In his Annals, or Chronicles of the Famous Kingdom of Poland, Jan Długosz wrote for the year 1347: ‘Casimir, King of Poland, wanted to put an end to the condemnable and grave abuses, namely slanders and injustices, which had given the Kingdom of Poland under all of his predecessors, kings and princes […] severe oppression in administering justice and resolving disputes and all kinds of misunderstandings because, having carried out evidence proceedings, land courts did not rule according to written laws and statutes, but were guided by the personal feelings of judges and those presiding over the courts, who often succumbed to their passions, sympathies and to bribes. He therefore wished to introduce order throughout all of his kingdom.’ To this end, the king allegedly convened a council in Wiślica in 1347, at which he promulgated statutes systematising the customary law of the two main provinces of the united kingdom, namely Greater Poland and Lesser Poland. When composing his account, Długosz succumbed to a myth common in his time, namely that the statutes were the outcome of a single codification of the law. In fact, the statutes of Casimir the Great were in the making for a long time and were based on judgements passed by the king as supreme judge. These judgements were systematised by adding justifications, often derived from Roman or canon law, to the legislation (see, for example, paragraphs 71, 72, 148 and 77).
The Statute of Piotrków, containing the laws of Greater Poland, was composed between 1356 and 1362, and announced at a gathering in Piotrków. It was anterior to the statutes concerning Lesser Poland, promulgated at the gathering in Wiślica, in 1362 at the latest.
The statutes contain provisions concerning both the state system and judicial law (especially criminal law). They were not codifications in the modern sense, because they did not provide an exhaustive overview of any section of law, but they introduced, following canon law, the superiority of the established norm over the custom, which became an auxiliary norm.
Of the more interesting regulations relating to the social system, it is worth mentioning the punishment for murder (główszczyzna) and the Test of Nobility, which had to do, on the one hand, with the rising prominence of the knighthood (nobility) in public life and, on the other hand, with the lack of a specialised heraldic office controlling who belonged to the nobility. The Statute of Wiślica also confirmed the military service duty of knights, subject, however, to the privilege of being remunerated for serving abroad, which the knighthood had obtained as early as the thirteenth century.
Despite their incompleteness, the statutes of Casimir the Great played an important role in constructing a united kingdom and in amending existing legal norms. In the fifteenth century, the statutes of Piotrków and Wiślica were merged into one.
