Wizytacja parafii Kowel z 1799 roku

Abstract

In the State Archives in Żytomierz there has been preserved until today only six charts of visitation to the Kowel parish in 1799, a parish that belonged to the Luck diocese in Volhyn. Despite that lack, the remains open a valuable material for the history of the Kowel parish. Owing to their important contents and dearth of the existent sources, the author decided to publish that material. Before that the author had written a paper on the Kowel parish entitled “XVIII-wieczne duchowieństwo na kartach metryk parafii Kowel” [The 18th-Century Clergy in the Pages of Certificates in the Parish of Kowel], published in the „Archives, Libraries and Church Museums” (2000, vol. 73, pp. 419-436). The preserved parts show the history of the parish founded in 1551, and its endowment, duties that parishioners had towards their parish, the condition of parochial buildings, the hospital and the school. It was Bishop Jan Chryzostom Kaczkowski, the Luck suffragan, who visited the parish on 28th September, 1799, commissioned by the Łuck-Żytomierz Bishop Kasper Kolumn Cieciszowski. One the basis of the material from the visitation it is difficult to point to a concrete person who had prepared the text of the visitation. It could have been Rev. Wincenty Dobrowolski, the then coadjutor-provost of Turzysk and Dean of Kowel. His name appears at the time of the visitation in the description of the dedication of the public chapel in Uchowieck (1797).