Elemente de viață materială într-un castel de la frontiera de vest a Transilvaniei: Aghireșu la mijlocul secolului al XVII-lea
Material life in a castle on the western border of Transylvania: Aghireșu in the middle of the seventeenth century

Summary/Abstract: As many other Transylvanian castles, Aghireșu from the county of Cluj (Kolozs) was built in the second half of the 16th century. During the Renaissance, the Transylvanian castles lost their initial function, as fortifications, and, by the end of the 17th century, they became noble residences. As the Hungarian-Ottoman frontier fluctuated during the 17th century, noble castles, such as Valcău, Gilău or Arghierșu came to be under direct Ottoman threat. Two extant inventories of the Aghireșu castle, the first from 1644 and the second from 1699, provide us with an insight into the architectural changes of the castle and into his role as noble residence in early modern Principality of Transylvania. The present study investigates the history of the castle and that of the noble family Csáky. The 1699 inventory was published half a century ago, but the earlier one, from 1644, is now edited for the first time. The 1644 inventory, published in the appendix of this article, was made by the deputies ofthe Cluj convent. Shortly before the castle had changed hands from the Csáky family to the count Gabriel Illésházy, whose possessions were investigated by the Transylvanian treasury. The 1644 inventory was meticulously made, as it describes every room of the castle and the furniture it contained.

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