Power in Lvov in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century: a Group Portrait

Abstract

A process of town foundation and the formation of the municipal self-government makes the first and most important step in the shaping of the city organism, this “living tissue” made up of people exercising power and those subjected to them, the rulers and the ruled. The knowledge of this process, occasionally very long, makes it possible to verify numerous questions about the formation of the power elite in the city.

Within the system of municipal self-government — the City Council and the Bench – a group of people stood out as those who occupied the dominant positions and exercised the authority entrusted to these entities. They participated in court sittings, legalized property transactions, registered last wills etc. This group could be termed as the “power elite” — the term which is not fully clarified in the literature on the subject. In Lvov the power elite included city councilors, hereditary wójts (community heads), and jurors, who in the second half of the fourteenth century exercised power in the city. First references to the wójt and councilors date to 1350 and they prove the existence of fully crystallized municipal self-government in the city under German law prior to the renewed foundation of the city by King Casimir the Great in 1356. The whole group comprised of 43 persons, with a majority of German origin; but also with some people from Silesia, Toruń, Cracow, and in later years from the Crown Ruthenia. As regards their profession, usually they were merchants, sometimes very rich, trading with townsmen in Cracow, Wrocław, Toruń. Occasionally, there are some references to craftsmen designated as bench jurors. Thus, the social advancement meant to be appointed municipal juror, and then councilor, although the mobility of this group was quite significant. The post of hereditary wójt, which was taken over by the municipal authorities in 1378, lost its prestige. Gradually, before the early fifteenth century, a group of people emerged which entered the rank of city’s patriciate and could be defined as its power elite.