Abstract

The vital records kept by three parish churches in the town of Kazimierz have been preserved in the archive of the Corpus Christi Monastery of the Cannons Regu-lar of the Lateran, and they are a vital source of information about the history of Ka­zimierz and Cracow. These valuable materials provide historians with a wealth of data for analysing demographic changes in this area between the late 16^th century and the late 18^th century, the development of the local economy, social and political transformations, and the moral, spiritual and intellectual culture of the time. Vital records are also a valuable source of information for research in topography, topony-my, onomastics, historical geography, historical biography and other areas. Unlike any other source of historical data, vital records paint a comprehensive picture of hu-man existence in geographical and cultural space, between birth and death.