Oral Tradition, Land Disputes, and the Noble Community in Galician Rus‘ from the 1440s to the 1460s

Oral Tradition, Land Disputes, and the Noble Community
in Galician Rus‘ from the 1440s to the 1460s
Yurij Zazuliak
For the year 1442, Jan Drugosz drew up an account ofthe donation policy of
Wladislas III in Galician Rus’1 with a description of the consequences of this
policy for the Ruthenian nobility:
Multi plicanter itaque Regno Poloniae mala, ut et hostibus premeretur, vastationibus
et rega/ibus donationibus et obligationibus dejlueret. Augebat
etiam huiusmodi malum baronum Poloniae ambitio, qui a Rege donationibus
oppidorum et villarum in terris Russiae et Podoliae impetratis,
antiqua incolas et haeredes de illis excludebant, qui inopia et egestate pressi
et quandum desperatione compulsi ad Tartaros confugiebant, illosque
postmodum ad vastandum terras Russiae et possessiones, que quibus eiecti
fuerant, inducebant.2
Drugosz’s portays the fate of the Ruthenian nobles, deprived of their estates, fleeing
to the Tatars, and then plundering their former native Iands in revenge, His
picture is complemented by the severe censure of the policy of Wladislas III and
the deeds of the Polish magnates. This suggests that the alienation of the ancient
estates of the Ruthenian nobles threatened the social position of the group of those
antiqui incolae et heredes.3
1 The territory of Galician Rus‘, which consistcd ofthe weslern part oftoday’s Ukraine and some
areas of south-eastern Po land, was included in the Polish Kingdom during the second half of
the fourteenth century and after the introduction of the Polish legal and administrative system
in the 1430s was also known as the Rus‘ palatinate. In my research, l will also makc use ofthc
terrn Ruthenians to delineate the local Ukrainian population living in Galicia. This tcrrn was in
usage until the middle of the nineteenth century, when under the influence of thc Ukrainian
modern national revival it was substituted by today’s name – Ukrainians.
2 Johannes Dlugosii seu Longini Canonici Cracoviensi Historiae Polonicae (henceforth:
Dtugosz), ed. Alexandr Przezdziecki, vol. 4, (Cracow, 1 877), p. 683. For commentary, sec
Andrzcj Janaczek, „Polska ekspansja osadnicza w ziemi lwowskiej w XIV-XVI ww.,“ (Polish
settlement expansion in the L’viv district in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries), Przeglqd
Historyczny 69.4 ( 1 978), p. 610; Mykhajlo Hrushevs’kyj , /storia Ukrainy – Rusy (History of
Ukraine-Rus‘), vol. 5 (L’viv, 1905), p. 23.
3 The donation policy of Wladislas III was not the only known attempt of the alienation of the
estates betonging to the Ruthenian nobility. Almost a decade before the events described,
under the year 1426, Dlugosz mentions that the Mazovian prince Siemovit IV initiated the
poiicy aimed at confiscating the land property of the old Ruthenian nobility and rcdistributing
it among Mazovian newcomers. Therc are some clues to suggest that such a policy was much
more successful then the one of Wladislas III. In his investigation of the noble families ofBelz
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 89
This process was a result of the widespread pledge distribution of royal
estates, initiated by the Jagellonian kings during the first half of the fifteenth century.
The institution of pledge became one of the chief sources of revenue for the
royal court as weil as one of the principal tools for goveming the state. Investing in
royal loans and receiving royal land in retum resulted in a considerable change in
the distribution of property and power in Jate medieval Poland, facilitating the
upward mobility of nobles as weil as the growth of the magnates‘ political
predominance.4
The reign of Wladislas III ( 1 434-1444) provides a particularly striking case
in this history of pledging royal domains. It was exactly during his short rule that a
!arge number of royal estates was pledged, becoming the main source of the capital
that the young king required to cover the expenses of his continuous campaigns
abroad and to reward the services of Polish nobility.5 Suffice it to say that pledges
compris approximately 60% of all known docurnents issued by king Wladislas III,
which is especially noticeable in comparison with the number of pledge documents
available from the reign of his father, which amounted to only 25%.6 The territory
of Galician Rus‘ became one of the main areas affected by the distribution of
pledges during the reign of Wladislas III.
The only traces that we can follow in search of any new details to clarify
Dlugosz’s account are the surviving records of disputes over contested estates between
old Jandowners and new recipients of royal pledges included in the court
books of the Rus‘ palatinate, beginning with the reign of Wladislas III. The disregion,
Polish historian Andrzej Janeczek has recently discovered almost no traces of the
presence of the nobles of Ruthenian origin and their property in Beiz region. For details, see:
Andrzej Janeczek, Osadnictwo pogranicza polsko-ruskiego. Wojewodztwo belskie od schylku
XIV do poczqtku XVIJ wieku (The settlement of thc Polish-Ruthenian borderland. Thc Beiz
voievodaship from the end of the fourtcenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century)
(Warsaw, 1993), pp .. 76-79.
4 Some scholars consider thc pledge holdings of royal domains as a decisivc factor in the
emergence of the group of „new“ aristocratic families during the fifteenth century: Antoni
G􀓈iorowski, „Czynniki rozwarstwienia stanu szlachcckiego w sredniowiecznej Polsce“
(Factors of the differentiation of the noble estates in medieval Po land), in Strulaura feudalni
spo/ecnosti na uzemi Ceskoslovenska a Polska do pfelomu 15. a 16. stoleli (The structures of
feudal society in the Iands of Czechoslovakia and Poland on the eve of the fifteenth and thc
sixteenth centuries), eds. Jän Cierny, Frantisek Hejl, and Antonin Yerbik (Prague, 1984), p.
82. For the generat overview of the pledge policy in late medieval Po land, see Anna SucheniGrabowska,
Odbudowa domeny krolewskiej w Polsee 1504-1548 (The rebuilding of the royal
domain i’l. Poland, 1 504-48) (Wroclaw, 1 967). pp. 20-3 1 .
5 The history o f the reign of Wladyslas 111 in Hungary is presented i n detailed study o f Jan
D11.browski, Wladyslaw 1 Jagiel/onczyk na W􀇃grzech (1440-1444) (Wladislas I Jagiellonczyk
in Hungary, 1440-44), (Warsaw, 1 923). Thc author also bricfly discussed the devastating
effect that the policy of Wladislas III had for the royal finances: Jan D11.browski, Wladyslaw I
Jagiellonczyk, pp. 74, 78.
6 lrena Sulkowska-Kurasiowa, Dokumenty krolewsfcie i ich funkcja w polistwie Andagawenow i
pierwszych Jagiel/lonow (Royal documents of the state of Anjou and of the first Jagiellons),
(Warsaw, 1977), pp. 45, 72.
90 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
tinctive feature of the status of the nobles who defended their rights to the estates
was the Iack of written confirmation of their estates. In the course of the disputes,
they Jegitimized their claims to the contested estates by relying on the oral tradition
of their rights, which was conveyed through the collective memory of the local
noble community in the form of witnesses‘ testimonies.
Although some of these documents have been repeatedly mentioned by
scholars, they have never previously been fully studied.7 By concentrating on the
ways in which the representatives of this group of Ruthenian nobility responded to
the circumstances of the disputes, two principal problems will be examined. First, I
irrtend to discuss the use of the witnesses‘ testimonies in dispute Settlements by
describing and analyzing the function of the witnesses in maintaining, transmitting,
and manipulating the collective memory of the noble community. Second, by
investigating the social bonds between the witnesses, r will try to reconstru􀁴t the
network of nobles mobilized in the course of the disputes, and thus to define the
effect of group solidarity and collective action on the legal process and noble’s
status in late medieval Galician Rus‘.
The study of the disputes can be also set in the broader context of the social
Status and the property rights of the nobility of Ruthenian origin in the late
medieval Kingdom of Po land. The establishment of Polish rule in Galician Rus‘
played a decisive roJe in the social development of the Galician nobility. During
the period of the second half of the fourteenth and the early fifteenth centuries,
their social status was defined by several features and peculiarities that set Galician
noblemen apart from the rest of the nobility of other Polish Iands. The essence of
these differences was that the Galician nobility was excluded from the advantages
of the series of corporate privileges won by Polish nobles from the second half of
the fourteenth century onward. Limitations of the rights of Galician nobles were
maintained and established mainly through the donation policy o f the rulers, which
imposed a set of particular obligations on the recipients of landed property in
Galician Rus‘.8 There was also no clear distinction in social status between some
7 Hrushevs’kyj, lstoria Ukrainy – Rusy, 23; Ivan Linnichenko, Cherty iz istorii soslovij v JuhoZapadnoj
(Halick.oj) Rusi XIV -XV vv. ( lbe features of estates in South-westem (Galician)
Rus‘ in the fourteenth – fifteenth centuries) (Moscow, 1 894), pp. 63-65; Antony Prochazka,
„Konfederacja lwowska 1464 roku“ (The L’viv confederation in 1464), Kwartalnik
historyczny 6 ( 1 892), pp. 743-744.
8 For an analysis of the royal donation policy and the nature of the noble status and land
ownership in Galician Rus‘, see Mykhailo Hrushevs’k.)’j, lstorija Ukrainy-Rusy, vol. 5, 75-6,
78, 80; Ivan Linnichenko, Cherty iz istorii soslovij v Juho-Zapadnoj (Halickoj) Rusi XIV – XV
vv. (The features of estates in South-westem (Galician) Rus‘ in the fourteenth – fifteenth centuries),
(Moscow, 1 894), pp. 34-38; Ludwik Wyrostek, Rod Drag6w- Sas6w na W(;!grzech i
Rusi Halickiej (The Drag -Sas clan in Hungary and Galician Rus‘), (Cracow, 1932), pp. 138-
141; Andrzej Janeczek, „Ekspansja osadnicza w ziemi lwowskiej w XIV – XVI wv-l.“ (Settlement
exspansion in the Lviv district in tbe fourteenth – sixteenth centuries), Przeglqd
Historyczny 69.4 ( 1 978), pp. 608-610; Stanislaw Gaw􀅣da, Motnowladztwo malopolskie w XIV
i w pierwszej polowie XV wieku (The magnates of Linie Po1and in the fourteenth and the first
half ofthe fifteenth century), (Cracow, 1 966), pp. 61-62.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 9 1
groups of the nobility and the upper strata of privileged populations, obliged to do
military service. The latter groups, widely presented in the social structure of
Galician society, gradually penetrated the ranks of nobility. This process took place
as a result of high social mobility and blUITing social barriers in late medieval
society and contributed on a !arge scale to the imprecision of the definition of
status and property rights of many Galician nobles. The widespread pledge
distribution initiated by Wladislas III, and the following disputes revealed very
weil some ofthose features ofthe status of the Ruthenian nobles.
For this inquiry, I have identified twelve cases. The overwhelming majority
of them come from the court registers of the L’viv district, were a !arge number of
pledges were given by the king. The earliest one was recorded in a court book of
the L’viv district under the date of September 5th, 1440.
9 The highest number of
cases, that is seventeen, was recorded during the years 1442 and 1443. The period
between 1445 and 1464, after the death of Wladislas III, supplies information
about three cases.
The court books provide a range of records with varying Ievels of specificity
dealing with disputes. They include rather sparse and overschematic pieces of
evidence that indicate only one or two stages of the lawsuits. The most numerous
type are the records produced by the court assembly or the royal starosta himself,
which postpone the case to the next session, or pass the final judgment to the king
or the following diet (convencio, sejmik) of the local nobility. Usually, we can also
find accusations brought before the court by one party against his rivals, which
arose because of their absence from court during the appointed session. Sometimes,
the records are summons issued by the starosta, which order the nobles to
come to the court to produce their privileges and tit1es to the contested property.
This type of record seems to be the first stage, normally introducing the opening of
the dispute. The outcomes of the lawsuits are richer in details but, unfortunately,
their records are rarely available.
It seems to have been a general pattem for the defendants to base their
claims to the land on the grounds of long possession.10 Statements such as . . . non
habere aliqua munimenta super eadem villam, sed ipsam dxi it habere ab ewo, ab
avis et protawis, 1 1 or . . . eadem bona fore eius verum et legittimum patrimonium ab
9 Ksawery Liske, ed., Alaa grodzkie i ziemskie z czasow Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z Archiwum
tak zwanego Bernardynskiego we Lwowie (The land and castle records from the time of the
Polish Commonwealth from the Bemardine archive in L’viv), (henceforth AGZ), vol. 1 4
(L’viv, 1 8 74), no. 8 5 .
1 ° For the importance o f the reference t o the long possession in medieval land disputes, consider
the work of Chris Wickham, “Land Disputes and Their Social Framework in LombardCarolingian
Italy, 700-900,“ in The Settlement of Displlle in Early Medieval Europe, eds.
Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (CaJTlbridge, 1986), p. I I 0. About time prescription conceming
different types of land possession in Polish customary law and legal practice, see:
Grzegorz Mysliwski, ‚·Between Memory and Anticipation. Temporal Consciousness of
Mazovian Society in 1 21h – the mid 1 6th centuries, .,
Acta Poloniae Historica, 82 (2000), pp. I 0-
17.
1 1 AGZ. vol.J 4, no. 538.
92 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
antiquo et pervestuste tentem alias sterodawna12 can be found in almost all
lawsuits. The reference to the „antiquity“ of their land holdings required support
and reinforcement through testimony from suitable witnesses. Like everywhere in
medieval Centrat Europe, this oral statement of the witnesses functioned as an institutionalized
collective memory of a given community and played a crucial role
in the settlement of land disputes.13 The wide acceptance of such a way of proving
the rights to land in the legal practice of late medieval Rus‘ seems to be best
reflected in the notion of this type of dispute as termini, qui haben! agerum pro
ipsorum bonis, que habent ab ewo, ab avis et prothavis et privilegia super ipsa non
habent. 14
In three out of the thirteen known disputes, the old Ruthenian landowners
failed to defend their rights to ancestral estates. Despite such a small nurober of
cases, they should be examined more c!osely since they give important details
surrounding their settlement. The most explicit account of a case with an outcome
unfavorable for the old Iaudowners is provided by two records of a lawsuit over the
village of Velyky Lubin. The first record was written into the court book in 1450.15
It starts with the summons of the starosta Peter Odrow􀃔 who, following the
mandate ofthe king, ordered the nobles Iwanko and Peter to produce the privileges
on their parts of the landed property that they held in Velyky Lubin. The rights o f
Iwanko and Peter were challenged by the noble Christopher ltalicus, at that time a
L’viv customs officer and well-known moneylender to the king and to the starosta
Odrowtli:. Both the summons of the starosta and the royal instruction given to him
(and included in the record under the title sequitur littera regalis) stipulated that
producing proof of the privileges within the six week term was an indispensable
condition for the nobles from Velyky Lubin to remain in possession of their estate.
As the next stage of dispule shows, Iwanko and Peter did not follow the requirements
of the starosta’s document, but tried to convince the court in another way.
According to their recorded speech, they declared the contested estate to be their
patrimony and pointed out the antiquity oftheir hereditary rights.
Unfortunately, the record teils us nothing about the witnesses of the nobles
from Velyky Lubin. The speech of Nicolas of Stradow, procurator of Christopher,
which followed immediately after the speech of the defendants, seems to give
some explanation for the sil.ence of the source conceming the witnesses. Nicolas of
Stradow accused Peter and lwanko of being ignoble by stating that they and their
father were servitores o f the former owners of Velyky Lubin. This is the last stage
of dispute that our record contains. Presumably, the accused did not manage to
prove their noble status, which would have required witnesses as weil, since no
12 Ibid., no. 697.
13 Erik Fugedi, „Verba volant . . . Oral Culturc and Literacy arnong the Medieval Hungarian
Nobility,“ in idem, Kings. Bishops. Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary (London:
Variorum, 1989), pp. 1-25; Piotr Gorecki, „Communities of Legal Memory in Medieval
Po land, c. I 200-1240,“ Journal of Medieval History, 24 ( I 998). pp. I 27-154.
14 AGZ. vol 14, no. 573.
15 Ibid., no. 2245.
ÜRA􀂓 TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOB􀂓E COMMUNITY 93
document of their compurgation is preserved in the court books. This fact
obviously played a decisive roJe in their defeat, because from the second surviving
record ofthe dispute, dated on December 1 , 1452, the sentence passed by the castle
court gave the contested estate into the hands of Christopher Italicus. 16
The other two disputes where old Jandowners lost their patrimonies, also
entail the questioning of their noble status. In the Jawsuit over the village of Sukmaniv
between Hlib of Stanymyr and Nicolas Gologorsky, the connection between
the accusation of Hlib Stanymyrsky as being ignoble and his participation in this
dispute cannot be established with certainty because the record of his
compurgation precedes the first information about his Iitigation with Gologorsky.
The time interval between the records of the compurgation and of the opening of
the dispute comprises slightly more than two months. According to the court book,
on July 1 5 , 1440, Hlib Stanymyrsky produxit testes pro honore suo, who
recognized him under oath to be noble and after that, by September 5, 1 440, the
first record appeared bringing the dispute over Sukmaniv to the court. 17 Although
there is no evidence that proves these two records were interrelated, the fact that
the noble status of one party was not quite clearly defined and thus needed to be
proved had a great significance in itself. It certainly reduced the chances of
Stanymyrsky mobilizing the resources and support of the local noble community to
win the dispute, especially in comparison to his rival, who was known for his
noticeable roJe in the local hierarchy of power.
The Iitigation over Sukmaniv was settled in an unusually short time. The
opening stage of dispute, recorded on September 5, 1440, displays Nicolas Gologorsky
coming to the court and showing the royal charter for the village. The same
legal record also includes the decision of the jury, which ordered Hlib Stanymyrsky,
who declared that Sukmaniv ad ipsum pertineret ex avis et protavis, to
confirm his rights through the support ofwitnesses. The impression communicated
by the record is that the witnesses were appointed by the jury, which is rather
unusual for the procedure of producing witnesses in our group of disputes. By
appointing certain witnesses, whom Stanymyrsky was obliged to present, the
court’s deputies specified further that . . . si vero predictus Hieb ta/es testes
producere non passet extunc villam predicto domino nostro Regi reddimus et eam
predicto Gologorsky damus ad tenendum. 1 8 The second and last time Gologorsky
and Stanymyrsky appeared in court, was less than one week after the ftrst introductory
record, of September 9. This time the account relates that Hlib Stanymyrsky
was not able to produce the first of the assigned witnesses and as a result
the jurors adjudged Sukmaniv to Gologorsky. Stanymyrsky tried in vain to appeal
against such a court decision, declaring that . . . sine meo scitu scriptus est testis, but
his protest was unsuccessful. 19
16 Jbid., vol. 14, no. 2730.
17 lbid. . vol. 14, no. 38; 85. 18
lbid., vol. 14, no.85.
19 1bid., vol. 14, no. 9 1 .
94 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
On the one hand, the quite frequent use of the accusation of ignobility,
invoked in the course of the disputes, could be interpreted as a deliberate strategy
employed by one party, which through alleging some moral failings in the adversary
and using defamation aimed to win a litigation.20 On the other hand, while
being initiated as court suits over property rights, these disputes also reveal some
basic issues of the social status and structure of community.21 In our cases, they
point to the ambiguity of the social status of many nobles, which could be seen as
evidence of high social mobility and of the absence of strictly defined borders between
social groups and estates, a feature that is considered by scholars today to be
fundamental for late medieval Polish society.22
The most illuminating example in this regard is the dispute over the village
of Stronyatyn, brought by Andreas Malechovsky against Peter Hamladynowycz?3
It is noteworthy that at the first trial, dated November 1 2, 1443, the starosta
referred to Peter Hamladynowycz as providus (townsman) and Armenus?4 At the
same time, however, Hamladynowycz claimed that Stronyatyn belonged to him ex
succesione materna, which infers his status of landowner and noble. These
multiple and contradictory social identities of Hamladynowycz were deliberately
used by Malechovsky, who did not miss an occasion to charge his adversary of
being ignoble: rursum Malechowsky sibi Petro Armeno crimen obiecit ignobilitatis,
quod non esset de nobili genere procreatus. 25 According to the same record,
Mikolaj Gologorsky, who acted on behalf of Hamladynowycz as his procurator
and tutor, objected to this statement and for defense were obliged to put Hamladynowycz
to compurgation. As reported in the record from March 20, 1 444, the
compurgation was successfully undergone by Hamladynowycz, and Gologorsky
brought to the court the Ietter confirming this fact.26
2° For example, note the article of Robert Schofield, „Peasants and Manor Court: Gossip and
Litigation in a Suffolk Village at the Close of the Thirteenth Century,“ Past and Presem, 1 5 9
( 1 998), pp. 36-37.
21 Patrick Geary, „Living with Conflict in Stateless France : A Typology of Conflict Management
Mechanisms, 1050-1200, .. in idem, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Jthaca: Comell
22 University Press, 1994), p. 136; Davies and Fouracre, eds., The Settlemem ofD ispute, p. 240.
See, for example Henryk Samsonowycz, „Relacje mi􀎲dzystanowe w Polsee XV wieku“
(Relations between estates in fifteenth-century Poland), Spoleczenstwo Polski Sredniowiecznej,
2 ( 1982), pp. 244-265.
23 Reccntly, Adam Szweda in his article dcvoted to the history of the noble family of Jurkowsky
in Galician Rus‘, wrotc the biography of Andrzej Malechovsky and mentioned the dispule
over Stronyatyn; see bis „Jurkowscy herbu Grzymala. Przyczynek do dziej6w osadnictwa
polskiego na Rusi Czerwonej“ (The Jurkowsky family of the Grzymala c1an. From the history
of Polish settlement in Red Rus‘), in Venerabiles, Nobiles et Honesti. Studia do dziej6w
spoleczenstwa Polski sredniowiecznej (Venerabiles, Nobiles et Honcsti. Studics of Polish
medieval society) (Torun: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu im. Mikolaja Kopemika, 1997), pp.
24 283-287.
AGZ. vol. 14, no. 894.
2265 lbid.
lbid., no. 1034.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 95
Perhaps by that time Stronyatyn was already in possession of Malechovsky,
because in the plea of trespass brought by him against another noble, Jan Kulykovsky,
and recorded on May 8, 1 444, Stronyatyn was mentioned as a tenuta of
Malechovsky.27 During the following two years the sources remain silent about
Stronyatyn and only on June 8, 1 446, does the next record appear in the court
register.28 It contains the Iist of witnesses who agreed to make testimonies in
support of Hamladynowycz and the text of their oath. This text of rota iuramenti
deserves close attention since, as the opening record of the dispute, it provides
valuable details on the history of the suit over Stronyatyn and helps to understand
the way in which Hamladynowycz built up his argument in the dispute. ln fact,
these two pieces of evidence comprise a shon piece of the history of the ownership
of Stronyatyn, or in the term of Patrick Geary, a kind of „genealogy of land“ based
on the local knowledge, transmitted by oral depositions ofwitnesses.29
According to the text ofthe oath, the witnesses had to testify that Stronyatyn
belonged to the father of Petrus Hamladynowycz and that after his death the village
was commissioned (fideiusserat) to his mother. The rota goes on to point out that
the estate had never been perambulated, neither acquired or confiscated violently
by the king, but had always been matrimonium (maczerzyszna) of the said
Hamladynowycz. A more detailed, but at the same time slightly different, picture
of Hamladynowycz’s succession to Stronyatyn was potrayed in the record of
November 12, 1443.30 This account, based on the interrogation of his representative,
Mikolaj Gologorsky, relates that initially Stronyatyn was owned by a certain
Kalenyk Armenus, brother of Hamladynowycz’s mother. It specifies further the
circumstances surrounding the transition of the village to Hamladynowycz. Asked
about the descendants of the mentioned Kalenyk and their rights to Stronyatyn,
Gologorsky reported that Stronyatyn had belonged to the sons of Kalenyk, Hrynko
and Masko, who, after they were deprived of the village, had run away from the
Kingdom. The record goes on to say that then Stronyatyn was escheated to the
Crown. This account turns out to be interesting and important for several reasons.
First, it corresponds at some point to the information written by Dhlgosz
concerning the profugi Ruthenian nobles. Second, the texts of the oath and the
opening records contradict each other regarding the confiscation of Stronyatyn by
27 Ibid., no. 1 077. The trespass of Kulykovsky into Stronyatyn also demonstrates that when the
rights of disputing parlies to contested estates were challenged or remained dubious, this was
often regarded by other nobles as a favourable occasion for seizing or intruding into another
man’s property. In his rcply, wrinen in the same record, Kulikowsky quite explicitly made use
of Malechowsky’s dispule with Hamladynowycz to ques1ion Malechovsky’s rights to
Stronyatyn and thus to legitimizc his own act oftrespass. Even more revealing in this regard is
the case of Christopher ltalicus and the village of Lubin. Throughout his dispule over Lubin,
he made permanent complainls, accusi,ng local nobles of anacking and trespassing his estate
(lbid., no. 2351, 2595, 2656, 2660).
23 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 1 7 1 1 .
29 Patrick Geary, Phantom of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion a t the End of the First
Millenium (Princeton, 1 994). p. 78.
30 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 894.
96 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
the king and the rights of Hamladynowycz’s father to Stronyatyn. Though it could
not be determined why Hamladynowycz and his oath-helpers tried to avoid these
facts being mentioned in the oath, one suggestion can be made. It is likely that the
oath presents an example of the selective memory of given nobles, deliberately
constructed and manipulated to highlight the antiquity of Hamladynowycz’s rights
to Stronyatyn. Third, the confiscation of Stronyatyn from the hands of the Kalenyk
family Ieads us to infer that the disputes over Stronyatyn had a much Ionger history
than that which appeared in the court records. This suggestion could be further
enhanced by information, drawn this time from the side of the Malechovsky
family. In 1 454, when the dispule was already over and Malechovsky owned Stronyatyn
in peace, a review of the charters on Stronyatyn was made by order of the
royal govemor.31 lachna, then the widow of Andreas Malechovsky, produced two
documents, the first of which, the pledge granted to Michael Malechovsky,
extended back as early as the reign of Wladislas Jagiello, that is to the time before
1434. Unfortunately, the record does not specify the exact date of this document.
Nevertheless, the sources point to a quite long, at least a two generations legal
contest for the rights to Stronyatyn of both disputing families, which suggests the
long-term persistence of Iitigation over Stronyatyn.
It was not until December 7, 1 447, that a new stage of the dispute was
opened, after the representative of Kalenyk family, a certain Iwaszko Kalenykowycz,
launched the suit over Stronyatyn against Hamladynowycz.32 In the court
ofFebruary 1 3 , 1448, Iwaszko Kalenykowycz claimed to be propinquior to former
owners of Stronyatyn and charged Hamladynowycz that he held the patrimony of
Kalenykowycz.
Claims of three or sometimes even more people to the same estates and the
disputes that followed seem to be common for the situation in Galician Rus‘ of that
time. 33 They were mainly invoked due to the chaotic distribution policy of Wladislas
TII, who issued the privileges to different persons, granting them the same royal
estate in pledge. For example, in 1441, the same Stronyatyn was also given to a
certain Alexander Wieprzyk with the revealing remark in the privilege: quas sibi
redimere indulsimus de manibus Malochowsky [sie!] ducentas marcas monete.34
Unfortunately, we can find no traces of further actions of Wieprzyk. Perhaps, he
neither took any steps to redeem the village nor launched a suit against Malechovsky.
Other cases demonstrate quite clearly a similar practice. In 1443, Peter
and Nicolas ofBartoshov litigated simultaneously against two nobles, John Luczka
and Nicolas B ieszkowsky, who claimed that each of them received Bartoshov in
pledge.35 Likewise, the rights of the noble family of Klus of Vyzhnyany to the
villages of Zubra, Plekhiv, and Vodnyky, which they held in pledge, were
challenged in turn by three people, who also claimed to have been granted the
“ Ibid., no. 3223.
32 lbid., no. 1967.
n For short commentary, considcr Andrzej Janaczek, „Polska ekspansja osadnicza,“ p. 610.
34 ZDM, vol. 8, no. 2306.
35 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 637, 930.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 97
pledges on these estates by the king.36 The most striking example of tbis is the case
of the village Zolochiv. At least four peop1e received the royal privileges on that
viiJage during the year 1442.37
After Iwaszko Kalenykowycz had sued his case against Ham1adynowycz,
there was no further trace of Iitigation between the latter and Malechowsky in the
court records. The only mention that casts some light on the outcome of this dispute
survived in the record of the lawsuit between Kalenykowycz and Hamladynowycz.
The evidence is scarce but intriguing. In the hearings, recorded on April 8,
1 448, when Peter Hamladynowycz was brought to respond to the claims of
Iwaszko, he stated that ista bona ego videlicet villam Stronyatyn a domino Andrea
Malechowsky habeo et econtra sibi eadem bona resigno, restituo et demonstro.38
We do not know by what time exactly Malechovsky and Ham1adynowycz reached
this agreement and whether the interference of Ka1enykowycz was the reason that
forced the parties to sett1e the dispute. The point of great interest here is the fact
that the final sentence of the dispute was not recorded in the court register, which
suggests that the conflict was finally settled without taking it to the court, by means
of arbitration and reconciliation procedures that were weil known to medieval legal
practice.39
Generally, the texts of the agreements settled out of court are rarely
available in the group of examined records, and as the case of Stronyatyn demonstrates,
the fact that the arbitration took place in the course of the dispute could be
gauged only by obscure clues. The most reasonable explanation for the absence of
the records of arbitration seems to be the practice that in the court register only
those stages of disputes were recorded that one of the litigants wished to be registered
as official, mainly with the aim of forcing the opposite party to settlement.
There are only three known records that speak directly about agreements
reached out of court. All of them come from the same dispute over the village of
Pohorci, pursued from the one side by a certain Nykel and his uncle Melchior and
from the other side by heredes from Pohorci. They were recorded at short intervals,
the first two on March 1 1 and the last on March 1 5, 1443.40 In the court held on
March 1 1 , for example, the plaintiffs Nykel and Melchior, who presented the royal
privilege for the whole village, agreed to recognize the rights of the brothers Chotko
and Andreas from Pohorci on two demesne 1ocated in the village. After that, as
the account relates, the court jurors imposed „eternal silence“ on the mentioned
36 1bid., no. 677, 3579 . .
37 ZDM vol. 8, no. 2 4 1 7 ; AGZ, vol. 1 4 , no. 490, 530.
38 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 2035.
39 Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (Oxford, 1984), p.
27; Davies and Fouracre eds., The Settlement of Dispute, pp. 236-237; Michael Clanchy, „Law
and Love in the Middle Ages,“ in Dispule and Seulements: Law and Human Relations in the
West, ed. John Bossy (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 47-67. For late medieval Galician Rus‘, see W.
Domino, Sqdownictwo polubowne na Rusi w p6tnym sredniowieczu (The arbitration in Rus‘ in
the late Middle Ages) (Warsaw, 1938).
40 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 652, 662.
98 YURJJ ZAZULIAK
Nykel and Melchior in this matter and forbade them to question the rights of
Chotko and Andreas in the future.41 The case of March 1 5 is recorded along the
same lines, which betrays the usage of a prescribed formula for an agreement of
this type.
In six cases, the defendants won the dispute by producing reliable witnesses.
According to the court records from November, 1 442, and October, 1 443, Jan
Dmytrovsky won the dispute over the village Chyzhky, located in the L’viv district.
His rights were challenged by Jan Rzeshovsky.42 In 1443, the same Jan
Rzeszovsky tried without success to get possession of another village, which
belonged to a certain Pelka, and which also bore the name Chyzhky, but was
situated in Przemysl district.43
In 1444, Jan Delanovsky filed a suit agairrst Stanislas and Suprun, brothers
from Ceperiv, questioning their rights to Ceperiv. At the trial recorded on January
28, 1444, the nobles from Ceperiv were summoned to the court of the royal
governor to defend their rights to the estate.44 Because the governor used the trial
as an occasion for interrogating the defendants about their social status, coat of
arms, and relatives among the nobility, the record provides kinds of details that are
usually lacking in our disputes. From the irrquest of the starosta it emerges that the
Ceperovsky declared themselves to be heredes et terrigenae ab antiquo Rutheni
who held Ceperiv as their patrimony. Their coat of arms, they related, was the
same as that of Wincenty Szamotulsky, one of the previous starosta of Galician
Rus‘. Taking into account the fact that Szamotulsky was a Pole who came to Rus‘
from Great Poland and held one of the highest offices in the hierarchy of the
Ruthenian palatinate, the possibility must be excluded that petty Ruthenian nobles
from Ceperiv and the Polish magnate family of Szamotulsky belonged to one
family clan. The presumption must be then of the adoption of the coat of arms of
the royal governor by Ceperovsky and thus of the existence of a certain degree of
servitude in the relationships between the two parties. This turns in to a more
general conclusion, namely, that like the nobles of Yelyky Lubin or of Stanymyr,
the family of Ceperiv originated in serving nobility whose noble status as well as
property rights were not strongly established.
However, the Ceperovsky were more successful in proving their rights.
During the following two years, 1 444-45, the only records available in the case of
Ceperiv are the delays of the dispute from one court session to another.45 This
Iasted until the court held on January 3, 1446, when Stanislas and Suprun of
Ceperiv finally named the witnesses to their statement and so defended their rights
to Ceperiv.46
41 lbid., no. 652.
42 lbid., no 538, 847.
43 Ibid., no. 657, 697.
44 Jbid., no. 946.
45 lbid., no. 1 1 94; 1242; 1250.
46 lbid., no. 1577.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 99
Two other relevant cases that we know of took place during the reign of
Casimir IV, Wladislas‘ brother and successor. For the year 1454, the beginning of
the dispute over the village Leshchyn is recorded, conducted by the starosta
Andreas Odrowctz against Hrynko of Leshchyn. The Iitigation for Leshchyn is
perhaps the best surviving case in the series of disputes that were initiated by
Odrowctz against the nobility of the L’viv and Zhydachiv districts. The claims of
Odrowctz, based on his status as the supreme holder of these two districts, targeted
mainly the estates that were held by nobles as royal pledges. This confrontation
developed into a serious crisis facing Galician society araund 1460 and has been
discussed in more a detailed way by other historians. 47 Here, I would only like to
add that in the conflict were also involved some of the Ruthenian nobles, who did
not have written confitmations for their hereditary possessions and who were regarded
for this reason by Odrowctz as pledge-holders.
This is exactly what the case of Leshchyn suggests. In the summons, from
January 4, 1454, in which Andreas Odrowq:Z erdered Hrynko to show his privileges
for Leshchyn, the royal govemor called Hrynko a simple pledge holder (tenutarius)
of Leshchyn, which implied the status of the village as a property of the
king. Contrary to Odrow<�.i:’s statement, Hrynko maintained in the same record that
Leshchyn was his hereditary estate and on these grounds, the court jury obliged
him to produce witnesses and defined the terms for the witnesses‘ testimonies and
oath in eighteenth weeks.48 Five months later, on June 8, 1454, the parties again
came to the court and this time the outcome of the trial was not successful for
Hrynko. We do not know for what reason, but he did not produce witnesses, and
the court deputies considered this fact to be sufficient to adjudge the estates to
Odrowetz.49 The opposition to the royal governor by that time, however, seems to
have been already streng enough to make it possible for Hrynko to continue the
dispute. The survival of the record from June 28, 1456, which, it is interesting to
note, was not registered in the court books of the L’viv castle, controlled by
Odrow’lZ, but in those of the landed nobles‘ court, illuminates the process of
producing witnesses by Hrynko, and the decision of the court passed in his
favour.so Probably, Hrynko did not feel hirnself secure, because of his mighty rival,
and the following record, made in the same court register, shows the sale of
Leshchyn to Iachko of Didushychi.s1
The secend dispute held after the death of Wladislas Ill, survived in only
one record, registered on July 1 4, 1464. The account has it that Jan Jacymirsky
brought suit against the heirs (heredes) to Chaykovychi, claiming his rights to
Chaykovychi and showing before the court the royal privilege for this estate. The
record enumerates the names of twenty of such heirs, who objected to the claims of
47 For details, see Antony Prochazka, ‚“Konfederacja lwowska 1464 roku“.
48 AGZ, vol. 14, no. 3814.
49 lbid., no. 3825.
50 lbid., vol. 19, no. 2765.
51 lbid., no. 2766.
100 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
Jacymirsky by stating the rights to the village as their hereditary estate.52 This
impressive number of nobles, who shared the rights to the same estate, illustrates
very weil how far the process of splitting up their property proceeded and suggests
the increasing impoverishment of this noble family. This feature was common for
many families of petty Ruthenian nobility, especially those who were numerously
settled in the Sambir, Drohobych, Stryj and Zhydachiv districts at the foot of the
Carpathian mountains. Furthermore, the pauperization of this group of nobility
seems to have been a decisive factor that determined a certain ambiguity in their
social status. This implication was used frequently by royal governors in their
attempts to impose additional obligations, confiscate their property, and finally
question their noble status. For instance, for the nobles of Chaykovychi the court
register provides a case of the accusation of ignobility, brought against two
representatives of this family by the royal starosta Andreas OdroW(\Z in 1457.53
Nevertheless, these peculiarities of the social standing of the nobles of
Chaykovychi did not impede them from proving successfully their rights to
Chaykovychi in the outcome ofthe dispule with Jacymirsky.
In the records of two disputes, the resort to the witnesses‘ testimonies is
lacking. In the first case the dispute was over the viiJage of Vovkiv between prince
Michael Olshansky and Jadwiga of Vovkiv, who acted on behalf of her sons,
Andreas and Troyan. The text of the final judgment, recorded on March 20 1444,
indicates that Jadwiga, to uphold and strengthen her rights to Vovkiv, referred to a
previous settlement of this type of dispute, made in favour of old landowners as to
the kind of legal precedent: petens se remanere circa eadem bona, sicut et alias
heredes manent circa ipsorum patrimonium.54 The case of the dispute over
Ostalovychi is more shadowy, pursued by a certain Nicholas Milejowsky against
nobles from Ostalovychi. The fact that the outcome of the dispute is missing
suggests, though without complete assurance, that similar to the case of
Stronyatyn, the Ostalovychi dispute was settled by arbitration without further intervention
of the governor’s court. In any case, either court judgment or arbitration, it
must have favoured the brothers for Ostalovychi, since in the next decades one can
find in the sources references to Ostalovychi as their estate.55
In one case the outcome of the dispute remains unknown. The suit was
initiated again by Jan Rzeszovsky in 1 443 against nobles of Vovchukhy. The
Iitigation over Vovchukhy is unusual in our group of disputes for one specific
point. Defending his rights to Vovchukhy, a certain Petrushko produced a charter
which the court found to be . . .insufficiens et falsum56 and gave it to the royal
chancellery for further consideration. The chancellery confirmed that it had never
issued the charter, and on thes grounds the court awarded the estate to Jan Rze-
52 lbid., vol. 1 5, no. 328 1 .
53 Jbid., vol. 1 5 , no. ! I I , 1 12.
54 Jbid., vol. 14, no. I 032.
55 Jbid., vol. 14, no. 693.
56 1bid., vol. 14, no. 675.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 1 0 1
shovsky.57 In the early fifties the dispute was renewed,58 and later, in 1457,
Petrushko and Wasko from Vovchukhy made an attempt to prove their rights to the
estate by producing witnesses. At the trial, however, dated on February 23, 1457,
witnesses, presented ad audiendum probacionem alias dowodu, could not testify
because of the absence of Jan Rzeszovsky.59 The last record, compiled on June 1 3 ,
1457, states that the case was submitted by the royal govemor Andrzej Odrowaz
for further consideration by the assembly of local nobility.60
Besides the case of Vovchukhy, bringing lawsuits to be held at noble diets
could be traced for other disputes as well (Chyzhky, Ostalovychi, Ceperiv). The
offer of the settlement of disputes by the governor’s court to the noble assernblies
aimed fust of all to highlight the collective nature of the judgment in order to
provide the decision with a sufficient Ievel of legitimacy in such an essential matter
for noble society as land conflicts.61 Unfortunately, we cannot say how much such
practice spread, though it is likely that the great number of noble assernblies held
in Galician Rus‘ during the reign of Wladislas IIl was in connection with the rise
of land disputes and their settlement at the same time.62
The examination of the given land disputes in Galician Rus‘ suggests that it
was not the royal written documents, but the testimonies of the witnesses that had a
greater significance for the local noble community and that determined the final
decision of the court. In all known cases the defendants who managed to produce
reliable witnesses won the dispute. This preference given by the court to the
witnesses‘ depositions stays in accordance with the general perception of witnesses‘
oaths in medieval law as a kind of unilateral act, an appeal to the supernatural,
which after having been done and accepted did not require any further
examination.63 This unilateral character of the oath was perhaps even more
enhanced in case of the witnesses of Ruthenian origin, who were obliged to take
the oath according to Ruthenian custom. The performance of the Juramentum more
57 lbid., no. 999.
58 Ibid., no., 2578, 2697.
6590 Ibid., vol. 15, no. 64.
lbid., no. 109.
61 About the idea of collective judgemcnt as centra1 for the understanding of the medieval legal
process and norms of procedure, consider Davics and Fouracre cds., The Settlement of Dispute,
pp. 2 1 6-217, 231 -232; Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 23-34.
62 The much greater number of noble diets in Galician Rus‘ in the middle of the fifteenth century
in comparison with other Iands of Kingdom has been recently emphasized by Anna Suchocka.
The author is inc1ined to explain this phenomenon by the growth ofpolitica1 activity as weil as
by the remoteness of Rus‘ from Cracow, which, in my opinion, seems to be an anachronism
for the Galician noble community of the fifteenth century. See: Anna Suchocka, „Zarzlld
ziemiami Rusi Czerwonej w polowie XV wieku“ (The govemance ofthe Iands of Red Rus‘ in
the middle of thc fifteenth century), in Centra/’na 1 Skhidna Evropa v XV-XVJJI st.: pytannia
socia/ ’no-ekonomichnoi i politychnoi istorii (Central and East Europe in XVth-XVIII1h centuries:
questions of social, economic, and political history), eds. Leonid Zashkilniak and
Mykola Krykun (L’viv, 1998), pp. 100-101.
63 See Reynolds, Communities and Kingdoms, p. 26; F.M. Maitland, Forms of Action at Common
Law. A Course of Lee/ures (Cambridge, 1948), p. 1 5 .
102 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
Ruthenicale, as it is usually called in the sources, displays the range of meanings
and actions closely related to the traditional medieval ordeal.64 An example to
demonstrate these similarities here is the text of the oath of Andreas Dechatkovych,
taken by him in one ofhis Iitigation, in 1462. The record spells out that with
his left hand he held the door-handle of the church, with his right hand he crossed
hirnself and then said the text of oath, the last part of which is particularly worth
quoting:
. . .E t si per veritatem faciem (meam) consigno sancte crucis signo, remitte
m(e swanthe) wyedenye ad meam domum et ad me(os) pueros. Item et si non
per veritatem, extunc swanthe wyedene non remitte me a te. 65
The opposing party was bound to accept the decision. There were cases when such
powerful persans as the Ruthenian capitaneus Andreas Odrow􀋍, while conducting
a dispute with Hrynko from Leshchyn over the village of Leshchyn, had to
recognize the rights of Hrynko: … visa perduccione testium per ipsum Hrynkonem
emisit.
66
The importance of the witnesses in lawsuits explains the active role which
the plaintiffs tried to play in their selection. Though it was primarily the responsibility
of the defendant, and to his advantage, to choose and submit the witnesses
to the court, the sources reveal some cases when final approval of the witnesses
belonged to the plaintiff. For instance, in 1442, Jan Rzeshovski, who
questioned the rights of Jan Dmitrovsky to the village of Chyzhky, restricted the
right to give testimony to four persons, those most convenient and most reliable
from his point of view and whom he chose from a broader body of witnesses
presented earlier to the court by Jan Dmitrovsky.67 In the next year, 1443, the same
Jan Rzeshovsky gave his consent to the deposition of testimonies of witnesses
provided by a certain Pelka from Chyzhky under the condition that Pelka should
present witnesses whom Jan Rzeshovsky would accept: . . . possunt [sie!] ta/es
testes fieri, quod eos acceptabo. 68 The initiative in the appointment of the
witnesses could also come from the members of the court, which is illustrated in
the case of the Iitigation between Hlib Stanymyrsky and Mikolaj Gologorsky over
the village Sukmaniv. Appointing certain witnesses, whom Hlib from Stanymyr
was obliged to present, the court’s deputies pointed out that “ … Si vero predictus
Hieb ta/es testes producere non passet extunc villam predicto domino nostro Regi
reddimus et eam predicto Go/ogorsky damus ad tenendum.“69 Finally, being
unable to produce the first among the assigned witnesses, he lost his rights to
Sukmaniv.
64 Consider the study of Wojciech Hejnosz, „Jus Ruchenieale na Rusi Czerwonej pod koniec
srcdniowiecza“ (lus Ruthenicale in Red Rus‘ in the end of Middle Ages), Sprawozdania
Towarzystwa naukowego we Lwowe, I I . I (193 1), p. 14.
65 AGZ, vol. 13, no. 5034.
66 Ibid .. vol. 19, no. 2765.
67 Ibid .. vol. 14, no. 847.
68 lbid., no. 697.
69 lbid., no.85.
ÜRAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 103
The centrat rote of the institution of witnesses in dispute settlements was by
no means unique or restricted only to the given lawsuits. Despite the rapid increase
in number of written charters issued by the royal chancellary, as weil as the assimilation
of writing in the local legal process during the first half of the fifteenth
century, the interpretation of law and legal process still strongly depended on
orality. The challenge of a written document as legal proof, even though its
authenticity was usually confirmed by the court, and Iitigation that broke out as a
result of completely opposite interpretations of the same condition of the transaction,
which was written down in the court book, can be found regularly in the
registers.70 Usually such disputes ended with an appeal to the testimonies of the
witnesses, thus tuming the dispute from the principles of the written law to legal
institutions based on orality. All this leaves us with an impression of noble culture
still loosely affected by literacy, in which the circulation and function of the
written word was frequently dominated and mediated by various forms of oral
communication. 71
The composition of the group of witnesses in those disputes where we have
their Iist available (there are seven such cases), suggests the existence of strong
social bonds within the group and their close connection with the persoh whose
property rights they were going to confirm. This view seems to be supported by the
fact that the same nobles, or representatives of the same noble families, were met
as witnesses more than one time in a group of disputes. For example, nobles from
Borshchiv figured as witnesses in four disputes (over Vowchukhy, Leshchyn,
Chaykovychi, Ceperiv), and nobles from Malchyci and from Dobriany played this
roJe in three lawsuits. Two times, the disputes were attended by the noblemen of
Remeniv, Romaniv, Rytarovychi, Chaykovychi, Lahodiv, and Ostalovychi. It is
also important to emphasize that often it was, in fact, the same representatives of
the noble families who participated in the witnesses‘ deposition. For instance, three
times Michno of Borshchiv and Vanko of Dobriany were called upon for witnessing,
Andreas Dechatkovych twice. In addition, many of the noblemen mentioned
as witnesses, also suffered the same kind of disputes, trying to assert their
own property rights (for example, noble families from Chaykovychi, Lahodiv,
Ostalovychi).
Conceming geographical distribution, two big noble „neighbourhoods“
could be singled out among the witnesses. The first group consists of the nobles
who came from the region nearby L’viv (Borshchiv, Remeniv, Romaniv, Lahodiv,
Ostalovychi, Malchyci, Davydiv, Dmytrovychi); the second group was recruited
from the eastem part of the Przemysl land, especially from Sambir district
(Chajkovychi, Rytarovychi, Komalovychi, Mykhajlovychi). These two networks
70 Ibid., vol. l l , no. 35; vo1. 1 3 , no. l06, 3 1 38, 3717, 4481; vol. l4. no. 785, 1406, 1409.
71 On this aspect of the relationships betweco the written and the oral forms of communication in
medieval culture, see for exarnple: Brian Stock, The lmplication of Literacy. Written Language
and Models of Interpretation in the Xfh and Xlfh Centuries (Princeton, I 983), esp. pp. 3-15,
42-59; M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066-1307 (Oxford and
Carnbridge, 1993), esp. pp. 254-299; Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance. esp. pp. 12-15.
104 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
of persons and noble families, supplemented sometimes also by other persons,
seems to have been quite frequently mobilized in the legal process either as a
support group or as a community of legal knowledge. This view can be supported
by two records of the compurgation, made correspondingly by Andreas Dechatkovych
and Jan iuvenus Hermanovsky, before the Przemysl land court in 1437.72
8oth records present the Iist of witnesses who testified to the innocence of the said
nobles, accused of thefts and of other dishonorable deeds. The Iist of the witnesses
in support of Andreas Dechatkovych contains the names of the nobles with whom
Dechatkovych acted together as witness in the disputes about Chyzhky and Vovchukhy
(Ivan Rybotycky, Zanko Komalovsky, Stanko Ryterovsky). The Iist of the
witnesses who appeared in the case of Jan iuvenus Herrnanovsky includes Mikolaj
Davydovsky, Dmytro of Chastyn, and Mykhailo Remenivsky, the persons, who
participated as the witnesses in the dispute about Ceperiv together with the father
ofthe accused, Jan antiquus Herrnanovsky. Moreover, the record also adds the two
other important names, Stanislaw Ceperovsky and Jan Dmytrovsky, both of whom
were supported by the testimony of Jan antiquus Herrnanovsky in disputes over
their patrimonies.
Taking into consideration the fact that the majority of the witnesses were
Ruthenians by origin, it is interesting to try to trace the rote that ties based on their
common betonging to the same ethnic-confessional group played in mobilizing the
relations among these witnesses. Rutheni seems to have been the permanent definition
used in the legal records to describe the nobles, who preserved their Ruthenian
identity, which could be defined in terrns of their betonging to the same
ethnic and confessional group.73 The sources sometimes go further in revealing this
kind of the identity. For instance, the record from September 1 2, 1466, conveys
that Dmytro Lahodovsky, who appeared as the witness in the lawsuit over Vovchukhy
and Ceperiv, pursued the suit against Jan Narajovsky, accusing him of
rebaptism of his Ruthenian maidservant from the Orthodox into the Catholic
confessi on. 74
The case of Ceperiv can supply the most illuminating example of the
solidarities of the witnesses grounded in their common Ruthenian origin. The
record of the witnesses‘ testimonies and of the final sentence of this dispute presents
the body of the witnesses divided into two groups. The first one, called
nobiles Lachos, contain the names of Mikolaj of Romaniv, Mikolaj of Davydiv,
Jan antiquus Herrnanovskys and Stanislas of Khodoriv. The second one provides
the witnesses de Ruthenicale geneologia, which includes Michael of Remeniv,
Hlibko of Khylchychi, Fedorko Moshensky (of Malchyci), Dmytro of Lahodiv,
Yurij of Lahodiv, Olechno of Borshchiv, Khodko of Stanymyr, and Dmytro of
Chastyn.75 This segregation is unique and never found again in the records. It
72 AGZ, vol. 13, no. 457, 5 8 1 .
73 As Ruthenus, for example, very often ligures in the records Yurij o f Malchyci, the witness in
thc Iitigation over Vovchukhy, sec AGZ, vol. 14, no. 2225.
74 Ibid., vol. 1 5 , no. 33 72.
15 lbid., vol. 14, no. 1577.
ORAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTESAND NOBLE COMMUNITY 105
seems insufficient to point out only their different etlmic and confessional
belongings, for all noblemen, called nobiles Lachos were, in fact, not of Polish
origin, but represented the second or even perhaps the first generation of the
polonized Ruthenian noble families. As far as the sources make it possible to
speculate, the division may have referred to the different ways of swearing the
oath, by Polish land law or Ruthenian legal customs and thus was closely interconnected
with the forms of collective actions, performed by two noble communities
in the legal processes of late medieval Galician Rus‘. This interpretation
is supported by the record from the dispule about Ceperiv, which relates two
distinct modes of performing the oath, one for the nobles in general and one for
those of Ruthenian origin in particular, and notes also the wish of the Ruthenian
witnesses to swear according to the land law: recusabant ad Colcza ecclesiae
Ruthenicalis iurare, sed voluerunt ad crucem sicut Christiani.76 The Ruthenian
identity of the nobles is often revealed precisely by their taking the Juramentum
Ruthenicale. This suggests the importance of collective action in maintaining of
the bonds of solidarity and the sense of coherence among the nobility of Ruthenian
origin as a specific group within Galician noble community.77
The ties that bow1d the witnesses together become even more obvious if we
take into account their interfamilial Connections. As an example I chose the case of
Ceperiv to illustrate the role of family relations in lawsuits. As we already know, in
1 444, Stanislas and Suprun, brothers from Ceperiv, were summoned to the court of
the capitaneus to respond to the claims of Jan Delianovsky, who questoned their
rights to Ceperiv. There they underwent a kind of interrogation, made by the
starosta, about their social status, coat of arm, and relatives among the Ruthenian
nobility. Answering the last question they stated that “ … haberet [sie!] cannatos
dominos Rzemeniowsky et Lopatycz. „78 Later, Michael Remenivsky figured among
witnesses, produced by Ceperovsky, swearing that Stanislaw and Suprun possessed
Ceperiv as their ancestral patrimony.79 Through the family of Remeniv, the
Ceperovsky were connected with nobles from Stanymyr, who were compelled to
prove their noble status and property rights as well.80 Also Ostalovychi, the
patrimony of Lopatky family, the other relatives of Ceperovsky, was threatened by
similar challenges. Thus, the trials reveal the significant roJe of different kinds of
solidarities (belongings to one kin group, similar social status) in the composition
of the group of witnesses. Moreover, one can regard the disputes and the
76 lbid., no. 1277.
77 One more example can be provided by the case o:· Drobysh of Rytarovychi, the witness in the
dispule of Chaykovychi. In his lawsuit with Alben of Jascniv, held in 1 468, the court jurors
took for advice of the land judge to define thc „‚ay of panies‘ swearing: . . . qualiter nobiles
Rutheni debent iurare an circa synagogam ipsomm vel circa crucem more terrestri. See ibid.,
vol. 13, no. 6899.
78 AGZ. vol. 14, no. 946.
79 lbid., no. 1577.
80 „Michael Rzemeniowsky “ is mentioned as „frater de parte marris “ of Hlib from Stanimyr,
whi1e the 1atter was proving his noble status: ibid., no. 38.
106 YURIJ ZAZULIAK
deposition of testimonies in particular as a good occasion for the manifestation of
group solidarity, as is seen in case of the dispute over Chaykovychi, when witnesses
quite clearly expressed their collective identity declaring themselves as “ . . .
veri et perpetui terrarum Rusie heredes. ,,sJ
The land disputes present themselves as a critical moment in reassessment or
reaffirmation of the noble status of the Ruthenian owners. Many cases have shown
that the challenge of the rights of the old owners to their estates was accompanied
by the accusation of ignobility, utilizing the ambiguity of social status ofthese Ruthenian
nobles. In this regard, it was the legal process and disputes themselves that
created the norms of belanging to the nobility and defined the social boundaries of
the noble estate.
Two basic and closely interconnected elements can be singled out in the
strategies employed by the Ruthenian nobles to succeed in disputes and thus to
reaffmn their noble status. First, it was the statement that the contested estates had
belonged to them as their hereditary property for a long time. This emphasis on
their age-old rights as a main legal argument in the dispute was usually supported
by witnesses. Witnesses functioned in this context as a community of legal
knowledge, whose testimonies, strengthened by oath, transmitted the local knowledge.
For this reason, they were accepted by the courts as sufficient legal proof.
We can also suggest that the disputes and the collective actions involved in their
Settlements strengthened and reaffirmed the solidarities of Ruthenian nobility as
weil as helped these nobles to perceive themselves as a distinct group within the
noble community of Galician Rus‘. The question, which is hard to answer with certainty
in the present study, is whether the claims of some of these Ruthenian
owners really reflect their belanging to the group of old Ruthenian nobility or
whether their status of antiqui incolae et heredes of Galician Rus was intentionally
constructed and promoted in the course of the disputes with the aim of defending
their land property and entering the ranks of nobility. Nevertheless, some suggestions,
supporting the hypothesis of the status of old Ruthenian landowners as an
„invented tradition“, can be made. First, during the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries the same social milieu ofthe petty Ruthenian nobles participated actively
in fm·ging another kind of „invented tradition“, so-called „charters of the prince
Leo“ (hramoty kniazia Lva).82 Second, the crucial role of the institutions of oral
memory in dispule settlement conforms very weil to pattems of the Iransmission of
knowledge in societies dominated by the oral culture. As we have seen, in Galician
81
lbid., vol.15, no. 3 2 8 1 . 82
The discussion of the falsity and authenticity of the charters of prince Leo as weil as their use
by the Ruthenian nobles to defend the property rights one can find in Mykhajlo Hrushevs’kyj,
„Chy majerno avtentychni hrarnoty kniazia L’va“ (Do we have the authentic charters of prince
Leo?), Zapysky Naulrovoho Tovarystva imeni Shevchenka, 45.1 ( 1905), pp. 1 -2 1 ; Ivan Linnichenko,
„Hramoty halickoho kniazia L“va i znachenie podlozhnykh dokumentov kak istoricheskikh
istochnikov“ (Charters of Halych prince Lev and the importance of the falsified
documents as historical sources), lzvestiia otdeleniia russkaho jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorslroj
Akademii Nauk, 9.1 ( 1 904), pp. 80-102.
ORAL TRADITION, LAND DISPUTES AND NOBLE COMMUNITY 107
Rus‘ the local legal process was very often govemed by the oral mode of communication
and writing did not always constitute the authority against which the
correctness of the remernbered past could be checked. In this context of oral
culture, the collective memory, customs, and traditions tumed out to be very flexible
social mechanisms, which were easily adjusted to the neeeds ofthe community
and to changing social realities.83 From this perspective, the memory and tradition
of Russie antiqui inco/ae et heredes represented a defensive strategy, deliberately
constructed by the group whose rights and status were under the threat.
83 This feature of the social memory and Iransmission of knowledge in traditional illiterate
societies has been recently emphasized by anthropologists. See, for example: Jack Goody and
!an Watt, „The Consequences of Literacy,“ in Language and Social Context. Selected Readings,
ed Paolo Giglioli, (London, 1972), csp. pp. 3 1 2-319; As for similar approaches in studying
medieval memory, sec Stock, lmplication of Literacy, p. 15; Clanchy, From Memory to
Written Record, pp. 294-299; Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance.
ORAL HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE AGES
THE SPOKEN WORD IN CONTEXT
Edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Michael Richter
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XII
=
CEU MEDIEV ALIA
VOLU1vfE 3
Oral History of the Middle Ages
The Spoken W ord in Context
Edited by Gerhard Jaritz and Michael Richter
Krems and Budapest 200 1
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER ABTEILUNG
KULTUR UND WISSENSCHAFT DES AMTES
DER NIEDERÖSTERREICIDSCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
niederästerreich kultur
copy editor: Judith Rasson
Cover illustration: The wife of Potiphar covets Joseph: “ … erat autem Joseph pulchra facie et
decorus apectu: post multos itaque dies iecit domina oculos suis in Ioseph et ait donni mecum.“
(“ … And Joseph was (a] goodly fperson], and weil favoured. And it came to pass after these
things, that his master’s wife cast her eyes upon Joseph; and she said, Lie with me. „), Gen. 39:
6-7 (KJV). Concordantiae Caritatis, c. 1350. Cistercian abbey of Lilienfeld (Lower Austria), ms
151, fol. 244v (detail). Photo: Institut fiir Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit
(Krems an der Donau).
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Published by:
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– ISBN 963 9241 64 4 (Budapest)
-ISSN 1587-6470 CEU MEDIEVALIA
Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung
der materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, A-
3500 Krems. Austria,
Department ofMedieval Studies, Centrat European University,
Nador utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary.
Printed by Printself, Budapest.
Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ……………………….. 7
Michael RICHTER, Beyond Goody and Grundmann ………. . . . . . . ………. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I I
Tom PETTIIT, Textual to Oral: the Impact ofTransmission
on Narrative Word-Art …………………………………………………………………….. 1 9
Elöd NEMER!<.ENYI, Fictive Audience. The Second Person Singular in the Deliberatio ofBishop Gerard of Csanäd …………………………………………….. 3 9 Katalin SZENDE, Testaments and Testimonies. Orality and Literacy in Composing Last Wills in Late Medieval Hungary ……………………………. 49 Anna ADAMSKA, The Kingdom of Po land versus the Teutonic Knights: Oral Traditions and Literale Behaviour in the Later Middle Ages …………… 67 Giedre MICKÜNAITE, Ruler, Protector, and a Fairy Prince: the Everlasting Deeds of Grand Duke Vytautas as Related by the Lithuanian Tatars and Karaites ………………………………… 79 Yurij Zazuliak, Oral Tradition, Land Disputes, and the Noble Community in Galician Rus‘ from the 1440s to the 1 460s ……………………………………… 88 Nada ZECEVIC, Ai􀃭tc; yA.uKeia. The Importance ofthe Spoken Word in the Public Affairs ofCarlo Tocco (from the Anonymous Chronaca dei Tocco di Cefalonia) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 108 lohn A. NICHOLS, A Heated Conversation: Who was Isabel de Aubigny, Countess of Arundel? …………………………… 1 1 7 Tracey L. BILADO, Rhetorical Strategies and Legal Arguments: ‚Evil Customs‘ and Saint-Florent de Saumur, 979- 1 0 1 1 …………………….. 1 28 Detlev KRAACK, Traces of Orality in Written Contexts. Legal Proceedings and Consultations at the Royal Court as Reflected in Documentary Sources from l21h-century Germany ……… 1 42 6 Maria DOBOZY, From Oral Custom to Written Law: The German Sachsenspiegel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Martha KEIL, Rituals of Repentance and Testimonies at Rabbinical Courts in the 151h Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 64 Michael GOODICH, The Use of Direct Quotation from Canonization Hearing to Hagiographical Vita et Miracula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 77 Sylvia ScHEIN, Bemard of Clairvaux ’s Preaching of the Third Crusade and Orality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ….. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 Michael BRAUER, Obstades to Oral Communication in tbe Mission offriar William ofRubruck among the Mongois . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196 Elena LEMENEVA, From Oral to Written and Back: A Sermon Case Study . . . . . . . . 203 Albrecht CLASSEN, Travel, Orality, and the Literary Discourse: Travels in the Past and Literary Travels at the Crossroad of the Oral and the Literary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . 217 Ulrich MÜLLER and Margarete SPRJNGETH, “Do not Shut Your Eyes ifYou Will See Musical Notes:“ German Heroie Poetry („Nibelungenlied“), Music, and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236 Jolanta SZPILEWSKA, Evoking Auditory Imagination: On the Poetics of Voice Production in The Story ofThe Glorious Resurrection ofOur Lord (c. 1580) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248 Jens T. WOLLESEN, SpokenWords and Images in Late Medieval Italian Painting . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 257 Gerhard JARTTZ, Images and the Power of the Spoken Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 Preface Oral culture played an instrumental role in medieval society.1 Due to the Iack of any direct source evidence, however, research into the functions and importance of oral communication in the Middle Ages must confront a number of significant problems. Only indrect traces offer the opportunity to analyze phenomena that were based on or connected with the spoken word. The ‚oral history‘ of the Middle Ages requires the application of different approaches than dealing with the 201h or 2 151 century. For some decades Medieval Studies have been interested in questions of orality and literacy, their relationship and the substitution of the spoken by the written word2 Oral and literate culture were not exclusive and certainly not opposed to each other.3 The ‚art of writing‘ was part of the ‚ars rhetorica‘ and writing makes no sense without speech.4 Any existing written Statement should also be seen as a spoken one, although, clearly, not every oral Statement as a written one. Authors regularly wrote with oral delivery in mind. ‚Speaking‘ and ‚writing‘ are not antonyms. It is also obvious that „the use of oral conununication in medieval society should not be evaluated … as a function of culture populaire vis-a-vis culture savante but, rather, of thc communication habits and the tendency of medieval man 1 For the late Middle Ages and the early modern period, cf. Willern Frijhoff, „Communication et vie quotidienne i1 Ia fin du moyen äge et a l’epoque moderne: reflexions de theorie et de methode,“ in Kommunialion und Alltag in Spätmillefalter und fniher Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Hundsbichler (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1992), p. 24: „La plupart de gens vivait encore pour l’essentiel dans une culture orale et !es procedes d’appropriation des idCes passaient de prefcrence par Ia parolc dite et ecoutee, quand bien memc on ctait capable d’une Ieelure visuelle plus ou moins rudimentaire.“ 2 See Marco Mostert, „New Approaches to Medieval Communication?“ in New Approaches to Medieval Communication. ed. Marco Mostert (Tumhout: Brepols, 1999), pp. 15-37; Michael Richter, “Die Entdeckung der ‚Oralität‘ der mittelalterlichen Gesellschaft durch die neuere Mediävistik,“ in Die Aktualität des Miue/alters, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz (Bochum: D. Winkler, 2000), pp. 273-287. 3 Peter Burke calls the constrnct of „oral versus literate“ useful but at the same time dangerous: idem, „Mündliche Kultur und >Druckkultur< im spätmittelalterlichen Italien,“ in Volkskultur des europäischen Spätmittelalters, eds. Peter Dinzelbacher and Hans-Dieter Mück (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1987), p. 60. 4 Michael Clanchy, „lntroduction,“ in New Approaches to Medieval Communication. ed. Marco Mostert (Tumhout: Brepols, 1999), p. 6. 8 to share his intellectual experiences in the corporate framework.“5 Oral delivery was not „the sole prerogative of any socioeconomic class. „6 For all these reasons, it is important to analyze the extent of and context, in which ’speech acts,‘ auditive effects, and oral tradition occur in medieval sources .7 Research into the use of the spoken word or references to it in texts and images provides new insight into various, mainly social, rules and pattems of the communication system. 1t opens up additional approaches to the organization and complexity of different, but indispensably related, media in medieval society, and their comparative analysis.8 The spoken word is connected with the physical presence of its ’sender.‘ Speech may represent the authenticity of the given message in a more obvious way than written texts or images. Therefore, the use of ’speech acts‘ in written or visual evidence also has to be seen in context with the attempt to create, construct, or prove authenticity. Moreover, spoken messages contribute to and increase the lifelikeness of their contents, which may influence their perception by the receiver, their efficacy and success. Being aware of such a situation will have led to the explicit and intended use and application of the spoken word in written texts and images- to increase their authenticity and importance, too. lf one operates with a model of ‚closeness‘ and ‚distance‘ of communication with regard to the Ievel of relation of ’senders‘ and ‚receivers,‘ then the ’speech acts‘ or their representation have to be seen as contributors to a ‚closer‘ connection among the participants of the communication process.9 At the same time, however, Speech might be evaluated as less official. One regularly comes across ‚oral space‘ 5 Sophia Menache, The Vox Dei. Commwzication in the Middle Ages (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 19. 6 Ibidem, p. 21. Cf. also Jan-Dirk Müller, „Zwischen mündlicher Anweisung und schrifilicher Sicherung von Tradition. Zur Kommunikationsstruktur spätmittelalterlicher Fechtbücher,“ in Kommunikation und Alltag in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Hundsbichler (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1992), p. 400: „Offensichtlich sind schriftliche und nichtschriftliche Tradierung von Wissen weiterhin relativ unabhängig voneinander, nachdem die Schrift längst dazu angesetzt hat, lnseln der Mündlichkeil oder praktisch-enaktiver Wissensvermittlung zu erobem. Die Gedächtnisstütze kann die Erfahrung nicht ersetzen, sendem allenfalls reaktivieren. Sie ist sogar nur verständlich, wo sie auf anderweitig vermittelte Vorkenntnisse stößt.“ 7 􀆿f. W.F.H. Nicolaisen, ed., Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1995). 8 See, esp., Horst Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, Schrift und Bild. K ultur und Gedächtnis im Mittelalter (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1995), passim. 9 See also Siefan Sonderegger, „>Gesprochen oder nur geschrieben?< Mündlichkeil in mittelalterlichen
Texten als direkter Zugang zum Menschen,“ in Homo Medietas. Aufsätze zu Religiosität,
Literatur und Denkformen des Menschen vom Mittelalter bis in die Neuzeit. Festschrift
for Alois Maria Haas zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde and
Niklaus Largier (Bem e\ al.: Peter Lang, 1999), p. 665: „Jedenfalls darf man sich bewußt bleiben,
daß auch in den Texten des deutschen Mittelalters die Reflexe gesprochener Sprache eine
bedeutende Schicht ausmachen, die besonders dann immer wieder hervortritt, wenn es um
einen direkten Zugang zum Menschen geht, um einVerstehen aus unmittelbarer Partnerschaft
heraus … “
9
that has become institutionalized or more official by the application of ‚written
space.‘ 10 Simultanous employment of such different Ievels and qualities of
messages must often have had considerable influence on their efficacy.11
The papers in this volume are the outcome of an international workshop that
was held in February, 2001, at the Department ofMedieval Studies, Central European
University, Budapest. Participants concentrated on problems of the occurrence,
usage, and pattems of the spoken word in written and visual sources of the
Middle Ages. They dealt with the roJe and contents of direct and indirect speech in
textual evidence or in relation to it, such as chronicles, travel descriptions, court
and canonization protocols, sermons, testaments, law-books, literary sources,
drama, etc. They also tried to analyze the function of oral expression in connection
with late medieval images.
The audiovisuality of medieval communication processes12 has proved to be
evident and, thus, important for any kind of further comparative analysis of the
various Ievels of the ‚oral-visual-literate,‘ i.e. multimedia culture of the Middle
Ages. Particular emphasis has to be put on methodological problems, such as the
necessity of interdisciplinary approaches,13 or the question of the extent to which
we are, generally, able to comprehend and to decode the communication systems
of the past.14 Moreover, the medievalist does not come across any types of sources
in which oral communication represents the main concem.15 lnstead, she or he is
confronted, at first glance, with a great variety of ‚casual‘ and ‚marginal‘ evidence.
We would like to thank all the contributors to the workshop and to this
volume. Their cooperation made it possible to publish the results of the meeting in
the same year in which it took place. This can be seen as a rare exception, at least
in the world of the historical disciplines. The head, faculty, staff, and students of
the Department of Medieval Studies of CentTal European University offered
various help and support. Special thanks go to Judith Rasson, the copy editor of
10 This, e.g., could be weil shown in a case study on thc pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela:
Friederike Hassauer, „Schriftlichkeit und Mündlichkeil im Alltag des Pilgers am Beispiel der
Wallfahrt nach Santiago de Compostela,“ in Wallfahrt und Alltag in Mittelalter und früher
Neuzeit, eds. Gerhard Jaritz and Barbara Schuh (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften, 1992), pp. 277-316.
11 Cf. Bob Scribner, „Mündliche Kommunikation und Strategien der Macht in Deutschland im
16. Jahrhundert,“ in Kommunikation und Alltag in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit, ed.
Helmut Hundsbichler (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
1992), pp. 183-197.
12 Wenzel, Hören rmd Sehen, p. 292.
13 Cf. Ursula Schaefer, „Zum Problem der Mündlichkeit,“ in Modernes Miuelalter. Neue Bilder
einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel Verlag,
1994), pp. 374 f.
14 Frijhoff, „Communication et vie quotidienne,“ p. 25: „Sommes-nous encore en mesure de
communiquer avec Ja communication de jadis?“
1􀅄 Michael Richter, Sprache und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter. Untersuchungen zur mündlichen
Kommunikation in England von der Mit te des elften bis zu Beginn des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts
(Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1979), p. 22.
10
this volume, who took particluar care with the texts of the many non-native
speakers fighting with the pitfalls of the English language.
Budapest, Krems, and Constance
December 200 I
Gerhard Jaritz and Michael Richter