THE VICISSITUDES OF URBAN LIFE 233
electors to the unenfranchised plebs was even more restricted than in the case of
the Christian burghers.^9 (See Diagram H.)
In legal and constitutional matters, the older cities frequently guided the
progress of more recent corporations. Just as Breslau imported the 'German
Law' from Magdeburg, so Cracow imported it from Breslau, and Lwow from
Cracow. The charters of Chelmno (Kulm) in Royal Prussia and of Neumarkt
(Sroda Slaska) in Silesia served as local models by which later charters were
drafted. The judgements of the older, superior courts, known as urteil or ortyle,
served as precedents for the guidance of inferior ones. In the sixteenth century,
Cracow's Quadragintavirat system was exported to several other cities, notably
in 1577 to Lwow. It reappeared elsewhere in numerous variations such as 'the
Twenty', 'the Sixteen', or 'the Eleven', not to mention 'the Hundred' of Danzig's
Rechtstadt.
The multinational character of the Polish cities in the past is a fact which
official Polish historians of today often neglect, if they do not categorically deny.
Yet the contention that the main cities of Poland-Lithuania were always pre-
dominantly Polish is as absurd as the older prejudice which preferred to see them
all as essentially German. In reality, the ethnic composition of urban society in
Poland-Lithuania was exceedingly complicated, and was in constant flux. The
subject is full of surprises. It is incontestable, of course, that the cities of Silesia
and of the Baltic Coast, especially Breslau, Stettin, and Danzig were overwhelm-
ingly German from the thirteenth century onwards. Yet it is curious to find that
the cities of medieval Malopolska, too, were largely German in character, whilst
the cities of Wielkopolska, which were nearer to Germany, were largely Polish.
In the fourteenth century, not only 'Krakau' but equally Bochnia, Tarnow,
Wieliczka, Sandez (Sacz), Sandomierz, Lublin, Przemysl, and even Lwow, were
settled by Germans, whilst Poznan and Bydgoszcz stayed more in the hands of
Poles. In the sixteenth century, in contrast, when Cracow was turning rapidly
towards Polish culture, Poznan was strongly influenced by the Lutheran
Reformation and took its first steps towards Germanization. In the 1530s the
Sunday services in St. Mary's Church in Cracow were in Polish in the morning
and German in the afternoon. German remained the official language of the
Cracovian courts until the year 1600. In Wilno at that time, representatives of the
four 'nations' - Lithuanians, Poles, Ruthenes, and Germans - took turns as head
of the guilds. In Lwow restriction of citizenship to Roman Catholics encouraged
assimilation into Polish culture. There, the Armenian community enjoyed the
same autonomy as the Jews. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, impor-
tant changes occurred when Polish noblemen deliberately sought to attract
German urban settlers into new textile towns. Cities such as Rawicz (1638),
Szlichtingtowo, and Szamocyn (Pfaffendorf) were expressly incorporated for
this purpose. As an over-all generalization, it is probably true to say that the
German element predominated in the cities of the Republic's western regions
(where the rural population was largely Polish), whilst the Polish element pre-
dominated in the cities of those eastern and southern regions where the rural