Extension:Ex-1.4.3-1
According to a Polish proverb: “The wine is born in Hungary, and it dies in Poland.”[1] After the Ottoman conquest of Venetian Crete in 1669, and the re-conquest of Hungary by the Holy League in 1687, this country remained the only source of wine in Eastern Europe. In Poland, Hungarian wine played a very important economic and cultural role, since it was used for Christian and Jewish cultic purposes and as a luxury commodity for the Polish nobility.
The assessment list of the Jewish poll-tax for 1742 records taxes paid by Jewish merchants trading in Hungarian wine. All of them resided in Sub-Carpathian Red Ruthenia (Baligród, Bolekhiv, Lisko, Sanok, Skole and Stryj).[2] One of these merchants, Dov Ber of Bolekhiv (1723-1805) left behind his memoirs written in the second half of the 18th century, which provide rare insight into the personal and business life of the Jewish Sub-Carpathian wine merchant. Thus we learn that the Jewish wine merchants employed an Armenian wine merchant from Kamieniec for tasting their non-kosher wine.[3] Most interesting are his references to the cooperation of Jewish wine merchants with Catholic priests and monks. Thus, when the Jewish wine merchant was arrested in Hungary for paying with forged coins, he was released subsequent to the testimony of Bernardine friars that he had received these coins from them.[4] Dov Ber himself stored his Hungarian wine in the cellars of the Carmelite friars at Lviv,[5] and he also described his personal friendship with the Dean of Lviv, priest Wieniawski.[6]
Before it was sold in taverns, this Hungarian wine had to be stored in special wine cellars for the purpose of taxation, which was called składe winne. The exact location of these wine cellars was prescribed by the local Dietine (sejmik) of Sudova Vishnia. It follows from the resolutions of this Dietine from 1645 to 1693 that all these cellars were located in the lowland region of Red Ruthenia, to the north of the wine merchants’ places of residence in the Sub-Carpathian region. These were: Babice, Bircza, Dobromil, Khyriv, Nowemiasto Bybel, Nowotaniec, Rudki, and Tarnów.[7]
The assessment lists of the Jewish poll-tax for 1742-1747 also record taxes paid by the Jewish tavern-keepers serving Hungarian wine in their taverns. [8] An examination of their locations shows that the Hungarian wine was marketed from these cellars farther to the north - to the districts of Belz (Belz, Lipsko, Sokal), Chełm (Chełm), Lublin (Kazimierz Dolny, Kozienice, Kraśnik, Kurowice, Lubartów, Łuków, Radzyń), and Volhynia (Lutsk, Torhovits'a). Thus, three alternative trade-routes for the marketing of Hungarian wine from Sub-Carpathian Eastern Galicia northward can be deduced: the eastern one via the river Styr to Volhynia, the middle one via the river Bug to Belz and Chełm, and the western one via the rivers San and Vistula to the Lublin district.
The information on the Jewish wine merchants and tavern-keepers serving Hungarian wine derived from the assessment list of the Jewish poll-tax is summarized in the following table.
Table: Jewish Wine Merchants and Tavern-keepers Serving Wine (numbers in annual columns refer to sums of the poll-tax assessed for them in Polish złoty)[9]
| Place | Name | Occupation | 1742 | 1743 | 1746 | 1747 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baligród | merchants bringing wine from Hungary | 396 | ||||
| Boleckiv | merchants bringing wine from Hungary and selling it | 216 | ||||
| Lachman of Lipowice | among them | 108 | ||||
| Lisko | Jonas of Mrzygłod | merchants trading in Hungarian wine | 270 | |||
| Sanok | merchants bringing wine from Hungary | 125 | ||||
| Skole | merchants bringing wine from Hungary | 504 | ||||
| Stryj | merchants bringing wine from Hungary | 144 | ||||
| Belz | serves wine | 597 | ||||
| Chełm | serves wine | 150 | ||||
| Kazimierz Dolny | Szlama and his brother Chaim | from wine | 60 | 200 | ||
| Kozienice | Judka | from wine | 70 | |||
| Kraśnik | Szymon and Abram | from wine | 65 | |||
| Kurowice | Nasyn | doctor of wine | 100 | |||
| Lipsko | Mosiek | from wine | 60 | |||
| Lubartów | Jonas | from wine | 70 | |||
| Berek | from wine | 60 | ||||
| Lutsk | Jankiel and Moszko, Auraszczuk and Peysach, Szmajuk | serve wine | 270 | |||
| Łuków | Lewek | from wine | 60 | |||
| Radzyń | Zalman | from wine | 60 | |||
| Symon | from wine | 20 | ||||
| Mendel | from wine | 50 | ||||
| Sokal | Jew serving wine | 1200 | ||||
| Torhowits'a | Rabbi of Torhowits'a selling wine | 144 | ||||
| Marko with his associate | selling wine | 126 |
- ↑ Roman Rybarski, Handel i polityka handlowa Polski w XVI stuleciu (Poznań: Drukarnia Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 1928), 121.
- ↑ Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych (AGAD), ASW, dz. 84, syg. 32.
- ↑ The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow, 1723–1805, ed. and trans. by Mark Wischnitzer (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 55.
- ↑ The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow, 1723–1805, ed. and trans. by Mark Wischnitzer (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 58-59.
- ↑ The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow, 1723–1805, ed. and trans. by Mark Wischnitzer (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 173.
- ↑ The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow, 1723–1805, ed. and trans. by Mark Wischnitzer (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 1-2, 119-120; see also Judith Kalik, "Economic Relations between the Catholic Church and the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th-18th Centuries,” Gal-ed 23 (2012), 29.
- ↑ Akta grodzkie i ziemskie z czasów Rzeczypospolitej Polski z archiwum tak zwanego bernardyńskiego we Lwowie, ed. Aleksander Stadnicki, Lwów: Towarzystwo Naukowe we Lwówie, 1891), vol. 20, 488, 498, vol. 21 (1911), pp. 147, 279, 397 (Khyriv), vol. 22 (1914), 270 (Dobromil).
- ↑ AGAD, ASW, dz. 84, syg. 32, 33, 36, 37.
- ↑ AGAD, ASW, dz. 84, syg. 32, 33, 36, 37.