~CHAPTER ONE~
Over the Quartermasterâs Shoulder
King WĆadysĆaw IV made one of his five entries into Wilno on 5 March 1636. Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Albrycht StanisĆaw RadziwiĆĆ (1595â1656, chancellor from 1623), a staunch Catholic and foe of the Reformation, recorded in his diary that on this occasion âthe King entered Wilno on a sleigh without ceremony and made his way to the Castle on foot. Having removed his hat, he dismissed all of us.â1 This nonevent was noteworthy precisely because of the lack of ceremony that usually accompanied the triumphal entry of a ruler. On the next occasion, 27 January 1639, RadziwiĆĆ wrote, âThe city went to great expense in order to receive the new queen [Cecilia Renata of Austria], who had come [to Wilno] for the first time.â2 Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, the entry of a ruler into a city was a highly choreographed pageant, in which the ruler and his considerable entourage would be met at the gate leading to the Royal Way within the city by local corporations such as the magistracy, the merchantsâ society, and the guilds, all dressed in the livery and under banners peculiar to each.3
King WĆadysĆaw loved Italian opera, and on both occasions he would command more than thirty intramural houses to quarter âHis Royal Majestyâs musicâ (Muzyka JKrM), which probably followed the king and his retinue through the gate during a triumphal entry. The king, his entourage, and some portion of Wilno society would be entertained on both visits by the performances of Baldasarre Ferri, an Italian castrato of some European renown, who would continue his career in Vienna after the death of his Polish patron. âLittle Baltazar, His Royal Majestyâs descantistâ (Baltazarek, Dyskancista JKrM) was the only member of âthe Kingâs musicâ identified by name in the Lustration of 1636; in 1639, he would be identified only by his profession (and the fact that he had been quartered there the last time). He was quartered by himself, on both occasions in the house of âTyl the locksmithâ (in all likelihood a Lutheran) at Glass Street 18.05.4 On 4 September 1636, the king was a part of an audience of 521 who were entertained over the course of five hours by a production of Il Ratto di Helena (The Abduction of Helen), an Italian dramma per musica with libretto by Virgilio Puccitelli and music by Marco Scacchi, who was in the employ of WĆadysĆaw IV.5
In addition to feasts, pageants, concerts, operas, and hunts, the king would participate during his stay in Wilno in 1636, earlier that same summer, on 5 July, in the ceremony conferring the doctoral degree in theology upon Wilno-based Jesuit Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Sarbevius), âthe Christian Horace,â the best known of Polish man of letters on the European stage, thanks to his Latin poetry. The ceremony took place in the Jesuitsâ Church of St. John, with the newly minted doctor of theology amazing the congregation with an eloquent Latin sermon. On that occasion the king made the poet-theologian a present of a sapphire ring.6 On 14 August 1636 WĆadysĆaw IV would participate in the long-anticipated translatio of the relics of Lithuaniaâs patron saint, Kazimierz, one of the kingâs own Jagiellonian great uncles, to the newly completed Chapel of St. Kazimierz in the Roman Catholic cathedral church. The royal preacher Sarbiewski himself would give the sermon glorifying the Jagiellonian-Waza dynasty and its role in the defense of the Church.7
Triumphal entries and the sojourns of the king and his large retinue required careful preparations, central among which would have been those for the âquartering of guestsâ (stanowienie goĆci). The royal quartermaster probably arrived in the city by the route taken by his royal patron and other dignitaries.8 The âusual roadâ led from Warsaw, by way of Grodno and Troki. Then, nearing the suburbs of Wilno, the visitor to the city descended along Troki Road from the plateau to the south and west of the city and finally entered from the south, through Rudniki Gate; he then continued along the Royal Way that led along Rudniki Street to the back of the town hall, through Market Square and up Castle Street to Castle Gate, which also housed the Lithuanian Tribunal, the highest court of appeal in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Beyond the gate, across a small branch of the River Wilenka (Wilejka; Lithuanian, Vilnia) that served as the cityâs northern limit, two focal points of temporal and spiritual powerâthe Lower Castle and the cathedralâwere nestled under the medieval Upper Castle perched high on a hill looking out over the city to the south and over the River Wilia (Lithuanian, Neris) to the north. As a royal functionary on an assignment from the king, the quartermaster may have lodged in the Lower Castle during his stay in the city. In any event, that was his point of departure as he began his survey of the intramural houses in 1636. (And with very few exceptions, the survey of 1639 followed the same pattern.) We may imagine him having his breakfast, exiting the Lower Castle with his assistants, and passing over the little branch of the Wilenka and through Castle Gate, where he began his appraisal:
Going from the Castle, on the left-hand side, the first wooden house on land owned by the [Roman Catholic] Chapter, just beyond Castle Gate, as the Father Deacon reported, fundationis Vitoldi [of a foundation of (Grand Duke) Witold]: in it lives Matys Walecki, in which [house] there is one chamber with an alcove and a vestibule; standing [i.e., residing temporarily] in it ex officio is Thomas, His Royal Majestyâs tailor. Previously there resided in it his barber-surgeon, with the benign permission of the landlord, as it was asserted [to us].9
This description, although shorter than many because the house in question was so modest, nonetheless contains the basic information found in each of the more than seven hundred entries of the Lustration: the location; the type of house; the types and numbers of rooms in it, along with some general information about their layout; the jurisdiction to which the house was subject; which functionariesâtailors, lackeys, washerwomen, musicians, wig makers, and marzipan bakers were also part of the entourage, alongside noble dignitaries such as cupbearers, masters of the royal hunt, judges, starostas, palatines, and marshalsâwere temporarily residing there now; and who had resided there previously and by what right.
The physical topography I survey here is based largely on the royal quartermasterâs Lustration of 1636, with some additional material from that of 1639. A detailed examination of patterns of Jewish settlement draws, of necessity, on additional sources. The Lustrations were also my first source for the names of property owners. The royal quartermaster was uninterested in religious confession and, with only one exception, did not register confessional allegiance among Christian Vilnans, even as he carefully sorted out Jewish property owners and chief renters. I have overlaid confessional topographies upon the physical map on the basis of other sources.
Castle Street
The quartermaster began his survey with Castle Street, proceeding from Castle Gate to Market Square, first on his left, as he stood with his back to the Lower Castle, facing south (1.01â1.42), then returning to the top of the street to repeat the process on his right (2.01â2.32).10 This was in fact one of German visitor Kiechelâs âtwo most fashionable streets or ways, in which to the greater extent Germans and others live[d] as merchants.â From Castle Gate, the street bent slightly to the left and rose gently until it came to Fish Market, widening a bit as it reached its end at the opening into the top of Market Square. In this section of his survey, the quartermaster found seventy-five dwellings and four places of worshipâone large Roman Catholic church and three smaller, formerly Orthodox, now Uniate churches. Of those dwellings, fully seventy were identified as âbricked town housesâ (kamienice). The other five (1.01, 1.02, 1.29, 1.31, 1.41) were called âhousesâ (domy); only the first was specifically called âwoodenâ (dom drzewiany), but all five seem to have been modest structures, two of them (1.29 and 1.41) perhaps outbuildings of other town houses. Since the quartermaster took such pains to identify hybrid structuresâa âbricked town house with a wooden chamber,â a âhouse with a bricked chamberââI make the assumption that structures identified simply as houses, rather than as bricked town houses, whether or not they receive the qualifier âwooden,â were in 1636 and 1639 wholly or at least largely constructed of wood.
The larger neighborhood was one of impressive residences. Only a small number (five) of the seventy-five houses in this first area surveyed remained at least partially nonbricked. The survey gives the impression that, of the houses on Castle Street, only three were single-story houses, thirty-seven possessed at least two floors, ten had three stories, and one had four. My estimations of the number of stories in each house are based on the quartermasterâs description of rooms as lying âupstairsâ (na gĂłrze) or âdownstairsâ (na dole) from others described. This is why I say âat leastâ two stories, since it is entirely possible that he neglected on occasion to specify âupstairsâ and âdownstairs.â The only house in the Lustration clearly described as a four-story structure was located at Castle Street 2.17.
A large number of houses in the neighborhood (twenty-three) received no detailed physical description, usually because they were exempt from the obligation of housing guests and thus were of less immediate interest to the quartermaster. Many of them were exempt because they were not subject to the magistracy. The ones subject to the jurisdiction of the land and castle courts (the court of the nobles, Jews, and Tatars) were usually owned by nobles, and many of them would have been imposing structures, as opulent asâor even more impressive thanâthe town houses of their neighbors from the burgher elite. These included, for instance, the large town house at Castle Street 1.34, owned in 1636 by Krzysztof Chodkiewicz, an ardent Roman Catholic and a holder of a series of important offices in the Grand Duchy of Lithuaniaâcastellan of Troki (1633â1636), castellan of Wilno (1636â1642), and palatine of Wilno (1642â1652). It is still known as Chodkiewicz Palace, and the complex, then as now, was linked by a large internal courtyard with a gate at Sawicz/Bakszta Street (in the vicinity of 68.02). Farther down the same block, at Castle Street 1.38, we find another large noble house with an internal courtyard reaching again to a rear gate on Sawicz/Bakszta Street (between 69.05 and 69.06). It was in the possession of the Roman Catholic sons of MikoĆaj Krzysztof RadziwiĆĆ âthe Orphan,â himself the Roman Catholic son of the original patron of Lithuanian Calvinism, MikoĆaj RadziwiĆĆ âthe Blackâ (1515â1565): in 1636 the owner was the castellan of Wilno, Albrycht WĆadysĆaw (d. 1636), and in 1639 his brother, grand marshal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Aleksander Ludwik (d. 1654). Across the way at Castle Street 1.16 was the so-called Cardinalia, the urban palace once in the possession of MikoĆaj RadziwiĆĆ the Black but named for another of his Roman Catholic sons (all his children would revert to Roman Catholicism)âCardinal Jerzy RadziwiĆĆ, archbishop of Wilno, later bishop of Cracow, who is said to have staged in 1581 outside the palace windows an auto-da-fĂ© of the Protestant books his father had paid to have printed.11 Across St. John Street to the north of the Cardinalia was the old Roman Catholic Church of St. John (founded in 1387, first bricked in 1426), by now the Jesuit parish church of Wilno (where for much of the seventeenth century the cityâs Catholic baptismal records were kept). It was the seat of the famous Jesuit Academy (established as a collegium in 1570, academy in 1579), the future University of Wilno.12
By the early seventeenth century, we find no Ruthenian owners of houses in this section of the city; nonetheless, there were still echoes of their former strong presence. The large town house at Castle Street 1.17 was called the Constantine House (kamienica konstantynowska), because it had been built by one of the greatest of the Orthodox magnates, the hetman of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Prince Konstanty Ostrogski (d. 1530).13 The house next door at Castle Street 1.18 was still called the SoĆtan House (kamienica soĆtanowska) because at the beginning of the sixteenth century it had belonged to a landed Orthodox gentryman of the BrzeĆÄ Palatinate by the name of JarosĆaw Iwanowicz SoĆtan, who was a relative of the Orthodox Metropolitan of RuĆ, Josyf II SoĆtan (d. 1521).
And there were other signs of a past Ruthenian presence in the street. The RadziwiĆĆ and Chodkiewicz palaces on the eastern side of lower Castle Street shared the block with two formerly Orthodox, now Uniate, places of worship. The RadziwiĆĆ palace, toward the lower end of the block (1.38), stood next to the Church of St. Nicholas (practically the patron saint of the Lithuanian Orthodox), which was erected in 1514 with an endowment by that same hetman Konstanty Ostrogski. And the Chodkiewicz palace (1.34), near the top of the block, was located next to the old Church of St. Parasceve;14 it was erected in 1345, before the Christianization of the Grand Duchy, allegedly on the site of a temple to the pagan god Ragutis. At the very end of this section of the survey, on the western side of Castle Street at the intersection with Glass Street, stood the old Orthodox, by now Uniate, Church of the Resurrection. Later in the survey, we will discover that the church was indeed still functioning, and moreover that, around the corner on Glass Street (20.01), ânext to the church, in the gate to the courtyard, lives the [Greek-rite] priest [pop] of that very church, MikoĆaj RybiĆski by name, on Church land.â15
Other echoes of a Ruthenian presence in this part of town are the several âhospital housesâ and other buildings owned by what were now Uniate churches, all of them on the eastern, Ruthenian side of the street, which was the entryway to the âGreekâ side of the city. The houses at Castle Street 1.29 and 1.41 were âhospitalsââi.e., either the poorhouses and shelters themselves or rent-producing properties for the support of such institutionsâof the Uniate Holy Savior Church and the Uniate Holy Trinity Church, respectively. Those who lived at Castle Street 1.33 and 1.40 paid rents that supported the mission of the Uniate Holy Trinity Church. It is likely that in all these instances we are dealing with old bequests of property from Ruthenian families. If the bequest predated the 1596 Union of Brest, the gift had originally been made to an Orthodox institution. This was certainly the case, for example, at Castle Street 1.40, which was originally owned by the Orthodox magnate Sapieha family. Bohdan and Apolonia Sapieha had bequeathed it to the Orthodox in 1558.16
In 1636 this remained one of the wealthiest streets in town, with clear echoes of a former Orthodox magnate presence and some palaces of newly converted Roman Catholic notables. The survey began, however, at the other end of the social and economic spectrum. The first houses that the quartermaster enteredâon both sides at the very top of Castle Street, just below Castle Gateâhad very little to do with Orthodox and Catholic magnate families or with Kiechelâs German merchant elites. These were all houses under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Chapter (1.01â1.07, 1.09, 2.01â2.04, 2.06), and it was to the chapter court that their inhabitants would go for all matters of civil law. The first structures just inside the gate were of the more modest sort. The very first house, as we have seen, was nonbricked and consisted of one chamber, one alcove, and a vestibule; it was occupied by an otherwise anonymous Vilnan of no specified trade (and in 1639 by a cap maker); in spite of the obviously modest possibilities of the layout, it was temporary home to a guest: a royal tailor. The next house at Castle Street 1.02, likewise wooden, was home to a tailor in 1636: ...