Trójca below Arłamów: Chodor “of Holy Trinity” in 1437

The entry, as printed

Chodor de Swyatatroycza condempnavit ipsum alias zdawa, pro quo ipsum citavit, videlicet pro eo, quod ipsum violenter in domo ipsius percussisti et duo vulnera cruentata sibi intulisti et ipsum captivasti et in domum tuam duxisti et ipsum serasti tribus seris, in quo ipsum dampnificasti veluti quinque marcis. Et dominus ipsius Waszco stat pro pena sua penes ipsum pro pena.

In English

Chodor of Holy Trinity won against him by default the case for which he had summoned him, namely that you beat him by force in his own house and dealt him two bleeding wounds, took him captive, led him to your house and locked him behind three locks, by which you caused him damage of five marks. And his lord, Waszko, stands with him as to the penalty.

A village that is no longer there

Where the Jamninka flows into the Wiar, below Arłamów, stood the large village of Trójca. After the war its people were deported, and the wooden Church of the Holy Trinity of 1763 was destroyed in 1972, when the area was turned into a government hunting lodge. Polish Wikipedia and the Geographical Dictionary know the church and 19th-century owners. They give no older date.

The Przemyśl court books know the village more than three hundred years earlier, under its full name: Święta Trójca, Holy Trinity.

Chodor behind three locks, 1437

On 28 October 1437, the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, the Przemyśl land court heard the case of Chodor “of Holy Trinity”. The defendant did not appear, so Chodor won by default. But the clerk kept the wording of the claim, addressed straight to the wrongdoer: you beat him by force in his own house, dealt him two bleeding wounds, took him captive, led him to your house and locked him “behind three locks”.

Chodor put the damage at five marks. His lord, Waszko, stood with him as to the penalty. The entry does not name the attacker.

Who was lord Waszko

An entry of 12 August 1443 answers that. Four brothers, heirs of Rybotycze, Iwan, Jerzy, Waszko and Aleksander, were then dividing their father’s estate. Among other things they agreed that Iwan’s people could graze cattle “in all the forests of Waszko that he holds by Rybotycze and by the village of Holy Trinity”. So in 1443 Holy Trinity was a village of Waszko of Rybotycze.

The lord Waszko of 1437 is most likely the same Waszko Rybotycki. It is not written anywhere in so many words: what links them is the name, the time and the place.

Trójca in the Rybotycze estate

Later the name grows shorter: “Troycza”. In 1469 Rafał of Rybotycze gave the guardians of some orphans the right to enter his estates: “Rybotycze, Sierakośce, Trójca, Marunina Wola, Grąziowa Wola”. At the division of 1494 Trójca went to Judge Jan together with the little town of Rybotycze. In the tax register of 1515 Trójca has 5½ łans, a mill and a priest.

So in the 15th century the village had its people, its lord, its forests and, by the end of the century, a hereditary headman. It probably took its name from a Church of the Holy Trinity. That a church stood here already in the 15th century is only our guess; the records do not mention one directly.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XIII (Lwów, 1888), p. 48, no. 609 (28 October 1437); p. 144, no. 2022 (12 August 1443).
• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XVIII (Lwów, 1903), pp. 16–17, no. 102 (11 July 1469); p. 351, no. 2406 (30 September 1494).
• A. Jabłonowski, Źródła dziejowe, vol. XVIII, pt. 1 (Warsaw, 1902): tax register of the land of Przemyśl, 1515.

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