Pokasacyjne losy opactwa cystersów w Lądzie na podstawie źródeł archiwalnych zachowanych w zespołach akt: Centralne Władze Wyznaniowe Królestwa Polskiego i Komisja Województwa Kaliskiego z zasobu Archiwum Głównego Akt Dawnych w Warszawie

The end of the centuries-long history of the Cistercian Abbey in Ląd, founded around mid-12th century, was brought about by the partitions of Poland. On 30 June 1818 Pope Pius VII issued the bull Ex imposita Nobis, introducing a new diocesan division in the Congress Kingdom, thus adapting the administrative structure of the Church to that of the state and taking into account a proposal by the Government Commission for Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment to dissolve some monasteries with their endowments in order to improve the living conditions of the secular clergy. The Archbishop of Warsaw, Franciszek Skarbek-Malczewski signed the dissolution decree on 17 April 1819. The Church retained only small estates which served as endowments for parishes and monasteries; income from the Church property taken over by the Kingdom’s treasury was the basis of the so-called General Religious Fund from which salaries of the clergy were paid, for example. The victims of the 1819 dissolution included all monastic houses of the Cistercians. Documents for the study of the Ląd Cistercians from the pre-dissolution period and after the proclamation of the 1819 decree have been preserved in the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw in two fonds: Central Religious Authorities of the Kingdom of Poland (CRAKP) and the Commission of the Kalisz Province (CKP). The records in the CRAKP fonds comprise three units with documents from 1819 (no. 802), 1833–1858 (no. 801) and 1835 (no. 803). The file no. 802 contains the oldest documents relating to the dissolution of the Ląd Abbey and associated directly with Primate Malczewski’s decree, including a copy of the decree. The CKP fonds comprises five volumes of records dealing with the funds of the dissolved Cistercian Monastery and Abbey in Ląd from 1810–1850. The material in question can be divided into several problem groups: 1. documents associated with the introduction of the dissolution, e.g. protocols and reports of the commissioners sent to Ląd; 2. records relating to the condition of the church and monastery buildings; 3. records relating to monastics still associated with the Ląd monastery, living there or providing their pastoral services in nearby parishes; 4. cases involving the monastery’s debtors and concerning property-secured loans, payment of commissions in arrears or recovery of sums lent. In 1850 the Ląd monastery passed to the Capuchins, an event that opened a new era in its history. However, the documents kept in the Central Archives of Historical Records and relating to that period, which ended with another dissolution, in 1864, require a separate analysis.