Metadata: The City Magistrat of Vilnius
Collection
- Country:
- Lithuania
- Holding institution:
- Lithuanian State Historical Archives
- Holding institution (official language):
- Lietuvos valstybės istorijos archyvas
- Postal address:
- Gerosios Vilties g. 10, 03134 Vilnius
- Phone number:
- (8 5) 213 74 82
- Web address:
- http://www.archyvai.lt/lt/lvia_naujienos.html
- Email:
- istorijos.archyvas@lvia.lt
- Reference number:
- f. 23
- Title:
- The City Magistrat of Vilnius
- Title (official language):
- Vilniaus miesto magistratas
- Creator/accumulator:
- City Magistrat of Vilnius
- Date(s):
- 1511/1808
- Language:
- Polish
- Russian
- Latin
- German
- Extent:
- 232 files
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- good
- Scope and content:
-
The City Magistrat was the chief executive body in the administrative system of the city of Vilnius. It not only supervised a wide array of municipal activities, but also held judicial power, mainly on civil matters. The archive of the Magistrat therefore includes materials which record a broad range of administrative and social issues.
A substantial part of the Magistrat's papers includes references to the Jewish population of Vilnius. These references can be broadly divided into two main categories: administrative documents which refer to Jews and judicial documents which record legal proceedings in which Jews were involved, either as plaintiffs or as defendants.
The administrative documents mostly refer to the Jews' rights and obligations (such as a 1757 arrangement between the Jews and the head of the Magistrat concerning the transportation of Jewish dead over a bridge in Vilnius).
Some documents refer to agreements and regulations concerning Jews' relations with other local communities (including a 1750 agreement between the Kahal of Vilnius and the Karaites). Several other documents mention real estate owned by Jews.
The judicial materials reflect complaints both by and against Jewish individuals and cases involving groups of Jewish residents. The files include arbitrations of cases of violence (such as a complaint of a Jewish tavern-keeper whose wife was beaten by a non-Jewish client), theft and fraud. Several files refer to arbitration between the Jews of Vilnius and the local non-Jewish guilds (such as a complaint submitted by Jewish residents of Vilnius in 1666 against the members of the salters’ guild, who allegedly attacked Jewish shops and houses).
Some material is in Old East Slavic.
- Archival history:
-
After 1852 the files of the Magistrat kept at the Civil Court of Vilnius were transferred to the Central Archive of Ancient Acts in Vilnius. In the 1920s the holdings of this archive were transferred to the Vilnius State Archive, which became a part of the Central State Archive of the Lithuanian SSR in 1940. In 1957, together with other pre-revolutionary documentation, these materials were included in the Central State Historical Archive of the Lithuanian SSR, predecessor of the current State Historical Archive.
A part of the Magistrat's papers that mostly refer to administrative matters comprises fond no. 458 at LVIA.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
In 1387 the city of Vilnius was granted Magdeburg rights. This privilege provided the legal basis for the creation of the city self-government. A 1536 statute defined the status and functions of the Magistrat as the executive body of the city council. The Magistrat was responsible for the functioning of the city administration, for communal services and for the supervision of trade. The Magistrat also held judicial power. Unlike the Magdeburg court, which had jurisdiction over the local citizens and addressed mostly criminal cases, the Magistrat court mainly addressed civil matters relating to local citizens, guilds and artisans and various communal issues.
After the Russian takeover of Vilnius, the City Magistrat retained its functions. However, in 1808 its administrative functions were transferred to the newly established City Duma (council). The Magistrat was abolished in 1866.
- Subject terms:
- Crime
- Guilds
- Kahal
- Karaite Judaism
- Legal matters
- Privileges
- Real estate
- System of arrangement:
- The collection consists of one inventory, which is arranged in chronological order.
- Access, restrictions:
- The collection is open for reference at LVIA.
- Finding aids:
- Basic information in Lithuanian and an inventory in Russian are available at the Lithuanian State Historical Archives (see the Lithuanian Archives' website). Lists of Jewish related materials originating from the collection, including extracts from the relevant documents, were published by the Vilnius Commission for the Study of Ancient Documents (vols. 28 and 29, Vilnius 1901 and 1902). A part of the Magistrat's documents are also included in a volume published by the commission in 1879 (vol. 10).
- Links to finding aids:
- https://eais-pub.archyvai.lt/eais/faces/pages/forms/search/F3001.jspx?_afPfm=-7dec7f9e
- Yerusha Network member:
- Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People
- Author of the description:
- Alex Valdman, Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, 2014