Sources on the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility (the end of the 18th - the first half of the 19th century)

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to conduct a review and analysis of documents related to the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility at the end of the 18th – the first half of the 19th century; to do the research on their source science potential, preservation state. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of historicism, scientific research, verification, as well as the use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special historical (prosopographic, historical typological, historical systemic) methods. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that a comprehensive analysis on the sources of history and genealogy of the Galician nobility of the Austrian era has been carried out. It has been sufficiently clarified which archinmical collections and gatherings have informative and original documentary material about the nobility of Galicia. There have been revealed numerous aspects of the potential use of these documents in scientific studies. The Conclusions. Documents on the history and genealogy of the Galician nobility of the end of the 18th – the first half of the 19th century consist of several complexes. The first complex includes documents, which were created in the process of ennobling the nobility. These are the legitimations, the Nobility Certificates that are in the form of copies, recorded in the so-called nobility metrics. These are the documents of the Department of States, consisting of several thousand cases, grouped by individual families and individuals, which included preparatory documentation that preceded the issuance of identification cards and the Nobility Certificates. The second complex comprises the documents of Lviv Noble Court, represented by almost 50,000 cases. These are the documents of a judicial and property nature, which revealed the material aspects of life of the nobility and cover a significant part of it. Another set of documents – the Krajeva (Regional) Tabula Acts, which reflected the history of land circulation in Galicia, generally of the Dominican Nobility, but partly also of free nobility. One more documentary complex was formed by the metrical books of the Greek-Catholic and the Roman-Catholic churches, which allowed us to reconstruct genealogy of the nobility and certain aspects of its social evolution on the example of individual families and individuals.