174 SZLACHTA
conversion of the Grand Duchy in 1387, had amassed, by the eighteenth century,
some 600 villages. A number of churchmen also possessed secular dignities. In
1443, Bishop Zbigniew Olesnicki of Cracow, bought the Duchy of Siewierz in
Silesia for 6,000 silver groats. He and his successors enjoyed the title, jurisdic-
tion, and income of the Duchy until the fall of the Republic in 1795. From 1462,
the Archbishop of Gniezno acquired the title of Duke of Lowicz, and trans-
ferred his residence to the ducal seat at Skierniewice. In the eighteenth century,
the Bishop of Plock paraded as the Duke of Pultusk. At the other end of the
scale, there were landless bishops. After 1667 when the province of Smolensk
was finally ceded to Muscovy, the Roman Bishop of Smolensk lost all his lands,
and lived in Warsaw supported by a government pension of 20,000 zl. per
annum.
Among the secular magnates, most owed their elevation to the royal service.
Others rose by colonizing the Ruthenian lands of the east. Very typically, how-
ever, the greatest magnatial fortunes were indebted to a combination of factors
- to auspicious marriages, to purchases, exchanges, conquest, to good manage-
ment, royal favour, obsessive ambition, long life, or to dominant male chromo-
somes. Only a few, like the Radziwill in Lithuania or the Potocki and
Tarnowski in Poland, were preserved over several centuries. Most of them
declined as rapidly as they had flowered. The Kurozwecki, Szydlowiecki, and
Melsztynski failed for want of male heirs. The Lubomirski, whose estates sur-
vived division between three sons in 1642, and confiscation in 1664, had to start
afresh. Many of those who flourished at the end of the eighteenth century - the
Czartoryski, Poniatowski, Jablonowski, and the two Branicki lines, were rela-
tive parvenus.
The great magnatial estates were organized as latifundia. Scattered properties
in each area would be linked to a klucz or 'key property' from which the rest
were administered. Each 'key' was linked in turn to headquarters in the palace
of the magnatial owner. In this way, the latifundium could be run as a single eco-
nomic unit, where the particular contributions of the parts could be made to
benefit the whole. In the case of the latifundium of the Lubomirski, for instance,
as recorded in the inventory of 1739, the 1,071 properties were spread over nine
southern palatinates of the Republic, from Wola Justowska near Cracow to
Tetiev near Kiev. They included cities, towns, villages, and plantations. At
Wisnicz near Cracow, the chief seat of the Lubomirski, there were 29 villages; at
Jaroslaw in Red Ruthenia, there were 18 villages; at Kanczuga, 13. In addition
to these family properties, the Lubomirskis by virtue of state appointments and
royal favour held a large number of Crown estates on lease. In the days of
Alexander Michat Lubomirski, who died in 1677, these had comprised 8 towns
and 89 villages. They also held a score of possessions over the southern frontier
in Hungary.^17
The laws of succession caused immense complications. In Poland, the custom
was to divide family property among sons and unmarried daughters alike.
The division was undertaken piecemeal as the children came of age or married,