DEEDS ON FOUNDATION OF VILLAGES UNDER WALLACHIAN LAW IN KALUSH STAROSTY OF HALYCH LAND

Abstract

The objective of the work is to study the process of settlement of the Subcarpathia in the early modern period through the prism of the analysis of documents on the foundation of settlements in the Halych land of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the 16th – 17th centuries. It is about seven foundation deeds for the villages under Wallachian law in Kalush starosty (Yasen, Kamin, Petranka or Nova Berezhnytsia, Ldziane, Kadobna, Mysliv, and Kropyvnyk), the texts of which have not been published anywhere before. The documents were processed based on copies stored in the Manuscripts Department of the Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine. The article is accompanied by the publication of three deeds (for Yasen, Petranka, and Kropyvnyk). The analysis of the texts of the foundation documents makes it possible to assert that the process of foundation of the villages under Wallachian law in the Kalush starosty from the end of the 16th to the end of the 17th century, in general, did not differ from similar processes in the well-researched Przemyśl and Sanok lands. The foundation deed was a documented permission of the starost to found a village for «osadczys» (settlers), who had previously purchased land in uninhabited places. Each document records their names. In new settlements, osadczys became «kniazs», or heads of village communities under Wallachian law. Deeds contain a list of peasants’ tributes to the castle and their obligations to kniazs. The payment of the former and the performance of the latter were to begin after the end of the «tax freedom» period, which in different villages lasted from 2 to 16 years. The kniazs themselves received land plots in new settlements from the starosts (from 2 to 5 lans), the right to collect «osadczyzna» (fees for settling in a new village) and a third of the fines. In contrast to other villages under Wallachian law, there are no mentions of the obligation of kniazs to perform military service in the deeds of the Kalush starosty. More than ten people with different surnames could receive permission to found a village here at the same time (in the Przemyśl and Sanok lands, deeds were generally granted to one person or brothers).