Ostriv was a market town by 1521, 19 years before Ternopil was founded

The entry, as printed

Propter servitia Stanislai Spinek de Banthkow, capitanei Leloviensis et Buscensis, in oppido eius haereditario Ostrow terrae Haliciensis et districtus Trebowliensis, duo fora annualia pro Ioannis Baptistae (24 iun.) et Martini (11 nov.) festis et septimanale feriis quintis singulis instituuntur.

In English

For the services of Stanisław Spinek of Banthkow, starost of Lelów and Busk, two annual fairs, on the feasts of St John the Baptist (24 June) and St Martin (11 November), and a weekly market every Thursday are established in his hereditary town of Ostrów in the Halych land and Terebovlia district.

A town older than the city

Today Ostriv is a village on the Seret river, a few kilometres from Ternopil. But when Ternopil was laid out in 1540 on “an empty place called Sopilche”, Ostriv already had something Ternopil did not: a royal privilege for fairs and a weekly market. In other words, it was a town.

The reference books do not know this. Wikipedia and the regional encyclopedia say Ostriv was first mentioned in 1431 and became a town in 1581, under Mikołaj Baworowski. We do not dispute the first mention. But Ostriv was already called a town in November 1521, sixty years earlier.

The books of the royal chancery

Every charter a Polish king issued, whether a privilege, a permission or a grant, was copied by his chancery into books. They are known as the Crown Register, the Metryka Koronna. The books survive and are kept in Warsaw, but for a researcher they are hundreds of thick volumes of handwritten Latin.

In the early 20th century the historian Teodor Wierzbowski set out to make them usable. For each charter he printed a short Latin summary: who gave what to whom, where and when, with the number of the book and folio where the full text lies. Part IV of his edition covers the reign of Sigismund the Old, 1507 to 1548. Our record stands there, among the documents of 1521.

The Diet at Piotrków, 11 November 1521

In the autumn of 1521 the king was at the Diet in Piotrków. On St Martin's Day, 11 November, the chancery entered a privilege granted “for the services of Stanisław Spinek of Banthkow, starost of Lelów and Busk”. In his hereditary town of Ostrów, in the Halych land and Terebovlia district, the king established two fairs a year, on St John the Baptist's Day, 24 June, and on St Martin's Day, 11 November, and a market every Thursday.

Lelów and Busk, where Spinek was starost, were royal holdings far from the Seret. Ostriv was his own, hereditary estate. How the Spinek family came to hold it, and for how long, the record does not say, and the reference books do not mention this owner at all.

What a fair meant

Fairs and a weekly market were what set a town apart from a village. Only the king could grant the right to hold them, and for an owner it had real value: merchants and peasants came in from the surrounding country, tolls were collected on trade, craftsmen and innkeepers settled in the town. That is why the record calls Ostriv not a “villa”, a village, but an “oppidum”, a town.

The fair of St John the Baptist fell on Midsummer, Kupala in the Ukrainian calendar, and St Martin's in late autumn, after the harvest. So twice a year, in summer and in autumn, Ostriv became the place the whole district came to.

How we know it is our Ostriv

There were dozens of places called Ostrów in old Poland, so the name alone proves nothing. But the clerk named the district: Terebovlia, which then took in the lands around the future Ternopil.

In the 1564 tax register of Terebovlia district there is only one Ostrów: ten peasant households and two craftsmen, listed straight after Berezovytsia. The Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland places Ostrów on the Seret, 4 km south of Ternopil, between Velyka Berezovytsia, Petrykiv, Myshkovychi and Velyka Luka. There is no other Ostrów in that district.

What we still do not know

Whether Ostriv remained a town without a break from 1521 to 1581, or whether Baworowski's privilege of 1581 revived a market that had lapsed, cannot yet be said. The craftsmen in the 1564 register suggest some town life went on.

Also open is who Stanisław Spinek was, and how Ostriv passed from him to the Baworowskis. The answer probably lies in the Halych court books and the royal surveys of the 16th century, and that is where the search goes next.

Sources

• Matricularum Regni Poloniae summaria, part IV, vol. 1 (1507–1548), ed. T. Wierzbowski (Warsaw, 1910), p. 225, no. 3940 (11.11.1521; Crown Register, book 37, fol. 278).
• A. Jabłonowski, Źródła dziejowe, vol. XVIII, part 1 (Warsaw, 1902), p. 100: the 1564 register of Terebovlia district.
• Słownik geograficzny Królestwa Polskiego, vol. VII (Warsaw, 1886), pp. 707–708, entry “Ostrów”.

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