Kolodziejczyk Dariusz. The Crimean Khanate and Poland-Lithuania (ENG)
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254 part two—chapter one
copied into the Inscription Books.
89
e fate of the Legation Books
was no less adventurous that that of the original documents kept in
the Crown Archives. Taken to Sweden in 1655 and restored to Poland
aer the Treaty of Oliva (1660), in the years 1795–1923 they were kept
in Russia along with the Crown Archives.
90
At dierent times, some
books were separated from the main body. For instance, the Legation
Book which contains the translation of the khan’s instrument of 1607
is today held in the Warsaw University Library.
91
Frequent travels of the Jagiellonian rulers to Lithuania did not inter-
rupt the activity of the Crown Chancery. It oen happened that the
king was accompanied in Lithuania by a Crown chancellor or vice-
chancellor (Pol. podkanclerzy), so also in Vilnius he could issue a
document on behalf of Poland that would be recorded in the Crown
Register.
92
In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an analogous role to the Crown
Register was played by the Lithuanian Register (Lat. Metrica Magni
Ducatus Lithuaniae). Its Latin title developed in analogy to the title of
its Polish counterpart and—like in the case of the Crown Register—
its origins date back to the rst half of the 15th century. Lithuanian
historians have many reasons to be allergic to the notion of the Polish
mission civilisatrice, represented by some of their Polish colleagues,
especially in the past.
93
Nevertheless, mutual borrowings in the chan-
cery practice in Cracow and Vilnius were inevitable, given the move-
ment of people and the shared experience of common life under one
dynasty. Although the Lithuanian chancery had its own ancient roots
and used predominantly Ruthenian and not Latin, many developments
in Cracow and Vilnius were parallel. Egidijus Banionis has convinc-
89
For instance, the instruments of the pacication of 1667 (cf. Documents 66–69)
are recorded in the Inscription Book no. 206, whose section covering fols. 618a–752b
is entirely devoted to foreign correspondence.
90
e Inscription Books returned to Warsaw (then in the Prussian hands) already
in 1799.
91
Cf. Document 43; on the Legation Books, cf. Irena Sułkowska-Kurasiowa
and Janina Wejchertowa, “Księgi poselskie (Libri Legationum) Metryki Koronnej,”
Archeion 48 (1968): 61–73.
92
On the organization of the Polish chancery, especially in the 15th century,
see Irena Sułkowska-Kurasiowa, Polska kancelaria królewska w latach 1447–1506
(Wrocław-Warsaw-Cracow, 1967); Waldemar Chorążyczewski, Przemiany organiza-
cyjne polskiej kancelarii królewskiej u progu czasów nowożytnych (Toruń, 2007); Księga
Metryki Koronnej podkanclerzego Andrzeja Oporowskiego z lat 1479–1483, ze spuścizny
Antoniego Prochaski. Edited by G. Rutkowska (Warsaw, 2005).
93
For a view representative for this school, see Witold Kamieniecki, Społeczeństwo
litewskie w XV wieku (Warsaw, 1947).
the language and preservation of documents 255
ingly demonstrated that in Lithuania—like in Poland—the Legation
Books developed into a separate category only in the 16th century,
although already in the 15th century, matters related to foreign aairs
had been typically recorded in separate, homogenous fascicles, which
were then integrated into larger books of heterogeneous contents.
94
Few of the earliest volumes of the Lithuanian Register are preserved in
the original.
95
Most of the extant volumes are copies made in the years
1594–1607 on the order of Lew Sapieha (Lev Sapeha), the Lithuanian
grand chancellor, because already in his times the originals were in
poor condition. Aer the completion of the copies, the originals were
either consciously destroyed by the Lithuanian authorities or perished
in the great re of the Vilnius Lower Castle, caused by the Russian
invasion of 1655.
96
Around 1735, the Lithuanian Register was transferred from Vilnius
to Warsaw and integrated with the Crown Register.
97
In 1777, it was
resolved to transcribe the oldest Cyrillic volumes of the Lithuanian
Register into Latin script, because the knowledge of Cyrillic was in
constant decrease. e task was supervised by Adam Naruszewicz, a
trusted royal secretary, Catholic bishop and former Jesuit, also known
as a prominent historian and a leading gure of the Polish Enligthen-
ment. In result, the contents of the earliest sixty-six books were copied
into twenty-nine new Latin script books. Following the demise of the
Commonwealth, in 1795 all the books of the Lithuanian and Crown
Registers were brought to St. Petersburg, but in 1799 the Crown Reg-
ister (except for the Legation Books) was handed over to the Prussian
94
Banionis, “K voprosu o genezise posol’skix knig (1480–1486),” pp. 64–84.
95
For such a rare example: a book covering the years 1511–1516 and composed
around 1516, preserved in the original, see Krzysztof Pietkiewicz, “Księga 9 wpisów
(zapisej) Metryki Litewskiej, układ i zawartość, oraz jej kontynuacja do roku 1518
z Archiwum Radziwiłłowskiego,” in: Lietuvos Metrika. 1991–1996 metų tyrinėjimai
(Vilnius, 1998): 11–35; the book is edited along with a supplement, covering the years
1516–1518, in Lietuvos Metrika. Knyga Nr. 9 (1511–1518). Užrašymų knyga 9. Edited
by K. Pietkiewicz (Vilnius, 2002).
96
Krzysztof Pietkiewicz initially shared the traditional view that the original books
had perished during the Russian invasion of 1655; cf. idem, “Nowa edycja Metryki
Litewskiej,” Lituano-Slavica Posnaniensia. Studia Historica 7 (1997): 133–153, esp.
p. 134; yet, more recently the same author stated that the original books had been
destroyed aer the completion of the copies in order to evade future disputes that
could result from the existence of two parallel versions; unfortunately he did not sup-
port this thesis with any reference; cf. his introduction to Lietuvos Metrika. Knyga Nr.
9 (1511–1518). Užrašymų knyga 9, p. 11.
97
Cf. Pietkiewicz, “Nowa edycja Metryki Litewskiej,” p. 135; earlier authors have
dated this transfer to 1740s.
256 part two—chapter one
authorities and returned to Warsaw (then in the Prussian hands).
Along with the Crown Register, also twenty-nine Latin-script books
of the Lithuanian Register returned to Warsaw and have remained
there until the present day.
Most of the volumes of the Lithuanian Register, brought to St.
Petersburg in 1795, were transferred in 1887 to the Moscow Archive
of the Ministry of Justice. A number of volumes, classied as Legation
Books, was transferred to Moscow already in 1828 to be kept in the
Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Aairs along with the former
Polish Crown Archives and the Crown Legation Books. In 1923, dur-
ing the negotiations following the Polish-Soviet war and the recently
signed Treaty of Riga, Moscow refused to restore the Lithuanian Reg-
ister to Warsaw, although it conceded to restore the Crown Archives
and the Crown Register. e refusal based on the argument that the
Lithuanian Register belonged to the Lithuanian and Belarusian rather
than Polish cultural heritage. On the other hand, independent Lithu-
ania, resurrected aer WW1 and primarily entitled to its archival heri-
tage, was then in sharp conict with Poland over the city of Vilnius,
the ancient Lithuanian capital but at that time inhabited mainly by
the Poles and Jews. Already involved in military conict with War-
saw, the government in Kaunas did not risk deteriorating its relations
with Moscow by pushing the touchy issue of the historical legacy too
far. Although the restoration of cultural assets was discussed between
Kaunas and Moscow in the 1920s, the problem remained unsolved
until 1940, when Lithuania was annexed to the Soviet Union. Mean-
while, in result of subsequent reorganizations in Moscow in the years
1925, 1940, and 1952, the volumes of the Lithuanian Register, kept
formerly in the Moscow Archive of the Ministry of Justice, were rear-
ranged into the section (fond) no. 389 (Litovskaja Metrika) of the
Central State Archives of Early Acts (CGADA), although all this time
they have remained under the same roof. e volumes, formerly held
in the Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Aairs, were trans-
ferred to the same building already in 1925, but only in 1954 they
were reintegrated into the main corpus of the Register (therefore they
are labeled today with high numbers: 587 to 601).
98
Following the col-
98
For a brief history of the Lithuanian Register, see Irena Sułkowska-Kurasiowa,
“Metryka Litewska—charakterystyka i dzieje,” Archeion 65 (1977): 91–118; the intro-
duction of Egidijus Banionis in Lietuvos Metrika (1427–1506). Knyga Nr. 5. Užrašymų
knyga 5, pp. 5–10; Pietkiewicz, “Nowa edycja Metryki Litewskiej,” pp. 133–135; on
the language and preservation of documents 257
lapse of the Soviet Union, in 1992 the CGADA was renamed into the
RGADA (Russian State Archives of Early Acts = Rossijskij Gosudarst-
vennyj Arxiv Drevnix Aktov), but the arrangement of its holdings has
remained unchanged. Like the rst one in 1918, the second resurrec-
tion of independent Lithuania in 1990 did not result in transferring
the Lithuanian Register from Moscow to Vilnius, but since the Soviet
times, the microlms of the Register books held in Moscow have
been available in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives (Lietuvos
Valstybės Istorijos Archyvas) in Vilnius.
Ten documents, published in the present collection, are preserved
in copies in the Crown Register (six in the Legation Books and four
in the Inscription Books). Twice as many, namely twenty-four, are
preserved in the Lithuanian Register. From among the nine volumes,
in which these documents are copied, four can be classied as Lega-
tion Books. e most valuable is book no. 7 that contains 1298 num-
bered pages lled with the foreign correspondence from the period
between the accession of Sigismund (1506) and the 1530s.
99
Fourteen
instruments, originating from the years 1506–1527, are recorded in
this book, including the Ruthenian translation of the khan’s instru-
ment from 1520, which is also preserved in the Khwarezmian Turkic
original. Also book no. 524, where an instrument from 1541 is cop-
ied, is entirely lled with foreign correspondence. Curiously, neither
of the above two books was classied as a Legation Book when the
volumes, brought to St. Petersburg in 1795, were divided among the
Russian ministries of Justice and Foreign Aairs, and in result they
have remained with the main corpus of the Register.
100
From among
the Legation Books of the Lithuanian Register, see especially Kennedy Grimsted, with
the collaboration of Sułkowska-Kurasiowa, e “Lithuanian Metrica” in Moscow and
Warsaw, pp. 61–70.
99
RGADA, f. 389, no. 7 (for its 18th-century Latin transcription, see AGAD,
Metryka Litewska, no. 193); a list of its contents is published in Opisanie dokumen-
tov i bumag, xranjaščixsja v Moskovskom Arxive Ministerstva Justicii. Kniga 21: Knigi
Litovskoj Metriki (Moscow, 1915), pp. 85–146. e Inventory of the Lithuanian Reg-
ister by Stanisław Ptaszycki, compiled in St. Petersburg in 1887 and republished by
Kennedy Grimsted, is misleading as it repeats the title from the front page, according
to which the volume covers only the years 1506–1513. Perhaps due to the volume’s
immense size it has remained unpublished until the present day, unlike the other
volumes from the same period. Its history and contents certainly deserve a further
study; perhaps not by accident its chronological scope coincides with the so-called
Acta Tomiciana (on the latter collection, see below).
100
On the other hand, not all the books, transferred to the Ministry of Foreign
Aairs, were Legation Books.
258 part two—chapter one
the Legation Books, then transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Aairs
and reintegrated into the main corpus in 1954, the books nos. 591 and
595 contain the foreign correspondence from the years 1545–1572 and
1506–1507, respectively, including a few instruments of peace pub-
lished in the present volume.
101
e remaining instruments, recorded
in the Lithuanian Register and published in the present volume, are
dispersed in books containing domestic matters as well.
In spite of the admirable eort, put during the last two decades,
especially by Lithuanian and Belarusian scholars, into the publication
of successive books of the Lithuanian Register, still much remains to
be learned in regard to their internal composition and the interrelation
between the separate volumes. Unfortunately, any judgment is severely
hindered by the fact that most of the extant copies origin from the late
16th century and do not necessarily reect the internal arrangement
of the lost originals. It is interesting that three instruments, published
in the present volume and originating from the years 1506–1507, have
been recorded three times in three dierent books of the Lithuanian
Register: book no. 8, classied as an Inscription Book and covering the
years 1506–1514 (although containing a few older documents as well),
book no. 595, classied as a Legation Book and covering the years
1506–1507, and nally book no. 7, also classied as a Legation Book,
but covering a longer period between 1506 and the 1530s. Textual dif-
ferences between the three versions are mostly negligible, but it seems
that copy B., recorded in book no. 8, is slightly better than the other
two. One could tentatively suggest that the texts of the three instru-
ments were initially recorded in the current Inscription Book among
other entries of mostly domestic character. en, they were copied
into a separate Legation Book, containing the current correspondence
with the Tatars and apparently composed in or shortly aer 1507.
Finally, in the 1530s a new Legation Book was composed, summariz-
ing the relations with the Tatars since the accession of Sigismund I.
ere, the three instruments were entered again on the basis of the
earlier copies.
101
Both books were already published in the 19th century by Mixail Obolen’skij,
the director of the Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Aairs, who also published
the yarlıq of Tokhtamısh from 1393; see Kniga posol’skaja Metriki Velikago Knjažestva
Litovskago, soderžaščaja v sebe diplomatičeskija snošenija Litvy v gosudarstvovanie
korolja Sigizmunda-Avgusta (s 1545 po 1572 god). Edited by M. Obolen’skij and
I. Danilovič (Moscow, 1843), and Sbornik knjazja Obolenskago (Moscow, 1838).
the language and preservation of documents 259
To sum up, the copies recorded in the Crown and especially the
Lithuanian Register books are invaluable for studying the correspon-
dence of Vilnius and Cracow with the Crimea. ese copies allow us
to reconstruct the form and contents of the original instruments, espe-
cially the oldest ones, the majority of which is lost today. From the
legal and practical point of view, in Vilnius and Cracow these copies
were regarded as equal to originals, because they recorded the wording
of royal instruments, whose originals had been sent to the Crimea, or
rendered intelligible the khan’s instruments, whose Arabic-script con-
tents were made accessible to their recipients only aer they had been
translated and recorded in the chancery books in Ruthenian, Latin,
or Polish. Nevertheless, one should remember that these copies were
sometimes recorded in a shortened, or even careless form. At times,
they are inferior not only to the originals, but even to other copies that
did not have an ocial character.
102
Other copies preserved in various collections
In 1535, aer the death of Piotr Tomicki, the Polish vice-chancellor, his
former secretary, Stanisław Górski, began to gather all the documents
dating back to the accession of Sigismund I. e collection initially
consisted of twenty-nine folders of documents in the original or cop-
ies, but was later supplemented and rearranged several times. By the
late 16th century, the voluminous collection, later named Acta Tomici-
ana, had already existed in several versions and several copies. Valued
as a handy chancery manual, it assumed a semi-ocial character and
found its way to the libraries of Polish and Lithuanian statesmen, who
ordered its purchase or copying. e text of the Latin instrument of
Sigismund I from 1513, published in the present volume, can be found
in two manuscript collections of Acta Tomiciana that once belonged
to Andrzej Opaliński (1540–1593), the grand Crown marshal, and
Stanisław Karnkowski (1520–1603), the primate of Poland.
103
102
Cf. Document 59, n. 1, and Document 37, passim.
103
On the Acta Tomiciana and their various collections, one of them destroyed in
Warsaw in September 1939, see Ryszard Marciniak, “Ze studiów nad zbiorem Acta
Tomiciana. Dzieje zwodu sapieżyńsko-radziwiłłowskiego w okresie Oświecenia,” in:
Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej, no. 16 (1980): 5–16; idem, Acta Tomiciana w kulturze
politycznej Polski okresu odrodzenia (Warsaw-Poznań, 1983); for the instrument of
1513, see Document 11.
260 part two—chapter one
In 1852, Tytus Działyński, a Polish aristocrat, initiated and sponsored
the publication of successive volumes of Acta Tomiciana, preserved in
his library in Kórnik as well as other collections. Unfortunately, the
editors of the earliest volumes did not compare the various copies in
order to establish the original and most reliable text of the published
documents.
104
Besides, they included a number of documents that
had not belonged to the original corpus of Acta Tomiciana, without
annotating their provenience. is is how four Tatar instruments from
the years 1507–1520, preserved in contemporary Polish translations,
found their way to the printed version of Acta Tomiciana, even though
they had never belonged to its original corpus. eir common source
of provenience is a sixteenth-century manuscript, held in the Kórnik
Library under the current number 222. It contains a separate fascicle,
written by single hand in Polish and numbering 38 pages, entitled:
“e treaties or agreements concluded by the Polish kings with the
Tatar khans of the Crimean Horde [lit. ‘the Horde of Perekop’]” (Pacta
albo dokończenia królów polskich z czarmi tatarskimi Ordy Prekopskiej
stanowione). e fascicle contains nine instruments of peace, issued by
the Crimean khans between the years ca. 1462 and 1560, and a letter of
Mehmed Giray that is not an instrument of peace.
105
We do not know
who commissioned the execution of the fascicle, whether the entered
texts were based on the originals, copies, or earlier translations, and
whether the task served an ocial or merely an antiquarian purpose.
Four documents in Polish, found in the printed version of Acta Tomi-
ciana, are also preserved in Ruthenian versions, recorded in the Lithu-
anian Register.
106
Sometimes the Ruthenian and Polish versions dier
substantially,
107
but they apparently descend from the same, now lost,
original or from more complete earlier copies. e remaining ve
instruments, found in the manuscript, are today extant only in Pol-
ish versions, although these versions are apparently translations from
104
Cf. Helena Chłopocka, “Edytorstwo naukowe Tytusa Działyńskiego,” in:
Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej, no. 12 (1976): 65–91.
105
On this manuscript, cf. Katalog rękopisów staropolskich Biblioteki Kórnickiej
XVI–XVIII w., vol. 2. Edited by R. Marciniak, M. Muszyński, J. Wiesiołowski (Wrocław
etc., 1985), pp. 90–92. On Mehmed Giray’s letter from 1516, see n. 153 in Part I.
106
ese are Documents 8, 12, 15, and 19; in the present volume they are published
on the basis of their Ruthenian, more reliable versions, although the variants found in
their Polish versions are annotated as well.
107
is is especially true for the two instruments from 1513–1514; cf. Document
12, n. 1, and Document 15, n. 2.
the language and preservation of documents 261
Ruthenian.
108
e most valuable among them is the copy of the oldest
extant Crimean instrument of peace, issued by Hadji Giray.
Another valuable collection of Crimean correspondence, today pre-
served in the Ossolineum Library in Wrocław, was completed in 1642
by Samuel Otwinowski, the Crown translator mentioned earlier. e
manuscript, commissioned by the Royal Chancery, consisted of the
Polish translations of numerous Ottoman and Crimean documents,
held in the Crown Archives and considered to be still useful in politi-
cal disputes, especially regarding the amount of gis to be sent to the
khan. e extant original manuscript is provided with Otwinowski’s
dedication to Piotr Gembicki, the Crown chancellor of the time.
109
Seven instruments of peace, published in the present volume, are also
recorded in Polish translations in that manuscript.
110
e last large collection that has been searched for the copies of
correspondence with the Crimea are the so-called Naruszewicz Fold-
ers (Teki Naruszewicza), the majority of which is held today in the
Czartoryski Library in Cracow. In 1781, the last Polish king, Stanislaus
Augustus (Stanisław Poniatowski), commissioned his trusted collabo-
rator, Adam Naruszewicz,
111
with the task of collecting materials that
were to serve the latter in compiling a voluminous History of the Polish
Nation. In result of a meticulous teamwork, sponsored by the king,
directed by Naruszewicz, and conducted during the following decade
in numerous archives and libraries at home and abroad, over 38,000
documents were copied and entered into over 200 folders.
112
108
ese are Documents 1, 4, 28, 31, and 33.
109
On the manuscript and the circumstances of its execution, cf. n. 440 in Part I.
110
ese are Documents 16, 20, 37, 50, 52, 53, and 54. In the manuscript, Otwin-
owski did not record all his translations of Oriental documents. For instance, his
translations of the Crimean instruments of 1624 and 1635, preserved in separate cop-
ies in the Crown Archives, are not entered in the Ossolineum Library manuscript.
111
On Naruszewicz’s supervision of the Latin-script transcription of the Lithuanian
Register, cf. above.
112
On the methods applied in gathering the materials and the collections searched
by the team, see Stanisław Grzybowski, Teki Naruszewicza „Acta regum et populi
Poloni” (Wrocław, 1960); see also the critical review of this book by Jerzy Michalski in
Studia Źródłoznawcze 9 (1964): 180–183. Aer the third partition of Poland-Lithuania,
the folders were taken care by Tadeusz Czacki, a prominent Polish historian, and
aer his death were acquired by the Czartoryski family. During the Polish uprising of
1830–1831, the collection was transported to Paris and in 1876 found its present loca-
tion in the newly founded Czartoryski Library in Cracow. A number of volumes, con-
scated by the Russian authorities in 1831, were taken to St. Petersburg and restored
to Poland in 1930. Nine of these volumes survived WW2 and are held today in the
state archives in Warsaw (AGAD).
262 part two—chapter one
As long as original documents or their contemporary copies are
preserved, their late eighteenth-century copies from the Naruszewicz
Folders are less important. Yet, some of the latter were based on older
manuscripts that are no longer extant today. For instance, three instru-
ments from 1637, published in the present volume, can only be found
today in the Naruszewicz Folders. ey are provided with identical
notes Ex ms. Bibl. Załusciae No. 425 which refer to the fact that they
had been copied aer an older manuscript from the Załuski Library,
which perished during WW2 (see below).
113
Some other copies should
also draw our attention. For instance, seven Crimean instruments (ca.
1462, ca. 1473, 1513, October 1514, 1539, 1542, and 1560) are pre-
served in Polish translations extant in just two collections: the six-
teenth-century manuscript of the Kórnik Library (no. 222), which was
described above, and the Naruszewicz Folders. Two of these instru-
ments (1513 and October 1514) are also preserved in more reliable
Ruthenian versions, so their Polish translations are of a lower value,
but the remaining ve instruments, including the oldest, eenth-
century yarlıqs of Hadji and Mengli Girays, are preserved uniquely
in the aforementioned two collections. Unfortunately, in this case the
copies recorded in the Naruszewicz Folders are not provided with any
notes referring to their provenance. In fact, it is highly probable that
they were taken from the Kórnik manuscript and hence present no
original scholarly value: out of the ten Crimean documents, recorded in
the Kórnik manuscript (nine instruments of peace and one “ordinary”
letter of Mehmed I Giray from 1516), eight can also be found in the
Naruszewicz Folders. Some of the copies in the two collections contain
identical errors, especially regarding their datation. Moreover, some
fragments written correctly in the Kórnik manuscript are misspelled or
omitted in the Naruszewicz Folders as their eighteenth-century com-
pilers were apparently no longer familiar with such terms as koń potny
(“a horse growing sweaty”), kupcy ordobazarcy (“merchants from the
khan’s military camp”), Frasy (“Franks”), or drzwi (lit. “door,” here
specically referring to the khan’s “Porte”). Both the similarities and
the dierences mentioned above suggest that the Kórnik manuscript
served as the basis for the copies entered in the Naruszewicz Folders.
113
On the most typical notes referring to the provenance of texts entered into the
Naruszewicz Folders (for instance: ex orig. Arch. Regni for originals from the Crown
Archives), see Grzybowski, Teki Naruszewicza, pp. 27–32.
the language and preservation of documents 263
Still, we cannot entirely dismiss that at least some of these copies
were based on other sources. It is worth noting that Mengli Giray’s
yarlıq is correctly dated in the Naruszewicz Folder (878 A.H.), while
in the Kórnik manuscript it has an erroneous date 978 A.H. Besides,
according to one testimony, the yarlıq of Hadji Giray—in the original
or a copy—was seen in the Załuski Library in Warsaw in 1772.
114
As
the compilers of the Naruszewicz Folders had access to the Załuski
Library, it would be hard to explain why they did not benet from the
collection that they had easily at hand and instead used the copy held
today in Kórnik.
e Załuski Library, founded by two brothers and bishops: Józef
Andrzej Załuski and Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, was opened in 1747
as the rst public library in Poland. Taken to St. Petersburg in 1795,
it became the core of the Imperial Public Library (today the Rus-
sian National Library), founded the same year by Catherine II. By
the force of the Treaty of Riga (1921), it returned to Warsaw, sent in
installments in the years 1923–1934 and incorporated into the Polish
National Library. Unfortunately, aer the Warsaw Uprising in 1944
the National Library was deliberately set on re by the Nazis and
most of its collection perished. Very few manuscripts that had once
belonged to the Załuski Library have survived. By lucky chance, one
nds among them the lengthy diary of Ławryn Piaseczyński, relating
his three embassies to the Tatars in the years 1601–1603. e manu-
script also contains a number of documents in Polish copies, including
two instruments of Ghazi II Giray from the years 1599 and 1601, and
the instrument of Sigismund III from 1601.
115
Single instruments of peace, exchanged between the khans and the
kings, are also preserved in copies dispersed in various manuscripts,
held in several Polish libraries. eir whereabouts can be found in the
Bibliography and in the descriptions of the instruments concerned.
Apart from the large manuscript collections, preserved in the coun-
tries once belonging to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, namely
Poland, Lithuania (Vilnius), Belarus (Minsk), and Ukraine (L’viv and
114
Cf. n. 34 in Part I.
115
Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, ms. III. 3086 “Księga poselstwa Ławryna
Piaseczyńskiego;” on this manuscript, cf. n. 345 in Part I, and Biblioteka Narodowa.
Katalog Rękopisów, series 2, vol. 2: Sygn. 3006–3300. Rękopisy z Biblioteki Załuskich
i innych zbiorów polskich, zwrócone z Leningradu w latach 1923–1934. Edited by
B. Kupść and K. Muszyńska (Warsaw, 1980), pp. 123–129.