The Kraków Dominican millrace in the thirteenth century : between archaeology, written sources, and late Gothic historical iconography

The article presents a new interpretation of archaeological discoveries made in the Mały Rynek (Small Market Square) identified as the remains of the thirteenth-century Dominican millrace structure and the accompanying specific relics of alleged mills in the form of a frame building and an element of the overturned structure of a treadmill. The double line of ditches, confirmed archaeologically in the Mały Rynek under the wooden pavement structure dated dendrochronologically to after 1278, had their channels clearly oriented towards the monastery gate located next to the building of the School of the Virgin Mary. Most likely, the mention from 1284 about a Krakow inn located by the moat on Floriańska Street should be related to another, more northern section of this previously dug Dominican millstream bed, especially since it is known from written sources that Leszek Czarny’s (Leszek the Black's) fortification campaign, related to the expansion of the network of city moats around Krakow, was initiated only in August 1285. In the context of the mill-function interpretation of the frame structure discovered in Mały Rynek by the millrace ditch dated before 1278, a comparison was made with the details of the view of the Dominican monastery found in a late Gothic painting with the vision of Saint Jacek Odrowąż painted in the years 1494-1518 by the so-called Master of the Annunciation from Jodłownik for the Krakow Dominican monastery. This detail of the view is an ideological reference to the historical tradition of the local monastery about the functioning of such a mill at the millrace located outside the monastery compound during the life of Saint Jacek (presumably before the saint’s death in 1257) - incidentally, a tradition independent of other external sources, because it clearly diverges from the slightly older description given in Liber beneficiorum diocesis cracoviensis by Jan Długosz, who placed the historical Dominican mill within the monastery enclosure. The relics of a moat discovered on the grounds of the Dominican monastery under the early modern building of Saint Jacek's Gymnasium have also been associated with the thirteenthcentury Dominican millrace.