Property and personal relations in the Jurydyka of the Vilna Cathedral chapter in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century (with particular reference to the scandalous and suspicious misdeeds of canon Isaac Fechtinus)

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ENThe term jurydyka is usually defined as ‘a settlement of urban character, whether organized within the defensive walls of a proper town, or beyond them, on land belonging to the said town, or on other suburban land, excepted from the municipal jurisdiction, possessing its own authorities and courts, subjected to the authority of the landowner or the king, but not possessing the rights of a town.’ The jurydyki of Vilna were not consolidated enclaves – we can rather speak of greater or lesser plots and properties which were sometimes connected. Some of them belonged to ecclesiastical corporations such as the Vilna Cathedral Chapter or bishopric. The chapter exercised jurisdiction both over the jurydyka and its estates located beyond the city limits. The scholarly literature on jurydyki in early modern Vilna is limited in extent and uneven in quality. Some scholars have established their existence, some have attempted to describe them generally and some have even tried to locate them on the plan of the city. Vladas Drėma’s titanic work on Vilnan properties now runs to thirteen volumes. Maria Łowmiańska used the plan of the city’s fortifications drawn up in 1648 by Friedrich Getkant, as well as other sources, to create the plan of mid-seventeenth-century Vilna, which, adapted and refined by later scholars including David Frick, continues to function as the principal basis for work on the city’s topography. Keywords: Vilnius, Vilna Cathedral Chapter, jurydyka, clergy, early-modern history. [Extract, p. 53]