„Heri et hodie”. Bishopric and consistory records of Chełm according to the delivery and acceptance protocol of 1743 and their current condition in the Archdiocesan Archive of Lublin

Jarosław M. Marczewski

Abstract

In 1743 Canon Józef Ludwik Balicki drew up an inventory of the documents transferred to the Archive of the Cathedral Chapter in Krasnystaw. Those materials came from the office of the bishops of Chełm and the Consistory of Chełm. The inventory has been published in the following article. Are the materials listed in the inventory in the folds of the Archdiocesan Archives of Lublin now? And to what extent have they been preserved? The findings, done on the basis of the comparative analysis, lead to several conclusions of a more general nature. A positive surprise is the fact that most of those materials have been preserved. Of the thirty-five items listed in Canon Balicki’s inventory only six are missing in today’s records of the archive. It enables the author to propose a theory of competent handling the entrusted materials, in spite of the rapid institutional changes and the adverse circumstances in history. There are only little chronological discrepancies in the books in relation to their description in the register. It is possible that these differences arise not so much from the material losses, but from a cursory inspection and consequently wrong description of the material once done by its author. Distinct differences exist, however, in the external appearance of the books, namely the binding of the volumes.