Ius Caducum in Lublin in the First Quarter of the 17th Century

Abstract

The research objective of the study focuses on the functioning of the escheat law within cities. The research, although undertaken in a limited chronological scope, may contribute to the introduction of an issue that has not yet been recognized. The subject of the findings are the detailed issues of the functioning of the escheat law in former Poland, in particular the implementation of the monarch’s prerogative in the light of its limitations imposed in the parliamentary constitutions, the property scope of the escheat law and the issue of the participation of local royal state authorities, i.e. the starost’s office and local (municipal) government authorities, in the execution of the monarch’s decisions. Apart from persons appointed to the inheritance by virtue of law or will, the monarch could also participate in the inheritance proceedings. A heirless or testamentless inheritance fell to the king who, under the law of the escheat (ius caducum), embraced such an inheritance, which was then known in Poland as the “puścizna”. The ruler’s powers in the field of ius caducum were limited by the parliamentary constitutions requiring the king to grant noble goods acquired under the escheat law only to distinguished persons from among the nobility. These restrictions did not apply to the king’s administration and disposal of the bourgeois escheat goods. The process of granting by the king the caduceus estates of the burghers to the nobility are presented on the basis of royal documents concerning the inheritance of Lublin residents passing down to the nobility in the first quarter of the 17th century. The sources used in the research are eighteen documents found in the books of the Crown Record kept by the royal chancellery. The applied research method relates to research on the sources of law. A feature of the presented findings is reliance on unpublished archival sources, which require taking into account the philological and palaeographic methods related to the preparation of sources for analysis.