802 – 1944).
The Feudal World: A Brief History of the Lesko Estate- Part 2
Piotr Zelny
PolishOrigins and Historical Museum in Sanok
Copyright 2023-2025, Piotr Zelny
proofreading: Douglas C. Orzolek