Parafie ziemi zatorskiej w okresie od ok. 1400 do ok. 1480 roku

Abstract

PARISHES OF THE ZATOR REGION IN THE PERIOD FROM AROUND 1400 TO AROUND 1480

This article attempts to establish which parishes were functioning in the area referred to as Zator land or Zator district. It has been hypothesised that there were about 26 parishes functioning in the 15th century. This is accompanied by a characterisation of individual churches, taking into account such elements as their invocations, the extent of the parish and the salary of the parish priest or vicar. Most attention was paid to the church in Zator, as it was a church whose influence covered practically the whole Zator district. For the issue of the church in Zator, a number of sources from the 15th century have been preserved, including extremely valuable papal bulls showing the phenomenon of the creation of so-called altari, i.e. altars furnished to specific clergy. Unfortunately, there are no such sources for the long-established municipal church, namely that of Wadowice. This church had the status of a parish church and was under the patronage of the Cistercian providence in Mogiła. Because of the origins of this church within another parish, sources from the 15th century repeatedly refer to the Wadowice church as a filial church. However, this is misleading because the term refers to history and not to the actual state of affairs in the 15th century. The best-endowed parish church in the village was the church in Mucharz These three churches – in Zator, Wadowice and Mucharz – were also the only brick buildings according to written sources. The analysis of the churches of the Zator district was presented by the author together with an attempt to verify the text of Jan Długosz’s Liber beneficiorum based on an autopsy of the so-called original stored in the Archives of the Cracow Cathedral Chapter. In the case of some localities where parishes existed in the 14th century, for the 15th century it was not possible to collect reasons for their continuation. Barwałd is a special case, but one can suppose that this is due to the lack of sources rather than the fact that the church in Barwałd actually ceased to function. The author also attempted to answer the question about the influence of the Hussite wars on the Zábora region and the fate of the local churches. This problem requires a broader study, taking into account a number of sources which are of indirect significance for church issues. The author analyses the endowments of individual parishes and shows that the richest was the parish in Zator, due to its strong support in the bourgeoisie and functioning altars, and the rural parish in Mucharz. In contrast, for all other parishes this endowment is modest, and this undoubtedly had an impact on the functioning of these churches. Future research will need to be undertaken on the period after 1480. The article also details who the recipients of tithes were in the Zator district.