"Since all remain subject to chance". Poor relief in seventeenth-century Wilno
ENOn 23 August 1636, King Wladyslaw IV of Poland-Lithuania gave a privilege to the beggars of Wilno allowing them - apparently for the first time - to organize themselves into a Corporation following the model of the guilds and laying down rules for the inclusion and exclusion of members and a few guidelines for their social discipline. In fact, the document to which the king gave his signature originated from the Wilno Magistracy and perhaps also, in part, from the incorporated beggars themselves. It was a response to "the great disorder here in the city among the poor and the great disgust that arises from it." This charter, along with much of the city archive, was lost in the fires that accompanied the Muscovite invasion and occupation of the city (1655-1661), and we owe our knowledge of it to the great flurry of reenacting of documents such as deeds, wills, and guild charters in the years after 1662. Whoever had a copy of a pre-war act came forward with it in those days to have it once again entered as an official part of the municipal record. The Beggars' Corporation was no different, and on 12 July 1663, officers of that group appeared before the Magistracy presenting a copy of the privilege of 1636 and asking that it be recorded in the official record, since "the original had been lost through the difficulty of circumstances during the raging of hostilities." Similar documents were re-enacted on 6 August 1729, 14 November 1744, and 11 March 1745.
