The Revenues from the Landed Estates of Cracow Bishops and Gniezno Archbishops of 1545

Abstract

The article discusses the revenues from the landed estates of Cracow bishops and Gniezno archbishops of 1545. The list of revenues was inserted into an inventory of the personal chattel of those dioceses’ pastor Piotr Gamrat, who had died that year without a last will and testament. Hence, the Cracow cathedral chapter decided to write down the inventory because their responsibility was to settle the archbishop’s debts and to cover the costs of his funeral. The 1545 revenues are confronted with the value of the Cracow bishops’ landed property according to its 1529 taxation, and with the manorial incomes that were documented for a part of the Gniezno archbishopric in 1531. This comparison shows a ca. thirty-percent total income growth in the Cracow bishops’ demesne. In one of the three Gniezno archbishops’ manorial estates that were taken into account, a hundred percent growth took place, while in the two others the incomes’ volume remained almost unchanged.