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 THE GOTHIC AGE

N the vast plains of Little Poland, now laid waste by the first Mongolian invasion, the whole civilization of the country was annihilated, the soil left fallow, the cities burnt down and depopulated. The only means to raise the country economically was the introduction of foreign capital and foreign hands for work. German colonization, on a large scale, was begun; lords both temporal and spiritual vied with each other in founding German settlements. The consequence of this important fact was the substitution of money payments for the old system of bartering or exchange. Thus, the old Polish law, with services due to the landlord and tributes paid in natural products, became more and more oppressive, and among both landowners and peasants the tendency prevailed to establish farm rents instead. This dissolution of the old legal relations also led to a somewhat more independent political position of the people at large. Still greater freedom is henceforth enjoyed by the towns, in which tradesmen and artisans settle in large numbers.

By way of Breslau, the Magdeburg municipal law was introduced to Cracow. The second half of the thirteenth century became the era of privileges.

Boleslaus the Modest signed, together with his mother Grzymislawa and his wife Cunegund, the foundation charter of the city of Cracow, at the assembly of Kopernia, on the fifth of June, 1257. By virtue of this charter the burgesses Getko (i.e.) Gideon) Stilwojt, Jacob, sometime justice at Neisse (in Silesia), and Ditmar Wolk, founded a new settlement and were granted large benefits to that end, such as complete administrative autonomy in municipal matters, independent jurisdiction under Magdeburg law—with the provision that final appeals were to be made to Magdeburg itself—and the right of legislation; the sphere of action of the municipal administration being, of course, limited to the territory and the inhabitants of the town.

The charter of 1257 does not, in fact, determine the limits of the town, but from the oldest book of city records preserved, Rh