Paweł Pietrowcew (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Gutenberg’s inventions revolutionised many areas of social communication. Not surprisingly, legal authorities quickly adopted this tool to enhance the management of their subjects. This was the case even in states where absolutist tendencies had not developed, such as Poland-Lithuania. Documents issued by the monarch, the Diet and central officials were printed in Kraków, Warsaw and Vilnius so that each local official (Pol. starosta) could incorporate a copy of them into the entry books under his care. He would then announce them and make them available to the local community.
When the documents were registered, the name of the messenger who brought them and the date when he arrived were recorded. This data allows us to prepare a reconstruction of the channels of distribution of official printed material to municipal authorities, as well as the efficiency of this process. My paper aims to present such a study on selected books from the Kingdom of Poland (Kraków, Sącz, Biecz, Poznań, Wschowa, Wałcz, Kalisz, Gniezno, Konin, Wieluń, Brześć Kujawski, Wieluń, Przedecz, Bydgoszcz, Kościan, Różan, Ciechanów) from the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The material will in future be compared with data from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
The analysis will allow us to better understand whether the introduction of printing by the Polish-Lithuanian government matched expectations and, therefore, whether the dissemination of printed documents proceeded smoothly and rationally.