170 SZLACHTA
Nevertheless, the economic divisions of the Nobility largely reflected their
possession of land. There was no formal economic hierarchy; but by counting a
man's estates it was easy to see whether he should be classed as prosperous or
poor-whether, in the language of the time, he was ttusty (fat) or chudy (lean).^16
(See Diagram J.)
At the top of the league, a score of families possessed properties which were
numbered in hundreds and thousands. The same families also tended to control
the key offices of state, and hence to be strongly represented in the Senate. They
were 'great' both in wealth and in influence. The individual magnat or 'mag-
nate' possessed no special rights or privileges. But the group as a whole, the
magnateria, wielded power and influence on a scale quite disproportionate to
their numbers.
In contrast to them, the average nobleman was fortunate if he possessed two
or three properties. Yet if his land was his own, and he had the serfs to work it,
he owed his living to no one. He was possessionatus (propertied) and dominus,
Pan Sobie—a 'lord unto himself. Contemporaries classed him among the
szlachta zamoina or 'nobility with means'. Some historians prefer the term
'middle nobility' - which now plays a prominent part in theories about society
and politics in the modern period. The lower limit of their holdings has been put
at zo lan. In the era of the Republic, they accounted for between one-third and
two-fifths of the noble estate as a whole.
At the bottom of the league, lay the most numerous element of all, the
seething mass of petty nobility without means. One such group, the szlachta
czqstkowa (fragmentary nobles) lived on fragments of larger estates which had
been broken up for sale or tenancy. They would generally share the serfs and
material resources of the original estate with their neighbours. Many, as
szlachta czynszowa (rent-paying nobles), were tenants, or leaseholders, of their
more prosperous brothers. Another group, the szlachta zagrodowa (noble
smallholders), possessed land but no serfs, and had to work their own plot or
'zagroda' for themselves. Economically they were indistinguishable from the
peasantry. Some of these, the szlachta zasciankowa (nobles behind-the-wall),
lived in exclusive noble villages, whose perimeter wall protected them from the
ignoble world around. But the group which with time became by far the most
numerous, the holota or 'rabble', possessed neither land nor serfs. They worked
as tenant farmers, as labourers, as domestics, as soldiers; or else, as szlachta
brukowa (street nobility), were reduced to eking out a penurious living in the
towns.
The magnates owed the accumulation of their landed estates to a variety of
circumstances. The clerical magnates - 17 bishops, 2 archbishops, and a hand-
ful of abbots — stepped, on appointment, into fortunes which had been growing
ever since the foundation of the Church in AD IOOO. By 1512, the Archbishop of
Gniezno possessed 292 villages and 13 towns; the Bishop of Cracow 230 villages
and 13 towns, at a time when no secular magnate possessed more than 30 such
properties. In Lithuania, the Bishopric of Wilno, which was founded after the