Some Comments About the Noble Parliamentary Assemblies of the 18th Century

Abstract

The author studied noble parliamentary assemblies for many years. He knows a lot of their documents and he wrote a lot of works on noble parliamentary assemblies. Currently, two large volumes on noble parliamentary assemblies have been published. One is printed noble parliamentary assemblies’ documents from 18th century. The other is a Poznan noble parliamentary assembly’s monograph concerning the years 1764–1793. In connection to this, the author shares his thoughts on 18th century noble parliamentary assemblies. The author states that in general there are more works on 17th and the beginning of 18th century noble parliamentary assemblies. This is because this was the period of the greatest importance of noble parliamentary assemblies. The years 1764–1793 received less attention. Therefore the two volumes published recently are even more valuable. The aim of the article is to confront the author’s former findings with the content of the two published volumes regarding the noble parliamentary assemblies of the 18th century; in particular, when it comes to the Poznan noble parliamentary assembly’s monograph concerning the years 1764–1793. The author emphasized that until year 1764 there existed not many legal acts regulating the organization and functioning of the assemblies. This changed in the period of numerous reforms between 1764 and 1793. The author points out that liberalism and noble democracy in the Republic (Rzeczpospolita) were mainly realized to a large extent through the noble assemblies. Therefore, the noble parliamentary assemblies are a key research problem of the old Republic. The author points out that it was not only a state institution, but also a political idea. The noble parliamentary assemblies were an important part of the Polish political culture.