LIVING IN A MULTIETHNIC COMMUNITY: ASPECTS OF URBAN LIFE IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN LVIV
Olha Kozubska (Lviv/Budapest)
Lviv (Lemberg) was founded as a stronghold against the Mongols in the mid-thirteenth century. Its history is a clear-cut example of how a princely stronghold involved in the system of long-distance trade developed into a fully-fledged town during the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The location of Lviv on the trade route between the Baltic and the Black Seas resulted in the presence of merchants' colonies and determined the multi-ethnic character of the town, which became the main trading centre of Red Rus'. Its heyday came with obtaining full staple rights confirmed by King Louis I of Hungary in 1380.
The presence of foreign settlers can be traced from the late thirteenth century. A tombstone dated to 1298 serves as a terminus ante quem for the presence of Armenians, and probably Jews came at approximately the same time. A charter from 1352 mentioning the first advocatus (Voht) Bertold Steher shows that a community under German law consisting of Germans and possibly of Bohemians, Poles, and Hungarians already existed in Lviv at the beginning of the fourteenth century. These groups, representing ethnic minorities in relation to the dominant Ruthenian population, were located within the "old Princely" centre of the town.
Around the mid-fourteenth century, the town centre shifted from the "old town" to the "new" ("German") town. The emergence of the latter is usually connected to the earliest preserved Magdeburg law privilege (1356) issued by King Cazimir the Great of Poland. The town's multi-ethnic character was reflected in urban topography through the presence of "ethnic streets" in the new town: Jewish (first mentioned in 1382), Tartar (1382, 1405), Armenian (1441), Ruthenian (1470). These streets indicated the ethnic and legal differentiation of the urban community.
From the mid-fourteenth century, after Red Rus' was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland, the adoption of the German (Magdeburg) law became part of a broad colonisation programme of Polish kings. At that time this legal system lost its "ethnic" character and became the basis for the life of urban communities of re-formed Ruthenian towns. The German law that developed within Latin civilisation and was originally connected to Catholic Christianity now spread in the territory dominated by Orthodoxy. Moreover, it was an intrinsic feature of Magdeburg law that it favoured newcomers in contrast to autochthons. Therefore, it is not a coincidence that theautochthonous population, the Ruthenians, appeared to be a "minority" within the town walls of Lviv. The multi-ethnic urban community of the town was alien to the ethnically and religiously homogenous countryside.
However, the first preserved Lviv privilege for Magdeburg law (1356) did not yet have a particularly "segregation character". It was granted toti civitati predicte et omnibus habitantibus et commorantibus in ea, while aliis gentibus habitantibus in eadem civitate, videlicet Ormenis, Iudeis, Saracenis, Ruthenis were allowed to use their own laws (although the Magdeburg law had supremacy).
The history of the co-existence of different ethnic groups in late medieval towns of Red Rus' demonstrates very different practices - from total exclusion of "the others" (i.e. non-Catholics) to full equality for all groups. The level of accessibility to rights and benefits of the German law for non-Catholics depended on the number of Catholics in a town and their position. Every town had its own experience in dealing with the problem of segregation and in its efforts to harmonise the life of a heterogeneous urban community. In general, the direction of changes was towards overcoming segregation and towards the elimination of the exclusive character of the town law. Nevertheless, ethnos and religion were the most important criteria of social stratification of the urban population in Ruthenian towns, and Lviv is a prominent example of this.
The sources for this paper are related to the exclusion of the non-Catholic population (Ruthenians) from certain fields of urban life and economy. The sources mostly state the prohibition on obtaining real estates (houses) in the most prestigious part of the town - the Market Square. With staple rights and privileges of economic character, Lviv secured the status of commercial emporium. The exclusive commercial rights of Lviv citizens made it necessary for foreign merchants to seek local citizenship. This may be an explanation of the demand for property in the town. In addition, the local population - Ruthenians from the surrounding countryside - were coming to Lviv, thus increasing the number of this group in the town.