Genealogy of the Lviv Elite Families in the Late Middle Ages: The Question of the Change of Urban Elites
Genealogy of the Lviv Elite Families in the Late Middle Ages: The Question of the Change of Urban Elites

Summary/Abstract: Lviv has always belonged to the category of great medieval cities, so we can apply the same theories of exchange elite as in cities such as Kraków, Vilnius, Poznań, and Gdansk. However, compared to these centers, Lviv shows particular social traits. The period analyzed in this study can be divided into two time periods: the first covers the fourteenth century and the first half of the fifteenth century, when the mobility of the group of Lviv officials is very high, and the second spans from the last decades of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the combination of economic and political factors led to the formation of a new model of elite group. The number of councilors expanded to twelve (rather than six) and membership became lifelong. Such re-organization made the council of Lviv a closed oligarchic institution. Tracing various cases of family development in Lviv, we can understand that there are several most common scenarios.

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