On the Place of Zhovkva and its Surroundings: the Documents on the History of the Estate of Wysocki & Żółkiewski Families in Lviv Land in the 15th–16th Centuries (Part 1)

The purpose of the work is to supplement the knowledge about the formation of noble estates in the Ruthenian voivodeship, since the late Middle Ages through the prism of historical geography. The research methodology is based on historical-critical, comparative (they were used in the analysis and comparison of original documents with their copies, which made it possible to identify signifi cant diff erences in the texts) and historical-geographical methods (to localize the proper names of geographical objects, listed in the acts). The scientifi c novelty of the research is to analyze the documents (including an Act, that was not previously published in a full), which established the boundaries of Jan Wysocki's estate on the northwestern edge of Lviv land with its nearest neighbors: the private property of Jan Kulikowski (the demarcation in 1487) and the Yavoriv starosty (the deed of sale of crown domain to Piotr Szamotulski in 1456 with a text fragment, added in the 16th or 17th century). The documents were found in the form of copies in the Lviv castle court books and in the form of extracts from the same books. They are stored in the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine in Lviv. The prospect of further research lies in the introduction into scientifi c circulation of the documents on the history of Ukrainian lands of the late Middle Ages and early modern times, in which the geographical nomenclature is recorded, with its further localization in space. Conclusions. Despite the fact, that the fi rst (the demarcation) and the second (the deed of sale of the land) documents were concluded for diff erent purposes, they both contain valuable information about the lands, owned by the above-mentioned persons (or land, they were going to own). Both in the fi rst and in the second document, this information is recorded in the form of an extensive list of microtoponyms, which in the Middle Ages and early modern times served as landmarks, when establishing boundaries of land holdings. The degree of importance of this information is shown by the fact, that in late copies of such acts we fi nd large fragments of the text with geographical nomenclature, that is absent in the original. Most likely, such insertions in the text were to serve as an additional «argument» for clarifying the ownership of a particular territory in the future.