There are very few convents in Poland whose registers were kept with such accuracy as to note the names of every nun’s parents: only 13 convents among more than a hundred. Even then, if the nuns belonged to families that have left little or no trace in books of heraldry or genealogy, there is hardly any chance of establishing the precise degree of consanguinity (or lack of any) between two nuns bearing the same family name. In order, then, to try it, a convent must be chosen whose nuns belonged most of them to rich gentry and whose registers are complete. Ideal for this purpose seems to be the convent of Franciscan nuns of the Third Order, founded in Cracow in 1646. Between this date and 1805 (which is more or less the end of the period) there lived in that convent 100 nuns. Of these, 15 were of burgess origin; 85 had family names known in heraldry; of these again 39 were bom of parents mentioned in heraldry books, and so there is a chance of establishing their family ties very accurately.
The ties on the sword side are most easily established. The 100 nuns had between them only 71 family names; of these, 51 occur only once and 20 are repeated; which means that 49 nuns in the 100 had either own sisters or cousins, aunts and nieces in the same community. In three cases the name belongs to as many as four nuns; in three cases to three; in fourteen cases to two. The ties on the distaff side are often conjectural; but they abound and there are only 30 nuns in the 100 who do not seem to be (either certainly or probably) related to any one of the rest. Many of the families are inter-related between themselves in many ways; if we had more data, very probably many more ties would be found. Given the fact that such ties were at that time much more valued and much better remembered than they are today, the community seems almost a family circle. The number of these ties, however, diminishes with time: they enclose 9/10 of the community before 1700, but only a half about 1800.