Dr. Iurii Zazuliak will present his research proposal on the topic: "Landscape, Law and Memory: Forging the Local Tradition and the Perambulations of Estates' Boundaries in the Kingdom of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries" on 9 June 2016 (Thursday) at 16:30h at CAS Conference Hall.

Summary:

I would like to present my new project which deals with the perambulations of land estates and disputes over the boundaries of the village communities and noble estates in the Kingdom of Poland during the 15th and 16th centuries. The aim is to investigate the perambulations of estate boundaries as a complex process of conceiving of and transforming the physical space through the procedures and norms of law, and to highlight the role they played in forging and reshaping the local tradition.
As fundamental element of the lordship rights, the establishment of the boundaries of noble and royal estates emerged in the close interconnection with the uses of writing and local oral knowledge. I start with the premise of the special role that the interplay of literacy and oral communication had in the process of constituting and reshaping the local traditions in the context of the border perambulations. I suggest that the local tradition, embedded in the specific features and histories of the landscape, landownership and borders, emerged as a result of the complex process of the encounter and interaction between the writing and oral culture.
From the late 15th century onwards, the system of proof and a set of procedures employed in the border disputes and perambulations became depended on the uses of writing and written instruments. Moreover, "the game of tradition", in which the border disputes and its perambulations were implicated, was inextricably interwoven with and affected by the relations of power, which were manifested in the rights of lordship claimed by local noblemen and kings over the peasant-subjects, land property and production. The objective of the study is therefore to demonstrate how various forms of the local knowledge which were transmitted mostly through oral communication were not only exploited in the course of border disputes and perambulations, but also were adjusted, reshaped and stabilized due to the complex influence of the institutions and practices of lordship and royal governance based on the new kind of pragmatic and administrative literacy, which became widespread in the Kingdom of Poland during the later Middle Ages.
In spatial terms the project will focus on Galicia, known also as Red Ruthenia or Halych Rus'. This historical region constitutes the territory of the present-day south-eastern Poland and western Ukraine. Since the forties of the fourteen century Galicia was under the control of the kings of the Piast, Anjou and Jagiellonian dynasties. Chronologically the project concentrates on the period from 1450s to 1550s. The 15th and 16th centuries also can be considered as an important period for the history of the boundary law in the Kingdom of Poland. During the second half of the 15th century the record keeping of the perambulations of land estates became a systematic practice. This is attested well by the survival of the first register of the sub-chamberlain court for the years 1472-1570 (the Przemyśl land). From the beginning of the 16th century one also can observe a considerable increase in volume of the survived documents registering the demarcation of the royal and private noble estates. The first half of the 16th century was a time of the actions of the royal government directed at the delimitation of the royal land property in different parts of the Kingdom including Galicia. All those changes in the practice of boundaries disputes as well as in its documentation coincide chronologically with the evident growth in the Crown's legislation aimed to regulate the demarcation of boundaries of land property. One can even assume that the new legal provisions enacted in the Crown law at the end of the 15th and during the first half of the 16 centuries were caused by the need to consolidate a new experience provided by the local practice of dispute settlements in the matter of estate boundaries.

Outline of the work plan
1. Introduction
• Research objective
• Historiography and Methodological Framework
• Geographical Focus
• Chronology
• Sources
2. The boundary law and the perambulation of the boundaries in the legislation of the Kingdom of Poland, 15th-16th centuries.
3. Delimitations of land property and legal foundations of the rights of land ownership in late medieval Galicia.
4. Who carried out the delimitation of boundaries in Red Ruthenia, 15th-16th centuries?
5. Legal procedure, oath-taking and ritual in the perambulations of property boundaries.
6. Transmission of local knowledge and the oral testimonies of village elders in the perambulation disputes.
7. Elders, local knowledge and the administrative practices of the early modern state.
8. Local traditions, village community and the concept of custom.
9. Uses of the written documents in the perambulation of boundaries.
10. Re oculis subiecta: written documents and the visual observation in the perambulation of boundaries.
11. Perambulations of boundaries and the making of physical landscape.