Vármegyei jegyzőkönyv és vármegyei pecsét a középkori Erdélyben?
Was there a County Seal and Protocol in Medieval Transylvania?

Summary/Abstract: This article attempts to answer the question regarding the existence and usage of county protocol and county seal in medieval Transylvania. In 1547, Mihály Damokos of Cernatu de Jos/Alsócsernáton, the supposed descendant on the mother’s line of László Bogáti, presented the transcript resuming the contents of an undated document which, allegedly, had been copied by the officials of Turda/Torda county from their protocols in the year 1494, at the request of the Transylvanian voivodes Ladislas Losonci and Bartholomew Drágfi . Data referring to the conveyance of the estates mentioned in the transcript do not appear in any other medieval documents; the transcript is undated and does not mention the names of the issuers but contains a number of typical diplomatic formulae. The sixteenth-century charter which preserved all these earlier documents is not authenticated with a seal. Except for this questionable case, Transylvanian county protocols from this period are not known. Reliable data confirming the keeping of such protocols can be produced only from the second half of the sixteenth century. The original seal of Hunedoara/Hunyad County, allegedly from 1490, is missing at present and it does not appear on any county documents issued before 1542. The impression of this seal is known from nineteenth-century collections of seal impressions and drawings; based on the stylistic features appearing on these drawings and seal impressions, the seal is not from the medieval period.

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