Hnatkowice and Drohojów: “What I did, I did on my own side” (1437)

The entry, as printed

Nicolaus de Nathkouicze attemptavit terminum contra nobilem Iohannem de Drohoyow, quia fodivit fossatham per lutum super ipsius parte et quia falcastravit gramina super Nicolai pratum. Dictusque Iohannes: quod feci, feci in mea parte. Nosque dedimus illis ducere et docere graniciebus; ut debent docere in quatuor septimanis.

In English

Mikołaj of Natkowice appeared at a hearing against the nobleman Jan of Drohojów, because he had dug a ditch through the marsh on his side and mown the grass on Mikołaj’s meadow. And the said Jan [answered]: what I did, I did on my own side. And we gave them leave to lead and show the boundaries; they are to show them within four weeks.

Natkowice, that is Hnatkowice

In the 15th century Hnatkowice was written without the initial “H”: Nathcouicze, Natkowycze. That this is the same village was already known to the editor of the “Akta grodzkie i ziemskie”: in the index to volume VII he refers “Hnatkowicze, see Natkowicze”. And the noblemen of Natkowice quarrel with exactly the people one would expect: their nearest neighbours.

The village first appears on 26 March 1436, when “lord Jan of Natkowice” is named among the witnesses to a loan before the Przemyśl court. This is the earliest mention of Hnatkowice we know of.

A ditch through the marsh, 8 July 1437

In the summer of 1437 a real boundary war broke out between Natkowice and Drohojów. On 8 July Mikołaj of Natkowice summoned the nobleman Jan of Drohojów: Jan had “dug a ditch through the marsh on his side” and “mown the grass on Mikołaj’s meadow”.

The clerk wrote down Jan’s answer almost word for word: “What I did, I did on my own side.” The court did not decide who was right. It gave the parties four weeks to “lead and show the boundaries”.

Eighty birches and five oaks, 1438

The boundary was evidently never agreed. On 24 February 1438 it was Jan of Drohojów who sued, against Budek of Natkowice: “You and your peasants rode into my grove, bounded by mounds, and cut down eighty birches and five oaks of mine”, and the court officer had inspected it.

Budek’s representative put the case off on the plea of illness. The same entry also mentions two oxen and three axes. Who wronged whom more, the book does not tell. It kept only the quarrel itself, and the word “Brzoz”, “birches”, written in Polish among the Latin.

What follows from this

Polish Wikipedia knows no date for Hnatkowice and begins Drohojów’s history with the birth of Stanisław Drohojowski in 1529. The Przemyśl land-court book gives Hnatkowice in 1436 and Drohojów in 1437, and with the dates, people: Mikołaj defending his meadow, and Jan who “did it on his own side”.

We have not checked whether local monographs know these entries. They have not reached Wikipedia.

Sources

• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. XIII (Lwów, 1888), p. 41, no. 477 (8 July 1437); p. 59, no. 790 (24 February 1438); p. 6, no. 34 (26 March 1436).
• Akta grodzkie i ziemskie, vol. VII (Lwów, 1878), index: “Hnatkowicze v. Natkowicze”.

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