230 M1ASTO
enjoyed slightly different privileges. Elsewhere they were taken merely as the
commercial branch of the guild system. They owed their origins to the much
valued Right of Storage which made the fortunes of so many medieval towns;
but their cherished monopoly only lost its value when the ancient commercial
regulations fell into disuse.^6
Political life within the cities centred on efforts to check the arbitrary designs
of the City Council. In the old days the City Council had itself acted as a demo-
cratic check on the powers of the sovereign's representative, the Wojt; and
Polish cities had passed through that same classical phase, first evident in
medieval Italy, where the Popolo confronted the Podesta. In Poland, however,
the supremacy of the Wojt was short-lived, and the Council was able to estab-
lish its control over the judicial and executive, as well as the legislative, organs
of self-government. In Cracow, for example, the royal Wojt lost his influence
after the revolt of 1320, when Lokietek was happy enough to deprive his rep-
resentative of the means for further insubordination. Henceforth, the appoint-
ment of the Wojt passed within the purview of the Council, and the prerogatives
of the Magistrates' Bench were merged within those of the Councillors. In con-
sequence, the president of the City Council - the Burgermeister or Burmistrz
(Mayor) - assumed the dominant position formerly wielded by the Wojt. What
is more, the patrician families who made their fortunes in the Jagiellonian
period tended to turn their seats on the City Council into hereditary offices, and
to manage all elections and appointments in the City through the devious chan-
nels of patronage and nepotism. By the sixteenth century, they had lost all pre-
tence of their democratic origins and formed the core of the elitist, oligarchic
establishment. In this situation in each of the cities the Guilds began to agitate
against the Council in the name of the people, just as two hundred years earlier
the Council had once agitated against the Wojt. The resolution of this constitu-
tional struggle differed in every particular case; and in most of the private cities
the powers of the patron, whether magnate or Bishop, were destined to reign
supreme irrespective of the governmental forms adopted. In the great royal
cities, however, the sixteenth century witnessed the evolution of an elaborate
system of municipal autonomy that lasted almost until the end of the Republic.
In Cracow, the principal organ of communal control was the
Quadragintaviratus the 'Group of Forty Men' which first appeared in 1548.
Elected by the Guilds and Confraternities from amongst their own Elders, it was
the outcome of almost three decades of litigation in the royal courts, where the
citizens had complained of the Council's arbitrary proceedings, especially in
matters of finance. Henceforth the Forty Men met with the Council to form the
joint Colloquium or 'City Meeting' at which all new legislation was discussed.
Their representatives audited the accounts of the Lonberia or 'City Treasury',
and their chairman, the Tribunas Plebis or 'People's Tribune' signed all import-
ant documents in the company of the Mayor. The Council retained considerable
powers of discretion in the executive sphere, and supervised the work of all the
City Offices. The twenty-four life-tenured councillors controlled the machinery