Privilege was given to Kamiаnets City by Princes Yuri (George) and Alexander Koriatovych in 1374: Lists and Interpretations

Abstract

The privilege which was given to Kamianets city in Podillia by Princes Yuriy (George) and Alexander Koriatovych in 1374 is quite famous in the scientific community. It is believed that due to this privilege Kamianets received Magdeburg Law. Up to now it only has been preserved in a few lists which were studied in detail by Yu. Sitsinskyi in his work "Podillia under the Rule of Lithuania". According to him two lists were kept in Kamianets Historical and Archaeological Museum: one in the diploma of King August III dated June 17, 1735, the second one in the diploma of King Stanislaw Augustus dated May 29, 1765. Besides in the State Archives of Khmelnytskyi Oblast we managed to come across several lists of this document. We are talking about the fund no. 120 "Podillia Chief Court" which has 4043 units of storage for the period 1796–1831 years. Until 2003 it was stored in Kamianets-Podilskyі City Archive. After the fire which occurred in April 2003 all materials were transported to the State Archives of Khmelnytskyi Oblast and restored. The texts of this privilege are contained in the following cases: 1) Inventory 1, case 3352: The case of lands belonging to the city of Kamianets. Volume 1. It was begun in 1537. It was completed in 1730. It had 240 sheets; 2) Inventory 1, case 1631: concerning the boundaries of Kamianets-Podilskyi city with adjacent possessions and state settlements. Volume 1: It was begun on November, 24 1799. It was completed on June, 11 1800. It had 130 sheets. In the first case we have only one version of the privilege in Polish (no. 1). The document was restored, glued of two parts with an offset of one line. The privilege is dated November 7, 1374. We do not know anything about this list at the moment. In the second case four lists were preserved. Polish versions are on sheets of 20–20 versus (no. 2) and 56–57 versus (no. 3) which had been dated November 7, 1374 and two translations into Russian are on sheets 6–6 versus. (no. 4) 21–22 versus (no. 5) with similar dating. Exactly this case is very interesting since this document had been used in the lawsuit concerning land demarcation in Kamianets-Podilskyi after the capture of Podillia by the Russian Empire in 1793. At the end of the article an academic version of the text privilege in Polish as well as a Russian translation of these archival cases are published.