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The Jakcs family, which originated from the Szilágyság region, had belonged to the narrow political élite of the Hungarian kingdom between 1382 and 1441. After the middle of the 15th century, however, they definitively dropped from the ranks of the barons. During their presence in the court they had managed to build up a medium-sized landed wealth, which in 1423 consisted of one castle (Hadad [Hodod, Romania]), some 50 to 60 estates in perpetuity, and a further 30–35 by right of pledge. The majority lay around the ancient property of Kusaly (Coșeiu, Romania), in the counties of Közép-Szolnok and Kraszna, and the rest in that of Kraszna. This landed wealth was divided around 1425 between the two principal branches of the family, that is, the descendants of György I (†1415/1416) on the one hand, and those of István I († after 1418) on the other. As we have no comprehensive report about this division, the act itself can only be reconstructed by working backwards from later material after all the surviving charters of the family had been gathered, grouped and filtered. The emerging picture shows that in the case of 28 estates owned in perpetuity and 4 in pledge each settlement was divided by peasant plots, whereas the remaining ones were assigned undivided (and in roughly equal numbers) to one or the other branch. (In the wake of Pál Engel the former type is known as division by plots, while the latter as division by blocks.) The case analysed here nuances the model elaborated by Engel, according to which after 1360 division by plots became exclusively applied at the division of noble estates. It also makes evident the existence of a third type, that of mixed division, which was obviously a combination of the other two. Alongside that of the Jakcs, the division of the Bélteki in 1424 and that of the Dezsőfi of Losonc after 1405 offer examples of the mixed division. Apparently this kind of estate division was only applied in a narrow region (along the river Szamos), and even there perhaps only in the first half of the 15th century. Which among the two elements constituting this type of division was applied depended not on the time when the settlement in question was acquired, nor on the right by which it was held; nor, indeed, can any relationship be observed, at least directly, with the population numbers. On the other hand, a strong correlation exists with the ethnic-legal qualification of any given settlement, which was then strictly taken into account; namely, it appears that in all three cases listed above, the settlements of a dominantly Hungarian character were always divided by plots, while the Romanian and Ruthenian ones were allotted to either of the branches in blocks. The underlying reason may have been that the Hungarian villages were more stable, in average three times more populous than the others, and the Hungarian tenants roughly twice as profitable as the non-Hungarian villagers, and thus a more differentiated approach was needed to make division equitable.
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The fragment we are editing here for the first time is a specimen of a new genre of Old Uygur literature. It is a memorandum or an account on the early years of the West Uygur Kingdom of Qočo. The leaf is the 22nd of an ötüg that contains a vivid text changing between prose and verse reflecting the literary heritage of the Old Uygurs. Supposing that the work was written during the Yuan period (13th to 14th centuries) we have to admit that it is an ambitious work of historical retelling political, military, and cultural events that took place at least two centuries before. Since the 62 lines are completely preserved, this text presents a new valuable source for further studies on Old Uygur.
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The purchase, exchange, mortgage, alienation and bequest of real estate, as well as their offer to ecclesiastical institutions as pious donation was a general phenomenon in late medieval Hungarian market towns. Free disposition of various pieces of property – plots, houses, arable, mills, pasture, and before all vineyards – was an everyday and widely accepted occurrence. Supervision of real estate trade was a basic duty of the town council, a task it discharged on the basis of the town’s own customary law. It was the same body which put such matters to writing, and, although the ensuing real estate contracts were meant to have a limited, local degree of authenticity, practice proves that their legal binding force was in fact acknowledged by extensive social groups, both local and outsider. The present study explores the content of this customary law and its practical application in the market towns of northeastern Hungary in the late middle ages. Some of the legal institutions applied in such transactions were known throughout the country, and can thus be regarded as parts of national (noble) law. As examples can be cited the procedure employed at depositions, standing as guarantee, frivolous prosecution, or the taking into account of the right of pre-emption by kinsmen, but also demonstration by charters or witnesses in lawsuits. Other legal customs, however, were either restricted to certain areas, or otherwise common nationwide, but limited to the peasantry. Such was, for instance, pledging by drinking toast, the previous lodging of the estimated value of a piece of property in case of litigation, or, in the region of the Hegyalja, the sealing of land transactions with a delay of a year and three days, a practice evidently introduced with a view to prevent problems connected to the right of pre-emption. In forming this customary law the peasantry could rely on several legal sources. Part of the consuetudo no doubt filtered down to the local custom of the market towns from national law through the mediation of the literacy pursued by the so-called places of authentication (loca credibilia) and public notaries. Another such source may have been the legal practice of the free royal towns, which resembled parallel practice in the market towns in several points. Moreover, the dispositions of the letter of privilege granted to the town (if there existed one) were also respected. But there also existed procedures which had evidently emerged among the peasantry in the course of past centuries. By the late middle ages these different legal customs had frequently merged in distorted forms, and thus created the various customary laws which were proudly referred to in the charters of local communities (ius, mos, libertas, consuetudo etc.).
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The great Mongolian imperial invasion reached Hungary in the spring of 1241. Béla IV launched into an attack against the enemy from Pest, moving toward the north-east. Near the Sajó river, the Mongolians launched a night time attack against the Hungarian camp, which was deflected first, but the Mongolians were then able to surround the them, so the king himself could barely escape with his life. This event was one of the worst military defeats in Medieval Hungarian history. However, recent research reveals that the cause of the defeat was not the tactical rigidity of the king and his captains, nor their lack of talent, but the superior military technology, discipline, experience and command system of the Mongolians.
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Although the Teutonic Order spent hardly more than a decade in Transylvania (1211– 1225), this period was enough to change decisively contemporary perceptions of them. When king Andrew II of Hungary invited them to his realm, he no doubt hoped earnestly that they would be able to fight off the Cumans with success. The charters issued over the first three years prove that the Order lived up to these expectations. Later, however, and up to 1222, no royal or other document refers to the activities of the Knights, a silence which, compared to the praising tone of the previous charters, seems difficult to explain. From this period, only a papal charter is known, which confirmed former royal grants, and shows that the Knight for some reason thought it necessary to secure the support of the Papcy. In other words, the relationship between the Order and the King of Hungary seems to have broken down by 1218. The reason was apparently the papal decision in 1216 to prohibit the Teutonic Knights, similarly to the Hospitallers and the Templars, to receive conditional grants from lay donators. This questioned both the legal status of the Transylvanian grant and the king’s overlordship. After the prohibition had been repeated in 1220, Andrew II took the Barcaság region from the Knights in 1221, but restored it to them a year later, and even accorded new privileges. At the same time, he prohibited the Knights from minting coins and from recruiting settlers on royal lands. Petitioned by the Order, the Pope exempted the Barcaság from the authority of the bishop of Transylvania, which raised the disapproval of the Hungarian clergy. After the Pope had subjected the Barcaság, and the lands taken from the Cumans, to the ownership of Saint Peter, and the special protection of the Holy See (1224), the Hungarian King feared that the Order would try to establish a state of their own under papal overlordship. Consequently, he drove them out of his realm, where they were regarded as „fire in the lap, a mouse in the bag, a snake in the bosom”. This phrasing repeated verbatim the expression that Pope Innocent III used with regard to the Jews. By referring to the Order, supported by the Papacy, with a phrase applied to the enemies of the Church, the Hungarian court sent a clear message to Rome about its views of papal absolutism.
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According to the literature, the term plebanus referred in the 13–14th century Hungarian Kingdom only to those Catholic priests who were at the head of parishes with a special status, while their unprivileged colleagues were named by other notions (rector ecclesie, sacerdos, presbiter). This local terminology differed from that found in Western Europe, where parish priests were uniformly called rectores ecclesie, while the unofficial term plebanus was used to denote other functions in the church hierarchy (in Italy a kind of dean, in German territories the vicar of a parish priest). This study proposes to investigate this issue in the case of 14th century Transylvania. According to a comprehensive data collection, the notion plebanus was used (inconsistently) on the territory of the noble counties only in the case of some central settlements (Mintiu, Satu Mare, Tăşnad, Dej, Sic, Cluj, Gilău, Florești, Turda, Abrud, Alba Iulia, Deva, etc.), while in highly privileged Terra Saxonum (Königsboden) practically for all parish priests. The territorial distribution supports therefore the hypothesis that plebani were different from the simple parish priests. However, this group of plebaniae was a non-homogeneous one, as its elements were characterized by a combination of privileges of different degrees. Some of them were removed from the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, being directly subordinated to the archbishop of Esztergom (Mintiu, the Deanery of Sibiu and Brasov), others were removed only from archdiaconal jurisdiction (Satu Mare, Cluj), or even less. The priests from the Terra Saxonum and from the Reghin area were entitled to the whole tithe (libera decima), while the other plebani received only the quarta. The communal right to choose the priest wasn’t general either. The higher the degree of these three kinds of privileges, the more consistent the denomination plebanus was. At the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centurythe meaning of the term plebania gradually changed; it began to be applied to all Catholic parishes. This phenomenon spread rapidly (in several decades) from the western parts to the eastern periphery of the diocese.
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Founded by the first Basarab princes, the “Saint Nicholas” Princely Church of Curtea de Argeș is a valuable part of Wallachia’s history due to its exceptional documentary and artistic value. The church is of a Byzantine art influence with its elegant and sober appearance, the cross-in-square plan, as well as its iconography and stylish frescos. This paper is focusing on the scene painted on the walls of the narthex, scene that represents the Consecration of Saint Nicholas as a bishop. The frescos of several monuments of Byzantine art found in the Balkans or Greece are, in part, similar with the scene from Curtea de Argeș; however, their compositions might differ from case to case. The innovative character of the Curtea de Argeș’ fresco consists of presenting the personages attending the consecration of the saint. While, according to the Herminy, this consecration should be attended by three bishops, at Curtea de Argeș the three characters present at the consecration of the saint are two psaltai and a cantor. We suggest that the portraits of the two psaltai are executed after real life personages, i.e. the first Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, Iachint of Vicina (1359-1372) and the Metropolitan Antim, which was consecrated in 1370. They are singing hymns of glory to Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of the Princely Church of Curtea de Argeș. Thus, he painting of the narthex can be dated around 1370-1372, with the consecration scene holding an outstanding documentary value.
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A fragment of a village that perished in 1242 during the Mongol Invasion was uncovered by excavations at the Dunaföldvár–Ló-hegy site (RM 09). The filling of one of the pits (109OBJ, 126 SNR) contained human skeletons and body parts, remains of wood and grains, iron rivets and an iron object, which proved to be an elongated prismatic iron mace head, a rare object in the Carpathian Basin. This weapon type has eastern analogues, especially in Iran, and the similar items found in Hungary can be dated from the time of the Mongol Invasion.
More...Beszámoló a Colloquia Russica konferenciáról (Szepesváralja, 2014. október 16–18.)
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Die Studie überblickt die bisherigen Ergebnisse der Erforschung der Burg in Szeged mittels der Zusammenfassung sowohl der historischen Quellen als auch der früheren archäologischen Beobachtungen. Danach gibt sie die wichtigeren Ergebnisse der im vergangenen Jahrzehnt als geplante Grabung begonnenen Forschungen bekannt und fasst schließlich die bisherigen und aus den neuesten Erkenntnissen zu ziehenden Folgerungen zusammen. Die Freilegung der Burgkirche, die das Rückgrat des Forschungsprogramms bildete, hat grundsätzlich neue Ergebnisse erbracht. Denn es hat sich erwiesen, dass die gotische Kirche irgendwann zwischen dem Ende des 13. und der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts erbaut wurde. Im 15. Jahrhundert wurde sie erheblich umgebaut. An ihrer Südseite wurde eine Seitenkapelle errichtet, deren gotisches Sterngewölbe in der Türkenzeit herabstürzte. Aus den an Ort und Stelle entdeckten Rippensteinen konnte das gotische Gewölbesystem rekonstruiert werden. Vor der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts erfuhr die Kirche noch einen weiteren Umbau und am Anfang des 18. Jahrhunderts wurde sie abgerissen. Der Chor der Kirche reicht unter das im 18. Jahrhundert darauf errichtete Tor der Kasemattenreihe (Maria Theresia-Tor), in dem derzeit das Burgmuseum untergebracht ist, so dass die vollständige Freilegung auf weitere Schwierigkeiten stößt.
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The goal of this study is not to offer a solution for all the details of the particularly complex and controversial problem of the origin of the Székelys. The author discusses and examines in detail three important aspects of the problem and argues against contrary opinions. The first aspect of the problem is that of the origin of the ethnic name Székely. The author states that it cannot have come from the early Hungarian occupation names for "border guard" (speculator, custos), "shooter" and "archer" (sagittarius), but, in agreement with other researchers, compares it to .skl (in the Arabic script), the name of a Volga Bulgarian tribe, and claims that this solution is the strongest one regardless of the etymological difficulties. The second aspect of the problem is the examination of the earliest Székely traditions. The author—responding again to different opinions—concludes that the Székelys did not have either original, or fictional, artificially created traditions connected to Attila or the Huns. Their original traditions were tied to the eastern Aba clan from Khwarezm, and to one of its members, Csaba. In the 13th century, Hungarian chroniclers, especially Anonymus and Simon Kézai, joined this with the Hungarian Hun traditions mostly developed by them—and thus the legend of the Hun origins of the Székelys was created. Then, the problem of this ethnic group joining the Hungarian tribal confederation is discussed, and the author prefers the view that the Székelys joined the Hungarians together with the Kabars around the middle of the 9th century. We know from the writings of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus that the Kabars became military auxiliaries of the Hungarians. They had three tribes and one prince, but they were subordinated to the Hungarian tribal alliance. The Székelys might have been the leading tribe of the Kabars, and the princes of the Aba clan might have emerged from them. In the course of time, the two other Kabar tribes adopted the name "Székely," and thus, during the foundation of the Hungarian state, when the tribal system was dissolved, the Kabar nation continued its life with a different name (Székely) and in an organized way, but their task was the same as earlier: they fulfilled military duties and served as border guards for the Kingdom of Hungary.
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This volume contains the edited texts of the papers presented at the conference "Sălaj (Szilágy) Region and the Wesselényi Family in the 14–17th centuries" held between 7 and 8 September 2012 in Cluj (Kolozsvár). The essays deal with the estate system and the political and economic history of the medieval Sălaj (Szilágy) region (Middle Solnoc/Szolnok and Crasna/Kraszna counties), as well as with the history of the Wesselényi family archives and the early modern history of the Wesselényi family.
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The study discusses the Mongol invasion based on the findings from two sites in the Kiskunság region. The mass graves containing the corpses of the mass murder of two communities uncovered at Kiskunmajsa and on the settlement around the Árpádian Age monastery near Bugac are set against the information contained in contemporaneous written sources in order to examine the latters’ reliability.
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Medieval towns in the Kingdom of Hungary did not exist in isolation: they were bound to other towns, to villages in their county and to the society of the whole country at large by complex economic and familial ties and interests. The connection between towns and county or kingdom can be best examined through their participation in the relevant assemblies, especially those where the towns or burghers were litigated even though their urban rights exempted them from their jurisdiction. Despite the scattered evidence, the presence of town representatives is demonstrable in nationwide assemblies of the Angevin kingdom. While the towns used these assemblies to have their rights confirmed or to acquire new ones, and to petition the king with requests, they also provided opportunities for adjudication between a town and out of town entities. Although towns and their resident burghers were both exempt from the jurisdiction of the county palatine – and, as such, from that of the palatinal assembly – this exemption only pertained to their affairs as burghers. As soon as they entered the ranks of landed nobility through the acquisition of lands out of town, they were no longer entitled to use their exemption in matters relating to these – if they suffered grievances, it was not even in their interest to do so. This means that while assemblies could be used to litigate against them, they were also entitled to appeal for legal remedy in matters concerning the town and its burghers, as well as their county properties.At the same time, palatinal and county assemblies were also used by the municipal governing bodies for securing their prerogatives, specifically their customs exemptions, and for obtaining the official approval of the county (or counties) participating in the given assembly. In addition, they also brought unlawful customs collection cases to court. Although all the surviving evidence is of cases concerning the customs exemption in the given county, it is justifiable to suggest that they took action at these assemblies also in cases where their country-wide customs exemption was violated. In the event of such violations, although they could voice their complaints at country-level assemblies, it is likely that they did so at least in their home county, or, in case of palatinal assembly, in a neighboring county.
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This article highlights some of the challenges the nascent Florentine territorial state faced in the second half of the fourteenth century, after it was visited with the Great Plague of 1348. When mercenaries began to cross the territory, and the ruling class found itself unable to handle this kind of emergency, the exurban population turned to forms of self-defence. These initiatives resemble the coeval ones undertaken by the Tuchins in Normandy or those in Languedoc and southern Piedmont.
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The fragments of a very fragmentary inscribed tombstone depicting an armed knight were found in the one-time Cistercian monastery of Pilis at Pilisszentkereszt (Pest county) during László Gerevich’s excavations (1967–1982). As certain fragments were uncovered in the debris heaped in the shaft of grave no. 59 in the centre of the chapter-house, the tombstone was associated with this grave (L. Gerevich). The man lying in the grave was identified as Robert de Courtenay (†1228), Andrew II’s wife Yolande de Courtenay’s brother, who was elected Byzantine Latin emperor then he was expelled and died at an unknown place (I. Takács). The author reviews the finding circumstances of the fragments and determines from radiocarbon measurements that there could be no direct contact between the late medieval body found in the centrally placed grave no. 59 of the chapter-house and the tombstone. The arguments that were raised to link the tombstone with Robert de Courtenay are not acceptable either: if he was ever buried in the medieval Hungary, his grave could rather be in the Cistercian monastery of Egres (to date Agriş, Romania) where Yolande de Courtenay was also buried. A secular nobleman must have been buried under the Pilis tombstone who could play an important role in the establishment of the monastery in the 13th century and who is called precium comitum (the most eminent of comites) in the very fragmentary inscription. There are no realistic data that would suggest that the pit of a heart burial was beside grave no. 59 in Pilis as it is suggested in the archaeological literature. This feature must have had a different function in the center of the chapter-house (foundation of a lectorium or a judicium).
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