Metadata: Lwów Castle Court, City of Lwów, Lwów Land, Ruthenian Voivodeship
Collection
- Country:
- Ukraine
- Holding institution:
- Central State Historical Archive of Ukraine, Lviv
- Holding institution (official language):
- Центральний державний історичний архів України, м. Львів
- Postal address:
- pl. Soborna, 3-а, 79008, L’viv
- Phone number:
- + 38 (032) 235-40-63
- Web address:
- archives.gov.ua/Eng/Archives/ca04.php
- Email:
- tsdial@arch.gov.ua
- Reference number:
- F. 9
- Title:
- Lwów Castle Court, City of Lwów, Lwów Land, Ruthenian Voivodeship
- Title (official language):
- Львівський гродський суд, м. Львів, Львівської землі, Руського воєводства
- Creator/accumulator:
- Lwów Castle Court
- Date(s):
- 1440/1786
- Language:
- Latin
- Polish
- Ukrainian
- Extent:
- 1,698 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Scope and content:
-
Fonds of castle courts contain the following types of material: minutes (primary records made in the presence of appellants); inductae (execution copies); fascicles, i.e., bundles of documents, whether entered or not into execution versions of logs; registers (titles of writs); and indexes (by subject, geography, and other indicators for registry books and fascicles). (Fascicles typically constitute a fonds’s second and third inventory; indexes, which constitute the fourth inventory, are strictly auxiliary, used to look up folders and match information.) There are also reference materials: registry books (logs of writs) and court logs, the former organised by particular subject, that is, in accordance with the type of documents submitted. In particular, there are books containing public and private writs; inscriptiones (real estate contracts); relationes (reports, notifications, and statements pertaining to cases); oblata (copies of official documents); manifestationes (sworn statements, complaints); and logs of oaths and minutes. Court logs contain minutes and records of criminal cases and investigations, and decree logs (i.e., logs recording court rulings).
Materials in this fonds that pertain to Jewish history may be provisionally divided into the following thematic groups:
1) Files and logs of minutes reflecting the property status of Jews and their business and professional activities, including the following documents: court orders, writs, contracts, minutes of court proceedings, etc., that pertain to the acquisition of land; the fulfilment of debt obligations to representatives of the gentry (szlachta), Catholic monasteries, and representatives of the Armenian and other communities; receipts for debt payments and for the provision and return of collateral; orders for the arrest of Jews accused of defaulting on loans and tax payments; materials pertaining to Jewish leaseholders, their leasing of the position of tax-collector and of liquor licenses; and receipts issued by Jewish leaseholders; materials pertaining to lawsuits between Jewish leaseholders and representatives of the gentry and other classes (15th-18th century).
Many of these court documents and minutes reflect the hearing of cases of mutual claims, among Jews or between Jews and non-Jews, regarding various monetary and business matters, as well as the transfer of real estate rights to or by Jews, including court documents on inheritance issues, the administration of inherited property, etc. Files of the Lwów Castle Court, for instance, contain a record of a transaction by which the Jew Lazar-zolotnik (i.e., Lazar the goldsmith) transferred a house and plot of land to Margaritha, “the widow of a Ruthenian priest” (1577); registered with the same court was a transaction by which Florian Orchowski, a stolnik of Chełm and podstarosta of Lwów, transferred a building he had inherited in Lwów to a Jewish widow named Ita (1661); etc.
Castle court materials also reflect the commercial activities of Jewish merchants, including confirmation of agreements between Jews and representatives of various other ethnic groups and faiths – Catholics, Armenians, etc.; documents pertaining to Jewish merchants from Krakow who traded in goods from Greece (1664); a decree issued by Polish King Sigismund II Augustus (Zygmunt II August) on an investigation regarding goods being exported to Turkey, in contravention of a royal ban, by the Jewish statesman and financier David De Isaac Cohen Nassy (Don Józef Nassi) (1570); testimony in a case involving Cossacks accused of attacking a ship containing goods belonging to Jakób Folenkines, a Jewish merchant from Istanbul, and abducting his son (1603); and indictments of Jews accused of counterfeiting, smuggling, etc.
Castle court materials often contain materials pertaining to major Jewish communities and prominent figures thereof, including lawsuits, debt obligations, and documentation on the construction of a synagogue by the merchant, leaseholder, and public figure of the Lwów Jewish community Izak Nachmanowicz and his descendants (1565, 1573-74, 1587-89, 1595-96) (op. 1); materials on a trial in Lwów in which the defendants were the brothers Chaim ben Isaac Ha-Levi Reizes and Joshua Reizes (1728); and information on Emmanuel de Jona (Simcha Menachem Miyona), court physician of Polish King Jan III Sobieski (1701) (op. 1).
Records of the Lwów Castle Court also include royal decrees and court orders on the issue of whether Jews were entitled to hire local Christians (Rusyns) as servants (1643).
2) The fonds also contains complaints, statements, and court records and rulings in cases of offences, assaults, robberies, and murders, including a case heard in the Lwów Castle Court regarding an assault on Jews of Przemyśl (1654); records pertaining to an incident in which students of a Jesuit collegium had attacked a synagogue and Jewish homes and residents in the Kraków suburb of Lwów (1664); an affidavit by a Jewish resident of Złoczów regarding the robbery of gems and other items he had been holding as collateral (1679); records of the hearing of cases pertaining to a fight between Jews and non-Jews in Żółkiew (Zhovkva), and an assault by a hussar on a Jew in the Kraków suburb of Lwów (1689); and decrees on the need to protect the Jewish population from attacks by Christians (1540).
3) Records reflecting religious issues and inter-religious relations, including relations between Jews and the Catholic clergy and monks, among them, materials pertaining to a lawsuit between Jews and Jesuits on ownership rights of Lwów’s Golden Rose (Nachmanowicz) Synagogue (1600); documents on Jewish communities’ relations with the Polish clergy and monks, including a record of a bishop’s order that certain synagogues be closed, as well as a directive that Jews refrain from appearing on city streets during Catholic holidays (1743); information about Jewish converts to Christianity, in particular, a royal decree mandating that Jewish converts be protected (1592); records pertaining to the protection of Frankists (followers of the Sabbatean Messianic claimant Jacob Frank) involved in a dispute with Jews in Lwów (1758); a rescriptum by Polish King Stephan Batory refuting the accusation that Jews committed ritual murders (1578); etc.
4) Information on tax and financial matters, in particular, notes on procedures for the Lwów kahal’s payment of the poll tax, and on its transfer to the treasury of amounts set by the king and senate (1656-57); royal decrees on the taxation of Jews and tax exemptions granted to private individuals and communities, including in connection with fires and hostilities – among these is a decree of Sigismund I the Old (Zygmunt I Stary) granting the Jews of Lwów a tax exemption in connection with the fire of 1527 (1527-28); moratoria on the payment of taxes by the Jews of Lwów in 1598, 1634, 1672, and 1716; a decree on the allocation of tax proceeds from the Jewish community of the town of Sieniawa among other communities in connection with fires suffered by the latter (1703).
Records in court logs often reflect damages suffered by individual Jews and Jewish communities due to the actions of troops or rebel forces; in particular, there is a complaint from the Jews of Drohobycz regarding casualties and material damage suffered by the community, including the ruin of its synagogue (1648-49); receipts for payment of indemnities to forces of Bogdan Khmel’nyts’kyi by residents of Żółkiew, Toporów, and Janów (1649), and information on the postponement of trials in connection with the siege of Lwów by the forces of Bogdan Khmel’nyts’kyi (1655).
5) Records of decrees and legislation regarding the rights of Jews in various cities and towns, in particular, decrees ratifying the privileges of the Jews of Warsaw (1588) and of Lwów and the Krakow suburb (1633; 1676) (see the privileges published in Myron Kapral, ed., Привілеї національних громад міста Львова (XIV–XVIII ст.), Lviv, 2010); royal decrees regarding Jews’ fulfilment of obligations prescribed by royal privileges, and decrees settling disputes in accordance with rights granted to Jews, including a dispute over Lwów Jews’ rights to process and sell meat (1581) and engage in commerce at the Lwów Fair (1533). These materials contain indications that Jews were under the jurisdiction of the king or palatine rather than that of local or municipal authorities (1693; 1731).
Castle court logs also contain inventories and listings of Jewish residents in several cities and towns, such as Bełz, Sokal, Niemirów, etc.; data from censuses of the Jewish population carried out in connection with the introduction of the poll tax in Lwów, Brody, Rzeszów, Żółkiew, Przeworsk, Sambor, Janów, and other cities (16th-18th centuries).
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
Castle courts were judicial and administrative bodies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The term derives from the Old Slavonic grod, a fortress or castle, where these courts carried out their functions. They were also called castle-starosta courts (or starosta courts), as they were headed by starostas. Castle courts were established in the counties of the Ruthenian and Bełz voivodeships from 1435, lasting until 1783. In some cases, counties that did not have a castle court — for example, the Przeworsk and Kołomyja counties of the Ruthenian voivodeship (which were centred around Lwów) — were served by the courts of neighbouring counties. The jurisdiction of castle courts initially included criminal cases involving the gentry (szlachta), while land courts heard civil cases (property, financial, etc. cases). Over time, however, the distinction between the functions of these courts became blurred.
The castle court consisted of the county starosta, who was appointed by the king, and who in turn appointed a deputy (the podstarosta), as well as a judge and clerk. The castle court convened to hear criminal cases every six weeks, and every two weeks, to hear misdemeanour and civil cases. Unlike the offices of the land courts, those of the castle courts were in continuous operation, which was the primary reason that the functions and jurisdictions of land and castle courts became blurred. In the 14th century, castle courts were vested with the so-called “right of eternity” (prawo wieczności), which meant that documents certified by these courts and entered into their registry books had legal force; this had formerly been the prerogative of land courts. The blurring of the functions of castle and land courts was reflected in the composition of castle books. Court decrees, acts of “private will” (wills and testaments, contracts), and government writs (privileges, charters, decrees, and orders) were recorded in registries of writs. Also recorded here were protests, complaints, and various documents pertaining to court proceedings and record keeping.
The castle courts of Galicia were abolished by 1784 amid judicial reforms carried out by the Austrian authorities.
- Subject terms:
- Antisemitism
- Antisemitism--Antisemitic measures
- Blood libel
- Census
- Christianity
- Christianity--Christian holidays
- Christianity--Churches (institution)
- Conversion to Christianity
- Cossacks
- Crime
- Education
- Education--Students
- Financial matters
- Financial matters--Debt
- Financial records
- Health and medical matters
- Health and medical matters--Physicians and nurses
- Jewish community
- Jewish-Christian relations
- Kahal
- Legal matters
- Legal records
- Military
- Privileges
- Professions
- Professions--Jewellers and goldsmiths
- Real estate
- Synagogues
- Trade and commerce
- Trade and commerce--Alcohol trade
- Wills
- System of arrangement:
- The files in the castle court fonds are arranged by source type as well as by subject and chronologically.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary