part two
Among other Bolesławiec chroniclers, Jan G. Bergemann, who also drew extensively on Mateusz Ruthard’s 1630 manuscript, states outright in his extensive three-part chronicle from 1829, without mentioning Holstein at all, that in 1190 Bolesław Wysoki granted the existing village town rights and gave this new town the right to have its own authorities, although fully dependent on the castellan. He even names the first mayor appointed (!) by the castellan, a certain Mikołaj Smotila. He further states that this dependence continued until 1226, when, according to him, Duke Henryk Brodaty granted the town German or Magdeburg law and judicial authority over the free roads within a mile of the town; exempted it from fees on bread, meat and shoemakers’ stalls and bathhouses; granted the mile right over craftsmen, free hunting within a mile of the town, fees from minor complaints, a toll for crossing the Bolesławiec Warta and the Bóbr, and also permitted free elections of the town council (B.I 38–39; III 7)"'. In view, however, of the contents of the previously mentioned document of Henryk Brodaty dated 2 November 1233, Bergemann’s information that Bolesławiec obtained German town law in 1226 is certainly untrue.
Naso in 1667 and Fechner in 1787, probably following Holstein, whose account they did not fully understand, or else Ruthard, merely report that the town was founded in 1190.
Dr Wernicke, meanwhile, first points out that in Chronica principum Poloniae in Script. r Sil. l.99 Bolesław Wysoki is mentioned only as the founder of Wleń and Legnica (W.5), and, ignoring Bergemann’s information about the granting of town rights in 1226, doubts that the town existed in the legal sense as early as around 1190, although he does not deny it; instead, he believes that it may have been one around 1251. He argues that the creation of a town as such, that is, in the legal sense, was determined by a specific legal act—a ruler’s document granting a settlement town rights. Only such an act liberated the inhabitants, created a class of free people, an intermediate class between the ruler and barons (lords) on the one hand and unfree people on the other: the class of townspeople (cives). He admits, however, that he does not know what the concept of a town meant in Polish relations (W.62), and although he does not state this directly, it may be concluded from this observation that he was familiar with the idea that Bolesławiec could have been a de facto town under Polish law (oppidum in jure Polonicum). And rightly so, because although there were generally few towns in Poland at that time, significant population centres nevertheless fulfilled this role, including those in Kraków, Gniezno, Kruszwica, Ciecz, Głogów, Opole and finally Wrocław, which formally obtained town rights according to the Magdeburg model only in 1229, or even 1242, yet was already the second-largest Polish town after Kraków. He also writes that the town’s steady development itself led to the restriction and removal of the hereditary vogt’s authority in favour of the council, meaning that the town arose spontaneously and not necessarily through the formal granting of town rights (W. 5 and 82). Authority over such towns, however, even if they developed their own self-government, was undoubtedly exercised by the castellan as the representative of the universal, unlimited ducal authority, just as Bergemann described the situation up to 1226. It should be added here that in Polish historiography Bolesławiec is listed among the pre-charter towns.
To some extent, light is shed on this matter by a record cited by Wernicke (W. 7) in a book of privileges from the sixteenth century, still surviving in fragments in his time. It states that in 1437—probably in connection with Emperor Zygmunt Luksemburski’s order of 1436 that, following disturbances caused by the war with the Hussites, people should return to their places of residence, cultivate their land and resume their former activities (see B.III,38; incidentally, this also shows that during the period of Czech suzerainty, and in any event at that time, Legnica was the seat of the supreme authority over Bolesławiec)—four former town scribes from Bolesławiec appeared before the council in Legnica. The oldest of them had held that office in 1397. Seeking to have the lost privilege re-created, they testified under oath that their ancestors had possessed the right to free hunting and free fishing along both banks of the Bóbr since the town’s “elevation”, granted to them by Duke Bolesław, and that this privilege had been confirmed to them by Duke Bolko Świdnicki (d. 1368). These testimonies were confirmed on 17 November 1437 by the town scribe in Jawor, Mikołaj Schaffer, then aged 60, a native of Bolesławiec who had previously held the same office there. According to Wernicke (W. 63), the statements of these scribes could refer only to the second Bolesław of that name, to whom Bolesławiec belonged in 1244–1252 and 1270–1278.
The event described should therefore be associated with the thesis that the town was chartered under German law sometime between 1245 and 1251 and with Bolesław II Rogatka. Bergemann may, following Ruthard, have made a slip of the pen (lapsus calami), giving, for example, 1226 instead of 1246. On the other hand, the year 1246 is contradicted by the fact that the wave of “elevations” of existing Silesian towns to German law, during the reign of Henryk I, had passed much earlier: Złotoryja obtained this law in 1211; Środa Śląska, whose municipal self-government, organised under Środa law, served as a model for other towns, in 1214; Ścinawa in 1215; Lwówek in 1217; Wrocław—in Wernicke’s view—in 1229; and Oława in 1234, not to mention nearby Nowogrodziec (W. 7). Bolesławiec was probably no less important a town than Nowogrodziec or Lwówek, since around 1154 the stronghold belonged to the most important in the country (B.111,5), while these two settlements probably did not yet exist as such at all, and it was already of great importance as a town during the turbulent years of Rogatka’s reign. These relations are best characterised by Konrad’s description of Nowogrodziec in a document dated 19 June 1265 as being located near Bolesławiec (situm iuxta Boleslauech). And although the date of 1251, given by the Orgelbrand Encyclopaedia and the New Universal Encyclopaedia of PWN and accepted as genuine, falls within the period indicated above, its authenticity is doubtful, at least because it is so late compared with the others. These doubts are deepened by the contents of the original document from September 1251 cited above, issued by Bolesław Rogatka, in which Bolesławiec appears as a civitas, with the continuity of its existence as such implied. It is therefore no wonder that the local chroniclers know nothing at all about the town being granted town rights in 1251—this most probably never happened.
to be continued.
- Johann G. Bergemann, Chronik der Stadt Bunzlau, Bolesławiec 1829
- abbreviation: (B) – Bergemann; the part and separately paginated sections of the book as in
note ad 5
- Efraim Ignacy Naso, Phoenix R.edivivus Ducatum Svidniccnsis, Javrowiensis, Wrocław 1607
- Christian G. Fechner, Die Geschichte der Stadt Bunzlau, Bolesławiec 17S7
- Chronicle of the Polish Dukes
- WBP (Great Universal Encyclopaedia of PWN, Warsaw 1966), vol. 7, p. 255
- Maria Bogucka, Henryk Samsonowicz, Dzieje miast i mieszczaństwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowej, Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków–Gdańsk–Łódź, ZN im. Ossolińskich Wydawnictwo, 1986, p. 28