By the grace of God, we, Stephen, voivode and hospodar of the land of Moldavia, openly make known with this letter *) to everyone who looks at him or hears him during the celebration that the townspeople of Lviv stood before us and brought a letter to Saint. in memory of my father, Aleksander Voivode, about tolls. And we have confirmed all these things and have given them this letter of ours, so that they may come to our land with what they want to sell and with what they want to buy. And we have established for them the tolls they are to pay in our land and have reduced them as follows: First of all, they are to pay the main toll at the Suceava warehouse for cloth, for each fine of the same, three groszy.
Further word for word as in the document of Prince Alexander the Good, printed above no. *II. up to the final formula, which in this document reads as follows:
And the witnesses of this were: Mr. Wyłcza, Mr. Kyr'sta, Mr. Kutczyn, the courtier, Mr. Izaak, Mr. Bohdan, the table-keeper *), Mr. Alb, the czech-keeper. And to confirm all this, we ordered our faithful logothet, Mr. Niegoj, to issue this letter and attach our seal to him. The deacon Iwancza wrote in Suceava, in the summer of G942, in the month of March, on the 18th day.
') Prince Stephen, son of Alexander the Good, began his reign in 1432 and exercised it according to the Chronicles of the Moldavian land (AiTonicini<łf UTkpii" MoA^OKii', nSKAiKdTt a« A\. Kor'KAHiM(aHS) vol. I, pag. 108 — 111, for the first two years until February 1434 jointly with his brother Iliaș; however, he later removed him and for the next three years, until March 1437, reigned autocratically; then again together with Iliaș, until March 1444; and finally once more autocratically (according to Engel IV. 2. 126) until the end of 1447.
'-) I) This document is in fact a literal repetition of the grant granted by Prince Alexander in 1407. We are printing it once again in its entirety because we have noticed in it, firstly, important grammatical and linguistic peculiarities which cannot by any means be indifferent to a philologist, and secondly, because we know that the loss of the original of the privilege granted by Prince Alexander could give rise to various paleographic doubts, which only of this literal copy can be resolved more or less convincingly.
[h] a* Oifrop'K, some people understand these words as synonyms defining each other and translate them (Ob. e.g. Hażdeua Archiva istorica I. 13) as follows: And whoever takes you to Bystrica in Hungary pays in Suceava, etc. But considering things well, it seems that this interpretation is not entirely correct. It is difficult to suppose that the issuer of the document, which only said that the export of cloth to Hungary and the Basarabians is not subject to any restrictions: Therefore, there is nothing left but to insert the conjunction h between the words: a«' KHCTpHitH and a* OyropTi, and understand this place as follows: And whoever takes his cloth to Bystrzyca and to Hungary in general, pays in Suceava, etc. And the fact that this place was already understood in this way is best evidenced by the privileges of princes Peter (under No. *VII) and Stephen the Great (under No. *VIII), in which we read literally: Jl kto H,«fT[k] iiOKtBTH coyKHC A'? Khctphi;h H A* Ov'rop'kira who will carry the cloth to Bystrzyca and Hungary. Similarly, the phrase: fi koah ca KcpoTHTk Hcf-k] Ot/ropii^a when returning from Hungary, which is repeated in all documents of this family, proves that the senders had in mind not only Bystrzyca, but also Hungary in general. And although we very much doubt that Lviv merchants, who had much more convenient and shorter roads (Ob. above all Szaraniewicza: Ancient Russian-Hungarian roads through the Carpathians, CrapiiHuń nyrn pycKO-yropcKil Mepe3'b Kapiiarti, Lviv, 18(59), with permission to go to Hungary to Moldova and Bystrzyca they used it very often, but it was not impossible. Because once they went to Moldova and from there to Bystrzyca, didn't it matter to them to get from Bystrzyca to northern Hungary and from there to the Beskids return to Lviv? Or, let's say, they took the shortest route to Hungary?
as far as Bystrzyca, could they not, if they had not yet sold the goods confiscated and sold, from Bystrzyca all the way to Moldova and only then, to Suceava and Chernivtsi, return to Lviv?
*) This document is written on parchment TC/s centimeters wide and 53 centimeters high: the handwriting is small, but always larger than in subsequent documents and more elongated, and the color of the ink is brownish-yellowish; large state seal on red wax, surrounded by the following inscription: nCiHflTL IG). 0T6t^!^Nn, B06FiQA1i H POGnO- AflP^B 36MA1i MOAAnilGKOH.