In this article, the rule of Bolko II the Small, Duke of Świdnica and Jawor in the Duchy of Siewierz in the years 1359–1368, is discussed. Based on source analysis, it can be concluded that Siewierz was purchased from the Duke of Cieszyn, Przemysław I Noszak. Duke Bolko II visited Siewierz at least once, and presumably created the office of the “starosta” of Siewierz.

Jan Długosz, the Krakow canon and chronicler of Polish events, is also the author of Liber beneficiorum – registers of emoluments regarding Krakow’s cathedral, collegiate churches, monasteries and parishes from the Krakow diocese, which he wrote from 1470 until his death in 1480. It is a source that is widely used by historians of medieval Poland. They generally use the printed version of Liber beneficiorum from the years 1863–1864, based not on the four-volume original from the 15th century, stored in the archives of the Krakow Cathedral Committee, but on the 17th century copies, also found in the same archives. As this publication contained some mistakes, which researchers drew attention to in the 19th century, a new publication of Liber beneficiorum became necessary. From 1966, a few researchers, mainly Stanisław Kuraś and Marek Daniel Kowalski, tried to establish the genesis, source and structure of writing of Liber beneficiorum as well as the dating of this work based on internal criteria: events, people etc. The author of this work tries, however, to establish the date of particular volumes of Liber beneficiorum, and even their parts, based on watermarks on the paper Liber beneficiorum was written on. The author illustrates these with images of the analysed watermarks, as well as tables in which parts of particular volumes appear together with the watermarks in them and dating comparisons with other sources. She also investigates the method of creating Liber beneficiorum, especially the parish parts, as well as the events of the register of emoluments after Długosz’s death.

The article presents the little-known activity of Johann Baptist Homann from Nuremberg, who is known above all as a cartographer and publisher. It presents a thesis that today he is almost unknown and forgotten in his home town, however, in his time he was a very active participant of the economic and, above all, intellectual life of the town. The great popularity of his maps and atlases meant that he became, to some extent, the creator of the world’s image, while his extensive contacts with scholars, artists and rich merchants led to his involvement in creating the environment of the Nuremberg elite.

Jan Tomasz Drachny (1770–1822) came from Cieszyn and was the son of Józef Drachny (dec. 1816), an architect and constructor. In 1797, he settled in Krakow and was accepted into the Krakow guild of builders and stonemasons. In the period of 1802– 1816, he was employed as a Building Inspector in the Municipal Building Office subject to the Krakow Town Council. In 1816, after becoming the Municipal Constructor of the Free 136 Kamila Follprecht Town of Krakow, he dealt with, among others, the purchase of specialised tools necessary for the work of the office, and prepared a list of abandoned buildings, in other words, those in very bad technical condition, in eleven municipal boroughs of Krakow. As a constructor and architect, he created a wide range of plans for building or extending Krakow’s townhouses, and as a clerk he supervised and authorised many of them. He created numerous plans and measurements connected with urban changes in the Krakow agglomeration.

In the history of Polish cartography, it is possible to indicate moments that, under external influences, usually created by the social-political situation, there was a significant increase in the number of map creators and publishers. This was not a long-lasting state, as the authors trying to influence particular events were not connected with cartography in the long term, and publishers extended their offers with maps exclusively for the needs of the moment. One such moment was the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The aim of the article is to characterize the maps issued at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century with the idea of shaping knowledge of the masses regarding former Polish lands, stored in the National Archives in Krakow. It presents the thesis that thematic maps, with content outside the official line of social thinking imposed by the partitioning powers, led to a better understanding by inhabitants of former Polish lands of the idea and process of shaping the Polish state. Attempting to confirm this thesis, reference is made to the fact that a map as a form of visual communication depicts the geographical range and spatial relations on one hand, while on the other it helps to maintain a feeling of national identity when presenting borders and regions, which a given society identifies with, is impossible or inconclusive. The article uses sources from the cartographic collection systematically gathered by the National Archives in Krakow.

The article by Adam Kamiński, an outstanding palaeographer and editor of old-Polish historical sources (1905–1981), discusses the system of palaeographic shorthand used by scribes of the Krakow land court in the oldest preserved register of the court in Poland from the years 1374–1385, stored in the National Archives in Krakow with the reference number 29/1/1. The author compares it with the shorthand used in western Europe based on handbooks of palaeography and shorthand dictionaries. The current text is testimony to Kamiński’s early palaeographic interests and studies, whose results were not published at the time, mainly due to the limited financial and technical resources of the state archives. This represents a valuable and interesting, as well as an unknown, contribution to research into land court offices in Poland.

The article briefly deals with the sanitary condition of Galicia after the occupation of the country by Austria, the ways of fighting against epidemics, and the contents of the Antoni Schneider collection, which contains cordon sanitaire maps of Galicia in the Zolkiew and Przemysl administrative areas, established due to the epidemics in 1801 and 1831 in Russia.

The article indicates potential research options concerning the areas of Krakow’s folwarks, especially in terms of early modern military activities. A few early modern plans, unknown or poorly-researched, have been analysed. The land of folwarks was used for centuries as a convenient place for stationing armies, starting from the 16th century.