For the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the thesis combines the approaches of historical and legal anthropology to study the late medieval and early modern city on the Ruthenian lands of the Crown of Poland in the 14th – the first half of the 17th century. The author has used the cultural-anthropological approach to the study of the past, according to which in the historical study one culture learns about the other, that is, the culture of the present explores the culture of the past. Here, a historian, like an anthropologist, explores an old culture through the prism of thinking categories, representative of his or her time, cultural and historical realities. Cultural markers of every era are always laid down in the texts, and among such written sources, legal ones are of considerable importance. They include the Sachsenspiegel (Saxon Mirror), which was the starting point for the formation of German town law used by most cities and towns in the Kingdom of Poland from the 14th century. The Saxon Mirror reflects various aspects of medieval culture, including the system of symbols and metaphors used by contemporary burghers. Although the manuscripts of the Sachsenspiegel reached Poland as early as in the 14th century, its content became known to the townsfolk largely due to the legal treatises of the 16th and 17th centuries. The first attempt to describe the norms of town law at the national level was made in the so-called Jan Łaski Statute. However, this legal monument was of compilation nature, while the motley and not very clear statement of the norms of German law in it indicates a weak understanding of its features. The most complete and most popular were the norms of this law presented in the treatises of Bartłomiej Groicki, Paweł Szczerbicz, and Paweł Kuszewicz. These texts show not only the law as such or legal ideas of the burghers, but also their understanding of concepts such as the ideal burgher, good man, good and evil, worthy and unworthy professions, morals, beliefs, different age categories, women’s positions, their ideas about the world order and the perfect city, etc. Through the prism of the codes of city law, one can also trace the change of attitude of the burghers towards the written word. These sources reflect the influence of custom and tradition, as well as the ideas of Humanism and the Reformation, on the legal opinions of the burghers.
