Chełmer Land
The Chełmer Land (Polish Ziemia chełmska , Latin palatinatus chelmensis ) was an administrative unit of the Polish Ruthenian Voivodeship from 1383 to 1793. The main town was Chełm .
The Chełmer Land was located on the territory of the former Rotburgenland . About 1240 Chełm was founded by Daniel Romanowitsch of Galicia and became the seat of an Orthodox diocese (the Eparchy of Cholm ) and for a few decades the capital of the principality of Halych-Volodymyr . Around 1340, the Polish king Casimir III. the great one the area, which shortly thereafter was disputed with Lithuania. In 1375 the Roman Catholic diocese of Chełm was founded. The country was finally annexed to the Kingdom of Poland by King Ludwig in 1377 . At first it became an integral part of the Principality of Bel , but the principality was bestowed to Siemowit IV in 1387, while Chełm remained with the Polish Crown. Probably only in the early 16th century it was administratively annexed to the Ruthenian Voivodeship, but remained specific or autonomous, e.g. B. the local Sejm often made decisions without regard to Lemberg . In the centuries after it was founded, parts of the Bełz Voivodeship were relocated to the Cholm region. The border became complicated, especially in the south where it was separated from the rest of the voivodeship. In the 16th century a large private latifundium of the Zamosc family entourage was established . The area of the country at the end was estimated at 9939 km², of which the Powiat Chełmski around 7945 km² and Krasnostawski around 1994 km².
The majority of the inhabitants were ethnically Ruthenian or Ukrainian, especially in the east, the Poles lived mainly in the west, the Wallachians were Ruthenized or Polonized. The Ruthenian families were Polonized in the 16th and mostly in the 17th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jews dominated many cities and shtetls , where there were not many Armenians either . After the Union of Brest , the local Orthodox churches became Greek Catholics. During the Reformation , Protestantism, especially Calvinism, spread among the Roman Catholic population and the Polish families. In 1676 there were 23 cities and 427 villages and over 100,000 inhabitants, mostly farmers. The Szlachta accounted for 3-4%.
The southern part of the Chełmer Land with the entire Bełz Voivodeship came to the Habsburgs in 1772 as part of the First Partition of Poland , from 1783 mainly in the area of the Zamosc District . In 1793 the reduced land was raised to voivodeship, but was soon divided between Russia and the Habsburgs.
literature
- A. Jabłonowski, Polska XVI wieku pod plus geograficzno-historycznym, Volume VII, Part II: Ziemie ruskie. Ruś Czerwona, Warszawa 1903.
- Zygmunt Gloger, Geografia historyczna ziem dawnej Polski , Kraków 1900, pp. 220–223.
- W. Ćwik, J. Reder, Rozwój administracyjno-terytorialny ziemi chełmskiej, [in:] Ziemia chełmska. Materiały z sesji naukowej historyków odbytej w Chełmie 21 VI 1959 r., Ed. J. Willaume, Lublin 1961.
- HM Łaszkiewicz, Dziedzictwo czy towar? Szlachecki trade ziemią w powiecie chełmskim w II połowie XVII wieku, Lublin 1998.
- J. Ternes, Sejmik chełmski za Wazów (1587–1668), Lublin 2004.
- A. Gil, Prawosławna eparchia chełmska do 1596 roku, Lublin-Chełm 1999.
- A. Gil, Chełmska diecezja unicka 1596–1810. Dzieje i organizacja, Lublin 2005.
- J. Lewandowski, Na pograniczu. Polityka władz państwowych wobec unitów Podlasia i Chełmszczyzny 1772–1875, Lublin 1996.
- A. Wrzeszcz, Gubernia Chełmska. Zarys ustrojowy, Lublin 1997.