Some Remarks on the Question of the Origin of Villages Owned by the Late Medieval Lviv

Abstract

The spatial and administrative dynamics of settlements with the status of a village is a fundamental component of rural history. In the ethnically Ukrainian part of the Kingdom of Poland (after the Union of Lublin — the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), villages were divided into four categories. The vast majority belonged to magnates, middle and petty nobility. Some were owned by the both Churches, namely monasteries, hospitals, and the higher clergy. Still another group was in the royal domain. Finally, a small number of villages in the vicinity of self-governing towns were subject to town councils. Early modern documents allow one to find out which villages pertained to that last category. The ones in question were subordinate to the municipality of Lviv. It ought to be noted that the dates of their first mention are known to scholars. The villages of Zubrya and Sykhiv belonged to the Lviv town council, and those of Malekhiv and Sknylivok — to the monasteries of St. Lazarus and St. Spirit, respectively. Therefore the municipal government had indirect jurisdiction over the last two villages as well. Historians still don’t know why some of the lands granted to Lviv acquired the status of a village. The author argues that the large estates on the town’s periphery began to be called ‘village’ gradually and without any established reason. During the Late Middle Ages, each of them was referred to in the municipal documents differently: an estate, a manor, a property. The documents were written in Latin and German (whether it was Early New High German or Early New Low German, or both, is beyond the subject of the article), consequently the designations show even more variety. Unification came in the second half of the 16th century when the municipal chancery adopted Middle Polish.