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This paper seeks to point out the characteristics of the witch hysteria and the view of witches in the Basque Country, which played an essential role in the cessation of witch-hunts and of burnings at the stake in Spain in 1614. It analyses the contrast between the characteristics of the Basque witch-hunts and those in Transylvania. The paper compares the typical view of witches in Transylvania, especially Cluj-Napoca, from the point of view of the people’s beliefs and of the elite’s demonology, by highlighting the characteristics of the view of witches in the area, the main types of accusations, the motives of the reports and the procedures against witches. By pointing out these characteristics, we can see how the demonistic and vampiristic notion of the view of witches in the Basque Country contributed to the cessation of the witch-hunts, and the circumstances in which witch-hunts intensified in Transylvania at about the same time.
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The testament is first and foremost about the inheritance of estates. The estates at issue are the following: Holics (Slovak: Holič) at the Moravian border, where Bakics had several houses either built or enlarged by himself; Sassin (Hungarian: Sasvár, Slovak: Šaštín); Boboldán (probably Bobót in Hungarian, Bobota in Slovak), and a Moravian village (Napajedla—Czechia). These castles and mansions, of course, included farms, lands, meadows, vineyards, mills, livestock, i.e. cattle.
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The choice of the above address is not accidental. The praedicatum of this Hungarian noble family extinct on female line, indicates that they probably originally did not live in Trencsén. Our renowned genealogists only briefly deal with the family and its members, which is understandable, as there was no successor who could have provided relevant information on the male line. The purpose of this paper is to address this shortcoming of the aforementioned books on the basis of a strange testament, and, at the same time, to analyse and interpret the testament itself.
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Metastasio, the librettist of Mozart’s “Il re pastore” wrote his libretto on the basis of Curtius Rufus and according to the claims of his epoch and royal court of Maria Theresa with due knots. Aminta, mounted the throne by the favour of Alexander the Great, is nobody else as Abdalonymus, mentioned repeatedly by ancient authors. He was bearer of mythic oriental traditions whose figure was transformed to (the invented) Cincinnatus, incarnating the ancient Roman ideals. Recently, the orientalist W. Fauth revealed the far-ramified treasure of this oriental tradition in his wide-ranging study. By its help the classical philologist can establish unexpected coherences between the cosmological relations of the ancient oriental royal symbolics and the phenomena, unexplained so far, of the Greco-Roman culture (descriptions of paradise, Roma quadrata, political motives of the rise of Roman historiography, etc.). As addition to the subject presented itself the contemporary description of the game reserve at Vienna of the Austrian archduke Maximilian (the later Emperor and King) as an attempt to put into practice the antique idea of paradise in modern Europe.
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According to proponents of the “Military Revolution” theory, musketry volley fire was among the military innovations that fundamentally altered early modern field warfare. The origins of European volley fire date back to the 1590s, but no western army, with the possible exception of the Dutch in 1600, was able to use this tactic in action until the 1620s. Furthermore, it has been thus far assumed that the Ottomans failed to adopt this new tactic and thus experienced setbacks in the face of their European adversaries during this period. By utilising hitherto overlooked Ottoman narrative and visual sources, this article first shows that the Janissaries were indeed using volley fire in action in 1605, and possibly before. Secondly, it raises questions about the origins of Ottoman volley fire, which are currently unclear. Overall, the Janissaries' use of this tactic during the Long War not only affects our understanding of Ottoman warfare but also necessitates a reassessment of the patterns of invention and diffusion of military innovations in the early modern period.
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The main purpose of the paper is to present and discuss some Keckermann’s thoughts on history and the art of historiography, expressed in the treatise De natura et proprietatibus historiae commentarius (Hanovie 1610), published posthumously by his student, David Schumann. According to the humanist from Gdańsk, history is not art, science, or discipline, because it does not have own commonplaces (loci communes), regarded as the basis for method. Nevertheless, history plays an important role in teaching of the practical arts such as politics or economy, because it is an inexhaustible source of examples, taken from narratives about the past events to illustrate general rules related to human life and actions. An excellent historian would be only someone who is able to combine searching for the truth with frankness in its telling. Therefore, he is obliged to use a simple style without almost any rhetorical devices. In relation to single events history serves as a tool of description and explication. Thus it provides the necessary illustrative material in the form of examples for the practical disciplines.
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Hans Dernschwam, an agent of the Fugger merchant company at Buda in the first half of the 16th century, wrote in his memories that the Hungarian moneyers used an instrument called draw bench (Zieh-Banck). The draw bench was applied to thinning the metal molds (Zaine) which were handed over to the moneyers. In 1526 the moneyers, returning to Körmöcbánya (today Kremnica, Slovakia), threw the draw bench into the Danube at Esztergom. The reason of this act remained unrecorded. News of the draw bench became known outside Hungary as well. Bertrand Behaim Jr, a chief official of mining and minting at Körmöcbánya – and previously chief master of coinage in Tirol and later in Austria – had the draw bench carried to Hall, close to Innsbruck, where the moneyers of Körmöcbánya presented the new instrument in the course of work. The new instrument also came to the attention of the city of Nuremberg. We know from a letter of Christoph Fürer, a well-to-do patrician, mining entrepreneur and wholesaler from Nuremberg, that with the draw bench used in Hungary, two moneyers could do the work that was performed by 6 to 8 of their colleagues working with the traditional methods. It is, consequently, fairly obvious that it was in fear for their living that the moneyers of Körmöcbánya threw into the Danube the instrument which would have made their work much more productive. They certainly had good reasons to do so, for the description of Dernschwam makes it clear that the application of the draw bench made it possible to produce greater number of better-shaped and cheaper coins than before. The fact that the name of the inventor of the draw bench was not recorded, has given birth to a number of hypotheses. The author of the present study is of the view that the inventor(s) of the instrument should be looked for among the personnel of the Thurzó Fugger mining enterprise. It is known from the researches of Oszkár Paulinyi, that János Thurzó and his son constructed and implemented at Nagybánya (Frauenbach; today Baia Mare, Romania) an instrument which permitted the extraction of water from the mines. This mechanical structure was much more complicated than the draw bench mentioned above. The employees of the Thurzó-Fugger mining company were consequently in possession of the required capital and professional skills to manufacture effective mechanical instruments. While the draw bench ceased to be used in the course of the 16th century, its expansion in Europe took momentum after the first quarter of the 17th century.
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It’s a well-known fact that the court of the Royal Table became the principal royal conciliar court at the second half of the 15th century. The discussions usually took place during the judicial terms (generally four each year), the so-called octaves. The Royal Table of the elected king II. János Szapolyai has been mainly patterned after the medieval Table of the kings. The emerging new state’s characteristics, in particular the fact that it was composed of two slightly different regions (the so-called Partium and Transylvania with three privileged communities, Hungarian noblemen, Saxons and Szeklers) was reflected in the organization and the functioning of the Table. Different court sessions were held for the noblemen from Partium, for the Szeklers and for the noblemen of Transylvania. These octave courts (generally two for each privileged community) at the beginning of the studied period have started on the day of major feasts (Epiphany, St George, Lucae ev., Reminiscere) and from 1571 on the eighth day of these feasts, and they lasted around thirty days. The court sessions took place mostly in Gyulafehérvár (Alba Iulia), Kolozsvár (Cluj) and Székelyvásárhely (Târgu Mureș).
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The main topic of this paper are the borders of Poland in the 16th century. The country’s state and province borders were first delineated by Bernard Wapowski on his 1526 map from (scale 1:1,000,000). While the map is known only from fragments, Gerardus Mercator used Wapowski’s borders in his map of Europe published in 1554. In 1880, Stanisław Smolka proposed elaborating maps of territorial divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 16th century. The first implementation of this program was the Atlas of the Ruthenian Lands of the Crown, elaborated by Aleksander Jabłonowski (to the scale of 1:300,000) and published in 1904. In 1964, a plan to publish a series of maps under the title of ‘Historical atlas of Poland: detailed maps of the 16th century’ was announced by the Institute of History at the Polish Academy of Sciences. The series aims at to cover ethnically Polish lands within the Crown. Out of the planned eight volumes, five were published in the years 1966–2008, and then their content was combined and published in English in 2014. The newest volume to date, published in 2017, concerns Greater Poland. Central large-scale maps (to the scale of 1:250,000) depict all towns and villages that existed in the second half of the 16th century. The maps indicate state borders, borders of voivodeships, lands, districts, and, in relation to lands owned by the Roman Catholic Church, the borders of dioceses, archdeacons and parishes. Settlements and borders of state administration were recreated with the use of extraordinary tax registers called pobor, and the basis for marking church boundaries was the documentation of canonical visitations. Additional maps to the scale 1:500,000 concern the distribution of landed property, with borders marked between various categories of land ownership. Interpolation of settlements belonging to different administrative units and having a different ownership status was used as a method in the reconstruction of borders of territorial units. This is the most detailed study on the shape of borders on historical Poland lands, not only presenting this element of geographical space in the 16th century, but also serving to further our understanding of border shapes in the earlier and later centuries.
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After the secularization of the Catholic ecclesiastical institutions in 1556, a new era had begun in the history of the place of authentication of the Chapter of Transylvania, which resided in Alba Iulia. This period has been characterized by a specific and totally different evolution of this institution, which was no more under the control of the Church. For the purposes of conducting its charter issuing activity, lay letter searchers (requisitors) were appointed by the princes, who were also paying these office holders. The majority of the members of the Chapter have left the country together with the bishop Paul Bornemissza (who’s chair remained vacant for a long time), and those who remained in Alba Iulia were converted to Protestantism. They became the office holders of Queen Isabela and, after a while, of his son, prince Ioan Sigismund of Zápolya. The fact that some earlier members of the Chapter continued their work at the place of authentication proves that the state apparatus of the newly born Principality needed these intellectuals who had been previously educated by the Catholic Church. For almost 20 years, the place of authentication and its archives had been given very limited tasks. The institution didn’t dispose of a very important object used in the authentication process of the documents, namely the seal of the Chapter. This object has been probably taken by one of the canons, who left together with bishop Bornemissza. For this reason, the appointed office holders could only transcribe the documents kept in the archives of the Chapter. That’s why they were called requisitores, which means “letter searcher”. The reorganization of this institution took place in 1575, when the requisitors were granted all the previous tasks: a new seal was given to the place of authentication, which was similar to the earlier; the requisitors among transcribing the documents started to issue different charters and to fulfill external activities on the demand of the princes (entering into possessions, boundary inspections, etc.). Starting with 1556, the requisitors were appointed and paid by the princes and the character of the Chapter’s archive has changed as the time passed: not only the documents created by the place of authentication have been kept here, but also the Libri Regii, tax registers and legislative documents. As a result of these changes, the archive became the institution that preserved the most important documents of the Principality and at the same time the reputation of the office holders grew. So, it was natural that during the period of the Principality, the office holders of the place of authentication were chosen very carefully by the princes from the members of the Transylvanian intelligentsia, which had close ties both with the Unitarian Church and the Reformed Church. The first chapter describes the birth of the requisitorial office and the secularization of the Catholic ecclesiastical institutions. This chapter, based on the consulted documents, proves that the ecclesiastical estates (including the lands owned by the Chapter) were already given to Queen Isabela and his son in 1556, and they haven’t been returned to the Catholic Church, as one could suppose from the contradictory laws issued at the end of that year. The volume continues with the description of the period until 1575, when the appointed requisitors’ single task was to search and transcribe documents. The reorganization that took place in 1575, based on a detailed written instruction dated at the end of that year, made the charter issuing activity of the requisitors of this institution comparable with the activity of the Chapter before the secularization. These characteristics remained unchanged until the end of the period of Principality.The second chapter presents a detailed analysis of a group of intellectuals represented by the requisitors of the Chapter of Alba Iulia. The chapter starts with the presentation of this institution’s structure and also discusses both the way the requisitors were appointed by the princes, and their duties and privileges. This chapter emphasizes the fact that the institution needed well-qualified personnel, and the requisitors needed to be well-trained in matters of paleography, Latin and legal issues. Romanian or German language proficiency often constituted an important advantage. It seems to be proven that the majority of the office holders spoke one of these languages.Due to the fact that the prestige of the Chapters archive constantly grew, the requisitors have been entrusted with multiple new duties and responsibilities. In addition to these responsibilities, they were also granted some privileges.As regards the estates and other properties possessed by the requisitors, it became obvious that many of the office holders were given goods and possessions by the clients of the place of authentication, in return for their services. The charters granted property rights of movable assets and real estates, and these rights represented the evidence of ownership in trials. For the clients who were taking part in actions for the ownership of properties it was of great importance to find these documents in the Chapters archive and to obtain their transcripts. The services of the office holders were rewarded with different donations.It’s well-known that during the Middle Ages, the personnel of the places of authentication consisted of clergy members who studied at Western universities or at the chapter or monastic schools attached to the chapters or convents. After 1556, the place of authentication from Alba Iulia was no longer under the jurisdiction of the church, but the society, in which this institution functioned, still remained religious. During the first period after the secularization, the earlier members of the clergy were appointed as requisitors and they have worked there until the reorganization that took place in 1575. After that, the personnel consisted of lay intellectuals, many of them with theological training. We may say that the majority of them have received higher education and have studied at Western European universi ties. A good example is the carrier of the chronicler of the court Gáspár Bojti and the personal librarian of Gabriel Bethlen, Mihály Barsi.In addition to the above mentioned objectives, our purpose was to characterize the social class from which the requisitors originated, to describe their previous career and the time they served as a clerk at the archives. We concluded that before being appointed to this office, the clerks were often notaries of the princely chancellery and sometimes this office constituted a gift for different services rendered on behalf of the princes. It was also proven that every clerk became a noble at the end of his career as a result of his services rendered at the place of authentication on the request of the princes and other clients.The third, longest chapter presents the biographies of 37 requisitors. Among them there were important figures of the Transylvanian cultural history, such as the chronicler István Szamosközy and Gáspár Bojti.The volume presents the members of a group of intellectuals who worked in the probably most important charter-issuer institution during the period of Principality.To reveal the role and importance of these office holders, it is enough to have in mind the character of the Transylvanian society, based on the possession of estates. Nevertheless, the requisitors were members of an intellectual class that continued the heritage of the Medieval Era, they’ve had close ties with the Church, which supported their activity.
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The princely estate of Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár) has been established at the middle of the sixteenth century. The landlords of the estate were partly the Bishops of Transylvania before 1542, and the Chapter of Transylvania before 1556. The Episcopal estate have been managed by administrators (provisores) with exact duties and competences, and they were usually the bishop’s men of confidence. In 1542, after the death of bishop János Statileo, the Episcopal estate was offered to queen Isabella to supply the court of Alba Iulia. The study aims to discuss the system of administration, the territorial extension of the Episcopal estate, the aspects of the social development and the income of the estate between 1542 and 1556.
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The study presents the historical process of rural depopulation with particular regard to the stretch of land in Southern Hungary (Dél-Dunántúl, Szerémség, Bácska, Temesköz), where the depopulation and desolation at the time of Ottoman occupation was the greatest. First it clarifies what the word puszta denotes, and presents its various meanings. He then presents the historical periods of depopulation. The article argues that the puszta was not simply a depopulated area, but a region where the changed political conditions and socioeconomic structures have resulted in a substantially different landscape. The puszta did not lack the presence of men. Hungarian, Serb, Bunyevac peasants, and Serb and Vlach peasant soldiers lived (in ever-decreasing numbers) in the area, who had an impact on the landscape with their farming. In the Turkish towns there was a Muslim population, and outside the city wall there were communities of various Christian denominations and occupations. The Hungarian population in the towns of the Great Hungarian Plain enjoyed a degree of economic autonomy, and controlled the livestock farming in the puszta of the devastated regions of central and south Hungary. The study places special emphasis on the presentation of the „close-ups” and traumatic sides of the desolation in addition to the characteristics of the frontier existence. It also outlines the process of the post-liberation landscape changes, as well as touches on the surviving phenomena that persisted in the following centuries, and even today bring to the mind the devastation and depopulation brought about the Turkish occupation of Hungary.
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Kovacsóczy István pályájának első szakasza
The present study sets out to correct previous historiographic mistakes concerning the early career of István Kovacsóczy, who served as the Chancellor of Transylvania from 1622 until his death in 1634. The author’s goal is to outline the history and relations of the family, ranging from 1594 – the execution of Farkas Kovacsóczy (father of István, also Chancellor of Transylvania) –, giving an account of the benefactors of the four orphans: three sons (Kristóf, Zsigmond and István, all converted to Catholicism) and one daughter (Zsuzsanna). The most prominent of these benefactors was Pongrác Sennyey, a politician loyal to the Habsburgs, who, by the end of the Long Turkish War, became one of the most significant figures of Transylvania. In 1608, after the jus ligatum afflicting the descendants of those executed in 1594 had been lifted, István (who, by 1603, was the only living son of Farkas) appeared in the political sphere as a member of a Habsburg-oriented group, thus adopting a political stance in stark contrast with his father’s. The leadership of the group included the aforementioned Sennyey, as well as István Kendy, catholicised son of Counsellor Sándor Kendy, also executed in 1594. Thanks to this circle – but also to political games that surrounded the succession of Gábor Báthory as the Prince of Transylvania –, István was appointed as supremus comes (főispán) of Fehér County, the most prestigious administrative region of Transylvania. Miklós Lázár, a 19th-century historian, has already referred to this fact (although with no sources cited), but Zsolt Trócsányi – an expert of the history of the Principality – deemed it improbable, based on István Kovacsóczy’s earliest known title (secretarius of the Chancellery), only mentioning it in the notes of his fundamental work. Kovacsóczy’s lowly outset as secretary, however, is perfectly explained by one of Lázár’s facts: István Kovacsóczy became involved in a plot organised by his “party” – known as the conspiracy of Szék –, a fact doubtlessly proven by his recently found pardon letter. Thus, in 1610, Kovacsóczy’s promising career was broken, resulting in the loss of all but one of his estates. He was forced to start anew after the election of Prince Gábor Bethlen, to build a life and career (whose post-1614 stages are largely known today) culminating in winning the title his late father had possessed before him.
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At the end of the Middle Ages (the late 15th, beginning of 16th century) the community of artisans remained an important part of the market-town population of Alba Iulia. The first data about the guilds in Alba Iulia is from the second half of the 16th century, that means that there was an important connection between the establishment of the of the princely court in Alba Iulia and the development and diversification of the guilds. Goldsmith masters had an important role in the community and the leadership of Alba Iulia. At the beginning of 16th century the Episcopal court hired goldsmith masters, but the role of these artisans has grown in importance at the same time with the establishment of princely court in the market-town. The individual goldsmith masters – members of the goldsmith guild of Cluj – were working for a long time in the princely court, but the growing needs of the court demanded the creation of a new guild. The establishment of this new goldsmith guild led to the conflict between the masters from Cluj and those from Alba Iulia.
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Pistaki Lukács prókátor levelezéséről (1567–1595)
By analyzing the correspondence of Lucas Pistaki, an early modern Transylvanian procurator with the town magistrate of Bistrița (Beszterce, Bistritz/Nösen) between 1567 and 1595 the study brings new data on the judicial activity of Transylvania and on the professional and private life of an early modern procurator. Our archival sources are unique since they do not discuss the mentioned topics from the point of view of the authorities who operated the system, but rather from “below”, from the point of view of those who participated as litigants or as their representatives in the judicial process. More than half of the letters concern the lawsuits of Bistrița represented by Pistaki at the court sessions of the Princely Table against the nobility of the surrounding counties. The same letters contain details about the activity of the Table, the daily tasks of Pistaki at these court sessions and the charter-issuing activity of the Princely Chancellery too. Other letters discuss the activity of the judicial institutions of the counties and the trials he represented for the town at these sessions. Some missives also show that, if asked, Pistaki advised the magistrates of the town in issues regarding their judicial actions even in cases when he did not represent the town. Sporadically there are fragments regarding Pistaki’s private life and family members, or details about more general news and events from around the country that could have influenced the town’s and district’s inner life and political connections. The data of the correspondence shows that, based on his experiences gained as notary of the Princely Chancellery and as procurator, Lucas Pistaki had a deep knowledge of the whole judicial system of the country and of the characters who operated it. He had a better knowledge of the customs and laws of the country, the decisions of the Diet, or even of the privileges of the Transylvanian Saxons in general, and of the town or the District of Bistrița in particular than the members of the town-magistrate themselves.
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The life-story of Derviş bey can by reconstructed with unusal accuracy. He come from an influential family, the Yahyapaşazade clan of Albanian origin. His father Küçük Bali had a house in Jagodina. Derviş must have born around 1500 since he is mentioned as a timar-holder in the sancak of Zvornik as early as 1519. When his father became the beylerbeyi of Buda in 1542, Derviş was appointed commander of the Danube flotilla, a nem post created specifically for him. When Szeged was taken early in 1543, he was elected to be the first district governor there. On 28 najuary 1545. he was nominated sancakbeyi of Székesfehérvár (Istolni Belgrad). In late 1547 he was sent to administer the liva of Mohács. He held this office for almost 10 years, an exceptionally long period. His many duties can be illustrated by several hitherto unknown orders which were sent to him. At the same time, he did not forget Jagodina where he had a cami built and where – as Hans Dernschwam reported – he also settled some Hungarians. This is shown by a defter od Szendrő (Smederovo), in which several individuals with Hungarian names were registered. On February 1557, he was appointed to Avlonya, partly as a punishment for the unsuccesful siege of Szigetvár in 1556. Four days later, however, he was allowed to return to Szeged. As in Pécs, he was again charged whit the preparation of the new cadastral surveys of some of the Hungarian sancaks. Derviş bey vanishes from sight around 1560/1561. in all likelihood he died either in Hungary or on his way to Jagodina.
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