Potwierdzenie transakcji finansowej z 15 III 1518 r.
Olsztyn, 15 III 1518
Original: Olsztyn, Archive of the Warmia Archdiocese, Dok. Kap. Z. 2/1.
When Copernicus was serving his Chapter as its administrator, one of his functions was to approve financial transactions of a certain kind. Four such transactions are known, all of them executed in the form of a sale (venditio). What is sold in these transactions, however, is not a material object, such as a house or a horse. Instead, what is sold is the rent (or part of the rent) of a farm cultivated by a tenant who pays an annual rent to the owner of the farm. In the four transactions approved by Copernicus as administrator, the owner sells the annual rent payable in future years (rent futures, so to speak) for an equal sum of money paid to him in full on the day of the transaction. At the same time be obligates himself (and his heirs or successors) to repay the purchase price in annual installments until the buyer is fully reimbursed. In document dated 15 III 1518 (three others were lost during World War II), for example, the seller receives 6 marks on 27 March 1518. In exchange, he promises to pay the buyer 1/2 mark a year until the rent is repurchased. If all goes well, the buyer's claim on the rent expires at the end of twelve years
Nicholas Copernicus Minor Works (Warsaw-Cracow, 1985).
