Disputes and rights in multiethnic Lviv

Jews, Armenians and Ruthenians in royal letters: detained goods, closed shops, infringed privileges and an attack on a school. The sources show how the city’s communities invoked royal authority against the magistracy and how the king responded.

A city seen through complaints

Early modern Lviv was a city of several communities with distinct legal standings. Full municipal rights belonged to Catholics, chiefly Poles and Polonised Germans; Armenians and Ruthenians formed “nations” with their own courts and privileges, but limited access to office and trade. Jews had two communities, one within the city and one in the suburbs, with separate communal government and a continually negotiated scope of trading rights. This arrangement, described most fully by Myron Kapral, generated recurrent disputes with the magistracy. Royal intervention was usually the route to their resolution.

Monarchs’ letters to Lviv therefore show the city through particular conflicts. They usually begin with a complaint submitted to the king and end with an order to an authority. They form part of the dispute rather than an impartial account. This does not mean that complaints should be disbelieved, but issuing an order must be distinguished from verifying an allegation. The terms “Jews”, “Armenians”, “Ruthenian religion” and “Greek rite” occur in legal and confessional contexts and are not equivalents of present-day declarations of nationality.

A privilege still had to be enforced

On 17 November 1567 Sigismund Augustus reminded the magistracy (132/1/22) that he had already sent two orders concerning Jews who had arrived from Turkey. They were to retain the freedoms and exemptions granted through the sultan’s intercession. The letter establishes no new liberties; it demands implementation of existing ones. The king requires the causes of complaint to be removed or a written explanation sent back through the bearer. A local dispute thus acquires a diplomatic dimension, although the document names neither the sultan nor the individual concessions. Majer Bałaban discussed the presence of Sephardic merchants from the Ottoman state in Lviv in the second half of the sixteenth century.

A different mechanism appears on 29 July 1600 (132/1/29). Sigismund III supports extending a trading agreement between Lviv’s Jews and the magistracy that is about to expire, because he has been informed that it harms neither the city’s rights nor its revenues. This is an argument for agreement, not the result of an independent assessment. Jewish trade in Lviv operated within successive pacts with the city, known in the literature from the agreement of 1581 onward; the letter itself gives neither their terms nor a new expiry date.

Binas iam mandatorum nostrorum literas ad fidelitates vestras dedimus

ani prawom Wier[ności] Wa[szych] szkodzić, ani w pożytkach uymy żadney czynić ta zgoda nie może

Seized goods and closed shops

In January 1637 Ladislaus IV responds to a complaint about goods brought to Lviv’s fair (132/1/61). The magistracy was said to have detained them before the king had decided the dispute. The order is practical: return the goods and do not obstruct trade pending a further decision. We learn neither the kinds or value of the goods nor the number of people affected. What we do see is a distinction between protecting everyday activity and deciding legal rights.

The same pattern returns in June 1699 (132/1/114). Augustus II receives a complaint that the magistracy is closing shops rented by Jewish merchants, with the merchandise inside, even though the matter is already before the royal court. The king forbids taking justice into one’s own hands before judgment. Reading this letter as a permanent trading privilege would erase its most important detail: the protection applies for the duration of the proceedings. The dispute over Jews’ right to trade within the city, as opposed to the suburbs, continued throughout the seventeenth century and is central to Bałaban’s study of the Jewish quarter.

przed dekretem et lite pendente sprawiedliwości sobie nie czynili

Violence and responsibility for public order

The letter of 30 October 1641 (132/1/65) conveys a complaint by suburban Jews: students and other “unruly” people had attacked houses and caused losses of merchandise, household effects and cash. Ladislaus IV reminds the magistracy of its duty to maintain security. He names no school or perpetrators and gives no amount for the damage. These details should therefore not be supplied from a general picture of confessional tensions.

On 1 June 1688 John III (132/1/108) writes of attackers acting “under the pretext” of being students. The phrase does not establish whether they actually were pupils. The king invokes an earlier decree by Michał Korybut and accuses the municipal authority of inadequate protection of the Jewish community. His order to arrest and try the perpetrators identifies who is responsible for responding. Student attacks on the Jewish quarter, described in the literature as Schülergelauf, recurred in Lviv and Kraków; Bałaban assembled a sequence dating from the sixteenth century. A separate letter of 1626 (132/1/50), prohibiting the export and import of coin, names Jews, Scots and others dealing in money. It records the language of regulation and the groups singled out by authority, not the collective guilt of those named.

Armenians: shared rights, distinct interests

In July 1642 Ladislaus IV orders that Lviv’s Armenians be maintained in their rights and customs (132/1/66), responding to a complaint of harm inflicted by the magistracy. He does not enumerate specific entitlements, and the day of the month was left blank. The letter cannot be treated as a new privilege. It does show how existing status was defended by invoking grants made by predecessors. Since the fourteenth century Lviv’s Armenians had possessed their own court and law, confirmed by successive kings. Kapral published a collection of these privileges, and Krzysztof Stopka described the community’s history.

Armenians do not appear solely as a united party opposed to the city. In the letter of 19 July 1605 (132/1/30), Armenians stand on both sides of a contractual dispute: Awedyk and Jan Bernatowicz on one side and Zachariasz Iwaszkowicz on the other. Sigismund III recommends appointing mediators so that prolonged litigation does not ruin the parties, provided that a settlement does not obstruct enforcement of earlier decrees.

abyście pomienionych Ormian przy prawach i zwyczajach ich cale zachowali

The Ruthenian school and the closed churchyard

On 27 April 1694 John III describes an attack by pupils of the parish school on the Ruthenian school attached to the Dormition Church (132/1/112), the school of the Stauropegion Brotherhood. According to the information received by the king, books were taken from children and their guardians were attacked. Closing the churchyard—the area surrounding the church—early was intended to prevent the incident from spreading. The document says nothing about casualties; “churchyard” here denotes the space around the church, not a burial place for victims.

The king connects protection of schooling and the rights of the Greek rite with public security and mentions a foreign envoy who witnessed the incident. The head of the parish school is to answer before the municipal court if he is a layman. The works of Isaievych on brotherhoods and Ćwikła on their education provide the institutional context.

libero exercitio literarum non impediendo

A known episode does not always mean a published letter

Majer Bałaban described many of these matters as early as 1906 and 1909, while Kapral collected the communities’ privileges. Recognising an event is not, however, the same as identifying a document. For the goods detained in 1637, Bałaban gives a different date for the order from the 17 January appearing in unit 61. For the attack of 1641 there is a matching subject and a reference to a municipal register, but publication of the precise letter in unit 65 has not been confirmed. Failure to find a counterpart does not by itself make a letter unpublished.

The greatest benefit comes from comparing an intervention with the magistracy’s reply, a court entry or an account recording the return of goods. Only then can implementation of the order be checked. The present comparison reveals ways of acting: complaint, mediation, defence of privilege and a demand for protection during litigation. It also shows that in their disputes with the magistracy, Jews, Armenians and Ruthenians resorted to the same instrument: royal authority.

Bibliography

Editions of privileges and studies concerning Lviv’s communities.