Nobility, land and service in medieval Hungary

Cover title: author: publisher: isbn10 | asin: print isbn13: ebook isbn13: language: subject publication date: lcc: ddc: subject: Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary Studies in Russia and East Europe (Palgrave (Firm)) Rady, Martyn C. Palgrave Macmillan (UK) 0333800850 9780333800850 9780333985342 English Hungary--History--1000-1699, Nobility--Hungary-History--To 1500, Feudalism--Hungary--History-To 1500. 2000 DB930.5R33 2000eb 943.9 Hungary--History--1000-1699, Nobility--Hungary-History--To 1500, Feudalism--Hungary--History-To 1500. Page i Studies in Russia and East Europe This series includes books on general, political, historical, economic and cultural themes relating to Russia and East Europe written or edited by members of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, or by authors working in association with the School. 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Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England Page iii Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary Martyn Rady Senior Lecturer in Central European History School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London in association with School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Page iv © Martyn Rady 2000 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2000 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–80085–0 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rady, Martyn C. Nobility, land and service in medieval Hungary / Martyn Rady. p. cm. — (Studies in Russia and East Europe) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–80085–0 1. Hungary—History—1000–1699. 2. Nobility—Hungary—History– –To 1500. 3. Feudalism—Hungary—History—To 1500. I. University College, London. School of Slavonic and East European Studies. II. Title. III. Series. DB930.5 R33 2000 943.9—dc21 00–041491 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Page v For Letty Page vi Page vii Map 1: Hungary in the fifteenth century Page viii Page ix Contents Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations used for Commonly Cited Sources xiii List of Maps xv Introduction 1 1. Werbőczy and the Hungarian nobility 1 2. A note on sources 8 1 The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 11 1.1. The work of the early Árpád kings 11 1.2. Households 16 1.3. Distinctions of men 20 1.4. Inheritance and the kindred 22 2 Origins of the Hungarian Nobility 28 2.1. The aristocracy and landownership 28 2.2. From servientes to nobles 35 2.3. Nobles and counties 39 3 Territorial Lordship 45 3.1. Dividing the land 45 3.2. Castle and lordship 48 3.3. Immunity and jurisdiction 54 3.4. Land and status 58 4 Authentication 62 4.1. Oral testimony and the pristaldus 62 4.2. Loca credibilia 66 4.3. The loca credibilia and inquisitions 70 4.4. Language and authentication 74 5 Conditional Nobles 79 5.1. Praediales and nobiles iobagiones 79 5.2. Landholding in the Highlands 85 5.3. Szörény and the Southern Danube 90 6 The Kindred and the Quarter 96 6.1. The solidarity of the kindred 96 Page x 6.2. Inheritance law and the ‘new donation’ 97 6.3. The daughters’ quarter 103 6.4. Prefection 107 7 Familiaritas 110 7.1. ‘Public’ and ‘private’ power 110 7.2. Familiares and their duties 112 7.3. Lordship and its obligations 120 7.4. Land and service 123 7.5. The royal aula and the ethos of chivalry 126 8 Offices and Honores 132 8.1. Definition and significance 132 8.2. Castles and honores 133 8.3. Revenues and distribution 137 8.4. Honores as ‘fiefs’ 142 9 Military Obligation 144 9.1. Personal service and noble taxation 144 9.2. Banderia 146 9.3. Reform and differentiation of service 149 9.4. A note on numbers 156 10 Counties and Corporations 158 10.1. Crown and estates 158 10.2. Counties and the settlement of disputes 162 10.3. The counties and the regnum 169 10.4. The counties and familiaritas 173 Conclusion 179 Notes 183 Works Cited 213 Index 225 Page xi Acknowledgements My first thanks are due to the Council of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, for granting me a year’s study leave in the session 1997–8. The School’s Research Policy and Funding Committee also provided generous support for several visits to Budapest in the autumn of 1998. Earlier drafts of this text were read by Professor János Bak of the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University in Budapest, by Damir Karbić of the Croatian Academy of Sciences in Zagreb, and by Professor Pál Engel of the Institute of History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Engel was also kind enough to let me read a preliminary version of his new history of medieval Hungary. Throughout the writing of the present book, my former supervisor, Professor László Péter of the University of London, has maintained a critical and watchful eye, and has given most generously of his time. I continue to be indebted to his scholarly advice and example. I have also benefited from discussions with my colleagues at the School, Professor Dennis Deletant, Professor Robert Pynsent, Dr Daniel Abondolo, Peter Sherwood, Dr Kieran Williams, Dr Wendy Bracewell and Tim Beasley-Murray, as well as from much earlier conversations in Budapest with the now late Professors Elemér Mályusz, Jenő Szűcs and Erik Fügedi. It was the last of these who, more than fifteen years ago, first alerted me to some of the opportunities for research on the medieval Hungarian nobility. Previous versions of parts of the present book were delivered as papers at the School’s annual Romanian Studies Day, to the School’s Centre for the Study of Central Europe, and to the Medieval Nobility Workshop organized by the Department of Medieval Studies of the Central European University in Budapest. I am most grateful for the comments and advice received on all these occasions. MARTYN RADY School of Slavonic and East European Studies University College London Page xii Page xiii List of Abbreviations Used for Commonly Cited Sources Árpád-kori történeti földrajz: György Györffy, Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza, 4 vols, 1963–98. AO: Anjou-kori okmánytár (Codex Diplomaticus Hungaricus Andegavensis), (ed), Imre Nagy, Gyula Nagy, 7 vols, Budapest, 1878–1920. AUO: Árpád-kori új okmánytár (Codex Diplomaticus Arpadianus Continuatus), (ed) Gusztáv Wenzel, 12 vols, Pest-Budapest, 1860–78. Blágay család oklevéltára: A Blágay család oklevéltára 1260–1578 (Codex diplomaticus Comitum de Blagay), (Monumenta Hungarica Historica, 28), (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Samu Barabás, Budapest, 1897. CJH, i: Corpus Juris Hungaricae (Magyar törvénytár), (ed.) Dezső Márkus, i, 1899. Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima: Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, i, (ed.) György Györffy, Budapest, 1992. Dl: Hungarian National Archive, Budapest, Collectio Ante-Mohácsiana. DRH 1301–1457: Decreta Regni Hungariae (Gesetze und Verordnungen Ungarns) 1301– 1457, (eds) Ferenc Döry, György Bónis, Vera Bácskai, Budapest, 1976. DRH 1458–1490: Decreta Regni Hungariae (Gesetze und Verordnungen Ungarns) 1458– 1490, (eds) György Bónis, Ferenc Döry, Géza Érszegi, Zsuzsa Teke, Budapest, 1989. DRMH: Laws of the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary (Decreta Regni Mediaevalis Hungariae) 1000–1490, (eds) János M. Bak, György Bónis, James Ross Sweeney, Leslie S. Domokos, Paul B. Harvey, 3 vols, Los Angeles, 1989–96. Krassó vármegye története: Krassó vármegye története, (ed.) Frigyes Pesty, vols iii–iv (Oklevéltár), Budapest, 1882–3. Lexikon: Korai magyar történeti lexikon (9–14. sz.), (eds) Gyula Kristó, Pál Engel, Ferenc Makk, Budapest, 1994. Mon. Strig.: Monumenta Ecclesiae Strigoniensis, (eds) N. Knauz, L.C. Dedek, 3 vols, Esztergom, 1874–1924. Oklevelek Temesvármegye: Oklevelek Temesvármegye és Temesvár város történetéhez, iv (Oklevelek, i), (ed) Tivadar Ortvay, Pozsony, 1896. PRT: A pannonhalmi Szent-Benedek-rend története, (eds) László Érdelyi, Pongrác Sörös, 12 vols, Budapest, 1902–16. Page xiv RR: Regesta regum stirpis Arpadianae critico-diplomatica (Az Árpád-házi királyok okleveleinek kritikai jegyzéke), (eds) Imre Szentpétery, Iván Borsa, vol 1 (3 parts), vol 2 (4 parts), Budapest, 1923–87. Smičiklas: Smičiklas, T. (ed.), Codex Diplomaticus Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, vols ii–xix, Zagreb, 1904–16. Tripartitum: Werbőczy, István. Tripartitum operis juris, (eds) Sándor Kolozsvári, Kelemen Óvári, Budapest, 1897. Zimmermann-Werner: Urkundenbuch zur Geschichte der Deutschen in Siebenbürgen, (eds) Franz Zimmermann, Carl Werner, G. Müller, G. Gündisch, 5 vols, Hermannstadt – Bucharest, 1892–1975. ZsO: Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, (eds) Elemér Mályusz, Iván Borsa, 4 vols, Budapest, 1951– 94. Page xv List of Maps 1 Hungary in the fifteenth century vii Kindreds and landholding in Bihar County in the early fourteenth century (Source: 3.1György Györffy, Az Árpád-kori Magyarország történeti földrajza, second edn, i, Budapest, 1987, pp. 580–1) 52 Page xvi Page 1 Introduction 1. Werbőczy and the Hungarian nobility The term ‘noble’ held several consecutive meanings in medieval Hungary. To begin with, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it meant a member of the small group of leading men and office-holders who gathered around the person of the ruler: the proceres, principes and iobagiones regales. Then, in the thirteenth century, the description broadened to encompass the many royal servientes thrown up by the disintegration of the old castle system of administration. The servientes’ relationship to the ruler was expressed in terms of fidelitas and the personal service which they were expected to discharge. From no later than the mid-twelfth century, and right through until well into the fourteenth, a nobleman might also be one who claimed membership of an ancestral kindred and who referred to himself as the scion of a genus. This association of status with ancestry is responsible for the Hungarian word for a nobleman, nemes, which itself derives from the Hungarian nem meaning a family or kindred. During the fourteenth century, however, the term nobilis was gradually understood as meaning a landowner or, to use the contemporary term, a homo possessionatus. This last meaning of nobility may be discerned in the writings of the early sixteenth-century Hungarian jurist, Stephen Werbőczy. Although Werbőczy conceded that there were exceptions to the rule, he firmly located noble status within the structure of Hungarian landownership. A nobleman was the holder of a property which he had inherited and which originated in a royal donation. Donation derived in the first place from ‘outstanding deeds and services’. These accomplishments were mainly understood as being performed in battle and thus the land Page 2 so given constituted a peculium castrense (a term completely unfamiliar in Hungarian law, which Werbőczy borrowed from Roman texts). As a scholar who had acquired both property and preferment in the course of his legal career, Werbőczy also permitted the study of letters as an alternative route to ennoblement: a peculium quasi castrense (again a civilian term unknown in Hungary).1 Nevertheless, whatever the type of service rendered, the act of ennoblement or of nobilitatio almost invariably had as its consequence the gift or collatio of property.2 Werbőczy was at pains to point out that land acquired by however distant an ancestor did not lose its connection to the ruler. In the event of treason (nota infidelitatis) or default of heirs (defectus seminis), the property reverted to the prince, since he was the source of all grants of land.3 The ruler was also the originator of all titles of nobility. As Werbőczy explained, upon their appointment of Hungary’s first king, the leading men of the realm had handed over to him and his successors the right not only to dispose of the kingdom’s land but also to create noblemen from out of their own ranks. Kingship and nobility thus existed as ‘reciprocal and reflexive and as always mutually dependent’. As Werbőczy explained, ‘There is no prince except he be elected by the nobles, nor is there a nobleman unless he be created by the prince and adorned with the dignity of nobility’.4 By the time Werbőczy was writing, the close personal bond between ruler and nobleman, which had originally marked their relations, had become attenuated. During the preceding centuries, the nobles of the realm had both extracted themselves from many of the duties which they owed to the ruler, and set themselves up as an estate constitutive of the regnum which was vested with its own separate rights and personality. By his doctrine of ‘one and the same liberty’, Werbőczy contributed to the estates-principle by proclaiming the legal equality of all nobles. To further this programme, he briefly promoted the notion of the Holy Crown as a corporation by their membership of which all nobles counted as equals. Even so, his notion of incorporation was firmly rooted in the tradition of noble landownership resting on royal donation.5 The nature of nobility in late medieval Hungary was thus twofold. It proceeded from a personal act of the ruler, which put the recipient and his heirs in an immediate relationship to the monarch. Ennoblement was, moreover, usually accompanied by the donation of land, the possession of which exemplified the relationship between the nobleman and his royal master.6 Page 3 Three things followed from this formulation. First, land which had been bestowed by the ruler to a nobleman and his heirs constituted a gift and was owned as completely as was possible in the Middle Ages. It is thus sometimes (and misleadingly) compared to what was known in Germany as an allodium or allod. As Werbőczy explained in one passage, which is known after its location in his text as the primae nonus, the Hungarian nobleman had a complete right (liberam potestatem) to all produce within his estate, the income of which was also exempt from taxation.7 The possession of this land did not, moreover, have to be renewed through periodic acts of homage. Although, as we will see, the rights of the possessor’s kindred still had to be taken into account, the property could be sold, pledged or exchanged by its new owner and his heirs. It reverted to the ruler only in cases of nota and defectus. Secondly, the nobleman was directly obligated to the ruler. By accepting noble status and the land which went with it, he had entered into a close and reflexive relationship with the prince. The commitments which the nobleman owed derived not on account of the land given to him but by reason of his nobility, of which the land which he held stood as the ‘adornment’ and mark. Nevertheless, the nature of the bond between ruler and subject which the act of ennoblement introduced was one which could not be specified. It might be comprehended in custom and practice but it could not be pinned down to a set of formal obligations. In this respect, the relationship between king and noble was as imprecisely laid as that existing between a French lord and his knight, which might be described simply in terms of ‘love’.8 From this followed the third consequence. If the nobleman’s relationship to the ruler was defined by conditions attaching to his land, then he was not noble at all. Under these circumstances his obligations derived not from his relationship to the king but instead from the land itself. As we will see, ‘conditional’ nobles who owed duties on account of their land were not full members of the estate of nobility. The only route by which they could obtain this status was either through a royal act which removed the obligations attaching to their land or through the obliteration from human memory of these impediments. Conditional nobles were not therefore ‘true nobles’. Appropriately, therefore, they do not feature in Werbőczy’s account of the law as it applied to the estate of Hungarian nobility. What all this actually meant in practice was that a hierarchy of property relations could not develop in Hungary. All noble land was freely Page 4 held as a royal donation and its possession was the mark of nobility. If land was held of another by ‘subinfeudation’ or encumbered with obligations deriving ratione terrae, then it was not owned as a royal gift and its possessor could not, therefore, be considered a nobleman. In this way, the association of nobilitatio with fidelitas and donatio hindered the development in Hungary of a system of landholding by which properties were ceded to lords who in turn granted them out to noble tenants in exchange for specific services. As we will also argue, Hungary’s unfamiliarity with certain civilian texts prevented any subsequent reconceptualization of noble land tenure in terms of fief holding. The absence of a feudal hierarchy based upon noble landholding has given rise to several longue durée explanations of Hungarian history. According thus to György Bónis, the absence of hierarchy facilitated the emergence in Hungary of estates which were arranged horizontally. The triumph of horizontal relations made possible the definition and ‘closure’ of the noble estate in the late fifteenth century with all which that implied for the peasantry and for intermediate social groups.9 Although writing more generally about East-Central Europe, Otto Hintze has viewed the absence of a hierarchy of feudal relations as impeding the development of ‘absolutist’ methods of government in the region during the medieval period.10 For Heinrich Mitteis, the more general failure of states east of the Rhine, among which he includes Hungary, to achieve ‘the integration of tenure and jurisdiction with fealty’, had the similar consequence of weakening princely power. According to Mitteis, the triumph of the ‘allod’ over the fief engendered particularism and drove wedges through the hierarchical arrangement of society and authority found in classic feudalism. Political forces were subsequently reconfigured in the form of estates, which led to the establishment east of the Rhine of the Ständestaat of divided and competing sovereignties.11 In contrast to the political particularism identified by Mitteis, Perry Anderson has noted the social hegemony which the weakness of feudal institutions gave to the East European nobility. According to Anderson, the fusion of territorial, personal and economic lordship which the absence of vertical feudal relationships made possible, aided the construction of a ‘single, manorial authority’ and so hastened the enserfment of the peasantry.12 Page 5 The most striking account of the impact of the ‘allod’ on later historical development has, however, been given by Jenő Szűcs.13 Szűcs’s inspiration, István Bibó, had seen medieval Hungary as belonging largely to the structure of Western Europe, ‘in a fairly simplified context with some provincial characteristics’. Szűcs, by contrast, regarded the ‘deformation’ of Hungarian society as reaching back into the Middle Ages. The failure of fully-developed institutions of feudalism to emerge in Hungary prevented the establishment of a civil society characterized by mutual and interlocking obligations. Here Szűcs follows Bibó in affirming that feudalism acted as the ‘kindergarten of democracy’.14 As Szűcs explains, ‘Not only the fief itself and other well-defined systems of institutions and ceremonies were lacking, but also the ‘‘reciprocity of unequals”, the emphasized contractual character of the personal bond.’ Since Hungary never experienced feudalism in its complete western form, it missed out on the historical stage ‘for the development of direct legality in general and for the thorough predominance of law as “custom”’. In contrast to Mitteis, Szűcs understood that the failure to distribute power within a feudal structure had the consequence of ‘enthroning’ sovereignty rather than of dispersing it within ‘the newly formed “political” sector of society’. The upshot, according to Szűcs, was that in Hungary and in East-Central Europe more generally, ‘political society’ remained both underdeveloped and insufficiently freed of the state.15 For Anderson too (whose account strongly influenced Szűcs’s own), the absence of contractual relations in the East European variety of feudalism disconnected government from society and so made possible the imposition of absolutist methods of rule.16 These last points have been further refined by George Schöpflin who has noted the function of developed feudal institutions in reinforcing in Western Europe the concepts of reciprocity, accountability and autonomy of law: features which he finds ‘weak, sometimes to the point of invisibility’ in the lands to the east.17 In similar fashion, but quite independently of both Szűcs and Anderson, Lászlo Péter has argued that the failure of the region east of the Elbe to develop a feudal beneficiary system impeded the development of parliamentary institutions and hastened the development of polities which were either autocratic or within which authority was sharply divided between ruler and estates. Péter goes on to explain a large part of Central Europe’s subsequent development, including the ease of the communist takeover after 1945, by reference to the imperfect constitutional Page 6 traditions which Hungary and the region as a whole inherited from the Middle Ages.18 It would seem, therefore, that the legal relationship of the Hungarian nobleman to his land has much to answer for. Criticisms of Hungarian feudalism presuppose a ‘western model’ based upon the union of beneficium and commendatio. It would be too much to claim that this conjunction only occurred in the minds of later jurists, for the social relationships of the time clearly permitted such a legal and semantic gloss to be put on them.19 Nevertheless, whether we read Georges Duby on the Mâconnais or Susan Reynolds’ more recent analysis of feudovassalic relations in Western Europe, it is plain that the ‘reification of fealty’ through the institution of the fief was a largely twelfth-century phenomenon which had much to do with the new demands made by governments and lawyers.20 It was in this respect, a product neither of a continuous historical development which reached back to the Carolingian period nor of local responses seeking to compensate for some supposed lack of royal government. As far as Western Europe is concerned, it must additionally remain uncertain just how deeply the institutions of fief and vassal penetrated noble society. By over-reading the sources, historians may have unwittingly read too much lawyer’s language into what were very diverse relationships of land and power. Moreover, even if the conjunction of fief and homage ever did take place in the manner imagined by many historians, it is not at all clear that this was the act around which most noble relationships turned. West European societies used a variety of methods in the Middle Ages to obtain and reward loyalties and to ensure the effective government of both kingdom and private lordship. Grants of land in exchange for services were surely only one of these. In this context, the advice of Susan Reynolds with regard to West European feudalism is timely: Political conditions and legal systems differed and the rights and obligations of property, however it was classified, differed accordingly. Calling the traditional model an ideal type and pointing to variations as exceptions or anomalies that do not affect its validity has . . . discouraged historians from investigating either uniformities or variations. Reliance on the model allows them to work within their separate national traditions with a minimum of comparisons, Page 7 using the model to fill in gaps in their own evidence while explaining what does not fit it as the result of Germanic or Roman survivals, national character, or other circumstances that look special because they do not fit the model.21 The same considerations must equally apply to studies of Hungarian feudalism. If we presuppose an ideal model of feudal relations, then its Hungarian variants may indeed seem ‘unarticulated, rough or mixed’, and ‘deformed to some degree’.22 Once, however, we abandon the model, we will see a web of personal relations, service and mutual obligation existing in Hungary. As was typical throughout medieval Europe, these relations betook both of a vertical and of a horizontal character, or, to use another vocabulary, of institutions both of vassalage and of association. The most obvious form which relations between nobles assumed in medieval Hungary was the institution of familiaritas. This, rather than being a distinctive Hungarian phenomenon, bears some resemblance to aspects of English ‘bastard feudalism’, even to the extent of including the occasional contract of retainer. Familiaritas was promoted by Hungary’s medieval kings as a way both of raising armies and of administering the kingdom. For this reason, it fused early on with office-holding. By the fourteenth century, whole parts of the royal and territorial administration lay in the hands of lords who charged their own familiares with the performance of military or governmental functions and with the collection of revenues. Relations between lord and familiaris were seldom expressed through the nexus of property. In Hungary, therefore, the structure of noble landholding remained largely separate from the ‘commendatory’ hierarchy of service, which was for its part built on familiaritas and on the retention of offices and honores. Alongside these hierarchical relations of power, associative forces were also at work within Hungarian noble society. These led most notably to the construction of the counties as institutions both of justice and of political power at a local level. The counties also acted as noble constituencies for the election of deputies to the diet in respect of which the diet constituted the communitas communitatum of the realm. The noble county might be transformed into an instrument of the great lords who exploited its resources both to subvert justice (although it appears that they seldom did so) and to ensure the selection of the right deputies to the diet. Nevertheless, the county could also function separately from the power-blocs of noble familiares, and Page 8 act as an instrument reflective of the interests and solidarity of the local nobility. The extent to which the noble county community acted as an effective counterweight to lordship and familiaritas in Hungary is uncertain. Circumstances doubtless differed over time and from place to place. Nevertheless, there is much to suggest that medieval Hungary’s county communities played a stronger and more independent role in justice, local government and the selection of representatives to the diet than most historical accounts allow. Out of the limits Werbőczy personally set on his work, his account of Hungarian noble law barely discussed the counties and all but completely ignored familiaritas and office-holding. As a consequence, Werbőczy gave to posterity a partial account both of relations among the nobility and of relations of power more generally in medieval Hungary. It is the aim of this present work to present a study of the Hungarian nobility which takes into account the Hungarian nobleman’s several separate and seemingly contradictory locations: as a landholder standing in a direct relation to the ruler, as the servant and office-holder of another lord, and as the participant through corporate institutions in the workings of local politics and government. 2. A note on sources The medieval kingdom of Hungary occupied a geographical space comparable to contemporary France. Its population was, however, much smaller, amounting in the late fifteenth century to between three and four million people. Hungary’s population density of approximately 10–12 persons per square kilometre in the fifteenth century, although falling well below both Bohemia and Germany (not to mention France), was roughly comparable to Poland, and far exceeded both Lithuania and Muscovy.23 Unlike its most easterly neighbours, moreover, medieval Hungary was not a fleeting assemblage of lands and peoples. In contrast to fourteenth-century Lithuania, Hungary cannot be considered (to use Norman Davies’s description) ‘a cairn of stones thrown together on a bleak plain – with no cement’.24 Hungary was throughout the Middle Ages a territory joined together under a single dynasty and subject to a uniform administration. It was, moreover, possessed of a powerful and persuasive judicial organization, an advanced fiscal apparatus, and a machinery of war capable of sustaining the struggle against the Turks for more than a century. Even as early as the thirteenth century, foreign commentators who reviewed the social and political institu Page 9 tions of the kingdom were left in no doubt that Hungary was not only a leading European power but that it also belonged to the comity of nations which made up European Christendom.25 In token of this prestige, during the first three centuries of its existence, Hungary’s ruling dynasty contracted at least sixty marriages with the princely lines of Catholic Europe. These included the royal houses of Naples and the Two Sicilies, Aragon, France and, possibly, Scotland26 as well as several dozen German ducal families. The outcome of these and subsequent marriages was after 1300 to bring Hungary into the dynastic possession of the Angevin, Luxemburg, Jagellon and Habsburg families. Hungary’s medieval greatness is hardly matched by its documentary Nachlass. Following the defeat of the army of Louis II on the field of Mohács on 29 August 1526, the king’s widow ordered the loading of the royal archive on to barges. Queen Mary’s plan was to transfer the royal records from the capital city of Buda, now threatened by the Turks, to the relative safety of Vienna upstream. Near the Danube bend, however, only twenty miles north of Buda, the barges foundered. Almost the entire royal archive now lies therefore in the mud of the Danube. Only a very few fragments which were separately transported to Vienna by cart survived the general ruin.27 Various literary records remain from the Hungarian Middle Ages. They range from the clumsy and spurious Anonymus Chronicle, written around 1200, to the elegant humanist prose of Bonfini’s histories, compiled at the very end of the fifteenth century. Between these two chronological and literary extremes may be included various dynastic histories and several autobiographical accounts. By West European standards, however, day-to-day legal and administrative records are relatively few. Altogether, the pre-Mohács section of the Hungarian National Archive in Budapest has just over 100 000 original charters. To these may be added its collection of 80 000 photographs of charters relating to the medieval kingdom, the originals of which are held in local or foreign archives. Many of these charters include transcripts of older documents: often, several may be given verbatim within a single text. Cartularies compiled in the early modern period also contain copies of older material. In total, therefore, we have well over 300 000 individual legal and administrative acts relating to the Hungarian Middle Ages. By contrast to France or England, this number is small. Given, however, the drowning of the royal archive and the destruction of many county and family archives by the Turks, we must acknowledge a remarkable abundance of material attesting to a legally literate and regulated medieval society. We should add that Page 10 these records are almost without exception written in Latin. As in Poland, there was until the sixteenth century no tradition in Hungary of either a vernacular prose or legal literature.28 The extant material relating to medieval Hungary is of uneven provenance. First, there is a chronological imbalance. On average, about 150 charters a year survive from the early fourteenth century. A century later, the annual number reaches 1500. These documents relate almost entirely to the nobility so that periods of collective noble absence, such as during the crusade of 1396, may prompt a sudden reduction in the number of records.29 Secondly, and rather more importantly, topography and chance have overwhelmingly dictated the terms by which this material has survived. Most of the local and county archives held in southern and central Hungary were destroyed during the Turkish occupation. Records surviving from this region relate almost entirely to the cadet lines of families whose archives had been previously removed to other parts of the kingdom. The consequence of these vicissitudes is an almost complete lack of correlation between historical significance and the actual historical record. The documents relating to almost all the great Hungarian noble kindreds of the Middle Ages are thus no longer extant, but those of politically insignificant families often survive in considerable quantities. We still have in Hungary, therefore, several hundreds of charters attesting to the manifold activities of the subaltern Himfi kindred of Krassó and Veszprém counties, but there is no Garai or Újlaki archive and what remains of the Hunyadi archive is now dispersed across Europe. Likewise, we have superficial evidence of many institutional peculiarities in the northern Highlands of modern-day Slovakia and in Slavonia (which comprises most of today’s Croatia),30 but we lack the necessary documentation from the heart of the kingdom by which to judge these apparent anomalies. Ordinary legal institutions and processes are thus left obscure, whereas procedures and practices followed at the edge of the kingdom often acquire a salience simply on account of the vagaries of documentary survival. Page 11 1 The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 1.1 The work of the early Árpád kings Under the leadership of Prince Árpád, the Hungarians captured the Carpatho-Danubian basin in the last years of the ninth century. They principally occupied the old Roman province of Pannonia and the plain between the Danube and Tisza rivers. Burial-finds and place-names also suggest their early occupation of parts of modern-day Slavonia and the Banat, and of the principal river valleys in the Slovak Highlands and Transylvania. The Hungarian settlement was accompanied by extensive raiding across both the Balkans and Western Europe.1 At this time, the Hungarians were a linguistically mixed people, whose ruling elite spoke a form of Turkic rather than the Finno-Uralic language of the majority. Whether this elite still practised nomadism is uncertain. The religion of the Hungarians was predominantly shamanistic, although at the time of the conquest some of the invaders were Muslims.2 Later chroniclers depicted the Hungarian entry into Pannonia as the outcome of a glorious and predestined victory. The reality was quite different, for the sudden westward movement of the Hungarians was an act forced upon them by a catastrophic defeat at the hands of their steppe rivals, the Pechenegs. The Pecheneg assault on the Hungarians’ lands split the Hungarians in two, forcing one section to flee southwards into the Caucasus. The remainder of about 400 000 people who retreated westwards and settled in Pannonia, were so deprived of nourishment as a consequence of their recent dislocation as to experience a collapse in their mortality. One recent archaeological investigation suggests that life expectancy among the tenth-century Hungarians stood at around the mid-thirties, which is twenty years less than that Page 12 enjoyed by the Hungarians’ predecessors in Pannonia, the Avars.3 Beginning in 933, a series of major defeats at the hands of their Frankish neighbours not only prevented the Hungarians from migrating any further westwards but also completed the destruction of a large section of their ruling elite. It is impossible to describe the impact of these upheavals on the social and political organization of the early Hungarians. Its extent may, however, be measured. The basis of Hungarian society, which had been arranged in the ninth and early tenth centuries around the existence of seven tribes (and a further three Kabar tribes which fought as auxiliaries), rapidly dissolved. The names of the tribes are thus preserved only in a mid-tenth-century Byzantine source and in toponymic evidence. There is no recollection either in later personal nomenclature or in the accounts of the Hungarian chronicles. The Turkic language spoken by the tribal elites had also vanished by no later than the beginning of the eleventh century.4 The totems of the tribes met an analogous fate. The most common motifs of the ninth and early tenth centuries – the griffin, wolf and hind – thus seldom figure in later Hungarian iconography and heraldic symbolism. The hawk or turul which in shamanistic lore rested upon the tree of life connecting the earth with the netherworld and the skies, persevered for longer as a device belonging to the ruling house. But even this was soon eclipsed by the symbol of the double cross and, around 1200, by the striped shield coloured in the red and white of Christ’s Passion.5 Ironically, after the turul bird, the totem most vividly recalled by the early Hungarians was the eagle, which was the symbol of the Pechenegs. The Hungarians’ defeat on the steppeland at the hands of the Pechenegs was thus described in later chronicles as the work of their totems, which swooped down upon the Hungarians from the crags and fastnesses of the Carpathians.6 Discontinuities are also apparent with regard to the leading families of the early Hungarian tribes. The Anonymus Chronicle, which was written around 1200 and which is the earliest extant history of the Hungarians, alleges the names of several princely families from the time of the conquest whose descendants were still alive in the twelfth century. Anonymus’s account cannot, however, be relied on at this point, for the chronicler was clearly backdating the history of prominent families so as to add lustre to their descent.7 Only in a very few instances can we establish a link between the principal family-groups of the century or so following the conquest and those of the subsequent period. Even in these cases the relevant families had plainly Page 13 suffered over the intervening years a substantial diminution in their power and prestige. The exceptions may be the house of Aba, which retained substantial influence right through from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries and which possibly originated in one of the leading Kabar families, and the house of Csanád, the site of whose main holdings demonstrates over the same period a quite remarkable continuity.8 One family did, however, endure and prosper: the family and house of the Prince Árpád who had led the Hungarians at the time of the conquest.9 Although the precise sequence of the dynasty’s earliest princes cannot be established with any certainty, the biological perseverance and retained power of the family from the ninth century until the start of the fourteenth is beyond question. The early survival of the house of Árpád owed much to its members’ good luck in not losing their lives in battle. Indeed, in this last respect Árpád may himself have established a pattern of survival by not participating in person in the campaigns and razzias directed against Hungary’s neighbours. Árpád’s house did not therefore, suffer the expiry of its line on the field or the disgrace of defeat which terminated the fortunes of the leading west Hungarian chieftains after the battle on the Lechfeld in 955. Nor did it endure the catastrophic loss of its headman such as devastated the dynasty of the chieftain Kurszán following his assassination by the Bavarians in 904. Nevertheless, the rulers of the house of Árpád were not passive observers but they actively contributed both to the destruction of the tribal structures of the conquest period and to the worsting of those leading families which challenged their own authority. During the tenth century, the Árpád rulers extended their power over wide stretches of the country, reaching far beyond their original tribal strongholds along the middle Danube. Appointing members of their own family over large sections of the population, they broke the affective bonds which had previously united the tribes.10 Shortly after his death in the 990s, the ruling Prince Géza was described, with some exaggeration, as ‘having held the entire kingdom in his hand’.11 The process of subjugation, elimination and absorption of rival centres of power was hastened during the eleventh century by Géza’s son, the newly-crowned King (later Saint) Stephen (1000–38). In a series of campaigns, he defeated the tribal chieftains Koppány, Ajtony and Prokuj. The last of these held the office of gyula, a Turkic title which conveyed an authority second only to the ruler’s own. The tribal organizations through which these chieftains had previously exercised power were destroyed by Stephen. Their lands and peoples were broken down into Page 14 smaller units of territorial administration over which the king placed servants loyal to himself. Within a short space of time, the families of the vanquished chieftains all but completely disappear from the historical record. A similar pattern of events followed in the middle of the eleventh century, when the lands of the pagan Vata were overrun by Stephen’s greatnephew, Andrew I, and reallocated among his royal retainers.12 The adoption of Christianity assisted the gathering of power by the house of Árpád. The introduction of Christianity, first from Byzantium as embraced by the south Hungarian chieftains, and then from the south German bishoprics which looked to Rome, as eventually adopted by Prince Géza and his son, put an end to the shamanistic practices which had previously bound Hungarian society. The establishment of an ecclesiastical hierarchy in Hungary was accompanied by compulsory church-building and attendance, and by laws which regulated both personal conduct and behaviour in church. Although in his various guises the shaman and his drum remain objects of folk-belief even in parts of Hungary today, by the middle of the eleventh century the shaman had been relegated to the status of a witch and of a dabbler in cinders living on the margins of society.13 It is a mark of the completeness of the shaman’s eclipse in Hungary that, almost uniquely among the FinnoUralic peoples, no record survives there of the secret language of shamanistic ritual.14 A similar but slower process of cultural erosion may be observed in respect of personal nomenclature. By the twelfth century, 80 per cent of free women held Christian names. Even among serving girls, pagan female names which often recalled furry animals, flowers or motherhood, were steadily replaced by more suitable references. By the first half of the thirteenth century, less than a third of all servile women still held original Hungarian names.15 Conversion completed the transformation of Hungarian society already underway at the time of the conquest. In place of pagan rulership came a new ideology which exalted the prince as defender of the faith and ‘rector of the people of Christ’. Together with the sanctification of King Ladislas at the end of the twelfth century, the promotion of Stephen to sainthood in the 1080s imbued the ruling dynasty with an invincible aura of prestige. The extensive ‘apostolic’ authority gathered by St Stephen and his descendants permitted the early Hungarian kings to control all ecclesiastical appointments and to treat the property of the church as more or less their own private possession.16 Along with Christian monarchy came a yet more exalted vocabulary which, deriving from classical texts, stressed the function of Page 15 the ruler as supreme legislator and as heir to the Caesars. The newly-Christian, newlyRoman king of the Hungarians spoke thus of his authority in the language of Charlemagne: decrevimus, volumus, nostra regalis potencia, potestatem a nobis concessam, and so on.17 These words were, of course, not the ruler’s own but were put into his mouth by the Catholic clergy who thronged to his court. The western-educated monks and priests who administered the royal household introduced the practice of recording acts in the form of written laws and charters, and they framed these instruments in a style and vocabulary with which they were familiar. In the majority of cases they used Bavarian formularies or collections of (often forged) Frankish capitularies. Although the terms which they imported doubtless conceal the perseverance of older forms of social organization, they yielded in turn a set of norms by which Hungarian society might be regulated and administered.18 Historians frequently explain the ordering of the Hungarian kingdom by reference to the achievements of its first Christian king, St Stephen. It is evident, however, that the imposition of royal authority required far more than the work of a single ruler. Although derivative of western texts, heavily interpolated, and by no means complete in their extant versions, the earliest Hungarian law-codes indicate the limits on royal power and the vanity of the ruler’s claim to possess a complete authority. The laws attributed to St Stephen acknowledged the primacy of local institutions of ‘self-help’ in the regulation of justice. These institutions included locally-chosen arbitrators but more usually comprised members of the extended family. Assaults on any one of the kin or parentes would occasion intervention by the injured party’s relatives who would seek to extract retribution or compensation from the perpetrator and his kin. As in Merovingian Gaul, we may presume that behind the inimicitiae, so frequently the source of local wars, lay something approximating the bloodfeud – and there are plenty of explicit references to this institution in medieval Hungary.19 The laws of St Stephen did not seek to supplant popular institutions of justice. Indeed, in the whole of St Stephen’s laws there are only two references to judges, and one of these borrows verbatim from a Bavarian source.20 Instead, his laws sought to regulate the feud, listing the penalties payable for offences committed and so imposing an upper limit on the demands which one family could lay on another.21 It is only in the late eleventh century that we have evidence of a body of royally-appointed judges entrusted with the maintenance of order and with the application of the law across the breadth of the kingdom. The Page 16 ‘despotic’ quality of Árpád kingship revealed at the end of this century in the laws of St Ladislas and so colourfully described in Otto of Freising’s later account of the kingdom, was not the product of any ‘oriental’ inheritance.22 It was instead the outcome of a long process of state-building, which had its origins firstly in the catastrophes of the conquest-period and then in the work of transformation accomplished by the house of Árpád. 1.2. Households It is common among historians to describe the early Hungarian kingdom as ‘patrimonial’. If, following Ferenc Eckhart,23 we understand patrimonium to be the personal landed property of the monarch then the term is apposite, but only superficially so. During the eleventh and much of the twelfth centuries, the ruling house held probably in excess of two-thirds of the land of the kingdom, for all the territory which constituted neither grazing-land nor cultivated property was considered to belong to the monarch.24 Nevertheless, insofar as this land was for the most part either unpopulated or forest, it was a resource of minimal value and can hardly be considered either the mainspring or defining characteristic of royal governance. If, however, we understand ‘patrimonial’ to be the relationship of a pater to his familia, then we will have a more fruitful line of investigation. Despite the admission of a vocabulary deriving from Roman law, no distinction existed in the minds of the Hungarian kings between their household and the lands over which they held sway. Both equally constituted ‘lordship’ or urusag. (By an ironic twist the term would in the later medieval period become ország which has as one of its meanings the constitutional counterpart to the power of the monarch.)25 The regnum of the Hungarian king was thus simultaneously the office he discharged, the lands over which he ruled, and the personal retinue which he led into battle. St Stephen’s supposed reflection that the strength of his regnum rested upon its constitution out of many languages was thus not a pious appeal to ‘multiculturalism’ but the expression of his belief that an effective bodyguard needed warriors drawn from different military traditions.26 The royal household consisted of several elements, each of which was united by a special bond to the ruler. In the words of a later, thirteenth-century source, members of the royal household were conjoined to the person of the ruler by consanguinitate, affinitate, vel familiaritate.27 In the first place, the household constituted a community of blood. Right Page 17 through until the twelfth century, each immediate relative of the ruler was considered equally fit for kingship since the family itself was thought to be in possession of the royal dignity. The difficulties involved in reconciling the collective claims of the royal kin with notions of primogeniture and of individualized Christian monarchy partly explain the ruinous dynastic wars and blindings of family-relatives which marked the passage of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The community of blood was matched by a fictive biological community, some of whose members may have been bound to the ruler by a ritual of blood-brotherhood: at least, Anonymus’s chronicle presupposes such a form of relationship to be understood by his readers.28 This larger ‘family’ comprised warriors and other servants of the ruler: his retinue, which consisted in the main of foreign adventurers, his secular administrators led by the mayor of the palace (later known as palatine), and the large body of clerics who interpreted the royal will through charters and other forms of instruction. The valour of the warriors was matched by the assiduity of the clerics who, even by the time of England’s own Domesday Book, had charted and recorded not only the extent of the royal estates but also the names of all those who worked them.29 The royal household was the greatest provider of largesse in the kingdom and the Hungarian ‘Domesday’ (which is lost) enumerated the resources available for donation. Originally the distribution-point of plunder, the household had by the eleventh century become the place where landed wealth and revenues were acquired, sequestered and reallocated. Doubtless the largesse over which the court presided has been exaggerated by historians who have relied on Béla III’s dubious recollection, made in the late twelfth century, as to the extent of the royal revenues.30 We would do well to recall that, around 1100, the court of King Koloman was unable to provide its guests with fish, and that several decades earlier, in 1062, the royal throne was so rudely constructed that it collapsed beneath Béla I, bearing him off to an early grave. (Perhaps it was for this reason that, according to Otto of Freising, the principal men of the kingdom later brought their own chairs to meetings with the king!)31 Notwithstanding these deficiencies, the resources available to the Hungarian king were evidently sufficient to attract a number of impecunious foreign knights to his service. The magnificent abbey of Ják, founded in the early thirteenth century by the descendants of the Bavarian Vecellin, is lasting testimony to the wealth which devoted royal service might in time yield.32 Page 18 Until the late thirteenth century, the royal household was itinerant. The demands placed upon the local population in the course of its movement are frequently mentioned in charters, which either enumerated or cancelled out the recipients’ obligations of descensus. The household was additionally in a constant process of reconfiguration. As it traversed the kingdom, so the household briefly locked into those other households of dignitaries who were considered members of the royal familia. On such occasions, the king took over the judicial duties of his local representatives, dispensing justice in person either in the home of the principal lord or under a nearby tree.33 Whenever the royal household descended upon them, the dignitaries abandoned the status which they derived from their local offices, recording instead their presence in deeds issued on the occasion as simply members of the royal domus.34 Equally, the leading Hungarian lords might leave their own households to attend the king’s court. A charter issued in 1055 thus records the presence of eight comites as witnesses to a royal donation.35 The passage of the royal court around the kingdom was aided by the existence of tracts of royal estate, organized around ‘palaces’, curiae or curtes, which provided for the immediate needs of the household.36 The labourers on these estates constituted a servile class, which was divided between providers (udvarnik-s) and gatherers (tárnok-s). Each of these groups had its own separate and discrete jurisdictional and economic organizations. An analogous role was played by the forest wardenships which, besides helping to suppress the brigands of the woods, served the king with huntsmen and game. Clearly though, the king could not be everywhere at once. The difficulty which the ruler experienced in maintaining a watchful eye over the more distant households of his servants partly explains the establishment in the twelfth century of the Transylvanian voevodate and of the banate of Slavonia. The voevodes and bans held their authority directly from the king and they ranked at the very top of the order of royal dignitaries. Their households traversed the regions which fell under their jurisdiction, exciting local landowners to acquire charters attesting to their own immunity from the rights of descensus claimed by these lords. Lest they accumulate too much influence in their jurisdictions, the king was accustomed to appoint and dismiss his bans and voevodes with dizzying speed. The most signal feature of political organization in medieval (and indeed modern) Hungary was the ‘county administration’. During the course of the eleventh century, the kingdom was arranged into about 40 local units of governance or counties. Their number subsequently Page 19 rose to over 70. The first region to be so organized was the central portion of the kingdom which originally belonged to the house of Árpád, and every victory over a rival to the ruling dynasty was marked by the reordering of his lands into similar units. The establishment of the counties took place over a long period. It was not until the late twelfth century that the territories of the gyula Prokuj were finally allocated in southern Transylvania, and counties were still being carved out of the northern forests as late as the thirteenth century. Discrepancies in terms of their geographical extent, the frequent reallocation and redistribution of their territories, and technical imprecisions with regard to their nomenclature indicate the uncertainties which accompanied the early phases of this important development in Hungarian administrative history.37 They also suggest that the county administration of early medieval Hungary is unlikely to have completely originated in the vision of St Stephen.38 The Hungarian counties were bifurcate institutions.39 The several purposes which they discharged may reflect the separate influence at the time of their foundation of Slavonic and Frankish methods of organization. On the one hand, they were institutions of military retaining. Warriors were gathered around castra, more usually earthworks, and in exchange for parcels of land they were obliged to perform military service under the command of a royally-appointed count or ispán. The larger economy of the castrum was sustained by castrenses to whom were allotted specific tasks: cartage, viticulture, the provision of honey, the manufacture of weapons, and so on. This type of social organization is entirely familiar throughout East-Central Europe and beyond, although in Hungary it would seem that castrenses also discharged some military duties.40 On the other hand, all lands and peoples in the proximity of the castrum were placed under the overall jurisdiction of the ispán and were subject to his court. The office of ispán therefore combined military, administrative and judicial functions. In the performance of his many tasks, the ispán was assisted by a military prefect (hadnagy) and by a judicial deputy or comes curialis. Within individual counties, there might also be castles and associated retaining districts which were separately assigned to subordinate ispáns. In their peregrination around the kingdom, the king and his retinue customarily descended upon the ispáns, receiving hospitality from them and briefly overseeing the business of the individual counties. The royal household was equally likely, however, to visit abbeys and cathedral chapters, which the king treated as his own Eigenklöster and whose lands thus formed a part of the royal goods. The abbeys and Page 20 chapters likewise constituted households in their own right with functionaries whose titles imitated those employed in the royal household, and with their own assembled ranks of retainers.41 Up to several hundred of these might be employed on any single ecclesiastical estate. On those occasions when the king’s retinue descended upon them, the households of bishops, abbots and ispáns became, albeit briefly, an adjunct of the larger royal familia. Thereafter, they reassumed their own separate existence, vying with one another to attract warriors to their ranks. 1.3. Distinctions of men The principal legal distinction made in the earliest Hungarian laws was between free (liber) and unfree (servus). The gulf separating these two groups was so profound in the eleventh century as to result in severe penalties for intermarriage. It is plain, however, that the distinction between free and unfree was not economic. The free included landless pauperes and vulgares, whereas among the unfree might be numbered warriors with extensive landholdings.42 Nor was the difference rooted in service, for freemen commonly served in the households of greater men. The competition between lords for freemen who might serve either as retainers or as ‘guests’ of the household (hospites domestici) was acknowledged as an unwelcome phenomenon in contemporary legislation.43 Freemen were also expected to perform military services for the king, under the command of the ispán. The distinction between free and unfree most probably lay in the extent of the latter’s obligation to his master. Whereas the freeman could enter into service on defined terms and under some sort of unwritten contractual arrangement, the bondsman was unable to leave his master’s service.44 The class of the unfree also included the warriors (iobagiones castri), castrenses and udvarniks who served the king in the counties and on his palace estates. The warriors in particular might have quite extensive properties which were ceded to them in return for service, and which the ispáns were enjoined to protect from diminution.45 The warriors prized their superior social and economic status, which distinguished them from the castrenses who performed humbler, provisioning tasks. Contemporary litigation often involved suits by castle-warriors against castrenses and udvarniks who had usurped either their land or their exemptions.46 By virtue of their separate subordination to the royal household, the udvarniks fell under the jurisdiction of the mayor of the palace or palatine who traversed the realm hearing their pleas and Page 21 dispensing justice among them. To the number of the unfree belonging to the royal service should be added the guardsmen (ewrii, őrök) who lived within the royal castles, and the very large number of archers and light cavalrymen, often the relics of tribal auxiliaries from the conquest period, whose task it was to patrol the frontier and drag to their scaffolds those making their way illegally across it.47 Church estates and also the more extensive properties belonging to the greater families adopted analogous institutions, having their own tied military retainers and guardsmen. During the course of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, secular and ecclesiastical lords succeeded in imposing on many freemen working their lands much the same obligations as rested on the unfree. The class of freemen, as a group distinct both from the nobility and from the peasant-tenantry, endured nevertheless in Hungary until the close of the Middle Ages. The ranks of the free and unfree were intersected, however, by other forms of allegiance and solidarity which blurred legal distinctions. The household itself was a mixed institution. It comprised freemen who had entered into the service of a secular or ecclesiastical lord, and also his military bondsmen. Both served equally in the prosecution of their lord’s wars, and the servile retainer might receive his freedom by a display of valour. Since the institution of the household did not acknowledge modern-day distinctions between private and public functions, the household of an individual ispán probably included those castle-warriors who served as part of his personal retinue. A similar pattern of effacement is also evident at the level of the village. The eleventh-century laws, while pressing the distinction between freeman and bondsman, simultaneously emphasized the collective role of the village in the building of churches and in the reporting of malefactors. The village was communally responsible for robbers in its midst, and its members might be randomly selected to undergo ordeal in order to prove the community’s innocence of crime. A composite institution of freemen and bondsmen thus became one of the principal vehicles for the enforcement of order. It should also be noted that members of the village often worked the land together, or agreed among themselves on annual divisions of their collective property. Besides being a legal unit, the village community operated as an economic cooperative, the membership of which transcended distinctions of status. Within the ranks of the free and unfree, new and closer distinctions manifested themselves. The development from the mid-twelfth century of towns as chartered corporations created a new category of Page 22 freeman who lived by his own laws and appointed his own magistrates. The invitation of foreign hospites who were granted special rights as an incentive to their immigration resulted in the foundation of privileged communities of freemen, most notably in Transylvania and the Szepesség.48 Among the unfree, a similar process of internal differentiation took place. Well before the supposed transformation in the mid-thirteenth century of ‘royal counties’ into ‘noble counties’, castle-warriors had assumed significant power in their own localities by obtaining the right to act as assessors in judicial matters passing before the ispán’s court.49 In some counties they also appointed their own iudex terrestris who represented their interests in legal business and who acted as a counterpart to the ispán and to his comes curialis. Many castle-warriors additionally assumed a greater collective responsibility for the lands which they occupied, even laying down the terms under which one of their number could sell his property (which also suggests just how less ‘unfree’ they were becoming) and participating in inquisitions.50 The emergence of a hierarchy of status within the ranks of the castle-warriors is suggested by the designation of some of these as liberi sancti regis, proceres filii sancti regis, iobagiones sancti regis or filii iobagionum sancti regis who had the right to be impleaded only before the king or palatine.51 Those castle-warriors who failed to obtain this status often had their lands occupied by local lords or converted into the private estate of the ispán. They were, thereafter, reduced by degrees to the condition either of household staff or of peasants.52 Elsewhere in the kingdom, groups of unfree extracted rights which not only enhanced their status but effectively obliterated recollection of their servile obligations. The Pechenegs of Árpás, originally captives who had been settled as guards on Hungary’s western frontier, had acquired by the late twelfth century the right to be judged by their own customs and to administer justice as they saw fit over their own peasants. Analogous rights were obtained in the next century by other groups of border-guards and former auxiliaries, most notably the Cumans of the Plain and the light-horsemen (speculatores) of Örimagyarósd.53 The acquisition of charters attesting to these collective rights anticipated the legal association or universitas as one of the principal actors in the political and jurisdictional order. 1.4. Inheritance and the kindred An equally important institution intersecting Hungarian society was the kindred: the genus, generatio or cluster of families which shared the Page 23 same ancestor. The kindred was, however, more than a biological institution, for it also retained a legal and economic character. The kindred dominated relations within the village, since over time, the between thirty and fifty households which constituted the village became interrelated (and doubtless like the islanders of Susak, occupied by Hungary in the fourteenth century, they eventually suffered much as a consequence of this inbreeding). Even after the decline of the bloodfeud as a means of regulating local justice, the kindred preserved its legal significance. The laws of the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries stress therefore the indemnities which were payable to proximi, parentes and cognati for injuries done, and the kindred’s role in maintaining responsibility for its members and in vouching for their testimony. As an economic institution, the kindred often worked its lands collectively, with its members sharing both agricultural tasks and profits, and sometimes even the same accommodation.54 Every several generations, however, the property of the kindred was usually reassigned among its several branches and new kindreds were created as a consequence of this subdivision.55 As we have already noted, except in a very few cases, no clear link can be established between the leading kindreds of the tenth century and those which appear in the historical record in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The lands of the overwhelming majority of these later kindreds were confined to a single county and rested in a single line. Only a few had properties dispersed over a wide area of the kingdom or more than several collateral branches, which might be taken as an indication of their longevity. By the same token, we may note that the Aba kindred, which probably was descended from a tenth-century chieftain, had estates across a wide swathe of the kingdom and was by the thirteenth century divided into several dozen branches.56 Curiously, the kindreds which demonstrated the greatest continuity were often those founded by immigrant knights, as for instance the Hont-Pázmány and Ják kindreds, descended from German warriors who entered the kingdom in the reign of St Stephen.57 From the beginning of the thirteenth century (the earliest reference is from 1208),58 members of the leading kindreds began to refer to themselves as de genere, followed by the name of a putative ancestor, and we can intimate from Anonymus’s chronicle that they were also anxious to establish romantic genealogies for themselves. In the majority of cases, however, the ancestors whom they chose, and whom Anonymus generously included in his account of the Hungarian conquest, lived in the twelfth century. As an alternative, Page 24 kindreds appropriated a genuine tenth-century figure and claimed a direct descent from him, much as they would do in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries with regard to figures of classical antiquity.59 In the mid-thirteenth century, therefore, the ispán Erdö, whose father was probably an immigrant of German descent, declared himself of the line of the tenthcentury princes, Gyula and Zsombor. Over the following century, Erdö’s descendants interchanged among themselves the names of Gyula and Zsombor as spurious evidence of their pedigree. The even less significant Ludány kindred, which was probably of Czech ancestry, also declared itself in the thirteenth century as being descended from one of the grandsons of Zsombor, and persisted with this fiction over several generations.60 Some of the nobility of Croatia, incorporated in the Hungarian kingdom around 1100, performed an analogous deception. It may well be that the Hungarian conquest of Croatia was accompanied by a treaty between the Hungarian king and the Croatian župans. In the midfourteenth century, however, a dozen Croatian kindreds, most of which were from the lesser nobility of Luka county, coupled their names to this treaty as evidence both of their antiquity and of their right to various privileges.61 Rather than imagine any continuity between the kindreds of the conquest period and those of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we should probably reckon instead on a rapid turnover during the whole of this period. Biological and political failure, and the loss of livelihoods by natural disaster or in feuding, could devastate a kindred’s fortunes while yielding opportunities to others. The simultaneous and almost complete disappearance around the 1230s of at least eight of the great kindreds whose members had previously guided the politics of the kingdom, and the rapid rise of three newcomers, demonstrate the dramatic way in which fortunes could change even in the more settled conditions of the thirteenth century.62 The frequency with which lines defaulted for lack of heirs and the implications which their expiry held both for the ruling house and for the relatives of the deceased branch, explain the prominence of regulations touching upon inheritance in all of the laws of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Nevertheless, and as indeed we frequently find during the earliest period of written Hungarian history, a discrepancy exists between the prescriptive and descriptive records of the time. The royal laws relating to inheritance clearly prescribe measures which contradict both what we know from descriptions given in other sources, and what we may guess were the principal interests of landowners. In Page 25 some cases, the extent of textual borrowing from Frankish and Bavarian sources must throw into doubt whether the law concerned had any relevance at all to Hungarian conditions.63 What follows can only be, therefore, a tentative survey of the facts as we know them. It was of advantage to the royal house both to permit individuals to bestow freely of their property and to assert the rights of the crown to the property of those who had died without heirs. First, free disposition permitted landowners to donate to the church their estates and the people who worked them. St Stephen’s concern to ensure a steady flow of wealth to the clergy, and the criticism which his policy engendered, is plain from the text of his earliest lawcode.64 Secondly, the royal house wished to increase the amount of cultivated and populated property at its disposal, and land which had been made economically viable by the industry of its previous owners fitted this purpose exactly. Ever since the mid-tenth century, the ruling dynasty had lost the opportunity of distributing plunder to its favoured supporters. Land and the bondsmen associated with it were the substitute, for their combination might be translated into wealth. Territory and servitors were also necessary to support the castle-warriors which, together with the royal retinue, constituted the backbone of the kingdom’s military resources. Such largesse required, however, a constant flow of property to the king which might be redistributed as a mark of favour. The laws of St Stephen reflected these concerns and were emphatic in the matter of land and inheritance. Each should be free ‘to divide his property, to assign it to his wife, his sons and daughters, his relatives, or to the church’. Yet, at the same time, the properties of those dying with neither a will nor close heirs passed to the royal fisc.65 Land was, however, not all of the same legal status. At least from the beginning of the twelfth century, a distinction was made between the ancestral lands of the kindred and those which it had subsequently acquired by royal donation.66 The former, which were defined at this time as ‘possessions given by St Stephen’,67 devolved to ‘successors or heirs’ – in other words, to collateral relatives. Independent evidence suggests that collateral heirs could at least include the cousins of the deceased. Since cousins and other close relatives held in common the land which had been passed down through the family, it made sense to recognize in this way their collective right to inheritance. The second category of land, royal donation, was usually made in recognition of an individual’s services. These lands had circumscribed rights of inheritability. They might pass either from father to son or, in default of immediate heirs, to the brother of the deceased. In the event, Page 26 however, of the dead man having no immediate family, the donated property reverted to the king. The distinction made in the early-twelfth century laws between ancestral and donated land was a compromise between the claims of the kindred and the interests of the ruling house. It was, however, quite unworkable. Kindreds often had neither memory nor written record of the terms under which they held property. Moreover, donated land was frequently absorbed and incorporated within ancestral properties and worked thereafter by members of the kindred. In some cases these lands had been given to a warrior precisely for the purpose of linking together dispersed estates which were otherwise held jointly. Treating ancestral and donated property as different under inheritance law not only, therefore, failed to take into account the way most land was actually managed but also threatened to break both the territorial contiguity of estates and the fortunes of individual kindreds. Under pressure from his supporters, the king was forced in the early thirteenth century to concede donated land the same status in inheritance law as ancestral properties even though this limited the opportunities for escheat on grounds of defectus seminis. According to the Golden Bull of 1222, a landholder without sons was free to dispose of his land by testament. In the absence of a will to the contrary, his property passed to collateral lines. Only if these were lacking did the land revert to the crown. Over the course of the century, the rights of the kindred became even more pronounced, to the extent of making it impossible to dispose of ancestral estates to anyone other than its members. Although a landowner was still permitted to dispose freely of properties which he had acquired by his own efforts, it was firmly laid down that inherited land could not be given away without the consent of his cognati and proximi.68 The collective rights of the kindred trumped, therefore, not only the right of the individual to dispose freely of his land, but also the interests of the ruler and of the royal fisc. Between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries, Hungary experienced a social and political transformation. The changes which took place were by no means unique in Eastern Europe, but have their parallels both in Piast Poland and in Varangian Russia. Shortly after the conquest, the tribal structure of Hungarian society collapsed and with it went the trappings of the Hungarians’ pagan past: their totems, shamans and Turkic-speaking chieftains. By the close of the tenth century political Page 27 power rested on the ruler and his household. St Stephen’s defeat of his rivals and his construction of a Christian kingdom both enhanced his own power and lent him a new ideological right to rule. Nevertheless, in order to establish their authority over the lands which they claimed as their own, St Stephen and his successors had to ‘territorialize’ the household and geographically project their authority. They did this through the appointment of loyal officers drawn from the household who were sent to administer the localities. Supported by their own retainers and kindreds, the ispáns and other chief men of the kingdom soon, however, made themselves into increasingly independent powerholders. They transformed the properties which they had been given into hereditary estates held on the same terms as ancestral land, and they successfully resisted royal attempts to replenish the material resources of the crown. Building up private households to which they joined both freemen and warriors, they established their personal retinues in competition to the king’s own. (This process will be further discussed in the following chapter.) The Árpád territorialization of the royal household thus had as its consequence the establishment of a hereditary landowning class, which would in time carry the name of noble. In this respect, the household of the ruler proved for Hungary as for its neighbours, ‘the threshold for a transition from a tribal to feudal aristocracy’.69 Page 28 2 Origins of the Hungarian Nobility 2.1. The aristocracy and landownership Until the thirteenth century, the term ‘nobleman’ was largely unfamiliar in Hungary and, on those occasions when it was used, it was applied without precision. The late eleventhcentury laws of St Ladislas thus suggest the interchangeability of the term with, variously, a high office-holder in royal or ecclesiastical service, a warrior, and the owner of a curia having his own bailiff.1 It is in this respect revealing that on the first recorded occasion when a private individual called himself a nobleman, he should have done so elliptically by describing himself as non ignobilis.2 By the end of the twelfth century, however, the designation of nobilis was understood as an alternative to princeps, procer and iobagio regis (royal servant). It thus became located among the aristocratic kindreds which served the king either in his household or in the county administration. The number of these kindreds, each of which alleged a descent going back to the pre-conquest period, was put in the thirteenth century at 108. As has been remarked, this figure bears some correlation to the combined number of county-ispáns and of court dignitaries. Certainly, some of these kindreds held several offices simultaneously, but there were also kindreds which on account of the age or unsuitability of their members were temporarily unable to participate in the government of the kingdom.3 The vast majority of these kindreds were of Hungarian origin. We should not, however, understand this term by a modern racial definition, since among those commonly considered to be of Hungarian descent were the offspring of Pechenegs (the Tomaj kindred), Bulgarians (the Kán kindred) and other Slavs.4 This last group included kindreds which were descended from the native Slavonic Page 29 dynasties south of the Danube and Drava rivers, and possibly also Ruthenes. Indeed, the first layman recorded as receiving a royal charter of immunity was a Slavonic landowner probably of the Orthodox confession, whose estates lay in the north-eastern county of Kraszna.5 There were also the descendants of German knights who had entered Hungary even as early as the reign of St Stephen. The demand for warriors trained in western methods of combat, together with land-starvation in Germany and the supposed rewards available in the Hungarian royal household, fed this immigration. Members of the hundred or so preeminent kindreds of the realm belonged to the royal household, although in many cases their contact with the king’s familia could only have been fleeting and intermittent. They also administered households of their own. Some of these were, like the king’s own, itinerant: at least, the distribution of estates belonging to high ecclesiastical dignitaries suggests peregrination. The majority were, however, immobile. In the case of ispáns, their households were most probably located within the compound of the castle from which they administered their counties. Other ispáns may have built their own forts, as possibly at Kőszeg and Kabold.6 Probably most made do with wooden houses and towers, for until the second half of the thirteenth century there was no tradition of private castle-building in Hungary. It was also common for kindreds to found their own proprietory churches and monasteries over which they retained rights of advowson, and in which their members were eventually buried. Members of the kindred often shared the same accommodation and household, and they held the land together, supervising its cultivation and reaping its profits collectively. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, properties were usually held in common for up to three generations, after which they were distributed among collateral branches.7 The prospect of subdivision was a strong incentive both to accumulate additional properties and to obtain the royal favour, which was the main source of landed wealth. By the early thirteenth century, however, it was increasingly common for properties to be divided every generation.8 The branches of the kindred might, however, retain common ownership of the proprietory monastery and, pending final agreement on their division, of certain pastures and woodlands. Branches of the kindred might also found their own religious houses in much the same way as they built fortified homes for themselves. The Baár-Kalán kindred, which subdivided in the twelfth century, thus retained two proprietary monasteries: one at Szer where the kindred had its oldest lands, and a more recent at Ellős, which was founded by Page 30 a later collateral branch.9 The history of the Slavonian Babonić kindred may, for its part, be tracked by the toponyms by which the family styled both itself and its later cadet lines. The Babonići (this being the plural of Babonić) first called themselves after their premier possession at Gorica. Following their acquisition in the late twelfth century of a better property, they renamed themselves de Vodičca (Vodicsai). The subsequent division of the Babonić estates among three branches resulted in the appropriation of new toponymic titles, each of which recalled the principal stronghold belonging to the newly-founded line.10 The noble kindred thus periodically reconfigured into its own separate parts or branches each of which in time generated new kindreds with their own special appellation. It is for this reason alone hard to make any categoric distinction between kindred and family, or between genus, generatio and parentela. Despite its division into collateral branches, the kindred might continue to share memory of a common ancestor and, as heraldic imagery became more fashionable, similar devices on its armorial bearings. In place of heraldic symbols, the kindred might adopt a species of animal after which family groups within the kindred subsequently styled themselves: chicken, hen, goose and so on.11 Members of the kindred also retained a right to the property of branches which expired through lack of heirs, and had rights of preemption and of consent to sale on ancestral estates owned by collateral lines. These rights were only formally recognized in royal legislation in the thirteenth century. They were, moreover, never codified with any precision during the Middle Ages. Despite the decline of the kindred as an economic unit, which undertook over several generations the collective management of the family estate, the interlocking clusters of families continued to retain some form of common legal identity. In the preservation of its rights and interests, they might collectively sue in law throughout the medieval period as a generatio. Members of kindreds would also frequently join together to engage in local wars and violent occupations in order to defend or augment the landed resources in which they all considered themselves to have a potential share. They would, however, just as commonly fall out among themselves over the distribution of the fruits of their collective endeavour.12 The establishment of a landed elite took place at the expense of the material wealth of the ruler. The properties belonging to landowners and private institutions grew substantially even during the eleventh century. Whereas at the beginning of the century, Pannonhalma abbey had only 10 villages, by the end it possessed 30. In the 1230s, the Page 31 number of villages belonging to the abbey had reached 90.13 Although some of these acquisitions were the product of individual legacies, the majority were donations of the crown. Even as early as the beginning of the twelfth century, King Koloman found it necessary to repossess some of the properties given to the church by his predecessors. Although compulsory repossessions of former royal estate were commonplace in the thirteenth century, they scarcely affected the larger trend of the erosion of royal resources. To begin with, the Árpád kings of Hungary found it expedient to donate unsettled and uncultivated land to their followers, for such cost little to the fisc. Under-utilized estate was most commonly found on the frontiers of the kingdom. The opening-up of Slavonia in the twelfth century and of southern Transylvania at the beginning of the thirteenth, yielded new opportunities for royal grants of land to the king’s importunate followers.14 These were, however, only temporary palliatives. Even as early as the twelfth century, rulers found it necessary to alienate lands belonging to the retaining districts of the royal counties. Wellpositioned estates were ceded to landowners, and the castle-warriors who had previously worked these lands were moved off to distant and sometimes strategically useless properties.15 By the early thirteenth century, when it first becomes possible to map the military districts and estates of retainers attached to the counties, the dispersal and fragmentation of the royal properties was clearly well advanced. Even the military districts of the county of Komárom, which had previously been concentrated in a tight bundle north of the Danube, had by this time become fractured by the interpenetration of private estates.16 Royal donations of land did not just limit the resources available to the crown but also spilled out to affect the jurisdictional authority possessed by the ispáns and other dignitaries. During the twelfth century, it became common to exempt properties from the jurisdiction of the ispán and to entrust to the new landowner the revenues and rights which had previously belonged to the county.17 An alternative to exemption from the authority of the ispán was the appointment of a leading landowner to the office of ispán as a hereditary dignity. The first preferment of this type is commonly considered to have been the donation of the Croatian ispánate of Modrus to the Frangepán family in 1193, although it is possible that at least one Slavonian county had already been alienated in this way.18 During the early thirteenth century, the county of Locsmánd was permanently assigned to a landowner and his heirs, and its castle-warriors were converted into servants of the new lord. Later on in the same century, the county of Page 32 Esztergom was ceded in perpetuity to the archbishop of Esztergom.19 The granting of ‘perpetual ispánates’ was strongly resisted, however, in the thirteenth century and is largely a feature of a later period.20 Moreover, the list of counties recorded as alienated in the thirteenth century comprise for the most part Croatian lordships, most of which do not qualify as counties in the accepted Hungarian sense. The consolidation of landed estates affected not only the crown but also the class of freemen. Already, in the earliest years of the twelfth century, King Koloman had found it necessary to impose financial disincentives on freemen who worked the estates of others, and to force landowners to return the properties of freemen which they had previously acquired. This measure failed, however, to reach its mark. Freemen continued to be either recruited or coerced to serve on the land or in the households of greater lords, and in the process many lost the right to free movement which they had previously enjoyed. Although they retained the designation of liberi, they might be alienated together with the estate on which they worked and they were also often obliged to pay dues summarily exacted by their lords. These payments included the financial penalty imposed by Koloman on freemen working the lands of others, which landowners often had the right to collect.21 Freemen working estates other than their own stood out, therefore, as legally inferior to the freemen who laboured on their own lands and who enjoyed, according to the terminology of the period, a plena or aurea libertas.22 Members of this second group frequently exploited their independent status to obtain royal favour and thus to work their way into the ranks of the prominent men of the realm. Quite possibly, they constituted the reservoir from which new ispáns and court dignitaries were recruited in the eleventh and twelfth century. The slow erosion of the category of freeman prefigured the eventual division of Hungarian society into two hereditary classes: noble regnicolae and a servile plebs of peasants. The alienation of the royal estate continued even more vigorously in the thirteenth century. With insufficient tracts of vacant estate remaining at its disposal, the crown found it increasingly necessary to make donations out of the castle-lands. Already by the second decade of the century, the villages of warriors and castrenses serving in Bihar county had fallen to no more than 18.23 Whereas previously the settlements of servile groups had been relocated to other royal properties, the cession of castle-lands frequently now included its population. Although it is common to blame Andrew II for this development, not least his express decision made in 1217, to ‘alter the conditions of our realm Page 33 that has been conserved by the ancients and distribute castles, counties, lands, and other revenues of our abundant Hungary to our barons and knights as inheritable possession given in perpetuity’,24 the extent of the royal properties remained considerable. Half a century after the introduction of Andrew’s so-called novae institutiones, about a half to twothirds of the total land of the Hungarian kingdom still remained in royal hands.25 Moreover, by making donations of property to their principal supporters, Andrew and his successors were only doing what was expected of them. The praise reserved for Andrew II on account of his generosity indicates the extent to which beneficence was understood as an attribute of kingship. The problem which confronted the crown in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries lay not so much with the resources at the king’s disposal but with the weakness of established methods of political management. The household and the personal bond which had previously served to unite the king and his most important subjects was increasingly ineffective. Already in the twelfth century, under the influence of the Gregorian reform movement, the high clergy had separated themselves from the royal house and established their own separate ordo clericalis. Some senior clergy still served the ruler as administrators. Prelates and abbots, however, increasingly distanced themselves from the king’s retinue preferring instead to spend most of the year with their own ecclesiastical familiae. (These were, however, also in the process of dividing between their chapters and the separate households of the bishops.) During the early years of the twelfth century, the ruler resigned his authority over the appointment of church dignitaries, shortly afterwards ceding charters of immunity to church estates which took them outside the jurisdiction of his local officials.26 Similar centrifugal tendencies affected lay members of the household, most of whom served their royal master at a distance. As the leading kindreds of the realm acquired their own extensive lands with a servile workforce to match, and built their own private monasteries and manor houses, so they were able to found households which rivalled in attraction the remote splendours of the king’s retinue. Moreover, by their acquisition of royal offices they were able to combine their ‘private’ power with a ‘public’ authority which enhanced their influence and resources. Alternatively, they obtained from the king their own privileges of immunity, which lifted their properties out of the control of the ispán and of other royal officers. With their local powers almost incapable of being checked, individual Page 34 lords set about the plunder of royal estates, converting castle-lands into their own private property and forcing freemen into their service. Although the establishment of provinciae over which a single lord ruled as a petty-prince through a combination of extensive landholding and the accumulation of offices, is really a feature of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, tendencies in this direction were already evident. The Babonić kindred of Slavonia, which was probably descended from župans, had thus built up during the twelfth century a body of neighbouring estates to which it added several royal donations. The Babonić lands enclosed several of the roadways leading to the Adriatic coast, from which the Babonići were able to extract tolls and on account of which they entered into a local war with the citizens of Senj. In the early 1240s, the Babonić obtained privileges of immunity which exempted them from the authority of the ban of Slavonia, and thereafter they commenced the occupation of nearby castle-estates. Their local power was sufficient both to force the subjugation of other kindreds, which surrendered a part of their own properties in exchange for protection, and to excite a dynastic alliance through marriage with the neighbouring ban of Bosnia.27 Smaller lordships were constructed lower down the social hierarchy. Like the more illustrious Babonići, their builders often relied upon a combination of local office and the royal favour. The Iharosfi kindred of Somogy county, for instance, originally possessed no more than a single village in the western part of the county. Around 1260, Gregory Iharosfi obtained possession of several square miles of land at Berény which belonged to servitors of the queen. His rights to this property were by no means secure and for the next few years he was in dispute with the servitors over the terms of their compensation. Using a minor judicial office which he had acquired in the county, Gregory was able to outmanoeuvre the servitors by obtaining the queen’s recognition of his superior, hereditary rights to the estate. In 1276, Gregory extended his estates by buying part of a nearby village. On account of personal services to the king, he received in the same year a further property. Thus, within less than 20 years, Gregory was able to construct a compact body of estates in Somogy county. Their overall value may be appreciated by the enormous (although doubtless inflated) sum of 125 marks paid in recompense to Gregory for a violent trespass on his lands. Despite his humble origins Gregory had by the end of his career, made himself one of the half-dozen or so leading men of the county.28 Page 35 In the course of their advance, both the mighty Babonić kindred and the humbler Gregory Iharosfi supported the ruler in his wars and were accordingly rewarded. Nevertheless, their relationship to the king was seldom personal and even less ‘familial’, but was mediated instead by office-holding and by legal instruments attesting to rights. The bureaucratization of relationships illustrated by these examples demonstrates the weakening of the bonds of affection and allegiance which had formerly united the royal household. In this sense, they reflect the larger supersession of personal methods of government by more bureaucratic institutions which had been proceeding apace over the previous hundred years. (This will be discussed further in Chapters 3 and 4.) As the leading kindreds accumulated increasingly independent powers in the localilities, so alternative and more impersonal mechanisms of political control became necessary. Their application contributed in turn to a further attenuation of the familial bond which had formerly served to unite the political community. 2.2. From servientes to nobles During the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the plight of castle-warriors and other servile groups as well as of freemen was profound. The royal estates on which they had previously worked were progressively alienated. Therewith they were reduced in status and, like the formerly royal servitors living on the Babonić and Iharosfi estates, they were subjected to the authority of local landowners. Freemen were likewise squeezed into bonds of dependence, losing their lands and being forced to work on the estates of others. The solution to the crisis which these diverse groups adopted was straightforward. Servitors on castle-estates simply seized a part of these lands for themselves, took over the residual judicial functions of the ispán, and threw themselves on the king’s mercy. Freemen likewise put themselves and their properties under the king’s protection. The alacrity with which the late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century kings of Hungary responded to the embrace of their subjects suggests not only that their actions may have been welcome to the ruler but also the complicity of the court in events. Nevertheless, we should not understand these developments as a social revolution, nor imagine as Hungarian historians often do, that they amounted to the conversion of hitherto ‘royal counties’ into counties governed by communities to which the name of noble would eventually attach. As we have seen, Page 36 castle-warriors had already acquired a judicial authority in some counties, involving themselves in legal business coming before the ispán, appointing their own judges, and taking over responsibility for the allocation of lands belonging to their number. Likewise, the office of ispán would persist throughout the Middle Ages as a royal appointment to which would be attached estates and revenues necessary for the ispán’s proper discharge of functions. Moreover, the terms in which the new relationship between the king and his importunate subjects was expressed emphasized traditional and personal bonds. Indeed, they were most redolent of the vocabulary of the royal household, the decline of which had contributed to the current crisis. The earliest examples of such acts of subordination to the king are from the late twelfth century (the earliest recorded instance is from 1163/64)29 and they involved in the main freemen. In the early thirteenth century, castle-warriors, udvorniks, tárnoks and other groups such as frontier-guardsmen and Pechenegs, joined the flood. The procedure followed, at least to begin with, was for members of these communities to petition the king for admission into the ranks of royal servientes. The king would commonly accede to these supplications, occasionally recalling the services which the petitioners had discharged. Placing them under his own immediate jurisdiction, the king would free them from the authority of his ispán and of other local officials, reserving their judgement to himself. The lands which the castle-warriors and other servitors had held were accordingly converted into properties held directly of the king. Servile obligations which had previously attached to their parcels of estate, were obliterated as a consequence of this new relationship. Where the beneficiary was not already in possession of an estate, then he might be awarded one out of the royal fisc. Acceptance into the ranks of royal servientes was often accompanied by the grant of a charter indicating the new status which the recipient had been afforded and the lands of which he was the owner. Whole groups, too numerous even to be named as individuals, were sometimes the beneficiaries of charters of this type.30 The term servientes, by which the beneficiaries were first known, is an unusual one.31 Before the thirteenth century it was sufficiently imprecise to mean anyone who performed a service. Its implications in the thirteenth century were, however, more specific. By acquiring the rank of a royal serviens, a person was admitted to membership of the royal household. In the king’s domus or aula he had both the opportunity to be sustained and the right to converse with his fellows (the so-called facultas conversandi).32 It is, of course, obvious that the many servientes Page 37 scattered across Hungary could not often enjoy the immediate benefits of service and conversation in the royal household. Nevertheless, the personal relationship between ruler and serviens was not to be interrupted by geographical considerations. The serviens, however far from the household, had the right to sue for justice before the king, and he was exempted from the authority of all but the most senior royal judges. He fought beneath the royal standard and, on at least one occasion every year, had the putative right to debate in the company of his peers with the ruler on the conduct of policy and the condition of the realm. This right would later be confined to representatives and the periods between their gatherings was evidently much longer than just a year. Nevertheless, in the first instance, the relationship between the serviens and his royal master was understood as immediate and personal. It was expressed in the only language of the time capable of rendering such relations: the vocabulary of the household and of personal kingship. The relationship between the ruler and his servientes was dictated by fidelitas. At the time of their accession into the ranks of the royal servientes, individual supplicants might be confirmed in hereditary possession of those properties which they had hitherto held as freemen, castle-warriors or udvarniks. They might also be ceded fresh lands as a gift and as a substitute for the sustenance which they would otherwise have obtained by their personal presence in the royal household. Both types of land constituted donations from which all burdens and stains of servitude were removed and which were held in hereditary possession, perpetuo iure. The allegiance of the serviens to the king was not, however, dictated by rewards or by specific manifestations of the ruler’s goodwill, nor was it discharged by reason of the land he had been given. It arose instead out of the personal bond of fidelity which united man to lord and which was expected of members of the king’s domus and familia. As such, it was as much beyond specification as all arrangements based on love and trust. Given this circumstance, it is perhaps not surprising that charters ceding the status of serviens should in the thirteenth century have so laboured the merits of fidelity or that Béla IV should have defined faithfulness not only as the cardinal virtus politica but as a quality which compensated for and, in a sense, almost redeemed from sin.33 Where precise definition was impossible, appeals to a natural order of morality and grace filled the void. In the charters granting the status of serviens, the only express duty ever laid on the recipient was to serve per se et personaliter in the king’s retinue. As it turned out, however, the vast majority of Page 38 servientes did not have the material support properly to fulfil this obligation. The interest of the Hungarian kings was in heavy cavalry, which were both equal to the forces ranged against them by their western neighbours and capable of dispersing light horsemen in a single charge. The need for armoured knights had been a principal cause of German immigration into the kingdom ever since the time of St Stephen, and their military superiority was indeed proven in Hungary’s otherwise disastrous encounter with the Mongols in 1241. Although the arengas of charters granting serviens status sometimes referred to the need to augment the number of bellatores available in the kingdom, the vast majority of the new class of servientes lacked the resources to equip themselves with a charger, armour and squires. The cost of these items alone was the equivalent of a substantial, stone townhouse.34 Early on in the thirteenth century, therefore, the king agreed to restrict his servientes’ obligations to the defence of the realm and to exempt them from service abroad. This larger duty was fastened instead only upon those to whom the king had granted the more extensive estates, and even this obligation was in time eclipsed. Although unable to fulfil a complete range of military commitments, the servientes were through their putative membership of the royal household equal in terms of status to the more established aristocratic nobiles. Distinctions between the two groups were mostly preserved during the first half of the thirteenth century. Thereafter, however, separate categories could not be maintained. The common relationship of nobiles and servientes to the head of the royal household, as well as other social and economic similarities, eliminated differences. From the middle decades of the century, the designation of servientes became interchangeable with nobiles even in documents issued by the conservative royal chancellery. As compensation for this dilution of their status, those leading men who had formerly boasted the title of nobiles, now began to refer to themselves as barones. This new title, although ill-defined, was largely linked to the possession of court offices and was therefore entirely in the gift of the king. As members of the servientes class began to acquire leading positions within the organization of royal government, so they were also able to break into the ‘baronial’ class. The Mongol invasion of 1241, and the famine and pestilence which followed the assault, yielded additional opportunities for land-acquisition and social mobility to those servientes who survived the general ruin, and further eroded differences between them and the more established families of noblemen. Page 39 2.3. Nobles and counties The terms by which servientes were accepted into the royal household indicated not only a vertical relationship of fidelitas between master and servant, but also a horizontal bond linking together individual members of the household. Entry into the ranks of the royal servientes was thus expressed in terms redolent not only of lordship but also of membership of an association. Besides entering into the royal familia, the recipient of the king’s favour was accepted into the collegium, consortium, cetum or societas of the royal servientes. These were no empty expressions. As early as 1222, the royal servientes acted together in order to force from Andrew II a charter attesting to their various rights. Their rebellion was most probably orchestrated by several of the leading aristocratic families. Nevertheless, the so-called Golden Bull extracted during the course of these tumults outlined the collective rights of the servientes to freedom from taxation, to royal judgement, and to annual assembly with the king. The provisions of the Golden Bull were amplified on the occasion of further meetings between king and servientes in 1231 and 1267. The collective rights of the servientes were buttressed on a rather more theoretical level by a new ideology of government which stressed the derivation of royal power from the communitas, and which emphasized the ruler’s obligation to consult with his subjects. Whereas, therefore, Anonymus’s earlier history had presented the royal house as the dynastic heir to Attila, the chronicle literature of the later thirteenth century made the Hungarian nobility the collective descendant of the Hunnish chieftains. In the rendering of events given by the chronicler Simon of Kéza, the origin of monarchy was considered to derive from the popular election of the rulers of the Huns in virtue of which the kings of the Hungarians were, like Attila himself, obliged thenceforth to act per commune consilium Vngarorum. As such, Simon of Kéza’s account both reflected and endorsed the political changes currently underway in the kingdom. The theory of popular election promoted by Simon of Kéza passed into the royal chronicles of the fourteenth century and found its way thereafter into Werbőczy’s description of Hungary’s laws.35 The servientes class had been promoted by the kings of Hungary, who had acceded to the petitions of freemen, castle-warriors and others for membership of the household. The political claims advanced by the servientes and their conversion into an ‘estate’ of nobility were, Page 40 however, an unwelcome concomitant. Béla IV, as iunior rex (or co-ruler with his father) and, after 1235, as king in his own right, held the parvenus nobles in disdain. This was not least on account of their servile origins, which rendered them, in Béla’s opinion, homines contemptabiles. Although charters of ennoblement continued to refer to the recipients’ right to membership of the royal household, for most of his long reign Béla refused to treat with members of the new nobility. Notwithstanding the terms of the charters ceded by his father in 1222 and 1231, Béla neither met the nobility’s representatives nor invited them to participate in the business of royal government. Only in 1267, at the very end of his reign, did Béla agree under pressure from his son to attend a meeting called by representatives of the nobility. The Golden Bull of 1222, which Béla had hoped to confine to oblivion, provided the basis of their discussions and resulted in the issue of a further charter outlining the specific rights of the servientes. Béla, however, reserved promulgation of the charter to a subsequent meeting with the well-born barons of his court.36 Until the famous reissue of the Golden Bull in Louis I’s charter of 1351, the 1267 privilege constituted the principal legal instrument defining the rights of the broad mass of Hungarian nobles. The king’s familia continued to constitute a ‘fictive retinue’ by which ruler and noblemen explained their relationship one to another. The distance which Béla maintained between himself and his servientes rendered the household irrelevant, however, as an institution to which the servientes might look for physical support, nourishment and conversation. After about 1250, the attenuation of the household was sufficiently advanced for the term serviens to be almost entirely superseded by ‘noble’. Nevertheless, the separation of the nobles from the king’s actual presence did not have as its consequence the emergence of an independent estate. The self-consciousness of the nobility was limited by the absence of any country-wide organization at which its members could meet and through which could be developed institutions capable of articulating their concerns. Instead, therefore, of emerging as a ‘national’ body, embracing and representing all nobles within the realm, the noble association formed at a lower local level as a multicellular institution. In place of the universitas of the nobility of the realm, there developed a multiplicity of communitates centred upon the Hungarian counties.37 The charters of 1222 and 1231 had reserved to the king and palatine the right to judge the servientes. In practice this remained the case, although on a specific royal mandate other ordinaries of the Page 41 realm might hear pleas. A number of cases were, however, too trivial to be reserved for superior judgement whereas others involving manifest violence might be best expedited by local agencies of justice. Moreover, within individual counties there were plenty of peasants, freemen and others who were not members of the nobility and who did not, therefore, share in their rights. Even before the emergence of the class of noble servientes, castlewarriors had assumed some responsibilities in the adjudication of legal cases dividing responsibilities in this respect with the ispán. The conversion of many of their number into nobles did not put an end to this practice. During the thirteenth century, it became common for the ispán to take the advice of iudices nobilium or szolgabirák (singular: szolgabiró; the Hungarian name betrays the origins of the nobility in the class of servientes or szolgák). They usually numbered four in any one county, and they were chosen by their fellows. The szolgabirák took over principal responsibility for the hearing of legal business in the county which was not referred up to the king or taken before his principal representative, the palatine. Although the sedes iudiciaria (sedria) of the county was still chaired by the ispán (or more usually his deputy, the vice-ispán), the szolgabirák advised on local customs and undertook inquisitions, gathering evidence and supervising oaths. Both the ispán and the palatine were forbidden to exercise justice in the absence of the elected szolgabirák.38 The development of local institutions of justice headed by representatives of the nobles received royal encouragement. The earliest reference to the nobles of a county administering their own justice dates from 1232. In this year, the servientes of Zala county in western Hungary petitioned Andrew II to be given ‘permission to judge and do justice’ (licenciam iudicandi et faciendi iusticiam).39 The justification which they gave for their plea was the breakdown of order in the county and the many oppressions to which this had given rise. The king consented to the petition. Thereupon the bishop of Veszprém, ‘seeing us to be judges and capable of making complete justice’, sued before the nobles of the county for the return of church lands seized by a certain Ban Oguz. Oguz declined to attend the oathtaking organized to prove his defence. The bishop found, however, a sufficient body of persons willing to attest to the veracity of his own claims. Thereupon judgement was made in favour of the plaintiff. The charter attesting to these events speaks in the name of universi servientes of Zala which was a legal device indicative of the Zala servientes’ status as a corporate person. Indeed, among the seals attached to the charter was one attesting to their collective legal status. Page 42 Inscribed +SIGILLUM SERVIENTIUM DE SZALA, it is in fact the only example of its kind before the late fifteenth century.40 Just as Andrew II had empowered the noble servientes of Zala county to administer justice through its representatives, so his son entrusted the szolgabirák to undertake other tasks on the royal behalf. In 1237 a dispute between rival religious houses over fishing rights and pools in the Tisza river was sent by the king to the four szolgabirák of Bodrog county for adjudication. The reluctance of the szolgabirák actually to oversee the process was matched by the determination of the palatine that the settlement of the dispute lay within their capacity and competence.41 After the Mongol invasion, Béla entrusted his commissioners to enter several of the north Hungarian counties and, using régisters drawn up before the attack, to restore unicuique quod suum est. In the discharge of their task, the commissioners relied also upon the testimony of local noblemen (which was probably unwise, given that one of the main aims of the exercise was to ensure the return of castleestates which nobles had illegally occupied).42 Even more strikingly, in a further attempt undertaken in the 1260s to restore land to legal ownership, Béla used the services both of the existing szolgabirák and of other nobles who appear to have been elected: homines de nobilibus ipsius comitatus [Somogy: de comitatu Simigiensi] electos per omnes nobiles de eodem comitatu.43 Representatives of the nobility of at least five counties were also deputed during this decade to establish the boundary between the dominions of Béla and of his son, the future Stephen V.44 Over this same period, noble servientes of the individual counties of the realm further developed the custom of periodically meeting in assemblies in order to discuss local matters, principally the maintenance of order. The assembly (congregatio generalis) of the county was usually presided over by the palatine. It was on such occasions that the szolgabirák were chosen. As representatives of the nobility took charge through the institutions of the county of an increasing share of local litigation, so they acquired an authority over those who were considered to be of their number. It is certainly the case that many free landowners, castlewarriors, udvarniks and others managed during the thirteenth century to obtain royal recognition of their status as noble servientes. Nevertheless, many persons who were later considered members of the nobility were elevated not by any royal charter of ennoblement or previous grant of serviens status but instead by ‘peer-recognition’. This circumstance partly reflected the affective bonds operating within closely-knit communities which encouraged friends, kinsmen and Page 43 neighbours to press for the same status. It may, however, also indicate the extent to which the local associations of nobles felt sufficiently empowered to determine their own membership and composition. Although in documents issued by the chancellery the term of nobleman replaced that of serviens only around the middle years of the thirteenth century, its use was commonplace within the counties from as early as the 1220s. Charters issued by the counties were quite apt, during and after this decade, to employ the term in a number of different ways. In the first instance, counties referred to anyone descended from the aristocratic genera as a nobleman. In this respect, they were only following chancellery practice and their use of the term recalled the older association of noble status with membership of one of Hungary’s leading kindreds. Nobility was thus a dignity acquired de genere, de progenie or de sanguine. This understanding of noble status as something inherited and passing, in the manner of an estate, down the male line persevered throughout the Middle Ages. In the earliest decades of the thirteenth century, descent counted the most as far as status was concerned. From around the 1240s, however, the counties began to employ the designation of nobleman in a second and much wider sense meaning anyone who was a landowner. Among the nobles of Komárom county recorded during this decade were thus included several families of landowners, the Berencsi and Bánai, who were neither descended from aristocratic genera nor had been granted any special status by the king. They were simply freemen and landowners, but this was sufficient for their nobility to be assumed by their peers and for them to be accordingly included within the collegium nobilium of Komárom county.45 Likewise, persons who married into noble families were commonly accepted by the nobility of the county as one of their number and integrated within their ranks. If later pressed to justify their title, such nobles would rely upon the testimony of their friends, relatives and neighbours who would affirm that they were veri nobiles even though they might not have a document attesting to their ennoblement. In this respect, the Hungarian nobility was not simply the product of royal policy; its number and membership was also something which emerged ‘from below’, out of the local associations of noblemen. Such a form of preferment was, however, unwelcome to the kings of Hungary who always maintained their exclusive right to ennoblement. In a highly revealing case from the mid-fourteenth century, the sons of a certain Vojteh in Turóc county were found upon inspection by the royal justiciar to have forged a Page 44 charter of nobility, as a consequence of which they were deprived of their lands and put under sentence of death. In fact, Vojteh and his sons had long been considered noblemen by their fellows and had previously undertaken important judicial tasks as members of the Turóc county nobility.46 Although, not unreasonably, we have used the term corporation to translate the words universitas, communitas and collegium, it is evident that the counties were legally incomplete as corporations. Their principal officer, the ispán, was a royal appointee and the periodic assemblies of the county nobility were usually presided over by the king’s palatine. In token of its limited legal character, the county (with the sole exception of Zala in 1232) did not possess a seal of its own but continued throughout the Middle Ages to make do instead with the personal seals of the ispán and szolgabirák. Nor, despite the strong influence which it could exert, did the county have the complete right to regulate its own membership. These deficiencies arose out of the origin of the counties as institutions of royal government and they were not effaced by the partial conversion of the counties into instruments of noble self-government. In this respect, the history of the counties corresponds closely to the history of the nobility itself. The nobility had by the mid-thirteenth century succeeded in establishing itself as a separate ordo, gradus and status within the realm, with its own local institutions of self-help and of justice. Yet the origins of the nobility in the class of royal servientes retained a powerful influence on the understanding of what the status of nobleman actually meant. Certainly, the nobleman was noble because he was well-born, held land, and was said to be a nobleman by his friends and kinsmen. Nevertheless, his nobility derived in the first place from his immediate relationship to the ruler and from the commitment of fidelitas which he owed to to the king. His obligations to the ruler were not categorically defined, nor were they laid on the land which he held, for he had received this as a gift from the king and as a token of his fidelity. And, as we will see in a later chapter, nobles whose obligations were located in their land rather than in their relationship to the ruler, did not constitute nobles at all. Page 45 3 Territorial Lordship 3.1. Dividing the land By the early thirteenth century, it was considered customary for kindreds of nobles to reallocate their estates every generation among male heirs. The leading Csák kindred, which owned properties in at least twenty-five counties, had probably started to divide its lands in this way in the twelfth century. By 1231 its members held only one piece of woodland in common.1 Nevertheless, the practice of owning and working land collectively was not immediately effaced. Until well into the fourteenth century, it was still often the case that noble kindreds held their lands communally for several or more generations. Only in the 1330s, therefore, did the Csanád kindred finally complete the division of its extensive holdings in Csanád, Arad, Krassó, Temes and Fehér counties.2 As with the Csanád kindred, the break-up of communally-held estates often proceeded in stages, with some properties being partitioned between heirs and others being retained in common for several generations more. In a further example, in 1389 the Mondolai kindred in Temes county split up estates which had previously been owned collectively for at least four generations. The division was made in three parts corresponding to the three branches of the larger family. One group of cousins agreed, however, to retain for the time being their share in common. Since disagreement was frequent among heirs as to what constituted the better parts of the estate, allocation was often accompanied by the casting of lots or by the use of arbitrators.3 The staggered chronology in the division of estates was matched by the piecemeal way in which lands were allocated. Rather than divide the entire estate into blocks, its individual parts were frequently split up and apportioned ‘in the manner of a chess board’.4 Heirs might Page 46 thus find themselves in possession of small parcels of land and halves of villages dispersed across the length of the kingdom. At the time of division, some swapping clearly occurred: a horse for a vineyard, and so on.5 Moreover, distant properties might be subsequently traded or serve as hubs around which cadet lines built up a new body of estates. Nevertheless, the tendency to divide the estate not as a totality but by reference to its parts contributed to the highly dispersed nature of Hungarian landholding in the Middle Ages. As it was, the custom of partible inheritance had the tendency of driving down with every generation the resources available to landowners. In a telling illustration from Temes county, a nobleman who was already so impoverished as to have had to pledge his mills, divided his one remaining village between his two sons. Each received 12 households apiece. Within a short time, the family had disappeared from view, doubtless swallowed up in the peasantry, and the village had become the possession of a neighbour.6 As may additionally be demonstrated by reference to the Ják kindred on the right bank of the River Rába, a superfluity of heirs could within three generations render a once healthy estate a congeries of dwarf-holdings.7 Certainly, some families avoided economic degeneration by biological good fortune just as others preferred to withstand convention and to gather rather than to divide estates. Thus, enormous discrepancies of wealth may be discerned among families of the same kindred.8 Nevertheless, partible inheritance contributed along with the dispersal of properties to the overall weakening of the broad mass of Hungarian nobility. In this respect, it is curious that most noble kindreds appear to have adopted no obvious strategies, such as later marriage or the celibacy of younger sons, to obviate the impact of partible inheritance.9 The division of noble estates was matched by the division of lands among the peasantry. To begin with, the Hungarian peasantry had worked the village lands collectively. They had often done so in groups which combined freemen, bondsmen and castrenses. Communal farming would indeed remain a feature of Hungarian rural society until the eighteenth century. (It was, moreover, inevitable to the extent that the fallow involved both communal supervision of grazing land and collectively-agreed terms of redistribution upon its return to cultivation).10 Nevertheless, the elevation to the status of royal servientes of many freemen, castle-warriors, castrenses and others, frequently involved the apportionment to them of the land which they had hitherto worked. The difficulties of establishing the extent of individual rights to land which had hitherto been worked in Page 47 common, mixtim or in communi, provided ample occasion both for litigation and for aggravated trespass.11 The enclosure of communally-held land by the new class of servientes was thus simultaneously attended by the attempts of those who had not been so promoted to divide off their own properties. Some of these subsequently made it into the nobility but the majority were squeezed into the peasantry. We may presume that new techniques in agriculture, most notably the heavy plough, partly compensated for the diminished economy of scale which followed enclosure.12 The division both of noble estates and of peasant properties was accompanied by the establishment of new borders. Ownership was most commonly demonstrated by laying boundary-markers. Often, these were simply marks on trees or shallow ditches. In places, no markers existed at all and the contemporary record simply stated that the boundary ran for several arrow-shots in a certain direction. The markers themselves might be easily disturbed: ditches could be ploughed up and stones moved.13 In one example, a river which served as a boundary was diverted, leading to a protracted legal dispute. With rare humour, the chancellery scribe recording the case noted that the issue of the river’s course per aliqua tempora fluxisset … in curia.14 In order to avoid the disturbance of boundarymarkers, landowners would commonly rely upon immoveable objects: a waterfall, unusual trees, or, in Slavonia, ad quercum dictam dobro-doeb (literally, ‘to the oak called ‘‘good oak”’!).15 They usually still found it expedient, however, to reapply every so often for a reambulatio and to review the lie of the boundary by checking off markers against a list.16 Individual homes and villages might be surrounded by fences or, where woodland was close, by high palisades. The cost of a fence was sufficiently prohibitive to make this sort of demarcation unsuitable over long distances and, in any case, unguarded fences were frequent objects of theft. Despite, or indeed because of, their frequent violation, boundary markers were held to possess some sacred quality. They would frequently have as their starting-point the stained-glass window in a church upon which the saints were depicted, while the most common device drawn on a tree as a mark of ownership was the cross. Recalling the pagan images carved on gateposts, the route of the boundary might also be marked by stone idols: a so-called baluanku, or as in Komárom county tria idola lapidea pro meta posita. Reambulationes attending disputes over boundaries also assumed a strongly symbolic character. On such occasions, the owner, local clergy and representatives of the county solemnly progressed around Page 48 the cursus metarum of the contested property, reviewing the location of markers. Meanwhile, the abutters stood super terram astride their own presumed boundary. In the event of a legal dispute, ‘terrible oaths’ (iuramenta horribilia) might be professed either in a disputed ditch or while barefooted, in the act of holding aloft a handful of earth.17 In much the same fashion, the formal introduction of a new owner to a property involved the gathering of neighbours and abutters, any of whom might challenge the newcomer with a drawn sword as he crossed the boundary to take up possession.18 Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the organization of the Hungarian countryside gradually assumed a certain uniformity. In place of communal property-holding, the individual landowner holding a small but clearly demarcated estate gained prominence. The gradual division of the land affected not just the social and political structure of the Hungarian kingdom but also the morphology of the landscape. On the ground, the ‘density of boundary-markers’ might confuse onlookers and inquisitions.19 Increasingly however, when viewed from above, the Hungarian kingdom might now be seen both literally and figuratively as a total of adjoining estates.20 3.2. Castle and lordship The partition of estates led to the impoverishment of broad sections of the Hungarian nobility. Most nobles held at best only a single village from which they extracted rents and services. Their domain land, which in any case they frequently leased out, was usually no more than a quarter-mile square. This was about the same size as the land which the average wealthy peasant farmed, although the nobleman generally had more arable.21 As we have seen, most nobles were unable to perform the basic task of accompanying the king to war, even though such service commonly resulted in rewards and favours. Unable to make a living from their land, many nobles sold up within a short period or else returned their property to the local castle thus reverting back to the status of castrenses. In one remarkable case dating from 1268, the sons of Chaz sued before Stephen iunior rex both for the return of their estate at Hodósd from the property of Bihar castle and for their own readmission into the ranks of the nobility. Both the estate and their status as nobles had, so they averred, been lost on account of the cupidity of their grandfather.22 It is, of course, hard to quantify trends from such anecdotal information. Nevertheless, the Page 49 numerical decline of the nobility may be tracked very approximately. Around 1200, the number of castle-warriors and others performing a military role comprised roughly 6–8 per cent of the population. Not all of these were admitted to the ranks of servientes but, there again, membership of this group was also extended to freemen and castrenses who did not normally count as warriors. By the end of the fifteenth century, by contrast, the proportion of nobles in the kingdom was about 3 per cent, of which only about a quarter to a third owned more than a single plot. Hazardous though these figures are, they do strongly suggest that over the intervening period the majority of Hungarian noblemen had lost both their status as nobles and their land.23 There were, of course, many former castle-warriors and other lesser men who succeeded in consolidating their territorial and social estate. A few, like the Petenye kindred of Zemplén county, who first appear in the historical record only in the late thirteenth century, were within a generation able to amass very substantial properties.24 Nevertheless, the majority of the great landholders who emerged to prominence in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were descended from already well-established kindreds. The resources which they had previously amassed guaranteed them access to the court and thus to the rewards which flowed from the king’s favour. The power which they accumulated ensured in return their monopoly of the principal royal offices and thus made their influence all the greater. We can count roughly about ten or so kindreds which took advantage of the disorders accompanying the extinction of the Árpád line to carve out an extensive local authority, which they frequently combined with royal offices. The Frangepán and Babonić kindreds built up large properties in Croatia and Slavonia, and they consolidated their powers in these regions by holding (and squabbling over) the several offices of ban. The Kőszegi and Kán variously combined the duties of voevode, justiciar (iudex curiae regis), ban and palatine with the office of ispán in those mainly southern and western counties wherein lay their estates. The Borsa kindred, the estates of which lay mainly in the east of Hungary, combined the office of voevode of Transylvania and of ispán of Bihar and Szatmár counties. The Ákos kindred, founders of the keep at Diósgyőr, achieved a similar mastery in Borsod county.25 The greatest achievements belonged, however, to Amadé of the leading Aba kindred and to Máté Csák of Trencsén. The largest landowner in the north-east, Amadé was firstly justiciar (iudex curiae) and then, from 1293 until his death in 1311, palatine. Besides these court offices, Amadé held as ispán the counties of Abaúj, Zemplén, Page 50 Sáros, Szepes, Ung, Szabolcs and Bereg. He commanded these territories from his fortress at Gönc to which as palatine he summoned the representatives of the county nobilities. His court aped the royal household, having its own iudex curiae and protonotarius. In a demonstration of his disregard for the ruler, Amadé alienated the estates of Ung castrum in 1291, later ennobling its castle-warriors. In similar fashion, Máté Csák of Trencsén built up his own authority in the north-west. His control extended to 14 counties, to between 40 and 50 castles, and to the 500 villages over which he was lord. Like Amadé Aba, Máté Csák claimed the office of palatine, which provided him both with the authority to control the county nobilities and with some justification for his sequestration of royal rights. With the support of Czech mercenaries, Máté could field a private army of 5000 warriors.26 The lordships carved out in Hungary by the ‘oligarchs’ of the early fourteenth century rested, however, upon a new institution. Until the Mongol invasion of 1241, stone castles were almost entirely unknown in Hungary. In order to defend the kingdom against any new assault, Béla IV and his successors promoted the construction not only of royal castles but also of private ones. In theory, royal permission was needed for a landowner to erect a fortress of stone. This technicality was frequently overlooked, particularly during the period 1280 to 1310. In the 80 years following the Mongol invasion, at least 200 castles were built. The overwhelming majority of these were private foundations, and by 1300, only 30 of the 166 castles in existence were royally owned.27 These figures are, moreover, conservative estimates and they overlook many of the smaller forts and turres built by less prosperous nobles. Nor, indeed, did most of these castles perform a strategic role in the defence of the kingdom. Their location was occasioned almost entirely by the defensive needs of the owner. Indeed, the very construction of a castle was liable to prompt a flurry of competitive building among a nobleman’s neighbours.28 Castles were, however, not just defensive strongholds. They were symbols of prestige which added visible weight to the owner’s rights of lordship. They were, moreover, homes in which the nobleman lived, worshipped and guarded both his treasury and the deeds to his estate. The larger castles had their own central tower and great hall or palatium where the owner held court. Others were not much more than block-houses which could easily be defended with only a small garrison. The economy of the castle was commonly sustained by ‘tied appurtenances’. These mainly comprised villages of peasants who were obliged to provide sustenance and to perform services for the castle, Page 51 but appurtenances might also include sources of revenue such as tolls and markets. The number of these villages and other appurtenances varied according to the size and needs of the castle. In Bihar county, Sólyomkő castle had several dozen villages attached to it, Adorján had about ten, and Körösszeg possibly as few as two.29 In Slavonia and Croatia, some of the appurtenances of castle-lordships might also include groups of Gypsies and shepherds.30 The estates of the wealthiest Hungarian lords comprised a number of such castle-lordships. Only one or several of these served as the lord’s residence, the remainder being administered by castellans. These castle-lordships were often not contiguous, but were divided one from another by the estates and castles of other noblemen. The dominium of the lord, although concentrated in various nodes, was thus physically divided. It was for this reason that Amadé Aba, Máté Csák and their contemporaries sought to combine landholding with office-holding, for only by acquiring the office of ispán or palatine could they wield a sufficiently overarching authority as to bring their dispersed lordships under some sort of unified, territorial jurisdiction. Their extensive estates were thus conjoined not just by their persons but by the offices which they could extract from the monarch. In this lay their vulnerability. The king’s disfavour and capacity to thwart the ambitions of the great landowners could bring down these packages; likewise, the animosity of a neighbour. With the ebb and flow of individual fortunes, castle-lordships were rapidly assembled, disassembled and reassembled, passing into the hands of new owners holding different titles. The vast estates gathered by Amadé Aba were thus inherited by his sons in 1311 who soon after attacked the nearby royal castle at Patak. Defeated by King Charles Robert at the battle of Rozgony (1312), and worsted once more following the discovery of their further treason, the estates of Amadé’s kindred were seized by the crown. A good part of these were subsequently donated by the king to Mikcs of the Ákos family who was able to build out of these his own extensive lordship in Ung, Sáros and Zemplén counties.31 A similarly rapid disintegration followed hard upon Máté Csák’s death in 1321. Nicolas of Gutkeled forthwith moved to rob Máté’s heir, the Moravian Stephen of Sternberg, of his lordships in Nyitra and Trencsén counties, while Charles Robert himself put Trencsén castle under siege. The Csák estates were, thereafter, either reallocated among the king’s principal supporters or placed temporarily under the supervision of royal castellans pending redonation. The Csák castle at Fülek thus, in time, found its way into the hands of the Mariássy; that Page 52 Map 3.1 Kindreds and landholding in Bihar County in the early fourteenth century Page 53 at Hrussó to the Perényi, and so on.32 As one historian has written with regard to this episode: The territories of the Amadé [and] Csák … emerged from the bellum omnium contra omnes and managed to exist for more than a generation, but none of them, nor their opponents, were able to propose any other concept than that of the great estate which, based on its castle, expands by all legal and illegal means. … Their ‘principalities’ were but colliers of estates and when they fell apart, they were replaced by new collier-collectors.33 A similar pattern of dissolution and collection may be demonstrated at a lower level within an individual county.34 The Geregye kindred had most of its ancestral estates in western Hungary and only one small property in Bihar county which had been granted by Béla IV in 1236. Paul Geregye, justiciar in 1241–2 and 1248–52, acquired further properties in Bihar, including a royal donation at Okány, after which he decided to abandon his western lands altogether. With the money from their sale he bought additional estates in central and eastern Bihar, while also capturing the castle at Székelyhid which belonged to the Gutkeled kindred. Thereafter, Paul built two castles, at Sebesvár and Sólyomkő, to guard his latest acquisitions. His sons continued this work, founding the castle at Adorján and seizing also a fort built by a cadet branch of the Hontpázmány family at Derzspalota. Accused of treason, the Geregye sons were ousted from their estates by the sons of Thomas Borsa and their properties were apportioned between the Csanád and Borsa kindreds and the bishopric of Várad. The Borsa kindred received the lion’s share including the castles at Adorján, Sólyomkő and possibly Sebesvár. They eventually returned Székelyhid to the Gutkeleds. Although the Borsa constituted one of the most powerful noble kindreds within the realm, they had hitherto owned only a few possessions in Bihar county, most notably the former royal retaining district at Kovácsi (doubtless alienated on account of its distance from the castrum at Bihar), the castle at Körösszeg, an estate at Széplak, and a proprietary monastery at Bátormonostor. Their acquisitions at the expense of the Geregye made the Borsa kindred the largest landowners in the county, a position which they sealed by taking over the office of ispán. The Borsa kindred consolidated its power by the usual seizures. In 1293–94, Roland Borsa, voevode of Transylvania, launched an assault from Széplak on the castle of Fenes which belonged to the bishop of Page 54 Várad. A few years later, he burnt down the castle at Diószeg belonging to the Gutkeleds: fitting justice, for his enemy had built the fort out of the fabric of the nearby monastery at Egyed. In 1317, however, the same accusation of treason as had brought down the Geregye transformed the fortunes of the Borsa kindred. The Borsa estates were confiscated and were apportioned either among royal castellans or to the Debreceni family. The Debreceni were relative parvenus, for the bulk of the family’s estates had only been acquired in the 1280s following the expiry of the Gyovád, to which they must have been related.35 The Debreceni ascendancy in Bihar county, particularly in the north-west of the county, was subsequently secured by the appointment of one of their members to the office of palatine in the early 1320s. The family’s continuing influence in the county was marked in the next decade with the acquisition by the palatine’s sons of Adorján castle, the former redoubt first of the Geregye and then of the Borsa. Over half a century, therefore, the structure of landownership and castle-lordship in Bihar county experienced much the same process of assembly and disassembly as affected the estates of the Amadé Aba and Máté Csák during the same period. With each change of ownership, lands and castles were redistributed in a fresh configuration and conjoined anew through different offices and relationships of power. 3.3. Immunity and jurisdiction Both noble estates and castle-lordships were sustained by the labour of the peasantry. Their obligation to perform services was regulated by custom and differed according to location. In many places, labour services were commuted early on to cash payments. Following the reissue of the Golden Bull in 1351, the peasantry were additionally compelled to pay a tenth of their produce to the lord (the so-called ‘ninth’, because it constituted after the tithe the ninth tenth-part of a peasant’s income). These obligations were considered to derive from the terms under which peasants held land of their lords. Although they may have become more onerous, they were not new impositions deriving from any ‘hardening’ of the feudal structure. They were instead analogous to the conditions under which bondsmen, castrenses and freemen working the land of others had laboured during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. What was quite new, however, was the jurisdictional authority claimed by the landowner over those who worked his estates. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, proprietors had exercised a very Page 55 restricted judicial authority. They may have been permitted some legal power over their bondsmen in so far as they were held financially responsible for their delicts. It is unlikely, however, that they had the capacity to adjudicate other than minor offences. According to the code of St Ladislas, drawn up at the end of the eleventh century, royal judges had the power to summon all with the exception of priests. Refusal to accept a judge’s seal carried with it a financial penalty. The detailed record of legal cases preserved in the earlythirteenth-century Várad Register gives no suggestion that landowners possessed any rights of adjudication deriving from lordship. Offences and disputes involving their bondsmen and peasants were referred instead to ordeal and were supervised by representatives of the ispán and of the local chapter. In this respect, the Várad Register followed the procedures established over a century before by King Koloman.36 The only possible exception to the extensive judicial powers held by royal officials lay in regard to the Freiung or special peace attaching to the house. St Ladislas’s laws permitted thieves discovered within the curia of a nobleman to be seized and held. Presumably the malefactors might be judged by the householder, for the relevant law specified that if the lord was absent from the home during the ten days following the arrest, then the thieves should be taken before a royal official. The concept of the Freiung possibly also resulted in the imposition of special penalties for the invasion of one lord’s house by another.37 It may well be that over the subsequent period, the rights attaching to the home were extended to the lord’s tenants and that they were thereby brought within the special jurisdiction of the householder’s fictive familia. Evidence for such a transference is, however, lacking in Hungary and, in any case, the rights of Freiung given in St Ladislas’s laws appear to be contradicted by later royal legislation.38 For this reason, historians have more commonly sought the origins of jurisdictional lordship not in the household but instead in the ‘secularization’ of the immunity.39 Until the second half of the twelfth century, Hungary did not know the immunity. Privileges given to monasteries and abbeys might on occasion limit the activities of secular judges on ecclesiastical estates. They did so, however, on account of the special relationship between the religious house and the king, which meant that the ruler alone possessed an exclusive claim to adjudication.40 More frequently, royal charters given to religious houses contained a simple prohibition clause (Verbotsformel), but this was not primarily aimed at restricting the legal rights of entry otherwise belonging to royal officers and Page 56 judges. It was intended instead to limit the physical invasion of church properties which attended the peregrinations of royal officials, and to prevent the movement before lesser judges of cases which might lead to the loss of church lands.41 The prohibition formula was intended to ensure the integrity of church estates. As such, it might be coupled with a royal conscription of the properties belonging to a religious house. In the 1090s, St Ladislas made such a list of the estates of Pannonhalma at the end of which he declared, in his vero supradictis prediis nullus hominum habet potestatem preter abbatem ipsius sancte aecclesiae.42 The potestas to which the king referred was not, however, a potestas over persons (as historians commonly aver) but over the disposition of the abbey’s lands, for the text of the charter clearly states that there were royal judges and summoners resident within the bounds of the Pannonhalma estate. Similar rights of potestas attached to stray cattle which wandered on to an abbey’s land. They became therewith in potestate of the religious house and were accordingly removed from the grasp of the royal ‘collector of stray things’ (quem vulgariter joccedeth dicunt – the joccedeth is almost certainly a rendering of the Hungarian jókszedő or ‘collector’ rather than, as one early etymologist maintained, a version of the Scottish tokioderach!).43 Over the course of the twelfth century, this potestas over property was extended on church estates to a judicial potestas over all persons dwelling within the confines of the estate. The prohibition, which had previously applied to the landed wealth of the church now included a jurisdictional aspect over persons. The earliest example of this development is the Biograd (Alba Maritima) privilege of 1166 which permitted the monks to judge all hospites on the monastery’s estates and forbade their summons before any other judge.44 It may well be that the terms laid out in the Biograd charter derived from peculiarly Croatian circumstances and that they were promoted under Cistercian influence.45 Nevertheless, similar rights of immunity rapidly entered Hungary. During the late twelfth century, therefore, the Pannonhalma abbey interpolated a genuine charter to include the right to pass judgement in placitis. This right to hear pleas was subsequently copied verbatim into the charters of other Hungarian religious houses.46 Royal charters and forgeries attesting to the right of abbeys and chapters to judge cases within the confines of their estates were commonplace in the thirteenth century. In 1290, the complete exemption of all people on ecclesiastical estates from royal justices was specifically recorded. A Page 57 century later, the right of the vir ecclesiasticus to judge his tenants was declared ancient custom.47 The concept of the immunity was rapidly extended from its original ecclesiastical context to a secular one. In order to encourage foreign immigration to the kingdom’s nascent cities and to those parts of the countryside which had been opened up to colonization, substantial rights of self-government were ceded to newcomers.48 The immigrants wished to live under their own laws and to be subject to their own judges, so the extension of the principle of immunity to their areas of settlement was clearly expedient. Secular lords also benefited from immunities. When in 1193 Béla III granted the county of Modrus to the comes Bartholomew, he gave him the potestas iudicandi on such occasions as he was resident in Modrus. Thereafter wholesale alienations of territorial and jurisdictional lordships became frequent in Croatia and Slavonia. North of the River Drava, donations of land to noble servientes often mentioned that the rights which the ispán had formerly discharged over the property and its tenants were henceforward to be transferred to the new owner. The charters recording these grants thus contained a cession of judicial potestas whereby the recipient acquired omne ius et proprietatem, et omnem jurisdictionem over both the newly-donated property and its occupants.49 These rights were formally codified in 1222. The Golden Bull published in that year acknowledged the right of all landowners to judge the peasants dwelling on their properties and exempted the predia servientium from the jurisdiction of the ispán and local judges. The competence of the latter was thenceforward confined to matters involving tithes, robbery and currency.50 The transformation of the counties into agencies of noble governance did not affect the rights which landowners had acquired under the Golden Bull. Indeed, large numbers of nobles managed to extend their authority in such a way as to ensure either that appeals from their courts passed immediately to the king or that the jurisdiction of the county extended only to offences which carried the death penalty. In 1328, the provisions of the Golden Bull were reiterated and it was confirmed ‘that all those having tenant peasants should themselves be allowed and obligated to judge their tenants in all cases except cases of theft, robbery, assault or arson committed against anyone, and no one shall have the right to summon them before another judge’. Even these restrictions were abolished in 1351. Noble landowners were thenceforward permitted to adjudicate all offences committed by their Page 58 tenants, and other judicial authorities were instructed to pursue plaints for murder, assault and injury before the court of the peasant’s relevant lord.51 Seigneurial justice was, however, by no means absolute. The landowner was obliged to adjudicate according to local customs and not according to his own will. Appeals might additionally be taken from his court to the county on which occasions the plaint might be judged by, among others, peasant assessors. Many landowners, finding the judgement of their peasants either bothersome or, on account of the rustic tendency to vengeance, potentially dangerous, handed over the task of adjudication to village courts and headmen. A few of these peasant tribunals appear to have practised the right of execution of notorious malefactors and outlaws.52 Despite the legal and practical constraints on the landowner’s authority, trends in jurisdiction mirrored larger developments within the Hungarian countryside. During the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the landscape was divided into contiguous noble tenements and lordships. Even the great territories built up by Amadé Aba and Máté Csák constituted temporary assemblages of these smaller units. In much the same fashion, jurisdictional authority over the land and its tenants was broken up. As the private estates of the nobility obtained increased immunity from legal intrusion, so the authority of the ispán and of royal judges suffered a corresponding diminution. The administration of justice was itself thus moved out of the hands of royal officials, parcellized, and newly located at the level of the noble estate and lordship. 3.4. Land and status Throughout the Middle Ages it was uncertain in Hungary just what constituted a nobleman. The nobleman’s status might be variously considered to derive from descent, from a royal charter of ennoblement, from a certain manner of conduct, or from the recognition of his fellows. In the course of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, however, it became ever more widely accepted that the nobleman should be a landowner in possession of an estate. This closer definition of noble status was symbolized in the titles by which noblemen referred to themselves. For most of the thirteenth century, they had commonly styled themselves after a putative ancestor, calling themselves by his name prefixed with the expression de genere. Thereafter, however, it became usual instead for nobles to call themselves by reference to their premier lordship. This change partly Page 59 derived from the policies pursued by the Angevin rulers of the fourteenth century who promoted and gave lordships to lesser men and foreigners with little boastworthy descent. On a deeper, structural level the change in nomenclature may also reflect the decline of the kindred as a political, social and economic institution (see below, Chapter 6). At the same time, however, the narrower interpretation of what constituted a nobleman was closely related to changes in landownership and jurisdiction.53 The nobleman was a lord, in virtue of which he owned a property and dispensed justice to his peasants. It was this which counted as his indicium manifestum and signum, and which marked his special status. As early as 1283 Ladislas IV thus affirmed that ‘noblemen in Hungary are accustomed to hold or to possess their own possessions’ (nobiles in Hungaria existentes tenere seu possidere possessiones suas proprias consueverunt). Similar statements are commonplace in the early fourteenth century.54 Despite the clarity of the preceding royal statement, confusion continued to attend the understanding of true nobility until at least the mid-fourteenth century. Petitions for royal recognition of status of nobility thus commonly also appealed to a historic right and bearing. In the words of one group of supplicants from Zala county in the 1330s, ‘from time immemorial, from the time of their grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather, they had always been true nobles and had held their possessions and lived on them in the manner and under the liberty of true nobles’. Others affirmed that their ancestral claims to status and property were of such antiquity that they should be considered ‘noblemen of St Stephen’.55 Doubtless these extravagant claims were intended to compensate for the petitioners’ lack of any written proof of their rights. Among the Saxons of Transylvania, who were demonstrably newcomers, a more precise test of status was applied, namely whether they held land of their own and bore themselves more nobilium.56 Even in these examples, however, it is clear that ancestry and manner of life were of only secondary importance. The Zala nobles thus appealed in the first place to the evidence of their property while, among the Saxons, bearing had to be matched by the possession of an estate. During the second half of the fourteenth century, the ownership of land became the almost exclusive criterion of noble status. The homo possessionatus was thus automatically contrasted in the legal literature of the period with the ignobilis and rusticus: hence tam nobiles et possessionati, quam eciam impossessionati et ignobilitatis condicione fruentes homines.57 For his part, the non-noble was equally presumed to be a Page 60 peasant who lived under the jurisdiction of a noble lord and whose right to quit his master’s service was increasingly circumscribed. His subordinate status was marked by the increased use of the term iobagio or servant. Enormous differences, of course, remained with regard to the number of properties and iobagiones which individual landowners possessed. Nevertheless, the equation of noble status with the single criterion of landownership facilitated the legal integration of the nobility as a universitas regnicolarum nobilium et possessionatorum each of whose members enjoyed una et eadem libertas. The association of land with status did not, however, vitiate the link between nobleman and king. Ever since the reign of King Koloman, royal laws had sought to impress that all land was held by a cession of the ruler: hence the reference in Koloman’s laws to ancestral land being a possessio … a sancto Stephano data.58 Some recollection remained, however, that there were lands which had belonged to the kindred by virtue of descent from time immemorial. The rights of ownership over such estates were considered in unspecified ways to be more complete than the rights over those properties which had their origin in a royal donation.59 During the course of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, however, memory of the separate origin of these so-called descensualis estates was entirely lost. By no later than the reign of Charles Robert (1307–42), it was universally accepted that all land had once belonged to the ruler and had been ceded to its present owners by way of donation.60 Certainly, we may interpret the notion that all land originated in a royal grant as a convenient device by which Hungary’s rulers sought to augment their own resources. By the close of the fourteenth century, landowners who could not prove that they held their estates by grant of the crown might thus be indicted as ‘concealers of royal rights’ (celatores iurium regalium) and forfeit their properties as a result.61 Nevertheless, by coupling the possession of land to royal donation, the principle of fidelitas was also augmented. As we have seen, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the origin of noble status was deemed to lie in the special relationship which the nobleman had to the ruler. In the fourteenth century, the ownership of land and of a servile workforce became the principal mark of nobility. By linking, however, possession of this land to the effluence of royal grace, the nobleman’s private estate now came to symbolize the special bond which united its owner to the ruler and which stood as a tangible token of that relationship. In time, and as we may read in Werbőczy, the land so donated would be understood as representing a reward for those services which Page 61 the owner’s ancestors had performed.62 Fidelitas prompted servitium, which thus in its turn yielded the proof of nobility, which was the donatio. The establishment of noble lordships and estates on which the owner practised an increasingly full jurisdiction over his tenants did not, therefore, diminish the bond between noble and ruler. Instead, it exemplified both that fidelity which the nobleman was expected to display, and powerfully demonstrated the benefits which service brought. Page 62 4 Authentication 4.1. Oral testimony and the pristaldus It is common for historians and others to equate literacy with civilization. Primitive societies are, by this measure, primarily illiterate. By extension, their methods of proof in legal business tend to be grounded on non-written evidence. This may be either oral testimony or some form of test, most frequently the oath, ordeal or combat. By the same measure, more advanced societies will be more literate and will give greater credence to the written word as proof in legal business. The transition from darkness to light may thus be measured by the volume of written information available to scholars. As one historian has written with regard to medieval England: Early society is ordered and governed by oral tradition. … Then there is a long twilight of transition, during which the written record encroaches more and more upon the sphere of custom. In this way the volume of written evidence steadily increases until we reach a time – not I think earlier than the thirteenth century – when most of society’s major activities find some sort of written record. More, however, is at stake than the mere volume of evidence. As documents grow more plentiful their whole meaning changes.1 Charges of whiggery have been laid against the preceding explanation, not least by a Hungarian historian.2 Nevertheless, it retains a validity which applies equally well to medieval Hungary (although we would have to substitute the fourteenth century for the thirteenth). As the work of medieval government and administration became busier and more complicated, so the human memory proved less efficacious Page 63 as a form of record. In a common expression of the Middle Ages and one that, time and again, the prooemia of Hungarian charters hammered out for the benefit of the intellectually tardy: labilis est hominum memoria sed litterae vivunt. Over time, the written record came to acquire an authenticity which made it either the equivalent of oral testimony or possessed of an even superior quality. In similar fashion, as patterns of landholding changed and became more complex, so memory and testimony were considered less reliable evidence than documents formally attesting to ownership. In a notable case dating from 1360, King Louis of Hungary overturned a verdict arrived at through the oral testimony of the assessors and noblemen attending a Croatian court. Awarding the case to the plaintiffs, Louis declared that the rival party had been able only to bring spoken statements (solummodo verbali prolacione) whereas they had been able to demonstrate their case with written instruments which were more trustworthy than oral testimony (maiorque fides literalibus instrumentis quam verbalibus atestationibus).3 Nevertheless, we should not make any single judgement a watershed in the transition ‘from memory to written record’. Since the written record could not cover every aspect of every dispute, the oral testimony of neighbours remained a powerful force in the resolution of disputes – even more so since certain litigants counted oral testimony as equally good to written evidence, while the oath was always to retain a special place in the legal resolution of disputes. Again, it is evident that some written instruments were considered to enjoy a ‘credible’ legal status whereas others retained only the most minimal value, and not a few were straightforward forgeries. The test of ‘authentication’ of deeds of ownership became thus an important aspect of all disputes involving landholding. Moreover, and as we will see, ‘authentic’ documents were composed in a language and manner which reflexively influenced the very objects they were held to describe. The transition to the written record thus fundamentally shaped the nature both of property and of property-ownership in Hungary. As early as the eleventh century, Hungary knew of written records. Royal donations to churches were sometimes given in charters. The basic form in which these would be subsequently composed (promulgatio, narratio, dispositio, testes, corroboratio) had already been established by the late eleventh century.4 As we have already noted in an earlier Page 64 chapter, the properties belonging to the king, along with the people dwelling on them, were listed around 1060 by the judge Sarchas in the lost ‘Hungarian Domesday’. Sarchas’s survey was subsequently employed to force the return of royal estates and castle-warriors which had been illicitly seized.5 Ecclesiastical institutions likewise compiled their own lists of property and persons, some of which they had confirmed by the king under the royal seal. Ispáns in the counties were obliged under King Koloman’s laws to render annual accounts, and all commercial negotiations with Jews were expected to be recorded in a special cartula sigillata. Foreign clerics were likewise expected to prove their status with letters of accreditation.6 Within the royal household there certainly existed by the early-to-mid-twelfth century a writing office headed by a comes capellae. Besides his liturgical functions, the comes of the royal chapel guarded the royal seal and supervised the drawing up of documents by subordinate notaries.7 Only a few charters have survived from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The absence of written sources cannot be entirely explained, however, either by the devastation done by Tatars and Turks or by the loss of the royal archive in the Danube in 1526. Quite simply, there was little need to make or keep records in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Land was held collectively from one generation to the other; its bounds and owners were well known. In the case of dispute, the testimony of neighbours and abutters might be had and they might generally be expected to know who owned what. If the case was prolonged, recourse might be had to a cathedral chapter where ordeal by hot iron was practised. (Under the influence of the church, the ordeal ceased to be used as a method of proof in the later thirteenth century.)8 Oral testimony prevailed not only on account, therefore, of widespread illiteracy but also because there was little perceived need for written instruments. Thus even as late as the mid-twelfth century, royal donations which involved quite complex exchanges of property might be made without any document accompanying the transaction.9 Where land had been the subject of recent litigation or of a change in ownership, a written record might certainly be kept of those who could be called as witnesses. Although none have survived, these so-called libri traditionum did not possess any legal significance except in so far as they acted as a guide to sources of oral testimony.10 In similar fashion, the famous Várad Register, which recorded the outcome of several hundred ordeals in the early thirteenth century noted simply the names of the litigants, type of plaint, outcome of the ordeal (iustificatus or combustus!), and the names of the royal Page 65 officers in attendance to whom recourse for proof might subsequently be made. Much the same consideration affected royal charters, which until the late twelfth century commonly recorded only lists of witnesses. Unlike later charters they did not, therefore, include a list of dignitaries by reference to whose time in office the date and authenticity of the document might be verified.11 In this respect, the charter although sealed under the king’s name, carried less legal weight than the spoken evidence which might be obtained by recourse to those who were listed as physically present at its publication. In order to prevent wasted journeys, the names of witnesses were sometimes accompanied by references to their ages.12 The principal source of oral testimony in early Hungarian legal procedure was the pristaldus.13 The origin of this office is undoubtedly South Slav and has its counterparts in Croatian and Serbian administrative practices.14 Although the title of pristaldus derives from the Slavonic word pristav meaning ‘assistant’ and is commonly rendered into Hungarian as poroszló or ‘bailiff’, the pristaldus was involved in such a wide variety of tasks as to defy any precise translation of his title. His principal function was to act in legal proceedings on behalf of the judge, including both local judges and the principal judicial officers in the royal household. The plaintiff having decided to sue in law would commonly meet with the relevant judge and would be assigned a pristaldus. The pristaldus would then make inquiries with regard to the plaint, summon the defendant and other witnesses, oversee the ordeal or the reambulatio of a disputed piece of land, notify the judge of his findings on the basis of which a verdict might be reached at, and, finally, ensure the enforcement of the judge’s sentence. The pristaldus functioned not only as a judicial dogsbody but also as the physical record of the proceedings and of their outcome. Having been involved with the case from its inception, he was expected to recall its details and the verdict. In any ensuing litigation he might thus be summoned to give evidence as an assertor veritatis. Records of cases and of trials by ordeal would thus customarily include the name of the pristaldus to whom reference might be made in the event of subsequent litigation. When thus in the 1090s, King Ladislas authorized the composition of a carta listing the properties donated by his predecessors to the abbey at Pannonhalma, the various royal gifts were enumerated together with the pristaldus who had witnessed the grant: hence, quem dedit rex Salamon, regalis pristaldus fuit Zolioc, or dedit rex … regalis pristaldus Kuca, and so on.15 Likewise, in the 1130s, when a Page 66 dispute arose as to a property previously assigned to the bishopric of Zagreb, the archbishop of Esztergom to whom the action was brought, referred to the pristaldus who had participated in the original definition of the boundaries of the contested land and he framed his judgement on the basis of the pristaldus’s recollection.16 It might even be that, for the benefit of posterity, the pristaldus’s presence was physically recorded on a stoneinscription left at the site of a transaction.17 Both the office and person of the pristaldus were subject to abuse. Unscrupulous litigants might attempt to subvert his evidence or bludgeon him into compliance, while some pristaldi were not averse to receiving bribes.18 Others were retained full-time by persistent litigants and acted in judicial matters as their permanent representatives rather than as assistants to the judge. More particularly, however, as written evidence began to acquire salience in the adjudication of disputes, so the role of the pristaldus became increasingly open both to challenge and to the claim of legal irrelevance. In 1231, it was thus formally laid down that the evidence of pristaldi should not be accepted unless accompanied by written testimony.19 Rapidly thereafter, the office of pristaldus fell into desuetude, although it would continue throughout the Middle Ages to form an important part of Croatian legal procedure. 4.2. Loca credibilia In the passage from oral testimony to written evidence, the influence of the royal administration has frequently been cited as of especial moment. According to the chroniclers, it was Béla III who first demanded that plaints be initiated by written petitions, ‘as in the Roman curia and in the Empire’. This account may be supported not only by Béla’s institution of a separate chancellery office under the supervision of a monk trained in Paris, but also by his own words given in 1181 that thenceforward all business proceeding before the royal person should be recorded in writing (ut negotium quodlibet in audientia celsitudinis mee discussum scripti testimonio confirmetur).20 The Angevin accession in the early fourteenth century is regarded as having had an equally transforming effect upon judicial procedures by standardizing practices on French and Italian principles. This at least was Werbőczy’s opinion, and his contention has found some confirmation in later historical writing.21 It is evident, however, that the pressure for written testimony as well as for improved judicial procedures came as much from below as from above. As has been long noted, the growth in written legal business Page 67 proceeding before the royal administration was a product of the middle years of the twelfth century rather than of the reign of Béla III. In this respect, Béla’s procedural and institutional innovations were more a response to developments than their first cause. Of particular significance in the growing reliance on written testimony as a means of proof was the tendency to have the royal chapel record land donations to foreign knights in charters and, more importantly, to confirm under the royal seal legacies made by private individuals to the church. In the second instance, the texts recording the donations were composed and written up by the notaries of the royal chapel, even though the substance of the gift was determined by the donors.22 Both of these types of charter attesting to transfers of property were composed at the behest of the parties concerned. Almost certainly, their concern to have the transaction put in writing and under the royal seal arose from a distrust of the prevailing regime of oral testimony. Immigrant knights did not have a powerful network of family-members and friendly witnesses upon whom to rely in physical and legal conflicts with their neighbours. The possessions of the church were equally susceptible to diminution. Dispersed across the kingdom and wedged between the estates of lay lords and (yet more dangerously!) of other religious foundations, the lands of abbeys and chapters were often the target of invasion. Their openness to assault is readily suggested by the Verbotsformel and anathemas found in the earliest charters given to religious foundations by the Hungarian kings. In this respect, the readiness of abbeys and chapters to list their properties in special deeds under the royal seal derived neither from the clergy’s special gift of literacy nor from their connections to the court but from the very real fear of territorial depredation. By contrast, the lands of the aristocratic kindreds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were not only more closely arranged but might also be acknowledged both in law and battle by a large body of kinsmen, supporters and, doubtless, compliant pristaldi. The vulnerability previously sensed by churchmen and immigrant knights began to be more widely shared in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The distribution of castle-lands and retaining districts threw up the new class of noble servientes whose sole protector was the distant ruler. The break-up of communally-held properties likewise resulted in a proliferation of smaller holdings which were themselves liable to further partition and dispersal. As one might expect, there was a corresponding flight into the written record over this same period and a rapid rise, particularly after 1240, in the volume of charters given Page 68 out to confirm both new transactions and long-standing titles. This development affected not only individual men of property but also whole groups of persons, who now petitioned to have their collective rights and customs put in writing. In the first instance, supplicants sought recognition of their titles from the king. Increasingly, however, during the thirteenth century they obtained confirmation of their rights to properties and other liberties by letters published under the seals of abbeys and cathedral chapters. This new development gave rise to the ‘place of authentication’ or locus credibilis, a uniquely Hungarian institution which survived until the mid-nineteenth century. More than any other institution, the locus credibilis accomplished the transition to legal literacy in Hungary. As we will see, however, the loca credibilia did not just substitute for oral testimony. By establishing the vocabulary of landownership, they influenced the terms under which property was held and by which landed relationships were understood. Until the late twelfth century, the only type of charter possessing any sort of legal credibility was that issued by the king. Even so, its value derived less from any inherent quality as from the witness-list given in the eschatocol. With the establishment of the chancellery in the 1180s, royal charters assumed a regular form and became more easily distinguished on account both of their internal textual arrangement and of their appended seal. At much the same time, charters issued by abbeys and chapters assumed an increasingly uniform character of their own, carrying for the first time their distinct seals. Although charters issued by the royal chancellery retained a special authority, letters given under the name and seal of ecclesiastical institutions rapidly acquired an almost analogous status. Early on in the thirteenth century, therefore, landowners began to turn to ecclesiastical institutions to confirm transactions. Ispáns and, to begin with, the principal royal officers also sought to have their judgements published under the seal of chapters and abbeys.23 The process by which an ecclesiastical institution acquired a ‘credible’ status depended to a large extent upon contemporary opinion. If the religious house was believed to be scrupulous in its assessment of landowners’ rights to property, then the charters which it issued on their behalf were deemed of an authentic quality. In 1330, therefore, King Charles Robert instructed the episcopal chapter of Győr to enquire into the seal used by a local monastery to see whether it was generally accepted by the comprovinciales as holding a legal validity.24 It followed from this that the credibility of a charter issued by a religious Page 69 foundation only extended to its neighbourhood, usually to the nearest counties in which its documents and seal were most familar. Only the handful of chapters to which the principal judges of the realm commonly turned in the prosecution of legal business retained an authority which extended across the breadth of the kingdom. Likewise, some religious foundations were understood to be so lacking credibility even in their immediate neighbourhood as to be unable to record property-transactions above a certain sum. Other houses were of such insignificance as to render their documents valueless. Proprietory monasteries were a special problem given their natural inclination to issue charters pleasing to their benefactors. Among secular institutions, the charters issued by the principal judges and barons of the kingdom, most notably the justiciar, palatine, ban and voevode, also acquired during the thirteenth century an ‘authentic’ character. Those issued by the principal men of the counties never did. In their legal business ispáns and szolgabirák would commonly, therefore, ask local religious houses to write up their most important letters. Although there were exceptions, charters issued under the seals of towns enjoyed a credible status only within the confines of their urban jurisdiction.25 The most frequent task of the loca credibilia was to verify titles of ownership. Accordingly, the clerks in these places would copy out charters which had been previously issued, check up on the authenticity of the originals, and record the deed either in a register or in the form of a chirograph. By the fourteenth century, the principal judges of the realm as well as the chancellery retained their own records of cases brought before them and of documents produced for purposes of authentication. Their notes or copies possessed a similarly authentic quality which meant that they could be used as written evidence in subsequent litigation or provide the basis for the publication of a new charter.26 The records kept by religious houses were evidently very substantial and might go back several centuries. In 1525, for instance, the chapter house at Eger was able to produce a copy of a charter originally issued in 1282. For its part, the archiepiscopal archive of Esztergom had around 1400 one charter originally issued by Béla III, eight published by Andrew II, and 21 from the reign of Béla IV.27 Besides their own archives, religious houses also looked after the private papers of local landowners. These were kept in the sacristy in deposit boxes which were sealed by the owners. Wise landowners ensured that they had several copies of their most important deeds, some left at home and others held for safekeeping in the local abbey or chapter-house. The history of Page 70 Hungarian record-keeping is marked by accidents with candles, the appetite of worms, and the folly of taking title-deeds on campaign.28 Nevertheless, before they could issue a charter affirming a landowner’s rights to property, the religious house had to be convinced that his claims to ownership were genuine. If the landowner produced a charter attesting to his rights and asking for confirmation, then the procedure was simple enough. The authenticating institution examined the relevant document, determining by reference both to its writing, seal and other features whether it carried the mark of authenticity in all its details: in carta, stylo, literis et modo, quam in sigillo, filo, annotatione Dominicae incarnationis, simulque regnantis anno et mense. If in doubt, reference might be made to the originating institution and the charter sent thither for inspection.29 Nevertheless, there were plenty of occasions on which confirmation was not so easily obtained but required instead some sort of inquiry with regard to the claims made by the importunate landowner. In respect of this proof, the interests of the religious house in maintaining its reputation for scrupulous authentication coincided with the interests of royal government in establishing a just mechanism for proving title. 4.3. The loca credibilia and inquisitions The transformation of the loca credibilia into effective agencies of royal governance was intimately associated with the eclipse of the office of pristaldus. The effective termination of this institution was announced in Andrew II’s lawcode of 1231: ‘And because many people suffer harm from false pristaldi, their summons or testimony shall not be valid without the testimonium of the diocesan bishop or his chapter.’30 Thereafter, many of the judicial tasks previously borne by the pristaldus were assumed by representatives of local chapters and religious houses. The business of summoning, taking evidence, relaying information back to the judge, surveying boundaries, and enforcing the verdict now fell within the purview of representatives of the church. Theirs was not, however, a complete authority. Just as Béla IV had entrusted representatives of the county nobility with the task of recovering royal lands, so he and his successors also involved local noblemen in the business of establishing the truth with regard to plaints. Whereas, however, the pristaldus had usually been of mean birth31 and thus particularly open to the persuasion of his betters, the agents of the county were dignified by the name of homines regii. (Or, if they were Page 71 instructed by the county without a royal mandate, homines communes.) They were invariably drawn from the ranks of the wealthier nobility and their names may have been kept on record in the royal chancellery.32 Together with members of the local locus credibilis, the homines regii would officiate in the more mundane judicial activities. Their institutional debt to the office of the pristaldus is, however, demonstrated by the frequent conflation of his title with that of homo régius. Unlike the pristaldus, however, the tasks of the homines regii were frequently overseen by clerics and their authority was circumscribed by a primitive system of checks. The loca credibilia and homines regii were most frequently involved in the conduct of inquisitions. Complete information on the variety of forms which an inquisition might take is forthcoming only from the fourteenth century, but it is probable that several types of inquisition were performed in Hungary by the last years of the Árpád period. Commonly, a plaintiff would initiate proceedings by Registering a plea with the local locus credibilis, asserting either a trespass or assault, a sale or exchange of land, or simply that his property lacked recorded boundaries. The matter would proceed through the locus credibilis to the chancellor, justiciar, palatine or the officers of the county who would write back requiring of the relevant religious house that it either perform an inquisition into the trespass, or introduce the new owner into his property and record any objections made at this time, or undertake a reambulatio. The locus credibilis would be instructed to act in concert with either one or several homines regii. As an alternative, plaints might be addressed to the ispán and szolgabirák of the county who would then authorize an inquisition of their own, which would usually also be attended by members of a nearby locus credibilis. Where a particularly violent assault or tricky piece of litigation was involved, the chancellery or justiciar might ask several religious houses together with the relevant county authorities (more than one might be invoked) to undertake separate inquisitions and to report back independently.33 Several types of inquisition were practised.34 At its most basic, the clerics and homines regii would take evidence of neighbours, abutters and others, and record whether they found the plaint justified or not. This was the so-called inquisitio simplex and it essentially allowed the inquisitors to determine the veracity of the plaintiff’s petition, with the judge usually affirming their findings. A rather more detailed procedure might be followed in the event of the communis inquisitio, which was initiated by a judge during the course of proceedings in Page 72 order to establish the truth of the parties’ claims. During the course of this type of investigation, the inquisitors noted the status and often the names of the witnesses and indicated whether their information derived ex scitu or ex auditu. The list of witnesses and a summary of their depositions were sent to the relevant judge who determined how to proceed with the case on the basis both of this information and of the presumed reliability of the statements given. These cases often involved much haggling as each litigant sought to have names struck from the record on account either of alleged partisanship or of insufficient proof as to an individual witness’s status. On occasion, several hundreds (or even thousands) of persons might appear to give evidence to the inquisitors, in which case their status but not their names were recorded and sent to the judge.35 In litigation most commonly involving violent assault, the inquisition might take the form per modum congregationis proclamatae. The local nobility would then be summoned by royal proclamation to attend an extraordinary assembly of the county and testimony would be sought from them there in the presence of representatives of the local locus credibilis. This last type of inquisition was most commonly used in the fifteenth century and earlier examples are (supposedly) rare.36 These inquisitions should, however, be distinguished from the so-called inquisitio generalis, which, from no later than the last years of the thirteenth century, was undertaken by the szolgabirák and 12 elected and ‘sworn’ men of the county. The szolgabirák and jurymen heard complaints of notorious maldoing which were raised at the periodic assemblies of the county nobility. On the basis of their own knowledge and from the evidence given, they swore solemn depositions as to the veracity of the accusations, which customarily led to the outlawry or summary execution of the malefactors. Only very infrequently were jurymen permitted to make inquiries of their own.37 For this reason, the inquisitio generalis, the name of which appears to be a nineteenth-century invention, should probably not be considered an inquisition at all but a requisitio.38 Upon receipt of the information obtained from the inquisition, the judge would decide upon how to conclude the case. Having arrived at a verdict, he would commonly issue instructions to the relevant locus credibilis and homines regii as to the case’s outcome and oblige them to see to the implementation. In cases involving disputes over land, the inquisitors would frequently be asked to perform a statutio or formal introduction (livery of seisin) of the owner to his estate, or to survey Page 73 and record the boundaries of the contested property. Thereafter, with notice given that the owner’s introduction or survey had been completed without any further objection, the judge would issue litterae privilegiales, published usually with a pendant seal, which attested to the successful conclusion of the case. Throughout the suit, from the initial plaint right up to the final publication of litterae privilegiales, the procedures were recorded in written form. During the course of the fourteenth century, these letters acquired the special terminology which has subsequently served to delight students of Hungarian legal history: the litterae inquisitoriae et evocatoriae which established the inquisition and empowered the chapter house to summon litigants before the judge; the litterae admonitoriae et evocatoriae, which announced to kinsmen, neighbours and abutters of a sale or pledge of land and permitted representations to be made; the litterae introductionales, by which the owner was solemnly delivered to the contested estate, and so on. Needless to say, the production of this correspondence placed enormous strains on religious institutions. A visitation of the Benedictine abbey at Somogy found, therefore, two of its five monks ‘continuously in the task of executing royal letters of instruction’.39 Nevertheless, within all these proceedings the written word derived primarily from the spoken testimony of the members of the local community. It was their oral evidence delivered under oath which the inquisition gathered and passed on to the judge. Providing the evidence was not decisive, one or both of the parties might also be allowed to purge themselves. This was, however, by no means an easy task. Unlike today’s ‘liars’ (the term by which English barristers may refer in private to witnesses for the defence), medieval litigants consistently demonstrated an extraordinary fear of perjury. Rather than tell an untruth, they often preferred not to turn up to swear an oath at all. Moreover, their oath needed to be validated by oath-helpers who were supposed to be persons of the same status and known to the litigant. The necessary number of oath-helpers depended upon both the severity of the charges and the number of inquisitions the findings of which the depositions would overturn.40 It frequently proved impossible for litigants to obtain the requisite number of oath-helpers and, moreover, oath-helpers once gathered were usually so fearful of the spiritual implications of perjury as to back down from delivering their oaths.41 In one early-fourteenth-century case which illustrates the popular regard for the written word, oath-helpers refused to perform their task Page 74 since they knew that the principal litigant had royal charters which would prove the case decisively.42 As a statement given by the justiciar in 1321 related, ‘according to the approved customs of the kingdom of Hungary, all cases of whatsoever provenance are commonly decided and concluded by the verdict of judges on the basis of the written instruments displayed, the deposition of oaths, and trial by combat’.43 Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the duel gradually fell into desuetude, being reserved either for cases where no other proof was available or for matters of honour coming before chivalric courts.44 The same did not, however, apply to oaths but, in the manner described by the justiciar, these continued to retain a special legal status. Certainly, therefore, by the fourteenth century, the evidence of charters generally counted for more than the spoken record. Yet oaths retained a force of their own, exemplifying in this respect the credence which still attached to oral testimony. 4.4. Language and authentication At the beginning of the fourteenth century, Bishop Ladislas of Sirmium complained that, ‘in the kingdom of Hungary cases are conducted not according to civil and canon law but according to custom of the realm and statute’, and he went on to note the absence in Hungary of deeds drawn up by public notaries.45 Despite Ladislas’s assertion, it is evident, however, that civilian and canonical influences did enter Hungary and that they played a substantial part in redefining aspects of landownership. The principal vehicle by which these ideas were transmitted was, moreover, the locus credibilis – the institution which more than any other substituted in Hungary for the public notary. In the first instance, the loca credibilia acted as vehicles by which the instructions and decisions of the central court offices were transmitted to the Hungarian countryside. The opinions and expressions of chancellery scribes, not a few of whom had received their training in foreign universities, were conveyed through the loca credibilia into the legal literature of everyday disputes and transactions. Secondly, the clergy belonging to the loca credibilia, although seldom educated abroad, relied in their work on formularies composed by those who had been. Of these formularies, the most famous is the mid-fourteenthcentury Ars Notarialis which was written by John Uzsai, a former rector of Bologna university. It is certainly the case that the principal legal influence in Hungarian law was canonical and that the clergy Page 75 belonging to the loca credibilia attached greater weight to canon law than to Roman. In this respect, it is suggestive that the Ars Notarialis contained only such terms as derived from canonical literature.46 Nevertheless, canon law was itself a vehicle of civilian vocabulary and ideas and it is not therefore surprising to find terms familiar in Roman law entering Hungarian legal texts. The principles of canon law assisted in putting landownership on a firmer legal footing and in establishing procedures which were designed to impede vexatious litigants. During the thirteenth century, we find therefore a wide variety of new legal terms which were intended to ensure both the security of possessions and the movement of disputes through recognized legal channels. The most important of these were the praescriptio, the period after which an owner was held to be incontestably in possession of his estate (to begin with 30 years and, later on, 32 years); the evictio or expeditoria cautio by which the seller of a property bound himself to meet any expenses incurred by the new owner in the legal defence of the estate; the renunciatio, according to which the seller handed over to the purchaser all documents relating to a property; and the statutio and admonitio by which a new owner was formally introduced to his property and a procedural mechanism established for addressing the complaints of kinsmen, neighbours and abutters. The new legal vocabulary additionally permitted a greater variety in the terms under which land might be held. Expressions originally deriving from Roman law permitted a distinction to be made between dominium and usufruct, and thus facilitated the practice of leaseholding. In an early example of what would later be called a donatio reservato usufructu, in 1266 the nobleman Nana assigned his lands to the nunnery on the Margitsziget (Insula leporum) but reserved to himself the use of these properties until the time of his own or any future son’s death. Nana’s wife was similarly permitted to retain the properties left to her by her husband as usufructuaria until her own death, after which they became like Nana’s own estate the possession of the nunnery, pleno iure proprietatis et dominii. Other transactions deriving from the decades immediately following point to an equally sophisticated use of the language of the glossators: plenum dominium et inconcussam possessionem, cum iure proprietatis et perpetui dominii, nullum ius proprietatis vel dominii, and so on.47 After the thirteenth century, leaseshold contracts became increasingly common. The contract most normally stated the land involved, the annual rent which might be given either in cash or in kind, and Page 76 the duration of the lease. Leases might be given in perpetuity or for an indeterminate period, during the owner’s pleasure.48 Occasionally, the lease might specify the improvements to the property which the leaseholder was expected to undertake, or include a clause that damage to the property could lead to financial and other penalties.49 Since disputes over the payment of rent were commonplace, wise leaseholders either paid before representatives of a local chapter house or obtained a receipt from the owner.50 Usually, the leaseholder had the right of jurisdiction over the peasantry on the estate. We know, however, of cases where the owner reserved this right to himself or where the occupier was obliged to pay an annual terragium to a third party as an acknowledgement of its superior jurisdiction.51 From the fourteenth century onwards, properties might also be given as a pledge (impignoratio) in return for money lent. Therewith, the borrower surrendered use of the estate to the lender, often on the condition that if the sum lent was not repaid within a certain period, then the dominium of the estate would pass to the lender in the same manner as if the property had been purchased outright: sub vero tytulo emptionis in ius et perpetuam proprietatem.52 The frequency with which borrowers were unable to redeem the estate and so forfeited their rights of ownership may explain Werbőczy’s criticism of the pledge in land as a form of usury.53 As these examples suggest, Hungarian law was entirely able to comprehend the difference between dominium and usus. With respect to György Bónis, the fact that the charters recording certain land-sales declare that the purchaser might enjoy both dominium and usus of a property does not signal a blurring and confusion of the two ideas.54 The coupling of these two terms in the texts of charters (such as, for instance, in the phrase totale dominium et plenum usufructum) surely reflects the frequency with which, as a consequence of arrangements of lease or pledge, the dominium of a piece of land did not automatically confer immediate rights of use upon a new owner. Hungarian property law was never completely influenced by canonical and civilian practices. The rights vested in the larger family continued to constrain property relationships. The dowry which, in its landed form, might have served to diminish the collective resources of the family was thus seldom recorded. Instead, Hungarian law preferred the institution of the dower, whereby the widow received a fixed sum in moveable goods upon the death of her husband. In lieu of this payment, the widow might retain a part of the estate providing this did not too greatly exceed in value the sum due under the dower. Upon her death, however, the property reverted to her husband’s Page 77 family or was inherited by her sons.55 Likewise, the extended family continued to retain rights with regard more generally to the disposition of estates, even though (and as we will see in Chapter 6) civilian principles provided a way of obviating these claims in specific instances. For its part, the principle of partible inheritance resulted in Hungary in the substitution of fraternal for filial adoption. According to this variation, it was usually the coheirs who agreed to the adoption since their adopted brother’s inheritance would be acquired at the expense of their own.56 Despite the persistence of older, customary practices suggested by these examples, it is clear that the transition from oral to written testimony was accompanied in Hungary by a greater precision and clarity both in the vocabulary of the law and in the terms under which property was possessed, sold, leased, pledged and exchanged. In this respect, the loca credibilia did not just foster the growth of legal literacy in Hungary and hasten the breakthrough to written evidence. By shaping the language of landownership, they also influenced the terms under which land was held. In this respect, the loca credibilia’s own ‘lawyerly approach to the law’ stimulated in its turn a lawyerly approach towards landholding.57 At no point, however, did the loca credibilia seek to redefine the basic terms under which noble property was held. Although they introduced a more sophisticated vocabulary to describe transactions, the chapter-houses never used terms other than possessiones (or else hereditates, proprietates and in Hungarian örök or örökség), to describe the estates of noblemen.58 They did not, therefore, recast the language of ownership in terms deriving from the vocabulary of fief-holding as found in parts of Germany, Italy and France. We can intelligently speculate as to why this development, which carried such consequence elsewhere, did not occur in Hungary. Since, as we have seen, canonical rather than civilian law had the more immediate influence in Hungary, it may be that the loca credibilia were unfamiliar with the Libri feudorum, which was the twelfth-century Lombard code frequently attached to volumes of Roman law.59 Alternatively, it may be that the development of the loca credibilia outpaced the bureaucratization of the central royal offices and that it consequently proved harder for rulers to specify, promote and organize the obligations laid on land. Whatever the cause, however, Page 78 the stabilization of the vocabulary of landownership was not accompanied in Hungary by the type of redefinition of landed relations which was commonplace in parts of western Europe from the twelfth century onwards. As a consequence there was never room in Hungary for any academic law of fiefs into which noble landholding might be pressed. Unchallenged by the academic literature of scribes and lawyers, the only form of noble landownership known in Hungary remained property held directly of the ruler. Page 79 5 Conditional Nobles 5.1. Praediales and nobiles iobagiones The possession of land was the distinguishing mark of the nobleman and constituted the indicium et signum verae et sincerae nobilitatis. Yet at the same time, the nobleman stood in a direct relationship of fidelitas to the ruler. His obligations to the king were not closely defined for, as we have seen, they derived from the customary commitment to service which the nobleman discharged per se et personaliter. In token of this fidelity, the nobleman held his land as a gift of the king. This land was not given on defined terms in exchange for services but as a reward for the nobleman’s love, trust and help. It followed from this that a landowner whose duties were specified and tied to the property which he held did not stand in the same relationship to the ruler. Under these circumstances, his obligations occurred by reason of the land which he held rather than arising from the fidelity which he owed to the ruler. A landholder whose estate had defined conditions of service laid upon it could not, therefore, be a true nobleman. This may seem a highly legalistic arrangement as well as an unreasonable one. The nobleman’s personal commitment to the king had already been circumscribed in the Golden Bull of 1222, which limited his military duties to service within the kingdom. Moreover, many nobles entered the households of greater lords owing them a separate obligation as familiares. Hungarian practice and terminology were, however, emphatic. Although a landholder with commitments deriving ratione terrae might call himself a nobleman, his status was of a lesser quality. He did not constitute a ‘true’ or ‘full’ nobleman, but was instead a nobilis iobagio, a nobilis exercituans or a nobilis praedialis. Nor was such a landowner considered a noble of the kingdom (nobilis regni) Page 80 but, at best, a nobleman only of the county or district in which he lived: a noble of Szepes, a noble of Turóc, and so on. It followed from this that landholders who succeeded in freeing their estates from conditions of service merited inclusion among the ranks of true nobles of the kingdom. Conditional landholding was most apparent on the edges of the kingdom, in particular in Slavonia, the Slovak Highlands, and on the southern Danube frontier. This partly derived from considerations of defence, which made it expedient to enumerate the military commitments of landowners. It may well be, however, that conditional landholding was at one time far more common in the heartland of the kingdom than the surviving sources suggest. As we will see, the origins of conditional landholding partly lay in the disintegration of the system of castle-warriors and of retaining districts instituted in the eleventh century. Since the alienation of the royal estates upon which this system rested proceeded earlier in the central part of Hungary, the more extensive evidence for unusual and intermediate forms of landholding existing on the periphery may be a product of the unevenness of the historical record.1 The alienation of royal estates often resulted in the transferral of castle-warriors into private ownership. Some of these succeeded in becoming nobles, whereas others were reduced to the condition of peasants. Not a few, however, retained their separate status. The example of the ‘county’ of Locsmánd illustrates this second trend. The properties and retaining districts of the castle of Locsmánd, which were otherwise parts of Sopron county, were progressively alienated from the middle years of the twelfth century. Finally in 1263, the castle itself together with its remaining lands and its dozen warriors were granted by Béla IV to the ispán Lawrence. Following the donation, the castle-warriors of Locsmánd were confirmed in their existing estates under such condition and agreement that as recompense for this land, they are held to serve the aforesaid ispán and his heirs, attending him at the court of the lord king and at war with the appropriate weapons, whenever it should seem expeditious and pleasing to him.2 The larger body of evidence relating to Slavonia demonstrates more exactly the relationship between conditional landholding and the alienation of royal estates and warriors. Slavonia originally consisted of a large number of petty counties. Some of these are likely to have Page 81 originated in an earlier form of administration based upon županates, which was reorganized during the twelfth century along the lines of the counties north of the River Drava. Others, like Pozsega, the name of which recalls the Slavonic word for an assart, and Verőce, which originated in a cluster of royal estates, were clearly later creations.3 During the thirteenth century, many of the castles and retaining districts in these counties were donated by the king to his supporters. Some indeed passed in their entirety into private hands as ‘perpetual ispánates’, by the terms of which the new lord and his heirs took over almost the entire judicial function of the ispán in the county. The castle-warriors on the alienated estates retained their properties in hereditary possession in return for which they performed the same obligations to the new owner as they had previously owed to the king (dum sub manu et potestate Regie Maiestatis fuissent constituti). Needless to say, the precise extent of these obligations was a frequent cause of dispute.4 A number of Slavonian warriors succeeded in obtaining full ennoblement, thereby removing the ‘stain of ignobility’ which attached to castle-service.5 The majority, however, sheltered behind collective privileges which enumerated their rights and obligations. During the late 1270s, the nobiles iobagiones of Zagreb county obtained, therefore, a succession of freedoms, including commutation of the obligation to feed and fodder (descensus), the exemption of their tenants from taxation, and the right to elect their own judges. They would, indeed, retain these rights until the nineteenth century by which time they were commonly known, after the place of their assembly, as the ‘nobles of Turopolje [Túrmező]’ or ‘nobles of the plain’ (nobiles de campo).6 Special rights were also obtained around the same time by the castle-warriors of Gorica which subsequently served as the basis of the privilege given to the nobiles iobagiones castrenses of the castle of Rovišće. In return for making an annual payment to the ispán of the castle, the nobles of Rovišce were secured in their lands and granted the right to be tried at the ispán’s court in the presence of a homo regius.7 In similar fashion, the nobles of Dubica county, which had been alienated by Béla IV in 1269 to the Templars and which was subsequently to be transferred to the Hospital, were obliged in return for their lands to render to the prior an annual tribute of marten-fur and of other produce.8 In the texts of the charters affirming these privileges, the nobiles iobagiones are often mentioned next to nobiles praediales and no distinction is otherwise made between the two groups. The impression of Page 82 synonymity is, however, misleading to the extent that the nobilis praedialis was most frequently the holder of an estate or praedium which had been given to him by a landowner under certain express terms, whereas the nobilis iobagio was the descendant of a castlewarrior. The conditions attaching to land held by praediales were, at least to begin with, generally more onerous than those attaching to castle-warriors: hence the complaint raised by the men of Rovišće in 1255 that they were being downgraded by the ispán from the status of nobiles iobagiones to that of praediales.9 Nevertheless, the majority of praediales on castle-estates seem to have succeeded in speedily obtaining the same rights as nobiles iobagiones and in effectively obliterating recollection of their separate obligations. The same did not, however, apply to those other estates where praediales predominated. As far as Slavonia was concerned, the majority of these estates consisted of ecclesiastical lordships, principally the bishopric of Zagreb, but there were also secular landowners who converted some of their estates into praedial tenures. The praedialis received his land in perpetuity. In Slavonia the property involved might be sufficiently extensive to include one or several villages.10 In return for this land, the praedialis was obliged to render certain datia debita and servitia, which involved either specific payments or services, often of a military nature. The principal obligation laid, however, upon a praedialis was fidelity to his lord, which might be promised in some sort of ceremony: hence, iurat una manu praedialis et recipiat nadelbam [i.e. donationem].11 Charters issued to confirm a praedialis in his estate commonly also included a formula signifying that faithlessness and ingratitude were grounds for escheat. Although these charters emphasized that the praedialis owned the property for as long as he remained loyal, he was still obliged to obtain his lord’s permission if he wanted to exchange parts of his land or to adopt an heir. Praediales were, however, not completely at the mercy of their lords. In legal actions, they were frequently represented by an elected iudex or comes terrestris who sat on the same bench as a representative of the lord. On the estates of the bishopric of Zagreb, praediales instituted their own assemblies which, in imitation of the counties, elected for the purposes of requisitio their own twelve sworn assessors. Praediales were also permitted to appeal actions to the courts of Zagreb and Kőrös counties.12 The institution of noble praediales was not confined to Slavonia. North of the Drava, there were also men who held land of mainly ecclesiastical lords in return for which they were expected to perform services.13 The prevalence of conditional landholding on church estates Page 83 was almost certainly the outcome of ecclesiastical injunctions which forbade the permanent alienation of church properties. In the thirteenth century, these conditional landholders were commonly known as conditionarii or nobiles (iobagiones) ecclesie, but the term praediales had become general by the late fourteenth century. Such praediales were to be found on the properties of most bishoprics and chapters, as well as of the principal abbeys. Unlike the Slavonian praediales, nobles on church estates north of the River Drava tended to have dwarf-holdings and they seldom had peasants of their own. Nevertheless, the terms under which these praediales held land of church institutions were broadly analogous to those found in Slavonia. They possessed their lands on hereditary terms and, with the consent of their lord, might exchange properties or even sell them. In the latter event, the new owner was expected to undertake the same obligations ratione terrae as his predecessor and to show the same fidelity. In return for their land, praediales were expected to demonstrate fidelity to their lords and to perform certain services. These included military commitments which might draw the praediales into familiar forms of ecclesiastical violence and avarice: assaults on querulous hermits, the theft of fences, and so on.14 Faithlessness or the failure to carry out duties could result in confiscation of a property which was, otherwise, held in perpetuity. Grants of land might thus be accompanied by some such clause explaining that the property would be retained only for as long as the recipients remained faithful to the donor (nobis et domui nostre extiterunt fideles).15 By the same token, distinguished service might merit a reward in terms of a further donation on which few additional burdens were laid. Following, therefore, the death of the praedialis Andrew who fell in 1400 while defending St Giles’s abbey in Somogy county against a violent trespass, the grateful abbot awarded his brothers a recently confiscated plot in return for which they had to pay only a peppercorn rent.16 Conditions of service were usually recorded in charters to which reference might be made in subsequent litigation concerning the obligations of praediales. These charters often also committed the lord to preserve the praediales in their rights. When, in one notorious case proceeding before the palatine in 1331, it was shown that the abbot of Somlyóvásárhely had not conserved his praediales in their freedoms, even to the extent of concealing the charter in which their rights were recorded, it was determined that the abbot would in future forfeit a massive 400 florins for any similar delict. He was also instructed to retrieve the charter and have a copy made for the benefit of the praedi Page 84 ales.17 Nevertheless, charters such as these seldom recorded in any detail the mutual obligations agreed but confined themselves instead to broad generalities. Nor was the relationship between lord and praedialis sealed by any ceremony of homage, although on a few occasions the praedialis might be referred to as a vassalus.18 Praediales dwelling on church estates north of the River Drava enjoyed, like their Slavonian counterparts, certain rights to elect their own judges. In some counties, praediales also had the right to attend the periodic assemblies of the counties and to have their plaints heard there. It would seem, however, that litigation involving praediales was reserved to a special session which usually took place after the fortnight customarily reserved for matters involving the nobles of the county. More commonly, cases involving praediales went before their own assemblies, although it was not until the modern period that these assumed any particular regularity or organization. As in Slavonia, these assemblies were largely modelled on the Hungarian county administration, having their own elected szolgabirák and (later) elected vice-ispán, and over which the relevant ecclesiastical lord presided as ispán.19 Although praediales dwelling on church estates north of the River Drava held smaller properties than Slavonian praediales, they proved generally more successful in enhancing their status, almost to the extent of obtaining acceptance as members of the full nobility. Certainly, churchmen were reluctant to have their praediales recognized as full nobles, as this would automatically have the consequence of freeing them of their obligations. It was, however, of advantage to the church to blur distinctions for, once recognized as nobles, praediales might obtain exemptions from taxation and from the payment of tolls, thus contributing to the overall prosperity of the ecclesiastical estate. In 1411, therefore, the archbishop of Esztergom declared that the praediales of Esztergom, Bars and Komárom counties were full nobles and should therefore be completely exempt from tolls, ‘just as are true nobles of the kingdom possessed of an ancient title of nobility’.20 During the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, legislation passed by the diet contributed further to this confusion, by declaring the oath and homagium (wergild) of a praedialis to be of the same value as those of a full nobleman’s. In 1521, it was affirmed that praediales ‘who bore themselves in the manner of noblemen or who were considered to be nobles’ (praediales ecclesiarum qui nobilium vices gerunt seu pro nobilibus reputantur), should henceforward enjoy the same rights as curial nobles. This did not, however, help much to advance the dignity Page 85 of praediales, as curial nobles (nobles holding only a single plot of land) were not at this time considered full nobles. Even as late as the reign of Leopold II (1790–2), praediales were still petitioning for recognition as nobles of the kingdom.21 5.2. Landholding in the Highlands Conditional landholding was not, however, just the consequence of the alienation of royal castle-estates or of methods of ecclesiastical land-management. On occasions, it was actively promoted by royal policy as a way of ensuring the more effective deployment of military resources. Two regions in particular witnessed attempts to renew the defence of the kingdom by a reliance upon forms of conditional landownership: the Lower Danube frontier, which will be considered in the next section of this chapter, and the Highlands or Felvidék of modern-day Slovakia. Although the Hungarians had settled the Highland valleys as early as the eleventh century, most of the region constituted uninhabited forest. The broad swathes of coniferous woodland provided both an obstacle to invaders and a valuable source of game. After 1241, the region was opened up to colonization and a more effective system of defence was instituted, for the Mongols had well demonstrated by their advance beyond the Verecke Pass and their sack of the castle of Borsova that woodland was not always an impediment.22 As part of this larger scheme of reorganization, the most northerly part of Hungary was transformed into the new county of Zólyom. The considerable area occupied by Zólyom county had previously constituted royal forest and had been administered by wardens (procuratores, custodes). Four new castles were also built at this time at Árva, Zólyom, Turóc and Liptóvár (Nagyvár). These subsequently provided the starting-points from which, in the early fourteenth century, entirely new counties were carved out of Zólyom county’s original territory. During the 1250s, the loosely organized and mostly uninhabited territories of the neighbouring Szepesség were similarly settled by Germans and other immigrants, and these former partes were reconstructed as a county. During the earliest phase of this reorganization, Szepes county shared the same ispán as Zólyom.23 Besides building castles, Béla IV encouraged warriors to migrate to the region and allocated lands to them. Among these were possibly included the descendants of Kabars who, having previously served as border-guards, were moved by Béla into the Szepesség.24 Udvorniks and Page 86 members of other servile groups already settled in the region were also lifted ‘from the servitude of the common people’ (de servitute populorum) and given properties of their own. It may well be that, to begin with, Béla intended the recipients of these land-grants to be tied to the service of the new castles which he had built. In 1262, for instance, he awarded to a certain John Gallicus four hides of land (aratra; one aratrum equals approximately 120 acres) in return for which John was expected to undertake periodic duties in the castle at Liptóvár.25 Nevertheless, Béla did not persevere with his scheme. Zólyom and its successor-counties were thus not constructed after the model of the traditional royal counties, with retaining districts centred upon castles and settled by warriors. Instead a diverse system of landholding and military obligation was instituted, whose beneficiaries held the title of the ‘noble sons of servants’ or nobiles filii iobagionum. Although the term filii iobagionum (jobbágyfiúk) was in frequent use during much of thirteenth-century Hungary, its precise meaning is obscure. It may refer, quite literally, to those descended from the more illustrious castle-warriors who pretended to trace their origin back to the fabled time of St Stephen: hence from (Aba) Újvár county, successores in iobagiones eiusdem castri qui filii iobagionum sancti regis appellantur. Alternatively, as one Transylanian example suggests, the term may refer to an intermediate rank between castle-warrior and royal serviens.26 It is evident, however, that the filii iobagionum of Zólyom county were neither the descendants of castle-warriors, for there had been none there before, nor were they royal servientes. Certainly, in the manner of iobagiones castri, they held plots of land on which services were due. They did not, however, have castles to which they were tied and they were not obliged to perform military service per se et personaliter after the manner of royal servientes. In the case of Szepes county, the apparent interchangeability of filii iobagionum with such other terms as nobiles, nobiles de Scepus, servientes and iobagiones de Scepus urges a particularly cautious approach towards any too rigid a categorization.27 Some filii iobagionum had properties suffiently extensive as to oblige them to serve either in campaign or in garrison duty. The majority, however, did not and were committed instead to join together with their neighbours so as to provide a single armoured knight in times of need. In the region which would later become Turóc county, the number of families which were expected to combine in this manner was specified in 1258 as six. In neighbouring Szepes county, an analogous development occurred which meant that the 40 or so families of filii Page 87 iobagionum were expected to contribute ten knights or ‘lancers’.28 Although it is hard to establish with any precision the extent of land which was considered sufficient to equip a single, armoured knight for battle, in general it appears to have settled at between eight and ten hides (about one-and-a-half square miles). The profit from such a possession roughly coincides with what we know to have been the cost of armour and a warhorse.29 In this respect, the grouping together of estates for the purposes of raising troops may reflect the interest of the ruler in establishing a reliable body of heavy cavalry which was capable both of resisting the assaults of Hungary’s equally armoured neighbours and of storming the light horsemen of the nomads. In this respect, it should be noted that light horsemen, once deprived by the lie of the terrain of the opportunity for encirclement, were easily charged from the field by armoured cavalry. Although Béla IV is closely associated in the historical literature with the establishment of the institution of the filii iobagionum and of service in heavy armour, donations of land in return for the provision of a homo panceriatus continued until well into the fourteenth century.30 During the late fourteenth century, the notorious John Litteratus forged several hundred charters attesting to land possession in Turóc and Liptó counties.31 John was executed for his misdeeds, but such was the scale of his deception that King Sigismund felt it necessary to send out the justiciar to review and record all the titles to land belonging to the local nobles. The register of their deeds survives, which means that we have disproportionately good evidence with regard both to the distribution of lands in these two counties and to the terms upon which property was held. A number of the estates included in the justiciar’s register are listed as conditionalis and they indicate, albeit briefly, the terms under which the land in question was held: hence with regard to a donation of five aratra to a father and his sons, ‘that each are held to serve the king in their own persons, just as the other filii iobagionum who are their comprovinciales are accustomed to serve with arms His Royal Excellency’; or with respect to a fourteenth-century donation, ‘that from this land they demonstrate faithful service and provide two armoured men at time of war or when the castle of Liptóvár is engaged in hard campaigning’.32 Certainly the evidence from Turóc county has proved good enough for an important volume to be dedicated to its medieval placenames, topography and population. A further spur to enquiry is dug by the presence among the earliest nobles of the county of a family bearing the name of Kossuth.33 Nevertheless, it is equally plain that other parts Page 88 of the Hungarian Highlands possessed institutions analogous to the filii iobagionum of Zólyom county. Throughout this region, and most notably in the mountainous counties of Ugocsa, Bereg, Zemplén, Sáros, Gömör and Trencsén, grants of land were made on condition that the recipients provided certain specific military services. Often grants were made at the initiative of the ispán who converted estates belonging to the castle into praedia large enough to equip a mounted knight. Awards of this type were made as far afield as Transylvania, and Pozsony and Vas counties in western Hungary.34 The recipients were commonly known, as in Zólyom county and its successors, as nobiles filii iobagionum, or alternatively as praediales nobiles. Conditional tenures might also be given to nobles who already owned unencumbered properties. In 1255, therefore, Béla IV ceded lands in Vas county in order to assist the ispán Dees in the construction of the castle at Körmend. Béla warned, however, that should the castle be left incomplete or in disrepair by Dees and his heirs, then the beneficium would revert to the crown.35 The duties imposed on the filii iobagionum and praediales were almost entirely of a military nature, such as to attend the local castle at time of war, to provide an armoured knight for the king, to guard a river-crossing, and so on.36 Failure to perform the requisite services could result in confiscation. When, therefore, in 1392 a nobilis praedialis from Liptó county fled his estate being thus unable to discharge his services to the castle of Liptóvár, his property was immediately seized by the ispán and given to others.37 Usually, however, the charters laying out the beneficiaries’ obligations demonstrate the same lack of clarity as we have previously observed with regard to the charters given to praediales on church estates. The charters simply enjoined the recipient to serve ‘in the manner of other praediales’ or filii iobagionum, leaving his duties to be determined by custom.38 The property given in return for services might be inherited, exchanged or sold, usually without the consent of the original donor being required. Nevertheless, as with noble properties generally, the agreement of kinsmen was required for any alienation of the estate. Land, if sold or exchanged, conveyed upon the new owner the same burdens as lay upon the vendor. Likewise, the right to these services might itself be sold and passed on to others.39 With the exception of the duty to perform certain services in return for the land which they held, the filii iobagionum and praediales were largely indistinguishable from the full nobility of the kingdom. They were commonly referred to as nobles, although usually with some Page 89 qualification such as nobiles exercituantes, nobiles praediales, nobiles de Scepus, nobiles de Liptó, and so on. They retained their lands in perpetuity and on much the same terms as all other nobles, largely following noble laws and customs of inheritance. Invariably, many were within a short period ennobled by the ruler and their lands were formally removed of the encumbrances of service. Others having been presumed by the full nobles of the county to be one of their number, allowed memory of their obligations to lapse and merged over time into the ranks of the local nobility. By the mid-fourteenth century, therefore, many of the filii iobagionum of Turóc county had acquired the status of full nobles. We know, however, of only one royal charter of ennoblement.40 It was different for the lancers of Szepes. Whereas the filii iobagionum of the former Zólyom county were able to inveigle themselves into the ranks of the local nobility, their counterparts in Szepes instituted their own community, the universitas nobilium decem lanceatorum nuncupata de terra Scepus.41 Rather than submit themselves to institutions of the county in the hope thereby of gaining entry to the ranks of the county nobility, the Szepes lancers appointed their own officers and judge who frequently came into conflict with the ispán and other officers of the county. The lancers prized their corporate institutions to such an extent that they regularly termed themselves ‘nobles of the seat’ (de sede X lanceatorum, de Zeek). Unfortunately, the Szepes lancers lacked the necessary resources to make good their claims to eminence. In the first place, they were unable to perform the military duties laid upon them, as a consequence of which these were commuted into a cash payment early on in the fourteenth century. When, in the late fifteenth century, the lancers proved unable to discharge even this obligation, their estates were put under the supervision of the county ispán. Their other properties were bought up by the descendants of German immigrants. In the meantime, the more prosperous kindreds, most notably the Ábrahámfalvi and Bethlenfalvi, extracted themselves from the ranks of the lancers by obtaining the status of full nobles. By the sixteenth century, the number of lancerfamilies had fallen from 40 to less than 20, by which time their economic condition was not much different from that of serfs. The institution, however, survived as a curiosity and was only finally dissolved in 1804.42 A strong sense of Landespatriotismus in this region means, however, that more historical literature survives on the tiny community of lancers than on any other group of conditional nobles. Page 90 5.3. Szörény and the Southern Danube For the first few centuries after the Hungarian conquest, the interest of the Árpád rulers lay in expansion to the south-west of the kingdom. This policy led to the acquisition of Slavonia and Croatia, and to conflict with Venice and with the neighbouring Byzantine empire. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Byzantine emperors intervened in Hungary’s factional and dynastic wars endeavouring thereby to take control of the strategically valuable borderregions which stretched from Sirmium to the Dalmatian coast.43 For the most part, the contest between Hungary and Byzantium was fought around the confluences of the Tisza, Danube and Sava rivers. Certainly, on occasions, the fighting spilled on to a wider arena. In the 1140s, a large Hungarian force followed the course of the River Drina, penetrating as far southwards as the Tara Gorge in modern-day Montenegro. Two decades later, a Byzantine commander broke into Transylvania, erecting there a copper cross as a sign of his victory.44 Such movements, were, however, rare. The main conflict ranged around, therefore, the frontier fortresses of Belgrade, Zemun, Haram and Braničevo, and the former Frankish marchland of Frangochorion (Fruška Gora).45 During the late twelfth century, however, the balance of forces on the Danube changed. The nomadic Cumans commenced not only a series of irruptions into both Hungarian and Byzantine territory, but also participated in the Bulgarian revolt, which led to the reestablishment of the Bulgarian empire and to the subsequent loss of the Greek forts on the Lower Danube. Around this time too, Cumans began to settle in large numbers east of the River Olt in the area which would later be known as Cumania.46 Just a little later, Vlach chieftains are first recorded in this region. A number of these and of their successors bore such Turkic names as Karapeh and Bazarab, while the toponymy of some of the earliest and most densely populated areas of Romanian settlement shows strong evidence of Cuman place-names.47 All this suggests an early Romanian symbiosis with the Cumans and points to a possible Cuman role in establishing the first Romanian political organizations. The sources consistently refer to Wallachia as being a largely uninhabited woodland before the thirteenth century,48 and, until this time, they contain no explicit references to Vlachs either here or anywhere in Hungary and Transylvania. There can be little doubt, however, that a Romanian population dwelled in the region, although it is impossible to estimate either its size or its principal economic Page 91 activity. Linguistic evidence suggests a Romanian presence in Hunyad county from at least the eleventh century.49 Both Byzantine and papal sources were convinced, moreover, that the Vlachs were the direct descendants of the Romans.50 It may well be, as Hungarian historians universally maintain, that the sudden entry of the Vlachs into the Hungarian historical record around 1200 was a consequence of Romanian immigration from the Balkan interior. It could, nevertheless, also be taken to indicate the new political importance attaching to the Romanian chieftains of Transylvania and the Lower Danube which made their presence for the first time worthy of record. The response of the Hungarian rulers demonstrates the seriousness with which they viewed Vlach and Cuman settlement on the Lower Danube. Certainly, one of their first acts was to establish a bishopric over the region and to press the Pope for missions aimed at the conversion of the newcomers from paganism and the Greek rite.51 This was, however, combined with a far-reaching territorial reorganization. The huge county of Fehér, which was the legacy of the gyula Prokuj’s tribal holdings, was completely reorganized.52 Its northern and western parts were transformed into the separate counties of Hunyad and Küküllő. On its southern flank, the Teutonic Knights were established in the so-called Burzenland to guard the Törcsvár Pass east of Fogaras, while the area of the strategically important Red Tower (Vöröstorony) Pass was transformed into a lordship under the control of the Tolmácsi family. The Tolmácsi subsequently pushed southwards into Oltenia, while the successors to the Teutonic Knights in the Burzenland also expanded on to the plain following the trade route to Braila. Still in Câmpulung (Hosszúmező) today, there lies a tomb inscribed to the memory of Laurentius comes de Longo Campo.53 A major immigration of German farmers who were capable of supporting heavy-armoured knights, was likewise sponsored in the interior of the county. In order to make room for these, the community of Szekels was shunted eastwards to the farthermost edge of the Carpathians. In the 1230s, the entire of Wallachia up to the River Olt was incorporated in the newly-established banate of Szörény (Turnu Severin), which appears also to have enjoyed some authority over Cumania.54 The banate of Szörény included the territories of several Vlach chieftains or knez-es (such henceforward will be given as the plural of knez, which has no counterpart in English). The knezes and their Vlach followers were obliged to provide tribute in kind (proventus et utilitates) to support the banate, and also to assist as warriors in the defence of the territory (ad defensionem terre … cum apparatu bellico).55 Page 92 In 1248 the banate was handed over to the Knights Hospitaller. Like that of the Teutonic Knights in the Burzenland, the Hospitallers’ tenure was only of brief duration. In the second half of the century, campaigns were launched from the banate against the Bulgarians and several insubordinate knezes. Thereafter, however, the territory of the banate came under repeated assault. Seized first by a certain Theodor, who was most probably of the Csanád kindred,56 and then by the Romanian prince, Bazarab, the banate’s lands east of the Danube were eventually lost in the aftermath of Charles Robert’s disastrous defeat at Posada in 1330. Although the Romanian princes of Wallachia or Ungro-Vlachia retained the subordinate office of ban in Oltenia, Hungary’s eastern frontier with Wallachia was now effectively fixed on the Danube.57 The rebellion of Bazarab was attended by the westward flight of a number of Romanian knezes into the territory of Hunyad, Temes and Krassó counties. Many of the refugees were settled in small territories or districts and they continued to provide men and provisions for the banate of Szörény. They thus took their place beside those other districts which had been previously established in the kingdom by Romanian knezes. These knezes were often employed as locatores, encharged with the duty of populating royal and private estates. In return for the labour of settlement, the knezes acquired permanent headship of the villages which they had founded and certain rights to services and revenue. Altogether, we know of at least 40 such Romanian districts, which by the early fourteenth century stretched across Transylvania and eastern Hungary as far northwards as Máramaros.58 Eight of these districts were intermittently tied to the castle at Szörény, which continued to serve as the centre of a banate. Unlike the banates established in the 1270s south of the River Sava in modern-day Bosnia, the banate of Szörény did not, after 1330, have a defined territory of its own but consisted instead of a disparate and shifting network of appurtenances. The populations of the various Romanian districts were obliged under the direction of their hereditary knezes to undertake provisioning and military tasks for local landowners or, more usually, to assist in the upkeep of a royal castle. These districts rapidly assumed a character analogous to a county, having their own assemblies and judicial officers. Indeed, their corporate character was even more pronounced in certain respects than the counties, for they more frequently undertook inquisitions communally per modum proclamationis, judged in accordance with their own law, and sometimes possessed their own Page 93 seals. The districts in south-eastern Hungary were, however, subject to the overall authority of the ban or, when this office was vacant, either to the principal military officer in the region or to the ispán of Temes county. Likewise sessions of the district’s court were presided over by representatives of the ban who would commonly be assisted by a single szolgabiró or krajnik.59 During the fifteenth century, the districts of the Szörény banate began to hold common judicial sessions and to press for recognition as a united jurisdiction under the authority of their own elected count.60 The ultimate failure of the districts of Szörény to gather together under their own overarching territorial administration was largely due to the frequency with which individual districts were reallocated to different castles depending upon the military needs of the moment. The constant redistribution of districts among castle-lordships, including even their individual division and pledge, made it hard to establish any larger legal and jurisdictional solidarity. By contrast, the Vlach settlements in Máramaros and Bereg counties succeeded for a time in maintaining strong collective freedoms, including the right to elect their own voevode who acted as a supreme judge. In the fifteenth century, however, the communitas Wolacorum in Máramaros was absorbed into the county organization through the merger of the offices of voevode and ispán after which it lost its separate identity. For its part, the Romanian community in Bereg found it hard to resist the authority of the local castellans of Munkács (Munkačevo), who, by the end of the fifteenth century, had succeeded in reducing the voevode’s jurisdiction to no more than a handful of villages.61 The Romanian districts consisted mostly of estates owned by the knezes upon which the bulk of the Romanian peasantry worked. Some of these properties were evidently substantial, including over a hundred peasants.62 From an early stage, the knezes also held the title of nobles. Insofar, however, as they were compelled to render duties to the castle in return for the property which they held, the knezes did not constitute full nobles but were commonly referred to instead as nobiles kneziales or even as praediales.63 The duties of individual knezes differed according both to the district and to the individual terms upon which their forebears had originally obtained and settled the land. Their commitments varied from the obligation to provide a single mounted warrior, to guarding the Danube against incursion, and to providing fodder and livestock, including delivery of the quinquagesima (the ‘fiftieth sheep’).64 As we have seen before in respect of other groups of conditional nobles, these rights were seldom defined with Page 94 any great precision. In most other respects, the terms by which nobiles keneziales held their lands were broadly analogous to those of full nobles. Some would also appear to have retained military authority over their peasants, functioning individually in this respect as a capitaneus jobagionum.65 It is unlikely, however, that the institution of the knez provided the basis of the system of frontier defence established in the 1520s and 30s. The appointment of soldiers who held farms in return for garrison-duty on the frontier is more likely to have its background in fifteenth-century methods of retaining Serbian and Croatian warriors in flight from the Turks.66 From as early as the fourteenth century, individual families of nobiles keneziales petitioned for admission into the ranks of the full nobles of the kingdom. Under these circumstances, the property which had previously been held of the king as a possessio kenezialis (hence, from a charter of Sigismund given in 1387, quandam possessionem nostram sub ipsius keneziatu seu officiolatu hactenus habitam) was converted into a private estate held in perpetuity. A royal charter recording the act was drawn up which affirmed that the burdens formerly lying on the estate were now withdrawn.67 The petitioner was thus received into the ranks of the full nobility, holding his estate ad instar ceterorum regni nostri nobilium.68 In this respect, the nobles of the Romanian districts differed from the Saxon grafs of Transylvania and the Szekel chieftains. These, although they might ‘bear themselves in the manner of nobles’, could only obtain full noble status by acquiring property outside the territory of the privileged community to which they otherwise belonged.69 Nevertheless, like these and all the other conditional nobles in the Hungarian kingdom, until the knez had obtained land which was free of specific services, he remained outside the number of the true nobles of the kingdom. The system of conditional landholding in Hungary has been compared to the Francocentric model of feudal land tenure.70 This, however, not only presumes a uniformity among West European institutions but also forces analogies almost to breaking-point. The relationship of the conditional nobleman to king, bishop, ispán, private landowner or ban derived not from a commitment to any form of personal service but instead from obligations resting in the land which he held. Even where the fidelity of the landholder formed a part of this relationship, it was seldom sealed by any act comparable to homage and might be effec Page 95 tively ‘sold on’ along with the property. The obligations which derived ratione terrae qualified, moreover, the status of the holder and denied him a full title of nobility, even if these obligations were owed directly to the ruler. For these commitments, being located in land, were understood to be different to the personal service which the full nobleman was presumed to discharge to the king. As this study of conditional landholding demonstrates, a nobleman who held land in return for specified services could not be a complete nobleman and was, indeed, never regarded as one. Page 96 6 The Kindred and the Quarter 6.1. The solidarity of the kindred We have already noted how, during the thirteenth century, the tradition of holding property communally among the several interrelated families of the kindred was replaced by the practice of dividing the property between families. Nevertheless, although subdivision was declared customary even as early as the 1230s,1 some brothers and cousins continued to hold land in common throughout the fourteenth century. It seems, moreover, that in a few cases the division of a father’s estate among his heirs occurred on paper only, with the oldest son managing the entire property on behalf of his siblings. Nevertheless, over the course of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such examples become increasingly rare. During this time, the noble genus or generatio was almost entirely superseded as an economic agent by the parentela or family unit, which worked its own estate. In token of this change, and as we have previously remarked, the de genere form of address gave way during the fourteenth century to names which recalled the individual landowner’s premier estate. The break-up of the genus as an economic institution did not have the automatic consequence of depriving the larger family of the affective bonds which had previously united its members. Besides calling themselves after their principal estate, noble landowners belonging to the same genus or kindred might still share a common surname, which usually referred back to an illustrious ancestor: Himfi (descendant of Him), Lackfi (descendant of Lack) and so forth. Cousins and other members of the kindred frequently acted together in political projects, combining for instance to thwart a royal official or to capture a valuable redoubt. The kindred was also enjoined to undertake certain moral Page 97 duties, most notably in respect of the care of orphans and widows. As a moral community, the kindred might on rare occasions be considered collectively responsible for the actions of one of its members. Felicián Zách’s failed assassination of Charles Robert thus resulted in the death-sentence being passed against all immediate members of his kindred.2 Nevertheless, we should not overestimate the centrality of the kindred in medieval Hungarian society. For every example demonstrating its solidarity, we may find another in which members of the same genus vied with one another over the distribution of an estate, even to the extent of engaging in local wars and murder, or where an uncle behaved wickedly towards an orphan.3 The Elefánthy kindred was thus riven throughout the first decades of the fourteenth century by internal disputes, which resulted in both protracted litigation and several killings.4 In similar fashion, generations of the Kistapolcsányi kindred of Bars and Hont counties bickered over the distribution of an inheritance, evincing their solidarity only in joint attacks on the nearby castle of Hrussó. Likewise, the several branches of the Helmeczi kindred, having managed a largely peaceful co-existence in the fourteenth century, subsequently fell out over an inheritance and a murder.5 The history of the Himfi kindred in Krassó and Temes counties is similarly marked by episodes of violent trespass, which are interspersed with periods of reconciliation.6 As well as being an agent of solidarity, the noble kindred might also be for its members a cause of dissension, impoverishment and even death.7 6.2. Inheritance law and the ‘new donation’ Until the nineteenth century, the kindred retained rights over a property held by one of its members to such an extent that the collective consent of relatives and kinsmen was needed for all sales, exchanges and pledges. Since the agreement of members of the kindred was not needed in cases of the alienation of properties which had been bought by the current owner, we may presume that the origin of these rights lay in the period when property had been communally owned and passed on within the kindred. Despite its longevity, however, the law of aviticitas, which was the law of collective rights over properties inherited from a common ancestor or avus, was never stable.8 During the course of the later Middle Ages, it experienced a number of significant alterations which cumulatively demonstrate the growing weakness of the kindred both as a social and as a legal institution. Page 98 Medieval Hungarian inheritance law was determined by three mutually opposing interests. In the first place there was the king. The aim of the ruler was to restrict the number of lawful claimants to a property, because, if an owner died without legal heirs then the estate reverted to the crown. The individual landholder was, however, primarily interested in retaining his right to free testamentary disposition, for this maximized the choices available to him. The church also promoted the right of free testament as it carried obvious benefits for religious foundations. The kindred, however, was concerned to promote its opportunities to inherit the properties of cousins and of other more distant relatives, and thus had a vested interest in the principle of aviticitas. It was emphatically not to the kindred’s benefit to allow relatives to dispose of properties freely, for they might assign their wealth to mortmain. Nor did it benefit uncles and cousins if a father gave land to his daughters, for upon their marriage the property would pass to outsiders and no longer constitute a possible resource. Since, however, fathers were also kinsmen a conflict of interests beat in every landholder’s breast. By the early thirteenth century, the nobility had succeeded in arranging inheritance law in a manner which, at least on paper, disadvantaged the ruler. As we have seen, they had secured the right to treat donated land in the same manner as inherited. Irrespective of origin, the land passed in the absence of sons to whomsoever the owner chose (1222), or to his kindred (1267), or, again, either to his kindred or to the church (1290).9 The various measures given in these lawcodes were emphatic that the king could not sequester estates while close relatives of the owner were still living. Despite the stress given in these laws upon the right of free inheritance, it is nevertheless plain that most properties were not and never could be passed on in this way. Although it was not in doubt that acquisita could be distributed according to the owner’s whimsy,10 the kindred retained collective rights over the inherited property of its members. Owners of inherited estate who wished to give their property to the church were often, therefore, obliged to petition the king for special dispensation to set aside the rights of the kindred.11 The balance of rights respectively vested in the kindred, in the immediate heirs to an estate, and in collateral branches is, however, hard to establish. Certainly, we know that during the thirteenth century a differentiation began to be applied within the kindred with respect to the parentela, which was the immediate family of the deceased owner. Irrespective of testament, members of the parentela retained larger Page 99 rights over the property than more distant collateral heirs.12 Beyond this, however, the rights of collateral branches as against those of the parentela are, until the fourteenth century, impossible to quantify with any precision. Just to make things worse, we have strongly conflicting evidence even with respect to individual kindreds and to their understanding of who constituted heirs. In 1319 and 1325, therefore, the brothers Dobo and John the Bold divided between themselves the property of their late father, Jacob Panyoki. The history of Jacob’s forebears is known but we have no indication that in any of his dealings he gave his more distant relatives any thought in matters of property. In 1327, however, Dobo and John undertook a further subdivision of their inherited estates. On this occasion, however, the brothers apportioned to hitherto unknown cousins a property which Jacob had received by royal donation over sixty years before. Again, in the 1340s, the nobleman Martin, who wanted to leave his lands to his sons, was challenged by his brothers. They demanded a share in his properties, sued him before the justiciar, and won the case.13 Lest it be thought that the rights of the kindred trumped on every occasion the rights of the parentela, let us consider two further examples. A former castle-warrior called Hudina was ennobled in 1225 and was granted full rights of possession to the lands which he had hitherto held in Kőrös county. During the Mongol invasion, Hudina behaved courageously and was given more land by Béla IV. He died, sometime before 1262, without any sons. At this point, his brothers started forging charters which alleged that Hudina’s property at Vizköz in Somogy county had been ceded jointly to them at the time of its donation.14 Had the rights of the owner been automatically assumed upon his death by his collateral heirs, in this case Hudina’s brothers, then such a deception would hardly have been necessary. It would have been understood that the brothers, as part of the kindred, had an immediate right to the inheritance. Presumably, they felt their rights to be uncertain, and feared that under such circumstances an escheat on grounds of defectus might be made. Likewise, and at much the same time, Chapan and Lawrence of the Ják kindred succeeded in excluding their cousins from a share of their paternal inheritance on the grounds that they stood in proximiori linea consanguineitatis, and that their superior rights were acknowledged in both law and custom.15 It is the case that communities of immigrants to Hungary, most notably townsfolk, were permitted their own laws with respect to inheritance. The Neapolitan Drugeth family also appears to have lived Page 100 under its own customs in matters of land.16 It may well be that the different noble kindreds of Hungary similarly lived under different rules of inheritance. Some may have recognized the rights of collateral heirs, and others not. Some may have stressed the genus, whereas others promoted the narrower rights of the parentela. Possibly, the basis of this differentiation rested upon whether the lands of the kindred were still collectively worked.17 If such was indeed the case then we may have to acknowledge a greater gulf between law and practice than most historians allow. We may, moreover, have to accept that, until well into the fourteenth century, the law of inheritance in Hungary was not normative but was instead subjective, and that the subjects of right were the kindreds. The alternatives to this extreme hypothesis are either that we do not yet fully understand Hungarian inheritance law in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries (which is reasonable enough!), or that the law was determined in specific instances by judges who were either ignorant or vulnerable to extra-legal persuasion. During the course of the fourteenth century, however, a certain clarity enters upon medieval Hungarian inheritance law. Following the Angevin succession, it becomes possible for the first time to track procedures and to establish a uniformity of practices. Examination of the principles at work in Hungarian inheritance law strongly suggests the steady erosion of the legal rights of the kindred. This development is most apparent in respect of the so-called ‘new donation’. In the 1320s, noblemen began to petition the king to give them land under terms which expressly excluded collaterals from any rights of inheritance.18 The ban Mikcs, therefore, who had been busily acquiring lands in the royal service approached Charles Robert in 1323 with the request that he be confirmed in his properties but under terms which expressly excluded his brothers from any rights of inheritance: quod ad fratres eius et consanguineos non in aliquo extendatur; exclusis fratribus et consanguineis eius, and so on. Charles Robert acceded to Mikcs’s petition, although the terms under which he did so make it clear that the king understood himself to be setting aside customary law.19 The grant to Mikcs was followed by a number of similar donations in which, again, the rights of inheritance of collateral branches were abrogated. During the 1340s, a flood of petitions reached the curia requesting the king not only to give estates on terms which excluded collateral inheritance but also to re-grant lands under a new title of ownership (sub titulo nove donationis) which had the consequence of excluding all except sons from any share of the property. Charters of ‘new donation’ were so frequently issued in the second half of the century that the Page 101 sub titulo formula was put in all documents relating to royal donations, including ones given to a religious house and, even more perversely, to usufructs held only during the occupant’s lifetime. By the last years of the fourteenth century, an evident transformation had occurred in the way in which land was inherited in Hungary. It was now understood that properties were passed from fathers to sons, and that while direct descendants lived, collateral branches had no rights of inheritance. The only way whereby collaterals might have a share in an estate was if the original charter of donation included an explicit reference to their rights. This was usually done through the per eum formula which specified that the land was given to a nobleman et per eum fratribus suis patruelibus, et per ipsum fratri eiusdem, and so on.20 Whereas, therefore, Mikcs in the 1340s had sought to have his rights codified in such a way as to prevent his relatives inheriting his estate, within less than half a century explicit codification was needed to ensure that collaterals were considered heirs at all. Pál Engel, whose recent work has established the significance of the ‘new donation’ in Hungarian law, interprets the origin of this new device in the importation of Norman legal norms.21 We should note, however, that even in the thirteenth century there was evidently pressure from below to exclude collateral heirs from inheritance. Moreover, we should not underestimate the role played by the principles of Roman law, upon which the Angevins relied. The setting aside of what were understood to be the customary rights of the kindred was achieved by Charles Robert through appeals to his plenitude of power and to the prerogative rights of royal majesty. Without such impressive justification in the doctrines of civilian lawyers, the overturning of Hungarian inheritance law during the fourteenth century is unlikely to have been accomplished in such rapid fashion.22 Nevertheless, the transformation wrought by the Angevin kings was hardly disinterested. If the rights of collaterals were denied and properties were deemed to pass in their entirety from father to sons, then the opportunity was enlarged for escheat on grounds of defectus. Circumscription of the rights of inheritance thus directly enhanced the sequestratory rights of the crown. This circumstance is well illustrated by a case from the 1360s. Nicholas Barácskai, a landowner in Bars county, died around 1365. He had a brother, Stephen, but no sons. Immediately upon Nicholas’s death, Ladislas of Oppeln petitioned King Louis to be given Nicholas’s properties on the grounds that Nicholas was without heir, and that his lands lay now at the ruler’s disposal. Louis concurred with Ladislas’s petition, at which point Stephen Page 102 protested. He brought to the king several charters which proved that the lands in question had been jointly ceded both to Nicholas and to him. Inspecting the charters, Louis ‘saw with the proof of his own eyes that the name of Stephen was written there’, and upheld Stephen’s plaint. Stephen was duly installed in his brother’s lands. Clearly, though, Stephen only obtained possession because the property had been jointly awarded. Had his name not been in the charters, then he would have had no right to his brother’s estate, which would instead have defaulted to the crown. In much the same fashion, in the late 1370s when Michael II of the Elefánthy kindred died without sons, Louis seized his estates, ignoring the protests of Michael’s distant relatives that this was contra regni sui statuta et consuetudinem ac legem.23 Changes in inheritance law during the fourteenth century represented a triumph both for the individual landowner and for the king. The loser was the kindred, for collaterals now had no presumed rights to the property of a relative even if he died without sons. The lands of those without direct male descendants defaulted automatically to the crown. Since, however, individual landowners were also members of kindreds, it is not surprising that this state of affairs was found to be objectionable. As early as 1351, Louis was obliged to concede that the estates of noblemen who died without direct heirs should pass in fratres, proximos et generationes.24 The Barácskai and Elefánthy cases indicate that this provision was ignored on at least two occasions. We know, however, that during the 1380s and 1390s, both Mary and Sigismund came under renewed pressure from the nobility to assert the rights of the kindred, even to the fourth generation, in respect of the estates of those dying without immediate heirs.25 Periodic reissues of the 1351 decree can only have served to stress the rights to inheritance vested in collateral branches. It seems likely that during the last decades of the fourteenth century, the ruler gave up all attempts to take control of the estates of nobles who had died without sons but who still had collateral heirs. The interests of the individual landowner and of the kindred thus combined to thwart the interests of the ruler. From now on, the law of inheritance was stabilized, and it worked against the king. Sons inherited. If there were none then the property was divided among the closest collateral branches of the family. Only if there were none of these did the property escheat to the crown on grounds of defectus. We may parenthetically note at this point one further development which is related to the trends previously identified in this section. During the thirteenth century, sales and exchanges of property were Page 103 frequently accompanied by clauses indicating that the vendor had obtained not only the consent of his relatives to the transaction but also the agreement of his neighbours.26 In the fourteenth century, references of this second type become increasingly uncommon and they are rare in the fifteenth.27 Although neighbours still had the right to object to a transfer of property at the time of the new owner’s statutio, their protestations were principally confined to claims that the boundaries of the estate were incorrectly laid. This apparent erosion of the rights of neighbours suggests the further specification of property-ownership and is in this respect analogous to the exclusion of the kindred from inheritance. 6.3. The daughters’ quarter The kindred emerged from the fourteenth century shorn of a good deal of its legal significance. Whereas around 1300 the kindred was largely presumed to have some collective rights to the land of any one of its members who died, by the close of the Angevin period these rights only came to the fore when that member had no direct male descendants. The same expansion of the rights of the smaller family, the parentela, over the kindred also occurred in respect of the laws governing female inheritance. It was in the interest of all the members of the kindred to prevent an estate passing into the possession of a family from outside the kindred, for such would diminish the resource from which future land acquisitions might derive.28 This mutual self-interest carried immediate consequences for the rights of daughters. Since land ceded to a daughter would upon her marriage pass to the ownership of her spouse and thus to his family and kindred, constraints were applied with regard to the inheritance-rights of female offspring. We thus find it specified early on in the thirteenth century that the lands of the family could not be inherited by daughters, but that female heirs had to be recompensed instead with ‘the daughters’ quarter’. The quarter was to be paid in cash or kind, not in land, and could amount to no more than 25 per cent of the estimated worth of a father’s estate. It was, moreover, irrelevant whether the father had one or several daughters; a quarter was the complete entitlement of the female branch. The explanation given for this condition, and subsequently repeated in the legal literature, was the danger of inheritances passing ad extraneos – outside the cluster of families which constituted the kindred. Similar constraints applied to the dower due to widows which, on account of the possibility of Page 104 remarriage, was customarily ceded in moveables. The exception to all this lay in regard to land bought rather than inherited by the father which could be passed on by testament to whomsoever the father wished. Although the earliest reference to the daughters’ quarter occurs in the early thirteenth century, it had by that time acquired a strongly customary character.29 We may therefore presume the institution to have an earlier origin. Most probably, the daughters’ quarter derived from a particular reading of the Theodosian lex Falcidia and its dissemination in Hungary was the work of churchmen and canonists.30 Throughout the Middle Ages, the church retained jurisdiction in cases of matrimony and of the rights of children. Although the authority of the church in matters touching upon landed property was circumscribed, ecclesiastical courts acted as powerful instruments for recalling fathers to their duties and specifying their obligations. As an imported rather than an indigenous device, it is not surprising that the daughters’ quarter should have parallels in provisions made in Normandy, Spain and Poland in respect both of female inheritance and of the rights of secundogenitures.31 Estimation of the sum to be paid to the daughters from the paternal estate was made according to the communis or condigna aestimatio, a set of fixed rules which may have deliberately undervalued the financial worth of landed property.32 Nevertheless, it still frequently happened that a noble family had insufficient moveable resources with which to pay off the daughters. This difficulty became even more pronounced once it was forbidden to discharge obligations to daughters in kind rather than in cash. Under these circumstances, the male heirs to the estate would compensate their sister in land while reserving to themselves the right to redeem the estate at a fixed price. Although Werbőczy did not explicitly acknowledge this practice, his reference to the daughters’ quarter as non perennali, vel haereditaria, sed redemptili lege suggests the regularity with which daughters may have been given land as a temporary substitute for cash.33 There were, however, occasions upon which the family was unable to redeem the quarter. In this event, the land remained with the daughter and was usually absorbed into her husband’s estate, unless she chose of her own will to return the land gratis to her family. In a touching illustration, in 1338 one noblewoman returned her quarter in land to her brothers on the occasion of her marriage because, as she explained, they had been kind enough to care for her and to find her a husband.34 The frequency with which the quarter was given in land, Page 105 pending its eventual redemption, spilled over to affect the distribution of purchased estates, which were otherwise subject to free testamentary disposition. One of the principal reasons for buying land was to connect tracts of inherited estate. It made, therefore, little economic sense to maintain a legal distinction between acquisita and haereditaria and thereby to apportion contiguous properties to different heirs. Fathers thus commonly specified in their wills that their acquisita should be assigned to their daughters in the same proportion as they received inherited land through the quarter, rather than distributed according to a separate mechanism. As we have seen, during the course of the fourteenth century the ownership of land became the distinguishing feature of noble status. This carried implications for the daughters’ quarter, for if the daughter lacked land, then her own status as a noblewoman was thrown into doubt as also was the status of her children. In the case of daughters married to noblemen, this difficulty did not arise since the woman automatically took her spouse’s rank. The prospect of derogation was ever present, however, in the case of unmarried daughters and of daughters who married commoners. With regard to spinsters, there was a straightforward solution. The daughter remained in the family home and was awarded the quarter in land to be redeemed at the time of her marriage. In the event of marriage to a commoner, providing the wedding was not opposed by the family, the quarter was again awarded in land but this time in perpetuity. Thereby, the daughter’s status as a noblewoman was assured and she did not have to suffer the indignity of living sub alienis tectis. This remedy to the problem of mésalliance was actively promoted by the church which otherwise demonstrated much concern in the fourteenth century over the ‘degeneration’ of noble lines. As such, the award of the quarter in land might be explained by explicit reference to canonical principles (regni consuetudine requirente, ymo et sacrorum canonum sanctione exposcente).35 In theory, neither the husband nor heirs of a marriage between a commoner and a noble wife should have acquired nobility. It is, however, evident that they often did. The acquisition of land through the device of the quarter was usually sufficient to convey the status of nobility. Moreover, the noblemen of the county, to whom inquisitions would commonly turn for confirmation of an individual’s status, were usually generous in their oral testimony as to the pedigree of a fellow landowner even if he had come into possession of his estate through marriage rather than through inheritance. The frequency with which spouses acquired noble rank by marriage and the quarter is famously Page 106 illustrated by a session of the Zala county congregacio in 1408 when a half of all outlawed nobles were listed as holding their title through their wives (post uxorem, post nobilem dominam, etc).36 According to Werbőczy, daughters did not strictly constitute heirs but held the lesser status of posteritates. Only sons constituted the legitimate heirs to an estate, and, as we have shown, if these were lacking then the property passed to collateral branches. Nevertheless, fathers without male heirs were naturally reluctant to see their property pass into the hands of collateral lines if they had daughters of their own upon whom the property might be bestowed. In law, the daughters were entitled to no more than the quarter, given in moveables, and to all or a part of the father’s acquisita. Everything else belonged to the collateral heirs. As early as the thirteenth century, however, the solidarity of the kindred was sufficiently weakened for fathers to seek to grant either a part or, indeed, all of their property to their daughters as unredeemable estate even though the land might thereby pass through marriage ad extraneos. A number of questionable devices might be employed.37 The first and most common resort was simply to give the quarter in land and to specify in the charter of donation that it was to be held by the daughter and her sons in perpetuity. The second was either to claim that inherited land was actually acquired land and thus subject to free testamentary disposition, or to broaden the concept of acquired land so as to include properties bought by a previous generation. All these remedies might be challenged in court and depended for their success upon good political connections and the readiness of the daughter, or her mother, to resort to force in defence of the estate. In this respect the defendants held the advantage, for in cases involving female inheritance the women retained the right to remain on the estate until the issue had been resolved. A further device, which Werbőczy himself acknowledged, was the use of bribery to effect entry to the property. There were, however, other options to which a father could resort in order to secure his daughters’ rights of inheritance. It had long been in the interest of the church to establish greater flexibility with regard to inheritance, since too prescriptive a system made it hard for nobles to donate property to ecclesiastical institutions. From the early thirteenth century, the right which nobles had long enjoyed to petition the king to allow them to benefit churches in their wills, was extended to permit them to dispose of their estates by will to their daughters. The earliest example of such free testamentary disposition comes from 1221 when Andrew II permitted a certain comes Sol to leave his estate to his wife and three daughters. The royal consent to Page 107 this arrangement made no reference to the prior agreement having been obtained of Sol’s male relatives. Following a succession of similar petitions, it was eventually laid down in 1290 that fathers without direct male heirs had the right to bestow their properties upon whomsoever they wished. The right of free inheritance in default of sons was by no means welcome to broad sections of the nobility. In so far as it prevented the king from laying claim to the property of those dying without direct male heirs, it certainly benefited the nobility as a whole. Nevertheless, it was damaging to collateral branches because ancestral properties which they might otherwise have expected to come into their possession could now pass by testament to the church or to daughters, and thus to mortmain or to another kindred. This issue came to the fore at the diet of 1351 during the course of which the assembled nobles pressed the king to affirm more generally the rights of collateral branches. In the preface to the decree issued at the close of the diet, Louis repudiated previous legislation and declared that the property of those dying without male heirs devolved thenceforward on ‘brothers, relatives and kinsmen’. Thereafter, petitions for the right of free inheritance were effectively ruled out. The only way a nobleman might secure the privilege of free disposition, and thus of female inheritance, was to have this right specifically recorded in the charter of donation by which he received an estate. 6.4. Prefection With the route of free testament now closed, parents sought other, more ingenious methods of securing their daughters’ rights to inheritance.38 During the fourteenth century, it became increasingly common for fathers without male heirs to petition the king to make their daughters into sons, thus entitling them to the entirety of the estate. As with the earliest charters of ‘new donation’, privileges assenting to acts of ‘prefection’ (prefectio in filium in heredem masculinum) commonly included references to the right of royal majesty to override customary provision. Indeed, the royal prerogative was seldom more keenly expressed than in charters of this type. To begin with, the right of prefection was only bestowed on members of the high nobility who had performed notable services for the king, but in the second half of the fourteenth century the right was also ceded to petitioners coming from the common nobility. Altogether over a hundred grants of prefection are known to have been made in the two centuries following the earliest use of this device in 1332.39 Page 108 As with the right of free testamentary disposition, prefection was damaging to the interests of collateral branches, even distant members of which frequently raised objections to the installation of a newly prefected daughter to an estate. It may also have held unwelcome constitutional implications suggesting the possibility of female inheritance to the crown (which indeed happened). During the later fourteenth century, therefore, it became generally accepted that acts of prefection should not be permitted while male relatives within the fourth degree were still alive, and towards the end of his reign Louis revoked all prefections which harmed the interests of such collateral heirs. The Temesvár diet of 1397 extended this principle by declaring that prefections were not permitted ‘within the fifth generation’. It seems likely, however, that by association with matrimonial law, the fourth degree remained the convention.40 These restrictions on the right of prefection represented only a partial victory for the kindred. For the first time, the generations constituting the kindred had been laid down, but in a restrictive sense detrimental to those collateral branches which shared a common ancestor beyond the fourth degree. Moreover, it is apparent that prefections well within the fourth degree continued to be made with the royal consent, although these later examples were probably made with the agreement of members of the relevant collateral branches. Prefections of this type often involved complex territorial and financial arrangements, such as the opportunity being granted to a collateral branch to redeem a daughter’s quarter in exchange for its consent to her inheriting the remainder of the estate. It is, nevertheless, evident that once the collateral branches had agreed to a prefection then they lost all future claims to the estate even if the daughter subsequently died without heirs. In a passage which probably derived from a genuine case, Werbőczy explained the relations between two brothers each of whose daughters had been prefected with the agreement of the other. In this instance, Werbőczy maintained, the prefections had the consequence of creating completely new noble lines. Thus, if one of the prefected daughters died heirless, the property would not default to the other brother’s line, as one might otherwise have expected to be the case, but would instead escheat to the crown. Although Hungarian noble property is sometimes described as ‘allodial’, it is plain that estates were sufficiently encumbered as to make it impossible to consider them as held either in freehold or in absolute dominium. Page 109 On the one hand, the crown might lay claim to properties on grounds of defectus or of treason, or with the excuse that the owners had insufficient proof of title and that they were therefore ‘concealers of royal rights’. On the other, members of the kindred retained certain rights of inheritance, and the consent of fratres condivisionales was required for all sales, gifts, pledges and exchanges of property. Although quite who constituted the fratres condivisionales was never specified, charters treating upon the alienation of inherited estates invariably noted that the consent of fratres and proximi had been previously obtained. According to Werbőczy, failure to secure the prior agreement of relatives constituted the betrayal of brotherhood, which was the most terrible of crimes.41 The kindred existed, therefore, as a legal community, each of whose members held rights over the other. During the course of the later Middle Ages, these rights became attenuated. As we have noted, by the close of the fourteenth century it was presumed that inherited land devolved in its entirety to sons and that collateral heirs only succeeded to an estate when the owner died without direct descendants. This was in apparent contrast to the legal regime which had prevailed at the start of the century. Again, in the case of female inheritance, we may notice fathers employing a number of devices to ensure that their daughters received land which might otherwise have passed to the kindred. Fathers either ignored convention and gave the quarter in land, or else they petitioned the king for rights of prefection, thereby converting their daughters into sons. The diminution of the legal rights previously vested in the kindred tends to confirm what we already know of the decline of the kindred as an economic and social unit. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the kindred withered as a force in medieval Hungarian society. As its economic activities and legal rights were gradually taken over by the parentela, it largely ceased to constitute an agent of solidarity. The kindred’s social and political functions could not, however, be so easily assumed by the family unit, for this was too small an institution to provide complete protection and support for its members. Accordingly, Hungarian noblemen increasingly sought to construct among themselves new relationships of power and protection, which would serve to compensate for the loss of the affective bonds of the kindred. Of these, the most important was the relationship built upon familiaritas, which is the subject of our next chapter. Page 110 7 Familiaritas 7.1. ‘Public’ and ‘private’ power The institution of familiaritas is commonly regarded as one of the ‘pillars’ upon which Hungarian noble society rested, and as one of the medieval kingdom’s defining characteristics.1 Familiaritas denotes the relationship between lord and man which was expressed in terms of fidelitas, service, reward and mutual obligation. By entering a lord’s service, a nobleman became part of his familia. As such, he might actually live within his master’s domus. More usually, however, he received a stipend or a portion of revenues. In return for these favours, the familiaris (or, very occasionally, famulus, and from the late fifteenth century, servitor) was expected to come to his lord’s aid and to perform tasks of either a military or civilian nature. On occasions, the nobleman might also be awarded land either in return for service or in token of services yet to be performed. Sometimes, indeed, the retention of this property would be made conditional upon the continued performance of the recipient’s obligations. Familiaritas was, however, more usually combined with officeholding. A royal dignitary such as the voevode, ban or a county ispán, often appointed his own familiares to discharge subordinate functions and apportioned to them a part of the revenues of office. The familiares might on these occasions appoint their own men to subordinate positions within the hierarchy, thereby effectively ‘sub-letting’ smaller parts of the office and of the income which flowed to it. The ladder of lordship and service might in this way extend to four or even five rungs. It is not at all apparent that the institution of familiaritas was so distinctively ‘Hungarian’ as Hungarian historians sometimes maintain. Familiaritas bears a resemblance to aspects of ‘bastard feudalism’, of Page 111 fiefes-rentes and of clientage found in contemporary England, the Low Countries and France. And, like English ‘bastard feudalism’, familiaritas has seldom encountered anything other than criticism.2 The earliest account of this institution, given by Gyula Szekfű in 1912, conceived it in terms of the surrender into private hands of the public powers and rights of the state.3 Ever since Szekfű, Hungarian historians have considered familiaritas to have exercised a negative influence upon historical developments. In the first place, therefore, familiaritas is supposed to have contributed to civil discord and to injustice on account of its subordination of public interests to private relationships of power. The state was thus ‘squeezed into the background’ and replaced by an arrangement of purely personal bonds.4 The salience of vertical relations among the nobility is considered, furthermore, to have delayed the establishment of corporations resting upon the horizontal relationships inherent within the concept of the estate of the realm. As a consequence, familiaritas compromised the early development of parliamentary institutions in Hungary. Finally, the retention of public offices within a hierarchy of personal relationships is judged to have hindered the emergence of a bureaucratic apparatus of state.5 This type of analysis presupposes, however, a distinction between public and private power which is hard to sustain in the context of the Middle Ages. It further conceives of the ‘despotic’ and ‘patrimonial’ monarchy of the Árpád kings as tending towards public power and state sovereignty and accordingly interprets the institution of familiaritas as retrogressive. It is evident, however, that the structures of power in the Árpád kingdom were overwhelmingly based upon personal relations, the most important of which centred upon the king. During this earlier period, the locus of power and authority in the kingdom was the royal household. It was to the royal familia that the future Hungarian nobility flocked in their search for status and protection. The fidelitas by which the noble servientes of late Árpád Hungary defined their relationship to the ruler differed little from the fidelitas by which they later explained their relationship to a lord. Nor should we overestimate the extent of the transfer of allegiance accomplished by the institution of familiaritas. Loyalty to a lord neither severed nor mediated the relationship between a nobleman and the king. The ruler remained the source of the land which the nobleman held as a mark of his status. The ruler likewise continued to be able to demand the personal service of the nobleman in time of war. In this respect, it is not surprising that Werbőczy, while acknowledging relations of familiaritas, should have given these no discussion within Page 112 his compendium of customary law. In Werbőczy’s vision, familiaritas compromised neither the rights of nobles, nor their immediate relationship to the crown, nor even their complete membership of the political community.6 It may, nevertheless, be observed that familiaritas derived from the practical weakening of the bonds between nobleman and king. Precisely because the king was remote and often incapacitated, so it became usual for men to seek out other protectors and patrons and to define their relationship to these in the same terms as they had formerly described their relationship to the king. The fictive royal household was thus replaced by more concrete nodes of power, protection and preferment. As we have suggested in the previous chapter, the declining influence of the kindred is also likely to have encouraged a search for new forms of social solidarity. The emergence of familiaritas as one of the distinguishing features of Hungarian noble society did not, therefore, represent a deviation from the public to the private. It signalled instead the substitution of one earlier set of private relationships, of the royal household and the kindred, by another set of private relationships resting upon the notions of fidelity and of mutual obligation. 7.2. Familiares and their duties As we have seen, the economic insufficiency of many noble estates, a circumstance compounded by the institution of partible inheritance, left many nobles unable to survive as independent proprietors. Financial exigency rendered these noblemen additionally vulnerable, for they lacked sufficient resources with which to defend their properties against assault. Some nobles in the thirteenth century relinquished their status and reassumed their previous role as castle-retainers, relying for protection upon the shelter of the castrum and its ispán. Others voluntarily submitted to ecclesiastical lords and took on the inferior condition of praediales. A later land-register of the bishopric of Veszprém thus records the payments made by ‘praediales who once were nobles but who submitted themselves for protection to the church of Veszprém’. Many more must have simply been worn down by hardship and loss to the status of serfs. Among the praediales of Veszprém, a proportion of their number were treated for the purposes of tax-assessment as no different from landless peasants.7 From the thirteenth century onwards, however, many tens of thousands of nobles chose to enter the service of other wealthier and more Page 113 powerful nobles. In return for this service, they most obviously received protection both from assault and from any potential diminution of status. In a famous incident from the 1280s, members of the noble Slavonian family of the Alsó-Jamniczai acknowledged Radislas of the Vodicsai (de Vodiča) family and his successors ‘as their special protectors and defenders’, in return for which they ceded to him a third of their lands.8 On occasions, however, submissions of this type were compelled by lords who sought through violence to coerce nobles into their service. Early on in the fourteenth century, Máté Csák practised violence on the persons and properties of those unwilling to seek his protection. Elsewhere, we know of whole families fleeing their lands in order to escape the embrace of a local castellan.9 Such instances were sufficiently commonplace for Andrew III’s lawcode of 1298 to impose sentence of excommunication on such ‘powerful men [who] would coerce nobles by force or violence to serve them or dare to harm noblemen in their persons or property’. Andrew’s code affirmed that all nobles of the realm ‘should be free to serve whichever lord they wish according to their own free will’.10 Excesses, nevertheless, continued. According to the report of a papal nuncio, written in the second half of the fifteenth century, on account of their expenses, natural excesses and love of war, the Hungarian nobles customarily preyed on the weak, thereby forcing them into their service and protection.11 It was not only, however, the desire for safety which drove the majority of nobles into service. Service offered pecuniary and other rewards. As such it compensated for the saturation of the property market which made it hard after the thirteenth century to acquire new sources of landed wealth.12 In the first place, some noble familiares received sustenance and support at the lord’s court. They were entitled there to food, shelter and clothing. We may guess that, since the cloth for their costumes was frequently cut from the same roll, something approaching a livery of maintenance became commonplace in the lord’s domus. The accounts of the bishopric of Veszprém at least suggest that the guards and two boys in the episcopal castle were decked out in clothing of grey, and we know that retainers at the royal court often wore the royal blazon.13 Within his lord’s court, the noble familiaris also had the opportunity to establish more personal connections with his lord: arranging the education of his children there or, as we know from several instances, his own marriage into the lord’s family.14 In the larger noble households, offices were introduced which imitated the royal curia and which were staffed by the lord’s own familiares: a tavernicus or treasurer, comes curialis, palatinus curie, and so Page 114 on. Other noble households had their own chancelleries, staffed again by familiares. These issued charters which in their calligraphy and festive form, aped those published in the royal chancellery.15 The majority of familiares were not, however, usually resident in the lord’s household but continued to live on their own estates. In return for their lord’s protection, they undertook administrative duties on his behalf. These tasks mainly involved the management of estates, with the familiaris functioning in this respect as his lord’s officialis. An officialis might oversee the collection of the taxes and other dues payable to the lord, adjudicate in disputes involving the lord’s peasants, or preside over the seigneurial court. On occasions, the officialis’s connection with a village might be sufficiently close for him to be actually appointed to live there. Officiales serving their lords at a distance in the villages of the peasantry often either abused their positions or went sufficiently native as to join with their charges in assaults on neighbouring properties and persons. Other familiares might perform legal tasks on behalf of their lords, representing them in judicial actions and participating on their behalf in reambulationes. The principal familiares of a lord, the so-called familiares notabiles, often came together to extend consilium to their master. These councils of notables might also act collectively on their lord’s behalf during periods when he was absent from the household.16 Lords who assumed offices within the kingdom often brought with them their own familiares and appointed these to subordinate positions within the administrative apparatus under their authority. Ispáns commonly chose, therefore, their own deputies (or vice-ispáns) and castellans. The voevode of Transylvania also appointed the seven ispáns of the Transylvanian counties as well as his own vice-voevode (who was usually synonymous with the ispán of Fehér county) and the castellans of the principal castles. For their part, the bans of Slavonia appointed their own ispáns in Kőrös and Zagreb counties. The warlords and bans governing the border defences of the realm each had at their disposal a string of county and castle lordships. Appointees to these mediate offices were drawn from the ranks of the lord’s own familiares. The familiares themselves, however, often had households and followers of their own who required rewards and favours. Upon appointment to office, the familiaris of a great lord would customarily entrust his own men with subordinate positions in the administrative hierarchy. They in their turn might appoint their own vice-castellans and vice-vice ispáns. Page 115 Within this structure, rewards for service usually took the form either of stipends and annuities, or of a portion of the revenues of office. Often income of both types might be involved. The annual payment agreed between the ispán of Zala and his deputy, who was also the castellan of Tatika, was thus specified in the 1450s as half the surplus produce of four villages attached to the castle, 600 chickens, 10 barrels of wine, up to 400 denars worth of fines, and a stipendium of 100 florins. Other contracts of similar type record a proportion of fines levied and of estates confiscated.17 In a contract made in the early fourteenth century between an ispán and his familiaris, the master promised the dues from several villages, a cash payment, suitably fine clothing (pallium et tunicam de panno nobilissimo), and an entire village ‘if one can be got from the king’. Prominent familiares might also expect upon the death of their lord to benefit from his will receiving a part of his moveables and acquired estate.18 The rewards of office often extended beyond straightforward monetary gain to include the acquisition of political influence. The Himfi kindred of Remethe and Egerszeg had, during the course of Sigismund’s reign, acquired a large number of adversaries in Krassó, Temes and the other south-eastern counties. Over this period, its members sought the service of the most powerful lords of the region, finally entering the familia of Sigismund’s principal officer on the southern Danube, Frank Tallóci. The Himfis cemented their relationship to Tallóci and his brothers by contracting a marriage alliance. During the 1430s, Frank Tallóci was appointed (amongst much else) ispán of Krassó, and towards the end of his incumbency he appointed his familiares and relatives by marriage, Nicolas and Frank Himfi, as his jointdeputies in the county. The Himfis therewith found themselves controlling a large part of the judicial apparatus of the county. Imagining themselves immune from legal challenge, they forthwith proceeded to raid the properties of their neighbours. One such ravaged estate belonged to the king, which prompted Frank Tallóci to write an importunate letter to the Himfis’ sister-in-law begging her to desist from such depredations. The Himfis, however, so persisted in their misdeeds as eventually to prompt one of their victims to complain to the king that they were as vice-ispáns iudices suspecti and therefore unable to try a case in which they were the principal defendants. The case was duly moved to the chancellery and the verdict found for the plaintiffs. Discussion, however, of the extent to which the example of the Himfis is illustrative of the degree to which the institution of familiaritas Page 116 corrupted the local administration of justice must be deferred to a later chapter.19 The more illustrious a nobleman, the more followers he attracted and the greater opportunity he had to enter into the service of one of the principal families of the kingdom. By the same token, a relatively impoverished nobleman might tie himself to a lesser lord in the hope of rising to fortune either on his tail or on the tail of another higher up the ladder of lordship. Paul Tomori, who was descended from a line of petty nobles in Abaúj county, entered thus the service of the middling John Bornemisza. Bornemisza was, however, the familiaris of Bishop Urban Nagylucsei, who became King Matthias’s treasurer in 1479. At this point, Tomori’s fortunes changed, and he was rapidly appointed chief collector of the Transylvanian taxes and castellan of the lordship of Fogaras. Even his taking of the Franciscan cowl did not prevent Tomori’s continued advance to the archiepiscopal see of Kalocsa.20 In similar fashion, John Hunyadi rose to prominence in the service of Újlaki family, which, over three generations, carved out the premier territorial lordship in the southern and western parts of the kingdom.21 Misfortune could as easily upset the calculations of ambitious familiares. The historian John Thuróczy tied his career as a notary to the circle of the justiciar, Ladislas Palóci. In 1470, Palóci died and was replaced by John Rozgonyi. Therewith, Thuróczy lost his patron and lord. He returned to his home in Hont county and found employment there in the humbler capacity of a notary in the Premonstratensian canonry at Ipolyság. In 1475, Rozgonyi was replaced as justiciar and Thuróczy was recalled to court. The figure who arranged Thuróczy’s summons and who was most probably Thuróczy’s new lord, was Stephen Hassághy, a protonotary in the justiciar’s office. Ten years later, Thuróczy transferred his allegiance to the judge of the personalis, Thomas Drághy, who had a reputation as a patron of historians. Shortly afterwards, however, Drághy resigned his office and Thuróczy was once again obliged to leave court, to be lost to historical view thereafter. His last known act was the publication of his famous chronicle in Brünn and Augsburg in 1488.22 As these instances suggest, ambitious familiares were often ready to break their allegiances and to cast in their lot with whomsoever they considered to be the brightest star among available lords. Stephen Werbőczy, having thus first sought the favour of the justiciar and subsequent voevode, Péter Count of Szentgyörgy and Bazin, changed his loyalties in 1510 to the new voevode, John Zápolyai, thereby setting himself on a course which would take him to the offices of palatine Page 117 and chancellor.23 The eclipse of the Garai and the continued rise of Nicholas Újlaki saw in its turn a flood of familiares transfer their allegiances during the course of the early 1460s. Over the next decade, following Újlaki’s elevation to the title of king of Bosnia, there was a similar movement to his service among the former familiares of the Kanizsai kindred. Some familiares might indeed switch their allegiances back and forth depending upon the perceived fortunes of their lords. Ambrose Enyingi Török started off, thus, in the service of the Kanizsai kindred as castellan of Léka and then of Sárvár. After 1458, he served Nicholas Újlaki as castellan of Németújvár and of Kaposvár. In the early 1460s, he returned to the Kanizai, before moving into the immediate royal service and thereafter into a brief period of disgrace. By the early 1470s, Ambrose was back acting for Nicholas Újlaki as head of the Bosnian financial administration and judge of the castle of Jajce.24 Indeed, prudent familiares might endeavour to serve two lords simultaneously. Throughout his early years, therefore, Stephen Werbőczy contrived to remain in the service both of the justiciar and of Michael Szobi, one of the premier leaders of the noble ‘opposition’.25 Nevertheless, such examples of the fickleness of noble ambition should not conceal the fact that many familiares retained a strong commitment of fidelity to their lord. From the thirteenth century onwards, chronicles and charters of donation are replete with stories of the self-sacrifice of familiares in the service of their lords, particularly in the climax of battle when they did not hesitate to spill their own blood, exert themselves much in the field, or even exchange armour with their master so as to draw off the enemy.26 Familiares regularly followed their lords to take up new appointments in different and unfamiliar parts of the country. In the 1360s, John Sárosdi, a petty nobleman from Zala county, accompanied his master, Benedict Himfi, to Krassó county upon the latter’s appointment to the office of ispán. Sárosdi was entrusted with the castellanship of Haram and the office of vice-ispán. Several years later, upon Benedict’s transfer to the office of ispán in Vas and Sopron counties, we find Sárosdi functioning as vice-ispán in Vas. In the early 1370s, Sárosdi returned to the south-east, this time acting on his master’s behalf in Temes county.27 A century later, Nicholas Újlaki’s familiares who had previously served him as castellans on his Hungarian estates, followed their lord to take up military posts in Bosnia in the hard-pressed banate of Jajce.28 Elsewhere, we know of familiares who maintained their allegiance both to their master and to his domus. The protonotary, Stephen Henczelfy, thus successively served the palatine Stephen Zápolyai, the Page 118 voevode John Zápolyai, John’s brother George, and finally Stephen’s widow, the duchess of Teschen. His loyalty was rewarded in 1520 with a property in Vas county.29 Similar patterns of allegiance and reward are evident in the fourteenth century. Over the course of his lifetime, Ubul Semjéni thus moved within the service of the Lackfi brothers, acting first in 1361 as a castellan of Dionysius Lackfi, then as Nicholas Lackfi’s vice-ispán in Szatmár county, a few years later as the voevode Imre Lackfi’s vice-ispán in Arad county, and eventually in 1379 as Stephen Lackfi’s vice-ispán in Vas county.30 Less venturesome families might prefer to stay near the homes, serving instead whosoever was appointed as the most powerful local lord. Over the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Folkusfalvi family of Turóc county officiated as the castellans of whosoever was appointed to the nearby lordship of Blatnica.31 Although their relationships are by no means easy to discern, the Himfis of Remethe and Egerszeg likewise tended to seek protectors and patrons among the leading lords of the Hungarian south-east, moving thus consecutively into the service of Pipo of Ozora, of the despots Stephen Lazarević and George Branković, and, as we have already seen, of Frank Tallóci.32 The bond between lord and familiaris was often sealed in a formal ceremony during the course of which oaths of loyalty were made and recorded. Most frequently, the oath was made by the familiaris before the representatives of a locus credibilis and taken either in a chapel or castle-gateway. The reciprocal obligations of the lord were seldom sworn in such a personal manner but were usually described separately in a charter issued by the same agents.33 The earliest examples of such a pactum or convencio are from the middle of the thirteenth century. In 1244, therefore, a familiaris of the bishop of Zagreb swore ‘under oath that he would display complete fidelity and service [omnimodam fidelitatem et servicium] to us [i.e., episcopo] for as long as he lived’.34 Several decades later, the castle-warriors of Locsmánd were permitted to retain their lands on condition (tali condicione et pacto) that they did service for the ispán Lawrence, accompanying him to the royal court and to the army with proper equipment.35 On occasions, the details of the treaty between lord and man were recorded in extenso. In return for the episcopal castle at Pécs, the cantor Nicholas swore in 1309 that he would serve the warlord Henry Kőszegi ‘with thirty or forty knights and for as long as he lived’.36 The agreement made in 1317 between the ispán Pethő of Szatmár and his vice-ispán Michael likewise enumerated not only Michael’s rewards down to the details of the cloth from Page 119 which his tunic would be cut but also what he might expect to receive on the occasion of his lord’s further promotion.37 Nevertheless, such specific accounts are rare in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the majority of cases, the obligations deriving from fidelitas were not described with any precision. It was simply presumed that the familiaris understood what his service comprised, and that the lord also knew what his commitments of help and protection were. In this respect, the duties of lord and servant remained as imprecisely laid as those touching upon the relationship of a bishop to his praedialis or of the king to a nobleman. The reciprocal obligations of lord and familiaris were on the one hand determined by custom and social convention, and, on the other, beyond formal definition. It was only during the later fifteenth century that the written accounts of the duties of lord and familiaris become sufficiently specific to merit the description of contracts. These contracts might be highly elaborate in their details. Nicholas Benković of Plavno thus undertook in return for the castellanship of Gyula castle to serve his mistress, Beatrix Frangepán, for the rest of his life and to furnish her with a specified military contingent. In return, she promised to provide powder and muskets. The contract went on to outline the payments which Benković would receive from Beatrix in order to help him fulfil his commitments in the event of her subsequently depriving him of the castellanship. For its part, the contract made in 1520 between George of Brandenburg and Benković’s successor as castellan of Gyula castle, specified the salary, quantity and quality of wine, grain, pigs, oil, clothing, fodder and subsidy for the kitchen which the incumbent might expect to receive. It went on to enumerate the castellan’s duty to accompany his lord to the diet, attend meetings of the county and not to alienate the properties pertaining to the castle.38 Within the central administration, oaths of similar detail might be delivered by familiares. The deputy treasurer, John Bornemisza’s oath to his lord, the royal treasurer, included a commitment not to quit his service without his express permission. Despite Bornemisza’s imprisonment and the confiscation of his goods on account of embezzlement, his obligation to the treasurer was considered to remain, thus preventing his obtaining alternative service and employment.39 By the early sixteenth century, contracts might not only be issued in pro forma style but be valid for only one year at a time.40 It remains, however, uncertain whether all familiares took such oaths and formal commitments of fidelity. The speed and perseverance with Page 120 which some familiares swapped lords suggests that even if they did, they did not all attach the same weight to their words. It is, nevertheless, clear that whatever his obligations and in whatsoever manner he made them, the familiaris was still bound by a superior obligation to the king. In the first place, the condition of familiaritas did not impugn a nobleman’s status. According thus to King Matthias’s exposition, given in 1467, which sought a definition of what constituted ‘true nobility’: ‘The kingdom’s nobles are understood to be those who hold pure nobility from the kings or an appropriate privilege of nobility and live under the jurisdiction of either the king, or of the churches, or of some other authority [sive sub quacunque alia iurisdictione degant].’ Matthias then went on to distinguish between such nobles and praediales, apportioning an inferior position to the latter.41 Unlike the praedialis, therefore, the noble familiaris’s relation to the king was not interrupted as a consequence of his special relationship to a lord. His commitments to the ruler, which flowed from the status of nobility, retained their priority. Although he might in time of war serve beneath his lord’s standard, the noble familiaris was still also obliged (at least in theory) to respond to the king’s martial summons. Even the most far-reaching promises of complete and life-long fidelity to a lord might therefore carry the condition that a superior obligation and commitment was reserved to the king.42 As one historian has recently argued, the larger debt of fidelity owed to the king may have vitiated the relationship between lord and man and so contributed to a general weakening of the institution of familiaritas in Hungary.43 It is impossible either to prove or to disprove this contention. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence relating to the shifts and fickleness of allegiance amongst some of the Hungarian nobility suggests that the bond of familiaritas was by no means always able to command the loyalties of men. It must, however, remain uncertain whether this deficiency derived from the ruler’s superior claims to loyalty or whether it had its origin in the keen sense of self-interest which propelled nobles in the first place to seek out their own lords, patrons and protectors. 7.3. Lordship and its obligations It was in the interest of lords to gather familiares. In the absence of such notions as salaried employment, familiaritas offered the most convenient instrument through which to manage estates and to oversee administrative institutions. Even within the royal treasury, a hierarchy Page 121 of familiares undertook such routine tasks as the assessment of taxes and the collection of tolls. Indeed, of the 450 persons known to have held office within the treasury apparatus between 1458 and 1500, as many as three-quarters probably constituted the familiares of other, higher-placed officials.44 A further interest of lords was, however, to ensure that they had an ample supply of followers who might be used to deter aggressors or to intimidate rivals. Familiares were thus frequently employed to prosecute private wars, joining with the lord’s serfs in assaults on neighbouring estates. Familiares might additionally be used to uphold the interest of the lord at meetings of the county assembly, to represent their lord in legal cases, and to perform a whole range of other petty administrative tasks. Massed in armour, they might also be used to overawe.45 Skilful lords could use the institution of familiaritas in such a way as to project their power territorially. A large portion of Nicholas Újlaki’s estates were thus dispersed across southern Hungary, with particular concentrations in Fejér and Veszprém counties and in Slavonia, particularly in Valkó county.46 The bridge between these two enormous tracts was Somogy county, but here the extent of Újlaki’s property was small, amounting in all to no more than a few dozen villages. In 1444, however, Nicholas Újlaki obtained the office of ispán in Somogy and he began forthwith recruiting familiares in the county. Within a short period he had brought into his service 16 of the larger landholders in the county. Their combined resources amounted to 160 of the thousand or so villages in Somogy, which meant that Újlaki now had effective control of a fifth of the land-mass of the county. Such resources of land and personnel allowed for the easier movement of troops, consolidated Újlaki’s hold on the administrative and judicial institutions of the county, and ensured that his sequestration of the Vajdafi estates in Somogy and the neighbouring Pozsega and Tolna counties would proceed largely without challenge. Familiaritas thus provided a mechanism by which the ownership of otherwise dispersed lordships could be transformed into a strong and comprehensive regional power. The principal obligation of lordship was most often expressed in terms of protection: protegere et adiuvare. On occasions, this commitment was plainly fulfilled by military action. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, therefore, John Corvinus undertook to help two of his familiares recapture their estates in Valkó and Kőrös counties in return for which they committed to him ‘all their men, familiares and their own persons’.47 ‘Good lordship’ was, however, usually understood in larger terms than just military. It was the responsibility of lords to Page 122 ensure the welfare of their familiares by extending to them favours both as a reward for service and as an inducement to further meritorious conduct. Likewise, lords were expected to secure advantages for their men, even to the extent (as was the case with the voevode Stephen Báthory), of finding suitably wealthy Szekel girls as brides for their indigent familiares.48 The duties of lordship might additionally extend to protecting the larger family of the familiaris. In 1416, Stephen Drugeth contracted with the widow Anna that her son would serve him with eight horses. In return for this, Stephen agreed to accept the boy as his familiaris and to come to Anna’s aid should anyone challenge her rights to her current property.49 The children of familiares were often also raised in the lord’s own household. Rewards for service often recorded that the recipient had demonstrated fidelity to the lord ever since childhood.50 The duties of lordship were promoted by the ruler as a way of curbing the violence released by private wars. In 1435, Sigismund laid down that lords were responsible for the misdeeds of their castellans and other officials, even to the extent of being obliged to pay compensation for their crimes. Eight years later, this legislation was extended to include all familiares and the compensation due from lords was doubled. The only way a lord could escape this harsh penalty, which might be sufficient to result in the loss of all his property, was to notify at once that the crime was committed without his knowledge and that the evildoer was ‘no longer … under his name and in his retinue’. The lord was additionally obliged to bring his erstwhile servant to justice by effecting his arrest.51 From this it was but a short step to permitting lords some jurisdictional authority over their familiares. It had long been accepted that lords had the right to judge the servants or famuli of the household. In 1486, this right was extended to permit lords, with the permission of the ispán, to judge their own castellans, officials and those others who dwelled in the lord’s household. No such rights were, however, permitted with regard to familiares who lived in their own homes.52 Even before this time, however, we know of powerful lords who exercised a judicial authority over their familiares. In the early 1470s, Ladislas Kanizsai seized a familiaris who had waged war on his peasants, condemning him to a ‘most miserable and foul death in chains’. The intervention of a local chapter house secured the nobleman’s release, after which he was deprived of status and forced to assume the condition of a serf on the Kanizsai estates.53 Again, it was largely understood that lords retained rights of judgement in the event of castellans either leaving their service without having rendered Page 123 proper accounts or of having embezzled money. In this last event, however, it is possible that judgement was reserved to an ‘honour court’ at which were represented the other principal familiares of the lord.54 The jurisdiction of lords over their familiares was, however, by no means complete. With respect to Szekfű, it stands no comparison to the rights of a landowner with regard to his tenants, which by the later fourteenth century permitted a jurisdiction over every delict and crime.55 Certainly, the ruler might attempt to impress upon lords their responsibilities for the deeds of their men, but lords themselves were both reluctant and unable to bear this burden. In the 1440s, therefore, an officialis of Dionysius Farnasi seized the horse of a serf belonging to Ladislas Bolgár. Bolgár retaliated by helping himself to the property of Farnasi’s own peasants, at which point Farnasi wrote to Bolgár that the officialis was a nobleman and that he, Farnasi, could not therefore be held responsible for his misdeeds. Likewise, familiares had the right to take their lords to court. Actions of this type most commonly involved disputes over payment and were taken to the county for judgement. A particular problem was that lords often expected their familiares to make payments on their behalf but were themselves negligent in the matter of reimbursement.56 As these examples suggest, it was precisely because familiares were in the overwhelming majority of cases noblemen that lords found it hard to impress their authority upon them. Familiares lived under the same libertas as their lords and they shared with them an equality of legal status. Notwthstanding their obligations of fidelitas, they retained their own lands, their right to petition the king for redress of grievances, and their membership of the county community. As much as the a priori duty of loyalty owed to the king, the libertas of the nobleman rendered lords incapable of binding their own familiares to them in any permanent or enduring relationship. 7.4. Land and service Lords were expected to reward their familiares and to extend largesse to them. Distinguished service was sometimes thus followed by a grant of land. Such a reward was indeed considered a naturalis obligatio and a part of good lordship. Moreover, further meritorious deeds might be inspired by such marks of favour. Donations thus often contained clauses urging the beneficiary to yet further heights of service: pro suis serviciis et fidelitatibus nobis exhibitis et adhuc exhibendis (1291); pro servi Page 124 cis eorundem. … quod sibi fideliter et indefesse preterite impenderunt et impendere poterunt in futurum (1286), and so on.57 The majority of donations made in this way constituted properties which were held on the same terms as donations of land given by the king and were thus free of specific obligations laid ratione terrae. Although, in the majority of cases, familiares were given a stipendium, it could happen that the lord had insufficient cash to pay a salary. Under this circumstance, the familiaris might be given land as an alternative.58 The grant of land to non-noble familiares doubtless provided a means by which they subsequently acquired noble status. There was, however, an obvious danger in assigning land to familiares, for such gifts tended to deplete resources and thereby to diminish over time the attractions of an individual lord’s service. Nevertheless, land if ceded on the right terms might serve to bond a familiaris more closely to his master and provide a more effective inducement than a simple cash payment. As early as the thirteenth century, there thus emerged a tendency to make conditional grants of property to familiares, with the lord retaining the dominium over the land so given. Donations of this type recorded that the familiaris retained rights of usufruct, and that he possessed these rights only while he remained loyal to his lord. On other occasions, the terms of the donation specified that the property might be redeemed by the lord for a fixed sum. As an alternative, familiares could be given properties which the lord had received as a pledge from a neighbour and retain these for as long as the principal remained unpaid. Donations of this type might be variously described as beneficia or as properties held in the manner of praediales (more et instar ceterorum liberorum servitorum, qui praediales solent nuncupari).59 In this respect, noble properties held in usufruct bear a close similarity to praedial tenures, with the important exception that the familiares continued to constitute true nobles. Their relationship to the king was not affected for they otherwise had properties of their own which originated in a royal donation. Nevertheless, lands held in usufruct by noble familiares were encumbered by much the same obligations as affected praediales. Their retention of the property was linked to fidelitas and to the performance of services. The recipient might, however, be allowed to pass the property on to his heirs under the same obligations of fidelity. As a spur to further effort, a property given in usufruct could be reawarded to the occupier as an estate held in perpetuity and in complete dominium. There is, however, no evidence of any formal investiture of Page 125 heirs to beneficia although sons may have been required to make an oath of loyalty to the lord upon their coming of age. Inability to perform the requisite services might, moreover, result in the reversion of an estate held in usufruct. In 1299, Malchuk, a familiaris of the ispán Gaal, returned to his lord a property which he had been given in use (ad utendum) by Gaal’s father on account of past and future services. Malchuk explained that he had no son and that he was so worn down by age as to be unable to perform any service whatsoever. Infidelity could likewise result in the loss of an estate.60 In 1502, Sigismund Losonczi gave to his physician, Nicholas de Monte, a property in Szabolcs county on condition that he continued diligently to serve him. The charter of donation explained that ‘should he [Nicholas] wish to cleave to another and escape our service, or in any way transfer himself from us or be separated from us by death’, then the property would automatically revert to the donor.61 In 1511, John Kanizsai moved swiftly against his familiaris, Nicholas Sydo, who had failed to speak up for him and who had not shown the proper respect due to a ‘natural lord’. Sydo’s properties were seized and he was downgraded to the condition of a serf.62 With respect to the last example, we have no indication that the property involved constituted usufruct. It is tempting, therefore, to read into this case an example of lordly oppression. Evidently, however, lords were considered to retain some rights even over properties which they had given to their familiares as otherwise unencumbered estate. In 1308, the lord Herbord gave to his familiaris, Stephen Gyalokai, a possession in Sopron county cum omni plenitudine sui iuris. Ten years later, Gyalokai’s estates were confiscated by the king on account of his treason, but rather than being absorbed into the royal fisc, they were returned to Herbord’s family. We know of similar cases of lands originally granted perpetuo iure by a lord to his familiaris, which rather than devolving to the crown, were repossessed by the donor upon the recipient’s death without heirs.63 Indeed, this practice appears to have been sufficiently commonplace to receive acknowledgement by Werbőczy.64 On some occasions, the recipient clearly anticipated events by returning the property to his lord. In 1448, therefore, the heirless and infirm Blaise Etrekarcsai gave the properties which he had received from George Héderváry ‘on account of his many services’ to the descendants of his lord, even though the lands in question had been ceded in perpetuity.65 Lords might additionally claim superior rights of preemption with regard to Page 126 properties previously given in full ownership to their familiares. Even estates granted by lords in perpetuity and in full right might thus be known as beneficia.66 It is perhaps at this point that the institution of familiaritas touches most upon the commendatio-beneficium model of feudal relations. In return for service, the familiaris received an estate. Retention of an estate given in usufruct depended upon the familiaris’s continued fidelity to the master. The lord, moreover, continued to retain rights of dominium to the other properties of his familiares even though these may have been granted in perpetuity. In either respect, the land so given came near to the concept of a fief, being a property held either in return for service or over which superior rights were retained by the original benefactor and his heirs. Some caution must, nevertheless, be observed. Although examples of familiares receiving land from their lords are rather more frequent than Erik Fügedi’s reference to ‘a rare bird’ suggests,67 familiaritas was not primarily expressed in Hungary through relationships of landownership and tenure. It more commonly manifested itself through the grant of salaries and incomes. Familiaritas may indeed be considered a variety of commendatio, even though it largely went without the ceremonial trappings of homage and investiture found in some parts of western Europe. For the beneficium, however, it is probably more fruitful to seek its Hungarian counterpart not in the ‘subinfeudation’ of landed estates but instead, and as we will see in the next chapter, in the sub-letting of offices or honores. 7.5. The royal aula and the ethos of chivalry It has been maintained that one of the principal weaknesses of Hungarian historical development was that the king remained outside the structure of familiaritas. Elaborate bonds and relations of fidelity were constructed within Hungarian noble society, but no mechanism existed to unify these hierarchical networks around the person of the ruler. The outcome of this failure to centre the institution of familiaritas upon the ruler was, so it may be argued, eventually to drive a wedge through the ancient constitution, severing the king from the political community and so preparing the way for the establishment of two mutually opposed subjects of right.68 In theory, of course, all nobles of the realm constituted members of the royal familia. The bond between ruler and noble was considered personal and immediate, and, as a consequence, to be beyond formal Page 127 specification. Nevertheless, the nobleman’s membership of the royal household was fictive. His relationship to the ruler existed not as a living thing but instead only as a legal principle. The king’s protection was distant and the road to his court uncertain. The language which the king spoke (which after 1300 was as often as not Italian, Czech or Polish), and the rhythmic Latin prose of his chancellery were equally unfamiliar. The king’s principal officers, those with whom the common noblemen of the realm were most likely to come into contact, could barely conceal their disdain for the boorish squires who fidgeted and fought even in church.69 Unsurprisingly, therefore, most nobles considered it expedient to seek protection and preferment not from the king but instead from a nearby lord, and they happily left the representation of their interests to those more fitted to the task by breeding or education. For the majority of the Hungarian nobility, attendance at the county assembly constituted the peak of their participation in public affairs. It would, nevertheless, be mistaken to presume that the royal court was unfamiliar with the institution of familiaritas. As Szekfű has observed, within the court and household there also existed a tight network of clientage which partly overlapped with the larger administration of the kingdom. The institution of the royal aula provided the ruler with a reservoir of knights, warriors and administrators. These were tied both to the person of the ruler and to each other by a common ethos of chivalric endeavour.70 They might be relied upon absolutely to perform the royal will. As we will also see, the royal court and aula further acted as an ideological resource. The aula in particular constituted an important channel through which larger ideas of service and fidelity were disseminated within Hungarian noble society. The small circle which constituted the innermost core of the king’s servants acted as the instrument by which the ideas underpinning the institution of familiaritas were propagated, explained and transmitted. The royal aula was, at first, understood to be synonymous with the royal court (curia) and household (domus). By the early years of the thirteenth century, the aula began, however, to acquire an exclusive quality. Some of the first charters of ennoblement thus specified whether the recipient was to serve the ruler in the context of the royal curia or within the more prestigious circle of the aula, by which should probably be understood the innermost sanctum of the king’s household.71 Doubtless, to begin with, the peripatetic nature of the court rendered these distinctions otiose. Nevertheless, with the settlement of the court in the fourteenth century first in Visegrád and then in Buda, Page 128 the aula acquired a stronger and more permanent physical location and meaning. Therewith, it became associated with the growing ranks of servants who stood in an immediate personal and physical proximity to the ruler. As with the familiares of lords, the so-called aulici might reside either with their royal master or serve him at a distance. Unlike, however, the majority of the common nobility, their geographical separation from the ruler did not diminish their sense of belonging to a larger enterprise at the heart of which stood the person of the king.72 The aulici comprised several distinct groups. Probably, the most numerous were the milites aulae. These constituted knights in the royal service who might be entrusted with specific military tasks, such as the guarding of strategic points on the frontier or the recruitment of bands of mercenaries. Having proven their loyalty, they would often be transferred to oversee branches of the royal military and county administration. During Louis I’s reign, we know of eleven milites of the aula who were appointed castellans of royal castles, and a further nineteen who held the office of ispán. Over this same period, members of the aula also filled a number of the kingdom’s leading offices, including those of voevode, palatine and treasurer (tavernicus). A further two bans of Slavonia and four bans of Szörény were also recorded as royal aulici.73 Besides these were the familiares aulae who performed largely civilian tasks on behalf of their royal master. The aulici were recruited from diverse backgrounds. Some came from older established families; others from the common nobility. Very few, however, belonged by origin to the impoverished sections of the nobility. Aulici often began their careers in the court as pages or iuvenes aulae. Ambitious families frequently sought to have their sons acquire such a position, for it provided a signal starting-point for further advancement and sometimes led the way to an auspicious marriage. The queen’s well-born ladies-in-waiting were a particular prize. For some iuvenes, however, the aula provided a way of obtaining the favour of a leading lord and so entering his service. More usually, however, the aula was a destination to which one aspired through dedicated service in the household of a lesser lord as was the case with the young John Hunyadi.74 Even as early as the twelfth century, the royal court was exposed to the chivalric literature of western Europe – in particular to the Trojan romances and to the chansons de geste. In the earliest extant chronicle of the Hungarian kings, composed around 1200, the anonymous author cast Prince Árpád as a Hungarian Aeneas and his father, Álmos, as Alexander. At about this same time, leading figures of the court Page 129 began to adopt a nomenclature redolent of the epics fashionable farther west. At the close of the twelfth century, therefore, we find among the leading Hungarians such names in circulation as Paris, Hector, Priam and Helen. A few years later, some members of the Hahót kindred were named Tristan, Lancelot and Yvain. Roland and Oliver subsequently acquired a certain currency, as indeed did the name of Oliver’s horn, Elephant.75 During the course of the late twelfth century, notions of Christian knighthood became ‘Hungarianized’ through the cult of the warrior-saint, King Ladislas I. Not only did Ladislas’s tomb become a particular object of veneration but his memory was extolled in missals and breviaries as well as in frescoes and sculptures. On the pantheon of saints considered by Hungarians to be of particular efficacy, St Ladislas rapidly eclipsed the reputation of that other Christian warrior and saint, Martin of Tours.76 During the thirteenth century, the royal court began to assume many of the other chivalric conventions popular in western Europe. The first tournaments were held and the earliest references to knighthood made. Within a few decades of its translation into Latin, the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum had become familiar in Hungary.77 This process of courtly acculturation hastened in the decades following the Angevin succession. It was marked by the frequency of tournaments, feasts and hunts at which the king personally participated, by the salience of heraldic insignia, and by the establishment in 1326 of the first knightly order of chivalry.78 Within the royal aula itself, the acceptance of new members may well have been attended by some sort of ceremony reminiscent of the dubbing of knights. At least, it was during the early Angevin period that the notion of the miles being ceremonially girt with belt and sword became a familiar topos of chancellery rhetoric.79 The royal aula was concerned not only with the outward forms of knight-chivalry but also with its values and ethos. During the thirteenth century, virtues which were conceived to be typical of the miles christianus began to be extolled in the literature and charters emanating from the court. The Christian knight was thus expected to be handsome and muscular (pulcher, strenuus) and, in the course of his dealings, to demonstrate the knowledge of experience, constancy, jollity, kindness, generosity, probity and truthfulness (experientia, constantia, hilaritas, humanitas, largitas, probitas, sinceritas). His motivation should be glory (gloria), fame (bona fama) and, following Cicero, a complete love of his country: hence from the early fourteenth century, qui in acie pro patria moriuntur, vivere intelligenter per gloriam. Transcending Page 130 and uniting all these virtues was, however, one single quality, that of fidelitas, which as Béla IV put it, stood before every other virtus politica. Faithfulness was thus understood as the cardinal quality, the practice of which acted almost in a redemptive function by inspiring all the other virtues and urging the individual towards his own salvation. As such, fidelitas merited special rewards of its own in order to nurture its manifestations.80 The royal chancellery acted in particular as the institution which defined and disseminated the principles which underpinned the chivalric ethos and which guided the knights of the aula. From the middle years of the thirteenth century onwards, this was the message hammered home in charter after charter: that, ‘it befits Our Royal Excellence so to measure the deeds and services of persons that those who, being more inclined to deeds of fidelity, give more should themselves be specially honoured with freely-given gifts’ (Regie convenit excellentie singulorum servitia et merita sic metiri, ut eos qui plus [se] ceteris offerunt ad opera fidelitatis promptiores, gratuitis prosequatur specialius donativis).81 Above all else, it was in charters of this type that the ideology of chivalry and the principles of fidelitas were spread beyond the court into everyday noble society. As with the early Frankish charters, the privileges issuing out of the Hungarian chancellery were intended to propagate a set of ideas around which human relationships might be organized. In their lengthy narrationes, therefore, Hungarian charters recorded in detail the achievements of individual royal servants and described in didactic form the benefits which flowed from these displays of fidelity.82 Certainly, few Hungarian nobles counted as knights, for they lacked the breeding, background, armour and opportunity for the sort of valorous endeavour associated with knighthood. Among the 350 nobles named as witnesses in an inquisition held in Veszprém county in 1369, only two were specifically recorded as milites.83 Nevertheless, the ideas and virtues associated with Christian knighthood and chivalric conduct passed through example and charter into the larger noble society. As the notion of fidelity being the preeminent virtue was disseminated and took root, so this in particular became the moral principle around which Hungarian noblemen explained their own relationships one to another. Indeed, the concept of fidelitas was so keenly held amongst the Hungarian nobility as to spill over and affect the terms in which landowners comprehended their relationship to their serfs.84 It may well be, therefore, that the subordination of one man to another was an inevitable feature of social organization in the Page 131 Hungarian Middle Ages and that its roots may be chased back even to the pre-conquest period. Likewise, as Walter Ullmann has reminded us, the medieval notion of fidelity has its roots in the Bible and Christian practice.85 Nevertheless, for the vibrancy which the concept of fidelitas retained and for its influence upon the relationship of familiaritas, we must also take into account the ethos of knight chivalry as embraced by the members of the royal aula and promoted by the king’s own chancellery. Page 132 8 Offices and Honores 8.1. Definition and significance A significant part of the property held by the leading members of the nobility did not constitute freehold land held in perpetuity but was instead jurisdictional and administrative property held of the king. This property was ceded out to the principal men of the realm pro honore as a means both of reward and of sustenance. The honor itself was considered to include the office and the revenues attached to it, both of which were held only at the king’s pleasure. As has recently been written, the honor was a designation of different types of kinds of royal offices, of lesser and higher standing, granted ‘‘at the pleasure” of the ruler, i.e for a limited, but not in advance specified, time. Honor was also the comprehensive term for those rights, estates and incomes which went with these offices.1 Or, in the words of the Florentine chronicler Matteo Villani writing in the 1350s, ‘The Hungarians are a very large nation and nearly all of them live under the administration of countships (baronnagi). These baronial offices (baronie) are not held in inheritance or for life, but rest in the gift and pleasure of the ruler’.2 (Villani here includes the ispáns of counties as barons. The association of the two ceased, however, during the first half of the fourteenth century.) Except for a brief period at the end of the thirteenth century when Andrew III sought to make office-holders swear a specific oath of fidelity to him, the leading dignitaries of the realm were not bound by any separate commitment to the king on account of the honores which Page 133 they received.3 The grant of honores was thus not accompanied by any ceremonies of investiture or by the taking of oaths of fidelity. Nevertheless, in the manner by which they themselves distributed these fruits of the king’s pleasure, office-holders commonly relied upon the principle of familiaritas, allocating to their servants portions of the office and of its attendant rewards. In return for these, familiares, even though already bound by express commitments of loyalty to their lords, might make additional contracts. A hierarchy of landed and financial relationships, in which the beneficiaries retained only temporary rights, was thus established within the institution of familiaritas. In the final section of this chapter we will consider whether the honores so assigned may be understood as constituting fiefs. 8.2. Castles and honores The honor has been compared to the Amtslehen and the fief de dignité in the medieval Empire and Capetian France.4 It is evident, however, that its roots lay in Hungarian circumstances. The royal demesne had for most of the Árpád period included the overwhelming mass of the territory of the realm. During the later thirteenth century it had fallen back as a consequence of alienations and seizures to less than 50 per cent of the kingdom. It had been further and catastrophically eroded during the civil wars which attended the Angevin succession. Charles Robert’s defeat of his rivals and his sequestration of their lands effected some recovery. Nevertheless, for most of his reign and that of his son and successor, Louis I, the royal properties amounted to no more than 20 per cent of the kingdom’s land. This figure is, nevertheless, misleading. A part of the properties so recaptured for the crown, as for instance in Csepel, Pilis, Bakony and Máramaros, constituted woodland. The number of villages belonging to the crown is likely, therefore, to have been well below a fifth of the kingdom’s whole. Moreover, land itself was of little value unless supervised, managed and protected. In order to understand the extent of the Angevin recovery we should, therefore, look not at percentages of territory but instead at castles and their surrounding lordships.5 During the course of the later thirteenth century there was a proliferation of castle-building in Hungary. The majority of these castles were constructed privately. Of the almost 200 castles in existence by 1300, only 30 constituted royal properties. During Charles Robert’s reign, the number of castles belonging to the crown substantially increased as a consequence of royal building, confiscations and the expiry of noble Page 134 lines. Figures from Louis I’s reign suggest that, of the 300 castles then in existence, roughly a half were owned by the crown. Castles were not, however, just blocks of stone. They lay at the centre of an economic enterprise of supporting villages and districts. In the majority of instances, these lordships were quite small, amounting on average to 14 settlements and including a total area about eight miles square. The villages which comprised the lordship might also be widely dispersed.6 Nevertheless, a castle might be used to dominate and overawe while, within any given area, a group of castle-lordships collectively constituted a powerful economic resource. Even in the early Árpád period, a distinction had arisen between private property and the land which pertained to a royal castrum. The laws of St Stephen thus declared that ‘everyone during his own lifetime shall have mastery (dominetur) over his own property and over grants of the king, except that which belongs to a bishopric or county’.7 A century and a half later, in 1171, the ispán of Locsmánd protested in vain against the donation by Stephen III of three properties, ‘declaring that they had been given by the king and belonged to his county’ (dicens datum regium ad suam pertinere comitivam).8 The (admittedly dubious) summary of the royal income prepared by Béla III in the 1180s suggests that the properties belonging to the 70 or so royal castra were of sufficient extent as to permit a third of their income to be passed directly to the crown.9 By the early thirteenth century, the lands which constituted the resources by which the castrum and its ispán were maintained had, under German influence, acquired the designation of an honor.10 The Golden Bull of 1222 thus laid down that should a leading nobleman of the realm fall in battle, the honor which he held should be transferred to his brother or son.11 Very few of the earthen castra which acted as the hubs of the county administration in the Árpád period survived into the fourteenth century, and those which did were extensively rebuilt. Nevertheless, the institution of the honor persevered. Whereas, however, in the Árpád period, ispáns generally controlled all the castles, castle-lands and warriors within their respective counties, by 1300 the pattern of royal alienation meant that the honores belonging to the ispán extended to only several castles and their associated appurtenances. These castles acted as the ispán’s military strongholds while the associated lordships, including their villages, tolls and other revenues, provided both for his own sustenance and for that of his retinue and staff. In those counties where there was only one royal castle, this was customarily assigned to the ispán. In Szerém and Bodrog counties, where Page 135 by the fourteenth century there were no royal castles still in existence, the ispán was entrusted with a castle and lordship in a neighbouring county.12 In the counties set in the vulnerable western highlands of Slovakia, it was common for the ispáns to occupy all the principal castles.13 Usually, however, the ruler took care not to permit an ispán too comprehensive an authority over a county’s major redoubts. Royal castles which were not allocated pro honore to ispáns were sometimes directly administered on behalf of the king by knights of the royal aula. More frequently, however, the castle and its appurtenances were allocated to a leading office-holder. Not only did this ensure that the castle remained in reliable hands but also that the office-holder was suitably rewarded for his services to the king by the flow of revenues from the lordship. The number of castles and lordships which might be allocated to the justiciar, palatine, treasurer (tavernicus) and dignitaries of the court often amounted to between five and seven apiece. The voevodes of Transylvania and the bans of Slavonia customarily held all the royal castles in the regions under their authority, each accordingly receiving between eight and ten castles.14 Royal officers might be assigned castles within a county, which they would continue to hold irrespective of changes in the office of ispán. For over 30 years, therefore, John Giletfi, ispán of Fejér and Tolna counties, held pro honore the castle of Bajmóc in Nyitra county. More usually, however, the king would appoint his principal officers to the dignity of ispán or, as was the case with John Giletfi, give one of his more prominent ispáns control over an additional one or more counties.15 The palatine Vilmos Drugeth, who was one of Charles Robert’s premier supporters, held therefore five counties as ispán, which gave him mastery of up to seven royal castles. For his part, Nicholas Kont, palatine from 1356 to 1367, simultaneously held the office of ispán in five counties and a corresponding fourteen castle lordships. Nicholas Drugeth, Kont’s contemporary as justiciar, was lord of two counties and of eight castles.16 The bans of Macsó, whose territories in the former tsardom of Serbia yielded few resources, were sustained by the revenues of the five counties on the banate’s northern border and by the castle lordships of Harsány and Kölpény in Baranya county.17 At one point during the first half of the fourteenth century, the leading officers of the realm are reckoned by a conservative estimate to have held in excess of 60 royal castles. Altogether about a half of the kingdom’s castles lay in the hands of officers of the royal court, bans, voevodes and ispáns.18 The succession struggle which attended the death of Louis I in 1382 followed a pattern similar to that which attended the expiry of the Page 136 Árpád line. The flood of illegal seizures of royal castles and lordships was, however, accompanied on this occasion by the massive alienations of Sigismund’s first decade as ruler. Whereas in 1387, at the start of Sigismund’s reign, 100 castles remained in royal hands, within 10 years their number had fallen to below 50.19 The royal demesne was correspondingly squeezed. By 1407 it included only about 5 per cent of the kingdom’s total number of villages.20 In some counties, there were no castle-lordships left from which ispáns might obtain income and sustenance. Counties of this type might thus be combined with neighbouring counties where royal castles still remained. During the early years of the century, Békés county thus first amalgamated with Zaránd county, and later was conjoined to Bihar. In similar fashion Gömör and Nógrád counties fused during the 1430s. In Győr county, where no royal properties were left, the ispán depended upon the royal castles in Komárom county. Elsewhere, as for instance in Sopron and Somogy counties, Sigismund simply appointed ispáns with sufficient private resources in the county as not to need the support of a royal castle lordship.21 Nevertheless, the system of honores endured and was even in some respects strengthened. Whereas at the start of his reign, Sigismund had endeavoured to win support by giving royal castles away in perpetuity, after 1397 the pace of alienation slowed. Over the next four decades, Sigismund altogether gave away less royal estate than in the first three years of his reign. The nobles whom he advanced to leading offices within the kingdom seldom received as royal donations more than one or two castles. Instead of giving them property outright, Sigismund preferred to assign honores from which his principal supporters might obtain a sufficient income to discharge their duties. The Florentine adventurer and financier, Pipo Ozorai (Filipo Scolari), who was vested in the early years of the fifteenth century with the defence of the Danube frontier, thus held the office of ispán in at least six of the counties closest to the frontier as well as the banate of Szörény and command of the royal salt monopoly. By virtue of these offices, his power extended to between 15 and 20 castles. The Albeni family, which under the leadership of Bishop Eberhard of Zagreb, was entrusted with the defence of the south-west of the kingdom, similarly controlled a band of important castle lordships in Slavonia. The resources assigned to Pipo and Eberhard pale, however, in comparison to those available to their successors, Frank and Matkó Tallóci of Dubrovnik. Matkó as ban of Croatia and Slavonia, and Frank as ban of Szörény, captain of Belgrade and ispán of three counties, controlled a Page 137 broad swathe of territory reaching along the entire southern frontier. Altogether they and their other two brothers were masters of no less than 50 separate castles and their lordships. Among these were included such notable strongholds as Knin, Orsova, Jajce, Srebrenik and Belgrade. The list of castles held as royal honores compiled in 1437 listed almost 40 per cent as being the castra et honores of the ban Matkó and his brothers.22 An equally substantial number of castles and lordships was held in the region by John Hunyadi and Nicholas Újlaki during the 1440s. As joint-voevodes, Hunyadi and Újlaki could additionally rely on the revenues and castle-lordships of Transylvania.23 Honores continued to be used for the remainder of the fifteenth century, particularly as a means of securing resources for the defence of the frontier. Following Matthias Corvinus’s capture of northern Bosnia in the early 1460s, he appointed Imre Zápolyai, the ban of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia, to the new office of ban of Bosnia. Besides the honores which he had already been assigned by virtue of his existing titles, Imre was vested with the ‘governorship’ of the priory of Vrana, which comprised eight or nine separate castle-lordships. A decade later, Nicholas Újlaki, the recently crowned king of Bosnia, was similarly assigned the castles of Vrana. His income and authority were supplemented by the counties of Szana and Orbász (Sana and Vrbas), the castle-lordships of which were made subordinate to Jajce.24 Nevertheless, the general collapse of the Slavonian revenues rendered this type of provision increasingly redundant. From the last years of the fifteenth century, the bans and captains of the southern frontier were commonly supported by subsidies and salaries paid directly out of the royal treasury.25 8.3. Revenues and distribution Honores were not assigned to office-holders in perpetuity. They were held only ‘during the royal pleasure’ (durante beneplacito regio) and as a trust on behalf of the king – non ut suam propriam, sed sub nomine honoris nostri regii.26 Honores continued thus to form part of the royal fisc and were understood as remaining under the king’s dominium. During the period of his possession, however, the occupier might extract revenues from the honor and make improvements so as to bolster his income. In 1351, therefore, the justiciar Thomas Szécsenyi encouraged immigrants to settle his honores in Trencsén county, which resulted in a proliferation of new villages on the lordships of Beszterce and Zsolna castles. Indeed, the ispáns of Heves county, Stephen and Page 138 George Bebek, were so undiscerning in their recruitment of foreign settlers to work their honor at Makovica as to earn the displeasure of their royal master. The holders of honores were additionally entitled to collect the royal taxes imposed on peasant plots and the census laid on towns. Some of these monies may have been passed on to the treasury, but a share was evidently retained.27 A fragmentary account from 1372 relating to the lordship of Temesvár indicates the variety of resources available to the holder of a royal honor. These included the tributum raised on the peasantry from which frequent disbursements were made (not least to the domina of the lord!), income from mills, bulls given by the local Wallachian knezes (24 in two months alone!), and the taxes of the towns of Temesvár and Mezősomlyó. The last were worth 400 florins, although it is uncertain whether this sum was completely retained by the lord, whether a part of it was diverted to the treasury or, indeed, whether it was ever even collected in the first place.28 Records surviving from the early sixteenth century give additional information on the resources on which one of the kingdom’s larger castlelordships rested. Among the appurtenances of Hunyad castle were thus included six towns, 122 individual villages and other possessions, and more than 1600 peasants. The annual payments to the castle amounted to over 1000 florins, on top of which the lord received 700 florins directly from the royal treasury. The peasantry additionally made payments in kind, including more than 160 pigs a year.29 The retention of honores could yield substantial profits. During the 1380s, and in the space of just four years, John and Stephen Bánfi of Alsólendva accumulated as bans of Slavonia no less than 2000 florins.30 In counties where only one royal castle was in existence, it was generally understood that this should be assigned as an honor to the ispán. The castle-lordships of Slavonia and Transylvania were also reserved as the honores of the ban and voevode. In respect of other offices, however, no such continuity can be observed with regard to the distribution of honores. These remained in the gift of the king and could be allocated as he saw fit. In the 1320s and 1330s, the treasurer (tavernicus) Demeter Nekcsei thus held pro honore the counties of Trencsén, Bács and Bihar together with their castles, revenues and other resources. Stephen Lackfi, who filled the office in the 1340s, held by contrast the county of Vas. A decade later, the treasurer Cikó Pomázi was ispán of Borsod county.31 Depending upon the military and financial needs of the moment, honores might be reassigned. In 1368, therefore, the castle-lordships of Temesvár, Zsidóvár, Sebesvár, Miháld and Orsova, Page 139 which had previously constituted parts of the banate of Szörény, were reallocated to the newly-appointed ban of Bulgaria, and the relevant castellans were instructed to transfer their allegiance to him.32 Elsewhere in this same region, castles and lordships were regularly transferred back and forth between bans and ispáns. The usual procedure followed for the transfer of honores was for the king to instruct the nobles and other men of the county to accept the new incumbent, and to inform the previous possessor that he must relinquish his post forthwith. On some occasions, the relevant procedure clearly bears the characteristics of a statutio to a property: hence from 1328, commisimus et duxerimus statuendum in dictum comitatum introducendum.33 Upon his appointment of Benedict Himfi in 1379 to the comitatus of Győr, Komárom, Fejér, Bakony and Vertés, King Louis notified the noblemen of the counties that he had assigned the counties to Benedict along with the four castles of Csókakő, Gesztes, Vitány and Csesznek. The nobles were enjoined to accept Benedict as their ispán. Louis then in the same correspondence addressed the village-headmen and peoples who pertained to the four castle-lordships, instructing them to pay to Benedict and his castellans the relevant royal incomes.34 Generally, in the fourteenth century, transfers of this type were effected swiftly with little sustained objection from those who had been deprived of their honores. During the next century, however, royal legislation found it increasingly necessary to specify that those relieved of their honores by the king should surrender them speedily to their successor.35 The holder of an honor thus retained land and revenues of the king only for as long as the ruler saw fit. In this respect, it is not surprising that the honor should have been also considered to constitute a beneficium on which full ownership or dominium was reserved by the original donor.36 The nature of the honor was thus essentially usufructual, in the sense that the fruits of the honor might be enjoyed by the incumbent but were possessed neither in perpetuity nor in complete right. Nevertheless, just as land might be assigned by a lord to his familiaris as a benefice upon which rights were reserved, so honores granted during the king’s pleasure might also be further distributed. Many ispáns were frequently involved in activities which took them away from their counties or, as we have seen, they held as ispán several or more counties. In their absence they were usually represented by vice-ispáns. These discharged the principal administrative and judicial tasks within the counties and were almost invariably the ispáns’ familiares. The vice-ispán was frequently assigned the principal royal castle Page 140 in the county. He, in turn, might appoint his own familiares to subordinate functions. Likewise, the bans of Slavonia and the voevodes of Transylvania appointed the ispáns and principal castellans within their jurisdictions. They, for their part, charged their own familiares with subordinate administrative and military tasks. Similar arrangements prevailed within the banates along the southern frontier. The castle of Érsomlyó variously pertained to the banate of Szörény and to the counties of Krassó and Temes. Its castellan was thus usually a familiaris of the relevant ban or ispán. He, in turn, appointed the castellans of the nearby fortress of Krassófő, and they enlisted their own familiares to perform subordinate tasks.37 As we saw in the previous chapter, familiares either received a salary and other support from their lord or were assigned specific revenues from the honor. Vice-ispáns appointed to administer county courts may also have received a portion of the income from fines and confiscations which customarily belonged to the ispán.38 The duties and resources so devolved were held, however, on the same terms as the honor itself. The familiares who occupied subordinate places in the hierarchy were obliged to surrender their titles as soon as their lord lost his own office. Moreover, vice-ispáns, castellans and others held their offices only at the pleasure of their lords and they might be deprived of these at his will. Vice-ispáns were often replaced with great rapidity. Between 1347 and 1382, Zala county had no less than 18 vice-ispáns. The vice-ispáns of Szabolcs county seem in the same century to have changed almost every year.39 Although the evidence relating to castellanships is more fragmentary, their incumbents also appear to have been replaced with considerable frequency. In just ten years (1334–1344), the castellanship of Nagykemlék, which belonged to the honor of the ispán of Kőrös county, changed hands at least four times.40 As these examples suggest, the various offices, lands and revenues granted by noblemen to their familiares were understood to be held pro honore and in the same manner as an honor assigned directly by the king. In 1469, therefore, the voevode Nicolas Csupor appointed his familiaris, John Fejes, to the office of ispán in the Szekel district (sedes) of Aranyosszék. In his master’s absence, the vice-voevode wrote to the district that it had been assigned as an honor to Fejes during the voevode’s pleasure. In this case, the text of the letter borrowed directly from the terminology usually associated with royal grants of honores to leading men of the kingdom (hence: dominus scilicet noster graciosus scribit nobis, ut sua magnificencia honorem comitatus Page 141 sedis predicte, durante suo beneplacito, nobili Johanni Feyes, familari suo dedisset et contulisset …).41 In much the same way, a subordinate function on a private estate, such as the management of a castle held by a lord in full ownership, might also be conceived as an office held pro honore and durante beneplacito. Sigismund’s legislation of 1435, which established the responsibility of lords for the violent misdeeds of their familiares, interpreted therefore the castra, possessiones et officiolatus assigned to subordinate officers as being held pro honore and as thus retained in a manner analogous to a royal property.42 Whereas the assignment of an honor by the king was not accompanied by any formal undertaking, honores received from a lord might be tied to specific obligations. Familiares appointed to castellanships often entered into detailed contractual arrangements regarding the terms on which they held the honor. Indeed, and as we have remarked in the previous chapter, some castellans had pro forma contracts which they were obliged to have copied and sealed upon their entry into service. These contracts specified that the castellans recognized that their office was only held during the lord’s pleasure (ad manus meas, durante beneplacito suo… dedit et in officium contulit). They accordingly undertook to surrender the castle together with all its military equipment whenever their lord so demanded and to whosoever he appointed to replace them. The castellans additionally undertook to have their vice-castellans, soldiers of the garrison and their other familiares swear oaths to the same effect.43 The system of royal honores did not endure beyond the late fifteenth century. The reforms of Matthias’s reign centralized the management and revenues of the royal estates upon the office of the provisor. Thereafter, office-holders were most commonly rewarded and their tasks funded through salaries paid either through the treasury or, in those instances where the offices concerned were deemed to constitute part of the king’s personal service, through the provisor’s separate account.44 With the continued depletion of the royal demesne, there were in any case insufficient resources with which to sustain office-holders. This circumstance was rendered all the more acute by the surrender of individual counties as ‘perpetual lordships’ to members of the leading families of the realm and to episcopal foundations. By the early sixteenth century, Abaúj, Baranya, Bács, Bihar, Esztergom, Győr, Heves, Közép-Szolnok, Kraszna, Nyitra, Pest-Pilis, Szepes, Turóc, Verőce and Veszprém counties had been so assigned.45 The honores pertaining to the ispánates of these counties became thus the property of the incumbents and of their descendants. By this time, however, the origi Page 142 nal notion of the honor had been lost and the term was largely understood as being synonymous with a dignity. As such, its meaning became increasingly circumscribed. Within a short time, the term honor would be used only with reference to the principal officers of the realm: the palatine, justiciar, voevode and treasurer (tavernicus).46 8.4. Honores as ‘fiefs’ Around 1450, a gloss was made in Hungary of a volume of Dominican sermons. The cleric responsible wished to explain to his audience the complete meaning of a sentence relating to divine grace: haec bone … a Deo in feudum recepimus. He accordingly glossed the term in feudum with the Hungarian bwchwbe, which is itself a direct translation of the Latin in honore.47 Caution must be observed in any too literal an interpretation of this gloss. The term feudum was in use in Hungary, but in such a variety of meanings as to defy a single translation. In the second half of the thirteenth century, Simon of Kéza used feudum in at least four separate senses and, therafter, the term was most commonly applied to leasehold estates.48 Nevertheless, the gloss invites pause for thought and gives ground for speculation. Some Hungarian historians have sought to find in Hungary a model of feudal relations resembling that described for Western Europe by Ganshof and Bloch. As we have already remarked, the institution of familiaritas bears some relationship to commendatio, although it was evidently shorn in Hungary of a good deal of the ceremony and symbolism described by Bloch. Commendation was not, however, usually accompanied in Hungary by a grant of land held conditionally on behalf of the lord in token and recompense of service. We may find examples of benefices being so awarded, where the dominium was reserved by the lord. Tenures of this type may also have been more frequently given than most Hungarian historians allow, since as we have seen, some properties ceded to familiares may not have been held in complete dominium. Likewise, we may observe lands being distributed among, in particular, the servants on ecclesiastical estates in return for specific pledges of fidelity. The beneficiaries of these donations were, however, not normally considered to be nobles. Nevertheless, once we acknowledge that the honor itself constituted a beneficium, and might indeed be referred to as such, then the circle may almost be closed. In medieval Hungary, personal relations of commendation as marked by the institution of familiaritas were frequently combined with the retention of offices and of the lands and revenues Page 143 which went with them. The honores so distributed within the hierarchy of relations of familiaritas were not held in complete ownership. Dominium was retained over these by the original owner and the possessor enjoyed only very limited rights, which were often further circumscribed by contract. In time, a very few of these offices and rights acquired through the institution of the ‘perpetual lordship’ a hereditary character. The majority, however, did not. Indeed, the speed with which offices and revenues were reassigned in Hungary is the very reverse of the stable order of land and service found in France and England. Hungary may, therefore, have known the fief under the different name of the honor. A snapshot of a single day in fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Hungary would reveal a hierarchy of interlocking obligations, with properties and revenues assigned within this structure as usufructs given in token of fidelity and in return for the discharge of duties. When looking, however, at years rather than days, we may have to acknowledge that the frequency with which offices, lands and revenues were reassigned amongst familiares necessarily compromises all discussion of fiefs and fief-holding in late medieval Hungary. Page 144 9 Military Obligation 9.1. Personal service and noble taxation The nobleman’s duty of fidelitas towards the ruler was understood primarily in military terms. Throughout the Middle Ages, each nobleman of the realm was considered as obliged to serve the person of the monarch at time of war. Charters of ennoblement published in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, therefore commonly referred to the recipients’ obligation to serve beneath the royal standard and to fight for none other than the king (nobiscum, et non cum aliquo exercituare teneantur).1 For failure to honour these commitments, a nobleman could not only be fined but also stripped of his lands.2 Right up until the nineteenth century, participation in the insurrectio, which was the collective military undertaking of all nobles of the realm, was considered a condition of noble status. The nobleman’s military commitment to the king was extolled in the narrationes of charters, which frequently drew attention to the individual deeds performed by nobles while serving beneath the royal banner.3 From the very first, however, a large part of the Hungarian nobility demonstrated its lack of capacity for warfare. Many nobles were too poor to afford the necessary horse and armour which were the prerequisites of valorous endeavour. They thus attended the king’s summons either on foot or in carts: ‘more on crutches than with arms, more like beggars than warriors’.4 It was for this reason that, as we have seen, even as early as the midthirteenth century, Béla IV sought to settle the frontier regions of the kingdom with conditional nobles who, in return for their land, undertook to furnish a set number of armoured horsemen. Other nobles sought either to limit or even to evade their responsibilities. As early as 1222, the assembled noble servientes of the realm extracted from Page 145 Andrew II the promise that they would not be called upon to serve outside the kingdom unless at the royal expense. In the fifteenth century, nobles frequently resisted serving on the border, arguing that the defence of the frontier had to be secured by the king out of his own resources.5 Other noblemen simply shirked military service altogether. Some of these even had the audacity to make their alleged participation in war an excuse for postponing legal cases taken against them.6 Accounts from the fourteenth century suggest that the king might in effect reckon upon only a half of the kingdom’s nobles as battle-ready.7 Unsurprisingly, therefore, the noble insurrectio became increasingly irrelevant as a military institution. By the end of the fifteenth century, the insurrectio constituted only the fourth line of the realm’s defence, after the royal corps of mercenaries, the forces supplied by the church, and the retinues of the barons.8 From the fourteenth century right through until the nineteenth, the nobleman’s obligation to serve personally at the royal summons was held to justify his exemption from taxation. The relationship between service and exemption was clearly expressed in Louis I’s privilege of 1366 for the Transylvanian nobility, which relieved them of several imposts in return for their help against the enemies of the crown.9 It is, nevertheless, evident that the right of the nobility to freedom from taxation was secured gradually. Moreover, the exemption of the nobleman was a personal one which applied to him and to his home-farm but not to the lands which his peasants worked. The increasing burdens falling upon the peasantry had the consequence of diminishing the resources upon which the local economy and the nobleman’s income rested. Throughout the Middle Ages, therefore, the nobility pressed for a reduction or even for the abolition of taxes falling upon the peasantry. Where possible, they also sought to have these royal dues collected by themselves. By so doing, nobles could reward themselves with a slice of the revenues raised and thus compensate themselves for the loss of income they otherwise sustained as a consequence of the taxation of their tenants. It is additionally evident that the nobleman’s personal freedom from taxation might be set aside by the ruler in cases of extreme urgency. On the eve of Mohács, the royal council ordered therefore a special tax on the herds, woodlands, fishpools and mines owned by members of the nobility.10 The freedom of the nobility from taxation was only secured during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. It was thus paradoxically obtained during that same period as when the Hungarian nobles’ collective incapacity for warfare was becoming most manifest. The progenitors Page 146 of the nobility, the castle-warriors, had by the early thirteenth century obtained certain exemptions from royal taxes, as indeed may certain groups of castrenses.11 The Golden Bull of 1222 extended these rights to the new class of noble servientes, laying down that subsidies and other imposts should not be raised on their estates.12 Despite the confirmation of this right in 1231, it is evident that both nobles and those dwelling on their estates remained liable to special royal taxation. Notwithstanding the prohibitions contained in the royal decrees of 1222 and 1231, the collecta generalis, which applied to the nobility and which is thought to have been first levied around 1220, continued therefore to be raised. In the quarter-century following the Mongol invasion of 1241, it was gathered almost annually.13 It continued to be collected during the first half of the fourteenth century, being assessed by reference not only to peasant-holdings but also to the property worked directly by the lord. In 1351, however, the nobility’s exemption from taxes of this type was specifically recorded and, hereafter, imposts on noble households and farms were no longer laid.14 Despite the 1351 privilege, nobles were still obliged both to allow and to facilitate the periodic debasements and exchanges of currency upon which a portion of the royal revenues rested. Already in the later thirteenth century, currency debasement had been occasionally replaced by a property tax. In 1323, the damaging and inefficient method of raising revenue by adulteration of the coinage was partially replaced by a uniform tax raised on households.15 To begin with, the new lucrum camerae tax did not apply to the remnants of the class of castle-warriors and to members of the nobility.16 These early exemptions were not, however, repeated in subsequent royal charters. In contrast to its provisions relating to land taxes, therefore, the 1351 decree affirmed the nobles’ obligation to pay the lucrum camerae tax even on their own households.17 It was probably only during the early fifteenth century that the nobility obtained collective freedom from the lucrum camerae, at much the same time as they won exemption from the payment of ecclesiastical tithes.18 By 1447, the nobility’s right to pay neither the lucrum nor the tithe was held to be a privilege which it had enjoyed ab antiquo.19 9.2. Banderia Although the nobleman’s military commitment to the ruler was originally expressed in terms of service under the royal standard, only a few nobles could have actually fought close to the king in battle. Page 147 Throughout the Middle Ages, the royal retinue comprised heavily-armoured knights drawn from the royal household and aula, supplemented by foreign mercenaries. We may guess that behind the increasing royal demands for cash from taxation lay the need to ensure a ready supply of mercenaries. The heavily-armoured horsemen of the royal household were additionally supported by garrison-troops, by the warrior-monks of the Temple and Hospital and, more intermittently, by knights of the Teutonic Order. Light cavalry were supplied by Szekel and Pecheneg guards, but their role was more one of reconnaissance and of harrying by arrow-fire than of close engagement. Precise estimates of military manpower are hard to establish. During the later thirteenth century, out of a total army of 40 000 warriors, probably less than a quarter fought in the king’s retinue. By the early fifteenth century, this proportion had declined to only a few thousand men, principally on account of the assignment to other duties of many former members of the retinue.20 During this later period, mercenaries in particular fought in separate organizations often under the command of captains drawn from the royal household.21 Doubtless, some members of the common nobility fought in the king’s company. The majority, however, performed their duties under a banner which was quite literally not the king’s own. These banners belonged instead to those of the principal lords of the realm and it was in their service that the larger share of the Hungarian nobility strove. The manner of the nobility’s recruitment and organization was based on familiaritas and the system of honores upon which rested the power of the principal Hungarian lords. Noble familiares thus fought in the company of their lords who were in turn rewarded and given access to additional resources through the grant of offices. From the late thirteenth century, these ‘private armies’ (for thus do Hungarian historians principally consider them) were distinguished by the flags of their commanders and ispáns. They were thus commonly referred to as banderia after the Latin and Italian names for a standard (banerium, bandiera).22 The institution of the banderium which mediated the nobleman’s military commitment to the ruler through the person of his lord, served both to consolidate the institution of familiaritas and to expand the political influence of the kingdom’s leading lords. It used to be thought that banderia played only a minor part in the kingdom’s defence during the Árpád period and that they were primarily a creation of the early fourteenth century. In fact, banderia were already deployed during the late thirteenth century. During the dynastic wars of the early fourteenth century, the banderia of the greatest Page 148 nobles were transformed into instruments of their own personal aggrandisement. Often numbering more than several thousand noble-warriors apiece and supplemented by mercenaries recruited from abroad, the banderia of the competing oligarchs were thrown into battle against the various rivals for the vacant throne. It was not until the third decade of the century that Charles Robert of Anjou was able to complete his destruction of the oligarchs and of the banderia upon which their military power rested. The castles and lordships of Charles Robert’s principal opponents were confiscated and reallocated piecemeal to his leading supporters. Nevertheless, rather than abolishing the system of banderia altogether, Charles Robert accomplished its reinauguration. His followers were allocated counties and castle-lordships pro honore.23 As we have seen, by the middle of the fourteenth century, most royal castles and the lordships attached to them were assigned in this way. In addition, both Charles Robert and his son and successor, Louis I, ceded properties in perpetuity to the leading nobles of the realm. Whether given in full ownership or only in use, these grants not only increased the military resources available to the beneficiary but also swelled the number of his familiares by making his service all the more attractive in terms of the availability of rewards. In return for these marks of the king’s pleasure, the holders of honores were expected to gather their most suitable familiares in time of war and lead them to battle as a banderium. The majority of nobles were not, however, summoned in this way but were enjoined instead to report on the eve of campaign to the local ispán. They were thus absorbed into the ispán’s banderium to which were also attached the ispán’s own familiares.24 In this way the institution of the banderium not only reinforced but also promoted the development of relations of familiaritas among the Hungarian nobility. The extent to which the holders of honores used their income from offices to recruit mercenaries to fight under their standard in the fourteenth century is uncertain. Foreign mercenaries were, however, employed during Louis I’s wars in Italy and we know of English (or possibly Welsh) archers who in the 1360s guarded the Törcsvár pass on Transylvania’s border with Wallachia.25 It is unlikely that the nobility of the realm was enlisted to serve in every royal campaign. Instead a ‘division of labour’ took place according to which those counties and holders of honores nearest to the theatre of conflict were the first to furnish banderia. When in 1345, Louis I sent the ispán of the Szekels, Andrew Lackfi, to defend the Transylvanian frontier against a Tatar assault, the army which he Page 149 deployed consisted primarily of Szekel cavalry gathered from Andrew’s own honores. Likewise, in the same year the army sent by Louis to assist Casimir of Poland was led by the ispáns of Hungary’s northernmost counties and consisted, we may presume, mainly of their familiares. In similar fashion, the ispáns and nobles of Sopron and Zala counties were mobilized principally against the Austrians, while those of the Pozsony Csallóköz were ranged against the Czechs. Only in the more important engagements, such as the Paduan war of 1372 or the Nicopolis crusade of 1396, were nobles and honores-holders from further afield obliged to attend the royal summons.26 9.3. Reform and differentiation of service Following the collapse of Serbia in the 1390s, the kingdom of Hungary shared a common border with the Ottoman empire and became increasingly vulnerable to Turkish attacks. The Turks’ superiority on the field did not derive from their predictable, and easily thwarted, tactic of encirclement but largely from their numerical advantage. It was, moreover, well known that heavy cavalry were more than a match for the lightly-equipped Turkish troops. In 1396 at the battle of Nicopolis, the French cavalry had successively ridden down the lines of akinjis, spahis and janissaries only to be eventually outnumbered and overcome by a huge and hitherto concealed mass of Anatolian cavalry.27 Nicopolis and other similar engagements determined the Hungarian military response in the century following. According to the policy inaugurated by Sigismund after 1396, the kingdom was to be defended by a cordon sanitaire of frontier dependencies. The cordon was subsequently reinforced by two lines of fortresses which were supported by banates dug deep into the Balkan peninsula.28 The defence of the frontier was supplemented by a new type of army which was both numerically equal to the Turks as well as fitted out with heavily-armoured knights who were capable of breaking through the Ottoman light horse and infantry. The overwhelming number of nobility had little part to play in the new scheme. The nobles baulked at long periods spent in garrison-duty and, until Sigismund laid down exactly what constituted the kingdom,29 they could always argue that the defence of the cordon and banates was not their duty. They were, moreover, insufficiently numerous to constitute a match for the Ottoman armies. The majority were, moreover, only lightly armoured and so unable to practise shock-cavalry warfare. In short, despite the privileges which they had Page 150 extracted in return for their martial service, the Hungarian nobles were militarily redundant. They did, however, have two things which the king needed: peasants who might be conscripted so as to provide numerical weight in battle, and peasant-plots which might be taxed to pay for garrisons and mercenaries. Nevertheless, by shifting the burden of warfare from the nobility to the peasantry, Sigismund and his successors undermined the most important principle upon which the noble estate merited its privileges. Moreover, as nobles were not equal in respect of the number of peasants which they owned, a differentiation began to emerge within the noble estate. Rather than upon the common commitment to personal service, the military obligations of the nobility began to be distinguished along lines of landed wealth. An elite of wealthy lords providing banderia of retainers, mercenaries and peasant warriors thus became prominent in the defence of the realm. Simultaneously a large underclass of landless and impoverished nobles also became visible, who provided neither useful personal service, nor peasants, nor even money. It would be otiose to discuss in detail the development of the militia portalis, the institution whereby peasants were enlisted in the kingdom’s defence, as an English-language literature already exists on this subject.30 Suffice it to say that, starting in 1397, landowners were required to furnish troops for the royal army in accordance with the quantity of peasants working their estates. To begin with, the number stipulated was one archer for every 20 peasants. In 1435, the figure was altered to three mounted archers for every 100, to be equipped with bow, quiver, sword and lance. Twenty years later, the proportion was reassessed at four mounted archers and two footsoldiers for every hundred peasants. Thereafter, the ratio alternated between one in 10, one in 20 and one in 36, until in 1526 it became in extremis a general levy of all peasants. The conscription of the peasantry was accompanied by surveys which were drawn up by officials of the county. An early example of such a register, which was compiled in 1398 in Ung county and which included a record of the number of peasants on every noble landholding, indicates the care with which these surveys were undertaken.31 It is uncertain from the texts of the royal decrees relating to the militia portalis whether troops were raised according to the number of peasants or the number of peasant plots. The former seems more likely, in which case we may have to admit that the name commonly given to the conscription is misleading. The various decrees are also unclear as to whether peasants were themselves enlisted or whether landowners were Page 151 expected to recruit warriors on the basis of the ratios laid down in the relevant royal decrees. The latter seems improbable, although it may be that the decrees were deliberately phrased so as to allow landowners the possibility of conserving their labourforce through the recruitment of mercenaries. In this respect, it may be no accident that later laws distinguish between the iobagiones, according to whose number the conscription was laid, and the gentes and stipendiarii who actually turned up to the colours.32 Almost certainly many of the mercenaries so recruited were themselves Hungarian noblemen. Later royal decrees discuss how nobles serving as stipendiarii were expected to fulfil their obligation to serve in a banderium.33 Nevertheless, whether peasants or lightly-equipped mercenaries, the troops raised by the militia portalis either joined the banderium to which their lord belonged or else (and these were doubtless the majority) were recruited into the contingent sent by the relevant county. Nobles who had insufficient peasants to provide a warrior according to the ratios laid down, were instructed to join together to provide the relevant number of troops.34 The 1398 register from Ung county suggests that the majority of nobles probably fell into this second category. Hungarian peasants were skilled in the use of arms.35 Nevertheless, it is hard to believe that their function in war was much more than to provide skirmishers. The backbone of the Hungarian army remained as before heavy cavalry although in order to meet the Turkish challenge, the number of mounted knights had to be increased. A good part of these consisted of foreign mercenaries, many of whom were recruited from the Bohemian crownlands. The number of foreign mercenaries in the Hungarian army more than doubled during the middle decades of the fifteenth century, from roughly 6000–8000 in the 1430s to about 16 000 four decades later. The cost of these, which worked out at up to eight florins a month for a mounted knight and four florins for a footsoldier, placed an intolerable strain on the royal finances.36 Already, at the end of the fourteenth century, extraordinary taxes had to be laid on peasant plots to help defray the burden of mercenary warfare. In the last 20 years of his reign, Sigismund is known to have levied a special subsidium on at least five occasions.37 Nevertheless, the extraordinary taxation raised by Sigismund pales beside that levied during the reign of Matthias Corvinus. Between 1462 and 1474, Matthias raised at least half a dozen special subsidies and, after 1478, taxes of this type were laid annually on peasant plots.38 At the same time, the lucrum camerae tax (which was assessed and gathered at the same time as the subsidium) was increased fivefold. Despite promises given at the start of Page 152 his reign, Matthias’s successor, Wladislas II, continued to demand subsidies on an almost annual basis. Nevertheless, the money raised by extraordinary taxation proved insufficient to meet the costs of retaining mercenaries. As a consequence, foreign mercenaries were more usually deployed in the wealthier theatres to the west of the kingdom where they could more easily live off the land.39 The money raised from extraordinary subsidies and the lucrum camerae was not only used to support the recruitment of foreign mercenaries. Although the alienation of royal castles which marked both Mary’s reign and the early years of Sigismund’s joint-rule was soon arrested, by the 1430s only a quarter of the realm’s castles still belonged to the crown. Their number further declined during the middle decades of the century. Although Matthias had at his disposal almost a half of the realm’s larger villages and towns, these mostly belonged to the crown by virtue of their origin in the Hunyadi patrimony. Even after he had repossessed the fastnesses occupied by Giskra and the Habsburgs, Matthias’s castles and castle-lordships constituted less than a fifth of the kingdom’s whole.40 This proportion declined yet further in the decades following his death. The erosion of the royal fisc during the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries made it increasingly hard for the king to distribute honores to his principal lords. Accordingly, their retention of banderia had to be rewarded not through the gift of offices and lordships but, instead, through payments made from the royal treasury. The banderia belonging to the realm’s leading lords were thus sustained through disbursements similar to those which supported the foreign mercenaries serving in the royal host and the garrisons along the frontier. Money raised from taxation was either paid directly from the treasury to lords or else was retained at source by the lord’s own tax-collectors and diverted to support his personal retinue.41 Whereas, therefore, during the fourteenth century the banderia of the great lords had been sustained out of office-holding and honores, over the next century salaries and remittances from the treasury provided an increasingly important underpinning of the banderial system. At the same time, the right to command banderia became increasingly circumscribed. During Sigismund’s reign, lords with as few as 50 familiares and attendant peasants had attended the royal summons with their own banderia.42 During the second half of the fifteenth century, however, the size of banderia was fixed at a minimum of 400 troops and the right to deploy military units of this type was restricted.43 In 1498 Wladislas II laid down that banderia might be raised only by the Page 153 leading bishops, abbots and chapter-houses, the voevode of Transylvania, the ispán of the Szekels, the ban of Croatia, the ispán of Temes county and a further 40 individually-named lords or barones, as they were now called. Nobles who were not the familiares of those listed in the decree were instructed to serve in the banderia established by the counties. Nevertheless, beside the 40 or so banderia of the barons, the county contingents retained only a minor significance. At most, the counties provided just one-third of the total number of troops in the kingdom, and the majority of these were ill-equipped. Although of a higher quality, the military manpower of the prelates and ecclesiastical corporations amounted to only ten banderia and less than 3000 additional horsemen. The decree of 1498 thus effectively put the kingdom’s defence in the hands of the great lords.44 The monopolization of the right to field banderia contributed to the consolidation of the Hungarian baronage. Barones were first referred to in the early thirteenth century. At this time, however, the term lacked precision and could mean either a large landowner (being thus the equivalent of the original Hungarian meaning of nobilis) or else the holder of one of the principal royal offices and honores (quicunque et qualescunque comitatus, dignitates et honores regni tenentes [1270]).45 The number of barons might also include the descendants of previously prominent royal officers. Like the prelates of the kingdom, the barons of the kingdom were commonly described as magnifici. Nevertheless, until the last years of the fifteenth century, there was little real distinction between barons and nobles. Barons remained members of the nobility while common nobles might advance through the royal favour and offices, eventually acquiring baronial status for themselves. Amongst the nobility, however, barons alone constituted members of the royal council.46 During the fifteenth century, convention held that the 70 or so barons and ecclesiastical lords of the royal council shared with the monarch the right to publish decrees and other legislation.47 During the second half of the fifteenth century, however, the difference between nobility and baronage became more apparent. This process partly originated in the steady accumulation of resources by the baronage which Matthias Corvinus did little to restrain. By 1490, almost 40 per cent of the kingdom’s larger settlements and about a third of the realm’s villages lay in their hands.48 The superior resources available to the barons encouraged a flood of familiares into their service and spurred baronial demands for a yet larger share of the property belonging to the royal fisc. It became, moreover, not unusual for the properties of the barons to be protected from reversion on account Page 154 of death without heirs. With the king’s approval, individual baronial families drew up mutual inheritance pacts according to the terms of which one family would inherit the other’s lands in the event of defectus seminis.49 Strategies of later marriage also had the consequence of keeping estates intact by reducing the number of heirs. Additionally, through the institution of the ‘perpetual ispánate’, Matthias and his successors established the hereditary rights of the leading barons to half a dozen of the kingdom’s counties. The growing separation of the Hungarian baronage was further demonstrated by differences which emerged at this time in respect of the value of their homagium (wergild) and of the dower due to their widows. It was, moreover, symbolized by the barons’ exclusive use of red wax to seal documents and in the personally-addressed royal summonses which they received to attend meetings of the diet. In 1487, the so-called ‘birthdate of the estate of magnates in Hungary’,50 Matthias acknowledged for the first time the existence of a hereditary class of barons, the so-called barones naturales, which was made up of the families holding perpetual ispánates (the Vitovec, Zápolyai, Alsólendvai Bánfi and Vingárti Geréb) and of a further nineteen prominent families. In this respect, the barons’ capture in 1498 of the exclusive right among secular lords to field banderia not only reflected their sense of corporate privilege and power, but also contributed to the emergence of the baronage as an estate which was set apart and legally distinct from the broad mass of the Hungarian nobility.51 Differentiation did not only occur amongst the highest reaches of the Hungarian nobility. There is little evidence to suggest that the majority of the nobility actively participated in warfare during the second half of the fifteenth century. As we have seen, they were on account of their poverty hardly capable of doing so. In theory, nobles who did not join a baronial banderium were expected to fight under the county’s standard. It seems, however, that many counties preferred to spend the cash which they raised from the subsidium on mercenaries, the number of which they supplemented with only a small number of nobles and their peasants.52 A difficulty arose, however, with regard to the so-called nobiles sessionales or ‘curialists’, who owned only a curia and single plot which they themselves worked, having no peasants of their own. The curialists rarely served in war, for they lacked the means to do so, nor could they contribute through their tenants to the militia portalis and to the various subsidia raised for the kingdom’s defence. Their commitment to military service was thus not even fulfilled vicariously through the payment of taxes and the provision of peasant Page 155 warriors. Nevertheless, this group constituted the overwhelming mass of the Hungarian nobility, accounting in 1500 for at least two-thirds of nobles in the kingdom.53 As they served the kingdom’s defence neither personally, nor through the provision of peasantry, nor even by tax-payments from their tenants’ plots, the status of curialists was open to question. During the course of the fifteenth century, curialists were increasingly subject to pressure from representatives of the county to pay taxes on their parcels of land as if they were simple peasants, even though exactions of this type were consistently prohibited in royal decrees.54 By the end of the century, however, curialists were like peasants clearly subject to payment of the subsidium. Royal tax registers from the 1490s thus record payments of the subsidium made to the county by the so-called nobiles minimi who held only a single plot of land. Many of these appear to have been so impoverished as to have been unable to pay the sums demanded of them.55 Certainly, in his account of the nobility, Werbőczy did not concede that the curialists were not full nobles; indeed, he was not even prepared to acknowledge that ‘armalists’, those nobles who held no land but only a charter of ennoblement, were not complete noblemen of the kingdom.56 Later commentators and jurists took, however, a less dogmatic approach. During the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was thus generally assumed that the status of full nobility belonged only to the possessionati who owned land and serfs. Noblemen holding only a single plot or a bare charter of ennoblement occupied an inferior status within the noble estate and thus could not share completely in its rights and exemptions. Collectively known as the ‘taxed nobility’ (taksás nemesség), curialists and armalists were subject to imposts raised by the counties on explicit account of their inability to perform military obligations.57 During the course, thus, of the fifteenth century the Hungarian nobility became increasingly subject to internal differentiation. This process was by no means complete at the close of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, by then the lines of division were already evident between barons, common nobility and the overwhelming number of petty noblemen whose status and rights as full nobles of the realm were increasingly open to question. The performance of military service was a critical factor in this process of differentiation. The wielders of the realm’s banderia, those with the familiares and resources to furnish large military retinues, became synonymous with the baronage. By the same token, those nobles who could neither serve nor contribute to the Page 156 realm’s defence through their peasantry assumed an inferior position within the noble hierarchy. 9.4. A note on numbers Almost without exception, historians’ accounts of the Hungarian nobility refer to their great number. The percentage of the population which the Hungarian nobles constituted is most frequently put at about five per cent. This figure is, however, obtained by reference to a late eighteenth-century census and relates, therefore, to a time following the massennoblements of the early modern period.58 It fails, moreover, to distinguish between categories of noblemen and apportions the same rank to what were, in fact, different status-groups. Estimates of the size of the Hungarian nobility during the Middle Ages rely on conscriptions of households which are not only of later, sixteenth-century provenance but also incomplete in their extant versions. In whatever way these raw figures are interpreted, however, they tend to yield similar results. They suggest that the number of nobles living in Hungary circa 1500–1550 was somewhere between 20 000 and 30 000 persons (or, by another measure, some 2500 to 3000 kindreds).59 If we multiply these figures so as to include all members of noble families, that is the daughters, wives and children of nobles, then we will arrive at a proportion of three per cent out of a total population in 1550 of about three to three-and-a-half million people.60 Few of these nobles were, however, ‘full nobles’. The majority were armalists or curialists who either had no property of their own or who lived on single plots. The same conscriptions suggest that members of these subaltern groups comprised between twothirds and three-quarters of all nobles, or about 18 000 out of a total number of 25 000 (or by another estimate, 20 000 out of 30 000). Information from individual counties tends to support these proportions. In 1549, therefore, Komárom county had 35 full noble families and 74 curialist families. Vas county had 244 and 909 respectively.61 We may nibble at these figures, but the conclusion is inescapable. The majority of nobles were in the early sixteenth century not full nobles of the realm at all but lesser men who did not enjoy the privileges or distinguishing marks of nobility. As we have seen, they had little or no land of their own, owned no peasants, did not perform military service, were liable to taxation, and seldom played a part either in the government of the county or in the institutions of the regnum. Although not tied to the land, they were in most other respects no different from peasants. Page 157 Once we accept that noblemen constituted only three per cent of the population and recognize, moreover, that at least two-thirds of them were not accepted as ‘true nobles’ at all, then we no longer have anything like a ‘mass’ Hungarian nobility in the later Middle Ages. Instead, we end up with a proportion of ‘true’ nobles to total population that is similar to the proportion of county and parish gentry to overall population in later medieval England. Arguments that make the supposedly large number of nobles in Hungary the consequence and mark of the medieval kingdom’s ‘retardation’ rest, therefore, on a false assumption.62 Page 158 10 Counties and Corporations 10.1. Crown and estates The study of parliaments in medieval Europe was long characterized by the disjunctive thinking (Trennungsdenken) of the nineteenth century.1 The dualist interpretation of constitutional history posited a contest between crown and estates which was fought out not only within the politics of individual kingdoms but also within the universal realm of ideas. ‘Descending’ and ‘ascending’ themes of government, doctrines of will and consent, and the civilian principles of quod principi placuit and quod omnes tangit, were thus pitted against one another in an epic struggle of ideologies. According to the dualist model, by the close of the Middle Ages two separate and discrete subjects of right, Herrschaft and Landschaft, confronted one another. Out of their contest emerged the Ständestaat of the late Middle Ages, the divided sovereignty of which would become sharpened in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by confessional strife. Certainly, a contest may be detected throughout the Middle Ages between what may very loosely be called the vertical and horizontal notions of order and authority. As Susan Reynolds reminds us, a ‘major source of conflict in medieval society … was that medieval culture embodied a belief in hierarchy, obedience, and loyalty on the one hand and a belief in custom, immanent justice, mutuality of obligations, and collective judgement on the other’.2 We may also notice in later medieval Hungary as well as elsewhere, that the organological concept of society, which imagined a corpus whose conjoined caput was the king, began to give way to the idea that crown and kingdom were not only separate entities but might even be mutually opposed. By the Page 159 last years of the fourteenth century, the distinction had thus been drawn in Hungary between rex and regnum, and the representatives of the regnum had proclaimed their right to defend the welfare of the kingdom even against the king should he seek to act in opposition to the common interest.3 Within two decades of this pronouncement, the ‘prelates, barons and princes’ of the kingdom had gaoled the ruler precisely on these grounds, replacing his authority with that of the Holy Crown of the Kingdom in the name of which they sealed all documents of state.4 Likewise, and as we will see, during the middle years of the fifteenth century, a new concept of the regnum emerged in Hungary, which, being synonymous with the common nobility, might occasionally be understood as confronting the rex in some form of antithetical relationship. It is, nevertheless, hard to extrapolate from examples such as these the type of structural dualism which characterized both later relations between crown and estates and the writings of nineteenth-century historians. On the level of function, it may therefore be observed that cooperation rather than competition marked the history of relations between crown and parliament in many European kingdoms. Struggles for power were exceptional, and the estates continued to see their role as one of providing ‘counsel and aid’ for the prince. Misleadingly, and as we will argue in the paragraphs which follow, the dualist interpretation posits the existence of only two separate subjects of right, ruler and estates, to which alone are ascribed the attributes of a divided sovereignty. Now, it is not at all obvious that the medieval polity recognized only two subjects of right any more than it understood notions of sovereignty in the modern sense of the word. Medieval kingdoms and territories were constituted in a multi-cellular fashion, in which authority was divided and shared among a congeries of separate associations. As A.J. Gurevich has written: From top to bottom medieval society is corporate. Associations of vassals, knightly orders, monastic brotherhoods and Catholic clergy; town communes, merchant and trade guilds; defensive unions, religious brotherhoods; village communities, kindreds, patriarchal and individual family groupings – these and similar collectives spliced individuals together in closely knit microcosms which gave protection and help, and which were built up on a basis of mutual exchange of services and support.5 Page 160 Some of the associations described by Gurevich may be considered corporations in the fully juristic sense. They possessed their own seals, regulated their own membership, might sue and be sued in law, and existed through time irrespective of the composition of their simul cohabitantes. Cities, fraternities and ecclesiastical chapters belonged most obviously in this category. The majority of associations did not, however, enjoy a fully corporate character. Nevertheless, they were capable of their own self-regulation and of legal representation, and they understood themselves to be possessed of fully autarkic rights. Their existence did not depend upon the grant of a royal charter or upon any other form of ‘state-recognition’ but was understood as deriving from the collective will of the membership through time. The same considerations must influence our understanding of the assembly of the estates in which there were gathered the representatives of the principal associations of the realm. The rights claimed by medieval parliaments were not ‘public rights’ extracted from enfeebled rulers in the way imagined by Marongiu and Lousse.6 They were rights which were considered to have an autonomous origin and to reside within the corporate groups whose deputies attended the meetings of the estates. In their dealings with the ruler, the representatives and other dignitaries gathered in the parliament frequently acted as if they themselves constituted a corporation. They negotiated through a form of collective dialogue and, on occasions, wielded their own seal. Nevertheless, the regnum in whose name they acted was itself a composite body, constructed of smaller associations and privileged bodies. The authority of the estates was thus itself founded on the anterior rights of local communities, the legal existence of which had nothing to do with the constitutive or public power of the crown.7 The multicellular character of the medieval polity meant that authority was not seen in terms of the Doppelpoligkeit of nineteenth-century constitutional dualism. Authority itself was understood to be multi-polar and was as such divided among the corporate and semicorporate groups which made up medieval society. Certainly, by the late Middle Ages, something approaching the modern notion of the state in the sense of it being ‘the common welfare and public utility of the whole community of the realm’ was beginning to arise, as surely the use of the ‘public welfare’ clause both in Hungary and elsewhere in Europe amply demonstrates.8 Nevertheless, although kings might claim a special ability in respect of discerning necessity, neither this facility nor their appeals to a plenitude of power deserve Page 161 the appellation of sovereignty. In Hungary at least, during the later Middle Ages authority was held to reside in the parts which constituted the fictive body of the regnum and in the conventions which governed the relationship of these parts one to another.9 Under these circumstances, no single person or institution could reserve legislative capacity for itself. Like authority, law was considered immanent, autarkically-derived, and rooted in the customary practices of diverse communities. Custom, therefore, which flowed in autonomous fashion out of the different parts of the realm and which varied both from place to place and from association to association, always took precedence over other forms of human law. Royal legislation, which in Hungary required some form of consent, might only amplify custom or, more controversially, bring differing customary provisions into line with one another. Should legislation contradict custom, then it was either deemed void or, in cases of necessity, considered binding only for the lifetime of the ruler and for the duration of the emergency. Even the most representative of assemblies was not empowered to repudiate customary provision. Nor could a community choose to abrogate the custom by which it lived, for the association out of which the law emanated transcended time and was, as such, greater than its current membership.10 Within medieval Hungary, there existed a proliferation of associations, both corporate and semi-corporate, which were similar in number and composition to those of which Gurevich speaks. To their number may be added regional curiosities, such as the corporations of Saxons and Szekels in Transylvania or the unions of Romanian knezes on the southern Danube. Amongst the Hungarian nobility, the predominant form of association was the county community. During the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these local communities accumulated additional powers and authority. Through their representatives at the diet, the county nobilities began, moreover, to play an increasingly important part in the governance of the late medieval kingdom. Although it might increasingly be considered as constitutive of the regnum, the diet might therefore also be understood as a communitas communitatum and as an assembly of nobles who had been elected to the diet in order to give aid and counsel on behalf of their own communities.11 It is to these lesser communities existing within the community of the realm, and to the origins of their rights and influence that we will now turn. Page 162 10.2. Counties and the settlement of disputes The Hungarian kingdom periodically experienced breakdowns of government and order, most notably in the interregna between dynasties. During the fourteenth century, both the advent and, 70 years later, the expiry of the Angevin line were accompanied by major tumults. In the next century, the two decades between Sigismund’s death in 1437 and Matthias Corvinus’s accession in 1458 were marked by disorders. Over the same period, repeated Turkish incursions severely disrupted the southern parts of the kingdom, provoking further lawlessness and sedition. Outside these periods, however, the Hungarian countryside enjoyed a largely peaceful and orderly existence. Certainly, the surviving charters are full of accounts of assaults, aggravated trespasses and seizures. Nevertheless, we know of these illegalities precisely because the victims were sufficiently confident in the agencies of judicial process and enforcement as to consider it worthwhile lodging claims for damages and keeping a record of the ensuing suit. Likewise, the lists of persons condemned to outlawry at county assemblies may number several hundred in any one session. Yet among those condemned as manifest criminals were included many whose offence would appear to be little other than vagabondage and who were most probably punished for living outside the developing manorial system. Other offenders would seem to be the soldiery of otherwise respectable lords, who perhaps in lieu of wages helped themselves to a sheep. Again, it may be noted that while robbery, counterfeiting, fencing stolen goods, and mouthing incantations were common enough accusations, charges of murder were seldom laid.12 In the Hungarian countryside, village communities doubtless policed themselves, which may explain why the most grievous assaults often happened in the forest or on the open road.13 In the absence of comprehensive records which permit a proper statistical analysis to be made, such assertions as are made in the last paragraph must remain surmise. Two examples are, however, suggestive. In 1360, the Slavonian lord, Ladislas Töttös, suffered a major assault on his property by peasants and troops sent by the bishop of Zagreb. His villages were stormed and his house burned down. Ladislas and his wife barely escaped, so they alleged, with their lives. This type of attack, frequent enough in the Pastons’ England, was reported by Ladislas to the curia. King Louis immediately responded. A trespass of such violence was, so Louis averred, ‘completely unheard of in this kingdom’. In token of his disgust, he immediately ordered no less than Page 163 four inquisitions to be simultaneously held to establish the truth of the matter, and he ordered their findings to be referred to him. Although the outcome of the case is not known, at least one inquisition was fast enough to establish the bishop’s complicity in the assault.14 Ladislas Töttös was a prominent lord and he might reasonably have expected royal protection. Gypsies were not. Nevertheless, we learn in the early 1500s of a crime perpetrated by a nobleman against ‘two Egyptians or pharaohs, who are commonly called Gypsies’ (duos Egipciacos sive pharahones quos vulgari sermone czyganos vocant). Seized while committing some minor delict, the Gypsies had been dragged before the nobleman who had blinded one of them. This extra-judicial punishment was reported to the curia (the surviving records give no indication as to which branch, but presumably the chancellery personalis), declared to be criminal, and the nobleman’s lands were forthwith confiscated.15 Likewise, an attempt during Matthias’s reign to disrupt an inquisition by attacking its members was promptly met by the confiscation of the culprit’s estate.16 To these examples may be added other suits in which normally busy and distinguished noblemen referred matters of only minor significance to the king’s courts: cattle-rustling, theft of pigs, oxen and beehives, diversion of watercourses, the abduction of individual peasants, the pulling of a servant’s beard, and so on.17 Either each of these protests introducing legal action was undertaken for political ends of which we are no longer aware, or else the general condition of order in the countryside was sufficient to make the initiation of proceedings for minor crimes seem both acceptable and worthwhile. As against these instances, we may, however, note others where witnesses refused to give evidence out of fear of retribution,18 cases of repeated violence which seem quite impervious to judicial check, and indeed instances where the agents of justice encountered just good, healthy resistance (hence from 1371: ‘Jacob said that he would not allow them a single boundary marker even if they tried to put up a hundred’!).19 We should also recognise that some parts of the realm were less law-abiding than others and that some groups may have operated largely outside the formal bounds of the law. Shepherds were a particular problem since it could be hard for agents of the law to trace them; large parts of Slavonia were periodically ungovernable.20 Among the nobility, aggravated trespass or seizure of property constituted the most common offences. In many cases, the assault was specifically intended to provoke a legal action in which the various claims to a certain piece of land would be formally adjudicated. Many Page 164 assaults thus betook of a strongly ritual character, including the often exaggerated assertions of the victim with respect to the damages which he had sustained. Cases such as these were most commonly referred by petition to the ‘royal presence’, which in the fourteenth century most usually meant the court of the justiciar and, thereafter, one of the several departments of the chancellery. The respective ordinaries usually referred back to the county for advice, initiating thereby an inquisition, and they fashioned their judgement on the basis of the advice which they received. The problem, however, was twofold. First, cases taken into the central courts were frequently delayed. Individual parties might seek adjournments or fail to attend at all. If denied the desired verdict, they might transfer the action to another court. (Burghers were in this respect particularly irksome.)21 Typically, a dispute between nobles over property lasted at least five years or, in the case of Transylvania’s unreformed and overburdened courts, over 30.22 Waiting for justice was compounded by the need simply to wait around. A party to an action was usually summoned to attend one of the four judicial sessions (or octaves) which were held every year. His was, however, in modern parlance a ‘floating case’, the initiation of which depended upon the speed with which preceding actions were expedited. It was therefore not unusual to have to wait several weeks in distant Visegrád or Buda for a case actually to begin, and even then it might be suddenly prorogued.23 Secondly, justice’s delay gave opportunity to the unscrupulous to engage in seizures. Transgressors knew that they might enjoy the fruits of their violence for as long as the case remained unheard. Royal legislation in the fifteenth century was thus concerned with how to put in trust contested properties in such a way as to ensure that the rightful owner was not denied the profit of the estate.24 By the early fourteenth century, courts functioned in each of Hungary’s counties as well as in many districts which did not otherwise merit the appellation of counties. These courts were customarily presided over by the vice-ispán and were attended also by elected szolgabirák as well as, so it would seem, by other such nobles who happened to be in attendance. Normally, a county court, sedes iudiciaria or sedria, met for a day every fortnight. Later evidence suggests that individual sessions of the sedria might, upon notice, be accompanied by larger gatherings of noblemen at which royal decrees were read out and other basic administrative tasks discharged.25 Enforcement of judgements was the responsibility of the ispán, who might use his own familiares to fulfil this task. In his absence, it was common for the Page 165 sedria to entrust one or several nobles with responsibility for seeing that its decisions were upheld.26 In theory, county courts had only a limited competence. They were best at dealing with instances of the illegal seizure of peasants and with landlords who prevented their tenants from transferring to other estates. The majority of cases coming before county courts seem to have consisted of these types. Occasionally, the sedria would oversee more serious criminal charges, including murder, and would fix the damages one landlord was obliged to pay to another on account of his peasant’s crime.27 Individual szolgabirák also participated in landowners’ courts and, after the fourteenth century, the sedria judged appeals from seigneurial jurisdiction.28 The sedria also heard cases moved from village-courts and suits initiated by peasants against noblemen (although it was usually the peasant’s lord who initiated the action on his behalf). There were, however, substantial territorial exemptions to the authority of the county courts, most notably cases involving seigneurial or royal towns, chapters and prominent nobles. Moreover, counties were not considered entitled to adjudicate property actions, although it is evident that litigants often brought minor disputes over land to the sedria for judgement.29 By association with the high judges of the central courts, however, the sedria might accumulate a quite extensive authority. A case once delivered to the curia would often be referred back to the county for information and for an inquisitio simplex. The findings of the inquisition would determine the ordinary’s judgement. More difficult cases would commonly require several counties and chapters to perform the necessary inquiries. Secondly, the palatine would frequently visit the counties. On the occasion of his visit, a list of those manifest criminals worthy of outlawry would be proclaimed and published. At the same time, the szolgabirák and assessors would be petitioned by members of the county community to make enquiry into cases of violent assault, and judgements would be fashioned upon the basis of the information so received. Given the credence which attached to the findings of inquisitions, it is not surprising that litigants should either have sought to initiate inquisitorial proceedings without the bother of approaching the curia, or else should have backed down once the outcome of a county inquisition was known. Without further ado, miscreants confessed before the inquisitors that they had seized estates unlawfully, for had they persisted with their criminal occupation they would have had to endure protracted litigation in the curia for a case which they were Page 166 likely to lose.30 Some litigants might out of sheer expediency take property actions to the sedria. County courts were not only speedier than the curia in rendering justice but also tougher in the penalties which they imposed for non-attendance. Other litigants would involve the county authorities in arbitration procedures, depositing a vinculum as forfeit for their non-compliance with the county’s verdict.31 Moreover, since cases of violent trespass and illegal seizure were frequently moved for requisitio before the county’s panel of sworn men, who on the basis of their own prior knowledge were expected to come to a verdict, it made sense to noise one’s rights abroad through inquisitorial proceedings in advance of a case being brought to trial. The taking of proof thus became confused with the delivery of justice. As a consequence, it became common for the sedria to operate through inquisitorial proceedings effectively as a court of the first instance in matters involving seizure and trespass. This development was formally acknowledged in 1397. In that year, Sigismund decreed that all actions involving ‘violent trespass, looting, robbery, illegal seizure of estates and other similar acts’ should be moved before the sedria. The sedria, having established proof by means of an inquisition, should resolve the action and assign compensation. Only if one of the parties was dissatisfied with the sedria’s verdict might the case be moved to the curia. As the editors of the most recent compendium of Hungary’s medieval laws suggest, the 1397 decree had the consequence of rendering the chancellery an institution of appellate jurisdiction.32 The inquisitorial powers of the sedria were further expanded in 1435 with respect to damages done by noblemen on their way to war. Following only the most basic of enquiries, the sedria was entitled to notify the curia of the injuries sustained, after which and without any additional proof being required, it was permitted to impose an award of compensation.33 Throughout the fourteenth century, the congregatio generalis constituted the supreme judicial forum at the level of the county. Its sessions were normally presided over by the palatine or, exceptionally, by another ordinary or court dignitary appointed ad hoc by the ruler. On account of the number of counties which the palatine was expected to visit and the need to hold the assembly in the open air and thus in sunny weather, congregationes usually met only once every three or four years. All the nobles of the county were expected to attend the congregatio’s deliberations and, until the later fifteenth century, they were often joined there by the better-off peasants and non-noble freeholders. The congregatio provided the occasion for the solemn denunciation Page 167 of notorious malefactors and for the initiation of legal actions of trespass and assault. Meetings of the county congregatio were opened by the election of office-holders and the empanelling of the 12-man jury which collectively pronounced upon the character and circumstances both of those who were declared to be malefactors and of those who were otherwise arraigned before the assembly. Sessions were closed, usually 10 days to a fortnight later, by publication under the palatine’s seal of the names of those outlawed. Cases which could not be concluded during the session were either moved to the curia or might be transferred to the congregatio of the next county which the palatine was due to hold. Transferrals of the second type were usually made when parties involved in a dispute over property requested time to find the charters attesting to their rights of possession.34 Largely on account of the additional duties attaching to his office, the palatine became increasingly sedentary during the last decades of the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, assemblies of the nobility were considered too valuable a means of enquiry and enforcement as to be allowed to fall into disuse. As early as the 1360s, the king had instructed certain counties to hold extraordinary assemblies for special purposes and had delegated a principal royal officer to supervise the proceedings.35 From the early years of the fifteenth century the king frequently instructed counties to hold extraordinary congregationes for the purpose of ascertaining the facts of a case, but in these cases without the supervision of an ordinary and under the presidency only of the vice-ispán and szolgabirák. Inquisitions held in this fashion, per modum congregationis proclamatae, were normally used in particularly violent cases of trespass and might only be initiated through a preliminary petition to the curia (which would for its part despatch litterae querimoniales to the sedria requiring an inquisition per modum to be called).36 Unlike the congregationes over which the palatine had formerly presided, extraordinary meetings were not attended by the entire nobility of the county but only by those neighbours and abutters whose evidence touched upon the case in hand. Once having determined the justice of a claim for assault and heard the oaths of the respective parties to the action, the sedria was expected to arrive at a judgement and to ensure restitution of the property involved. The case was then automatically referred to the curia for a final and binding verdict. Despite Matthias’s attempts to restrict the per modum inquisition and to replace it, in the interests of justice, by the ‘short summons’ (brevis) to the chancellery and by permanent sessions of the Page 168 central courts, extraordinary assemblies continued to be held in the Jagellon period.37 Both the inquisition undertaken by petition to the sedria and the per modum inquisition, which was separately initiated through a petition to the curia, conveyed a judicial authority on the county court which far exceeded its original competence. Instead of just dealing with the crimes of peasants and with other minor actions, the sedria was now vested with a de facto authority which extended to all cases of violent trespass, including those perpetrated by and upon the great lords of the county. This extension of the county court’s authority was accompanied by a succession of other instructions which further extended its powers. In 1405, the sedria was given appellate jurisdiction over cases proceeding out of seigneurial courts.38 Thirty years later, it was permitted to seize the properties of those who caused damages on their way to battle, and, subsequently, to occupy in collaboration with the regent the castles of robbers.39 During the intervening period, representatives of the county were increasingly involved with the collection of the lucrum camerae and other subsidies, including the right, as ceded in 1411, to distrain the property of defaulters.40 Officers of the crown found it likewise expedient to delegate authority to individual county courts, requesting them to bring to order certain property cases.41 The impression given by the laws of the realm is that the competence of the counties was extended by a cession of royal powers. It is evident, however, that the crown often just authorized measures which were already practised and that, moreover, the counties often assumed their powers rather than being granted them. Regulation of the per modum inquisition thus took place only several decades after the first use of this instrument. Even more strikingly, the de facto authority of the county in smaller property disputes, which was pretty much established by the early years of the fifteenth century, was never conceded in royal legislation. It is, furthermore, plain that individual counties often took the lead in requesting the ruler to expand their judicial authority. In several famous examples from the middle of the fifteenth century, representatives of counties petitioned the king to permit them to pursue and bring to justice members of the ‘royal party’ who threatened their homes and livelihood. In the early 1440s, in particular, the nobles of Somogy county asked King Wladislas to sanction retrospectively the demand for compensation of 1800 florins which they had previously laid upon the baron, Ders Szerdahelyi, for his attack on the lands of a local nobleman. When Ders refused to pay the compensation, the county authorized its ispáns and other nobles to occupy Page 169 Szerdahelyi’s estates. Once again, royal consent to this action was only obtained after the event. It would additionally seem that one of the methods employed by the nobles of Somogy, more specifically, their enlistment of four nobles to act as bailiffs in the confiscation, was subsequently adopted in royal legislation published shortly afterwards in 1444. In token of the enhanced confiscatory powers of the county, the number of county bailiffs was extended in the 1480s to up to a dozen.42 As these examples suggest, the considerable growth in the power of the counties during the course of the fifteenth century was not obtained at the expense of the ‘public’ rights of the crown. Certainly, the authority of the county was enhanced by new procedures which often had their origin in innovations made by the counties themselves, particularly as we have seen in respect of property actions and of cases of violent trespass. Usually, however, these measures received royal support or retrospective sanction, since they were recognized as contributing to the maintenance of order in the Hungarian countryside. In this regard, crown and county were not competitors, but institutions whose aims and interests largely coincided. 10.3. The counties and the regnum The enhanced authority of the counties was accompanied both by their closer corporate definition and by their increased role within the government of the realm. Ever since the thirteenth century, each of the county communities of the realm was considered to constitute a universitas. As such the counties might sue in law and might live by their own customs. Certainly, the counties never constituted corporations in a juristic sense. Their principal official was a royal appointee and the counties were never completely selfsufficient in respect of the power to regulate their membership. We may, nevertheless, observe within the counties several trends towards greater corporate self-sufficiency. In the first instance, the county communities acquired the character of an association of persons of equal status. During the fourteenth century, assemblies of the county had included nonnoble landowners, who actively participated in its proceedings. After the first decades of the fifteenth century, however, references to county assemblies being attended by both nobles and homines cuiusvis status et conditionis become less and less frequent.43 During this century, the county became almost exclusively an institution of the nobility. Nevertheless, while the county was frequently entrusted with the right Page 170 of determining the status of those who claimed noble rank, the right to ennoblement remained a royal prerogative. Like the office of ispán, the composition of the community lay beyond the community’s own power of regulation. For most of the Middle Ages, the principal executive officer within the county was also appointed without reference to the community of the nobility. The vice-ispán, who presided over the sedria, was, as we have seen, normally selected by the ispán from the number of his own familiares. Nevertheless, we may in respect of the vice-ispan’s office note some important changes occurring at the close of the fifteenth century which indicate the growing corporate strength of the county community. In the royal legislation of 1486 and 1492 it was thus laid down first that the vice-ispán should be drawn from the county over the affairs of which he presided, and secondly that he should be appointed out of the ranks of the leading nobles of the county. Shortly afterwards, we have the earliest indication that nobles of counties considered the office of vice-ispán to be elective in the same way as the office of szolgabiró. In 1498, therefore, the nobles of Eger county rejected the vice-ispán chosen by their ispán, the bishop of Eger, and demanded the right to appoint their own. The nobles failed in this attempt. Nevertheless, in 1504, it was expressly conceded in royal legislation that henceforward the vice-ispán should be elected in every county and that he could not be imposed ‘without the consent and will of the nobles of the county’. In practice, it seems that most nobles and ispáns arrived at a compromise in matters of selection, with one of either side submitting a list of suitable candidates from which the other made a final choice.44 The consolidation of the noble county community and its strengthened corporate identity manifested itself in terms of the county’s capacity for representation. The right of the nobility to send two or three of its members from each county to treat with the king had been first laid in 1267.45 Over the following decades, we have some slight evidence that the king was attended on important legislative occasions by ordinary noblemen, although we have no knowledge as to how these were chosen.46 During the Angevin period, however, representatives of the county nobility played no obvious part in those gatherings at which important legislative acts were discussed and promulgated. The 1351 decree, which reissued the Golden Bull of 1222, thus mentioned the king having been petitioned by the cetus et universitatis ydemptitas of barons, princes and nobles of the kingdom, but it is altogether improbable that the last of these were elected. Page 171 In the interregnum following the death of Louis I and during the subsequent reign of Sigismund, representatives of the counties were occasionally summoned to attend lawmaking (or, more properly, law-finding) sessions with the royal council. In 1385, Queen Mary ordered four of the potiores nobiles from every county to discuss ways of remedying disorders within the kingdom.47 In 1397, Sigismund instructed each county to send four nobles to advise him on military measures against the Turks. On this occasion, the ruler specified that the noblemen so chosen should have full plenipotentiary powers. Nevertheless, such occasions as these were infrequent.48 Generally, the nobles of the counties were only summoned to attend the king in matters of extreme urgency. When, therefore, in 1405 Sigismund sought to record and reform the customary laws of the kingdom, he took advice only of the prelates, barons and principal lords of the realm. Throughout Sigismund’s reign, therefore, the premier legislative body within the kingdom remained the council, at the deliberations of which the nobles of the counties enjoyed only an intermittent and very much ad hoc right of participation.49 The crises following Sigismund’s death in 1437 provided the occasion for the county nobility to play a more regular role in the kingdom’s diets, supplanting by degrees the authority of the royal council of barons. During the reigns of Wladislas I and Ladislas V, there was scarcely a year in which the representatives of the counties were not called to give counsel and aid. By the close of the 1450s, it had become generally accepted that the advice of the county nobility was required in all matters affecting extraordinary taxation. Although Matthias occasionally levied taxes without the nobility’s consent, and reformed the institutions both of the lucrum and of the border-tariff without any reference to the diet, the nobility continued to make strong advances during his reign. They were summoned through their representatives on an almost annual basis to attend the diet, and sometimes were even instructed to gather individually at mass meetings. Within less than a decade of Matthias’s death, the nobility had seized places through their elected representatives both in the central courts of the curia and, more importantly, within the royal council itself.50 These spectacular gains owed little to the common nobility’s inherent strength and capacity for organization. They were rendered possible by political circumstances which made it advantageous for the various factions to enlist the county nobles to their side. With their support and by an appeal to their interests, programmes could be Page 172 pushed through the diet and sanction obtained for decisions. The articles drawn up at the 1446 diet agreeing to the appointment of Hunyadi as regent were not, therefore, and as we now know, the outcome of the nobles’ own discussions but were instead previously drawn up by members of Hunyadi’s party and then presented to the diet for ratification.51 Moreover, in the raw and violent politics of the period, the assembled nobles could be manipulated as a highly visible and voluble counterweight to baronial ambitions. As János Bak has written with regard to the critical period of the 1440s and 1450s: ‘Power was in the hands either of the barons or of the king, both of whom sought to mobilize the county nobility to support either their particular interests or the interests of the crown and central authority, and it all depended upon which party won to its side the mass of their politically unsophisticated representatives’.52 For all the limitations attending the common nobility’s entry into political life, the vocabulary of authority began to be appropriated to describe its role within the kingdom. In the fourteenth century, the barons and prelates had alone been considered members of the kingdom. Starting in the 1440s, however, and thus simultaneously with the county nobility’s capture of the right to attend the diet, common noblemen also began to be considered membra regni. Charters of ennoblement thus acknowledged the beneficiary’s assumption as a member of the kingdom (in membrum huius regni nostri assumendo).53 Not only, however, were the common nobles now perceived as membra regni, but they were also seen as the regnum itself. In 1442, therefore, their leaders were recorded as representing the communitas regni, and thereafter it became commonplace in royal letters to contrast the prelates and barons with the tota communitate nunc hoc regnum … representante.54 It was therefore only with the attendance of the representatives of the common nobility at the diet that the totum regnum or universum regnum was considered to be fully constituted.55 The association of nobility with regnum acquired a wide circulation. Indeed, by the middle years of the century, the term ország had passed into common parlance as a way of describing the common nobility. From this it was but a short step to acknowledging the regnum of the nobility as a subject of right which stood in a dualistic relationship to the rex. This construction, which, despite Werbőczy’s organology, would be teased out over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was already apparent in the 1486 Articles on the Palatine. According to this measure, the palatine had as one of his duties to Page 173 intercede between the rex and the regnum in the event of any discord or disagreement arising between them.56 Nevertheless, while regnum might confront rex, the authority of the first was by no means self-generating. Behind the regnum stood the counties, and it was on the powers which they delegated to their deputies (nuncii) that the authority of the regnum was founded. The agents of the county nobility attended the diets, therefore, both as representatives of the regnum and as deputies who stood in persona huius comitatus. On occasions, as for instance in 1439, 1444 and 1527, the names and even the seals of the individual deputies were appended to the privilege which was issued at the close of their assembly, together with a record of the counties which had sent them.57 At other times, a note was made of the names or number of counties which sent deputies to the diet, or a generic formula was used: nobiles de unocunque comitatu quatuor electi cum plena facultate and so on.58 The foundation of the regnum’s authority on the precedent rights of the counties was symbolized by the meetings of the counties which preceded the diet. On these occasions, the elected deputies consulted with their fellow nobles with the intention that they ‘be fully informed as to their opinions and instructions’ (de … opinionibus et totali intentione eorum plene informatos). By no later than the sixteenth century, the outcome of these discussions yielded a mandatum imperativum which was binding on the deputy.59 In short, and as was once remarked of the English parliament, the authority of the Hungarian diet rested on its twofold character ‘as an assembly of estates and a concentration of local communities’ (Bishop Stubbs).60 Behind the appeals to the regnum and to the liberties of the nobility lay the counties. The powers which they had gathered over the course of the fifteenth century and the corporate rights which they had secured, gave the regnum of the nobility its political, ideological and moral strength. As Hungary’s Habsburg rulers would shortly discover, well might they browbeat the diet into submission, but to break the retained and antecedent powers of the counties was a quite different matter. 10.4. The counties and familiaritas Whether gathered in the counties or in the community of the realm, the estates of the Hungarian kingdom were intersected by bonds of familiaritas. The extent to which these personal bonds compromised Page 174 collective institutions of justice and government is, however, hard to establish. Likewise, it is difficult to determine whether a sense of community really existed among the nobility in the individual counties, or whether their collective actions were motivated by the few lords who controlled the familial apparatus in the countryside. The same lack of clarity attaches to the community of the regnum. Was this a genuine institution of the common nobility, led by its freely chosen representatives, or was its membership selected and manipulated by the leading lords of the realm? Perhaps these questions are ill set, given that ‘private’ bonds between men were so comprehensively woven into ‘public’ relationships of power. Nevertheless, there is some good evidence to suggest that the local nobilities were guided by a strong sense of communal identity and that, moreover, their institutions operated largely unconstrained by the network of familial relations. Until the close of the Middle Ages, the vice-ispán, who was also the principal officer of the law in the Hungarian county, was an appointee of the ispán and was usually chosen from out of the ranks of his familiares. The ispán, who was often also a major landowner in the county, thus effectively controlled the presidency of the sedria. The benefits accruing from this appointment are suggested by the reluctance with which powerful landowners relinquished their hold on the office even after 1504. The vice-ispán did not, however, constitute the sedria. He was assisted by noble assessors and, more particularly, by the elected szolgabirák. Certainly, in a few counties these may have been the placemen of the ispán or vice-ispán. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that at one point in the 1340s the szolgabirák of Zala county were actually the famuli of the vice-ispán.61 Nevertheless, if the rapid turn-over of vice-ispáns reflects their situation as nominees and familiares of the ispán, then the long periods in which individual szolgabirák held office suggests that the terms of their appointment were entirely different. In Zala county, Dionysius Donátfalvi held office throughout the tumultuous decade after 1445, when the office of ispán changed at least six times and the sets of vice-ispáns (usually several were appointed to hold office simultaneously) rotated with still greater speed. George Zágorhidi Gömbös likewise held office from 1497 through to 1510, and his kinsman Blaise from 1502 to 1507. Individual families regularly contributed members to the ranks of szolgabirák. In Zala county, the men of the Köveskáli kindred served as szolgabirák on at least five occasions between 1410 and 1485.62 Similar continuities are evident with regard to appointments as bailiffs – those nobles of the county who led inquisitions, enforced Page 175 judgements and undertook installations to properties. In Bereg county, seven members of the Gecsei kindred discharged duties as bailiffs on 14 occasions between 1383 and 1561, and 15 members of the Hétei on 25 occasions between 1435 and 1594.63 Similar continuities, although over decades rather than over centuries, may be demonstrated in Temes and Krassó counties. Certainly, bailiffs acting as homines regii were royal appointments who were nominated in the letters sent out by the curia to initiate proceedings in the counties. Besides these royal bailiffs were the appointed bailiffs of the county, the socalled homines communes, who performed an analogous role in inquisitions and enforcements. The homines communes appear like the szolgabirák and royal bailiffs to have held office over long periods. In Krassó county, successive members of the Chakan family acted as homines communes at inquisitions from 1375 to 1437. Members of other kindreds might over generations alternate between serving as royal bailiffs and as county bailiffs.64 Examples such as these do not prove that the institutions of the county were uninfluenced by relations of familiaritas. The strong continuity of personnel does, however, suggest that the counties retained a cadre of willing officers who over generations conceived of service as a duty. The same impression attaches to the delivery of justice. Had familiaritas damaged ‘public’ institutions in the way historians allege, then we might expect to see frequent complaints to the curia with regard to judicial malpractice. In fact, petitions on grounds of iudex suspectus are rare. There is, moreover, much to suggest that the nobility retained a high degree of confidence in the workings of justice even on the most unexpected occasions. Two examples from Krassó county may be cited as evidence in this respect. In 1406, Stephen Remethei of the Himfi kindred took a case for non-payment of goods to the vice-ispáns and szolgabirák of the county. The defendants were in this case the two vice-ispáns themselves. Stephen swore an oath with respect to the sum which he was owed and the vice-ispáns promptly paid up.65 Twenty years later, Stephen’s greatnephews, Ladislas and Emeric, complained on two separate occasions before the szolgabirák of the county that the deputies and familiares of the vice-ispán (who was currently abroad on campaign) had first seized some cattle and then raided their estate.66 Although we do not know the outcome of the case, it is scarcely credible that the plaintiffs would have pursued the matter before the county had they believed the szolgabirák to be in the pocket either of the vice-ispán or of his most trusted familiares. Page 176 In a recent article András Kubinyi has indicated that the strengths of the county communities differed from place to place. Where the county was dominated by a few large landowners these could usually impress their will and force through their own nominee as vice-ispán. The Perényi kindred, which owned wide swathes of Ugocsa county, was thus in the early sixteenth century able to impose its own vice-ispán despite the objections of the local nobles. At around the same time, Stephen Zápolyai, palatine, ispán and a major landowner in Zemplén county, managed to ensure the appointment of George Csanádi as vice-ispán, even though he was not of the county and may indeed not have been a nobleman at all. In Szabolcs county, by contrast, where there were no great landowners, the local nobility dominated the vice-ispán’s office, with individual vice-ispáns retaining office over long periods despite changes of ispán.67 A similar pattern is discernible with regard to elections to the diet. In counties where there were few large landowners, as in Szabolcs, the representatives sent to the diet were invariably lesser men, holding at best only a few villages. We know virtually nothing about some, like Nicolas Gerfasi of Keve county or Andrew Endrédi of Szatmár, both of whom attended the 1439 diet.68 By contrast, in counties where large landowners predominated, then members of their families were frequently selected as representatives. In 1439, therefore, Valkó county, the seat of major landowners like the Garai, Maróti and Kórógyi, sent Nicholas Liszkói, who although he held only a few villages of his own, was nevertheless related to the Maróti.69 In 1518, Bihar county sent three representatives, all of whom were large landowners and two of whose families had held right of execution on their estates for over a century.70 One may, however, notice that even in those counties where great estates predominated, members of the common nobility were often selected side by side with those others who were quite clearly representative of the wealthier section of the community. In Csanád county in 1518, besides members of the Telegdi and Csák families, two other nobles were selected, both of whom we know little.71 Pozsega county in 1439 likewise sent a member of the leading Beriszló family and an otherwise insignificant litteratus. In the same year, Temes county sent Peter of Ozlár, a scion of the middling Majósi family, and the obscure John Ravaszdi. Even in the counties where large landowners constituted a dominant element, one therefore has the impression of a negotiation whereby greater and lesser men traded places at the diet.72 A similar pattern may be discerned in elections to the royal council. In Page 177 the early sixteenth century these tended to yield a comparable mixture of prominent nobles having castles of their own, the familiares of great lords, and others about whom little is known except that they do not seem to have been the dependents of others.73 The case for familiaritas converting institutions into private instruments of power and subverting the county community is, therefore, not proven. The county continued to dispense justice with the apparent confidence of litigants, and to appoint its own officers who were often drawn over generations from the same kindreds. Even in counties where powerful landowners predominated, the common nobility were not excluded from selecting their own representatives to attend the diets. In short, we may have to acknowledge that familiaritas had its limitations and that its influence on Hungarian institutions was neither allpervasive nor completely corrosive. Indeed, such limits are exactly what one would expect. As Erik Fügedi has shown, the Hungarian nobleman existed simultaneously in a number of different relationships. He had his immediate family and, beyond that, an extended network of cousins who might lend support in political and other projects.74 In times of great stress, nobles and others might build their own associations for mutual support, as most notably in Transylvania where in 1437 a communitas nobilium was constituted which pitted itself against a communitas regnicolarum of peasants.75 Just as important, however, were the bonds of solidarity which one noble felt towards another. By the sixteenth century, Hungarian nobles commonly addressed one another as fratres and amici and thus as the equivalent of the Polish ponowie bracia.76 Doubtless, periodic attendance at the diet and in warfare heightened the nobles’ apprehension of belonging to an estate which embraced the whole kingdom. The principal object of the nobleman’s affection was, however, the local community in which he had his being. His noble and fellow neighbours joined with him at meetings of the congregatio and sedria. They vouched for him at oath-takings and affirmed his rights at inquisitions. If he had no charter to prove it, they might be called upon to uphold his claim to noble status. It was, likewise, to his fellows that the nobleman turned when beset by litigation. Whatever the benefits of familiaritas to the oppressed nobleman, he could not (even in Slavonia!) prevail upon his lord to burn down the sedria’s tables and to bully the szolgabirák. Instead he asked his friends and neighbours to stand by him, and either in concert or separately to help him in his suits. Such lists of friends commonly included not only other landholders in the county and a litteratus or two, but even old adversaries who set aside their scores to help a fellow in need.77 Page 178 The history of the Hungarian nobility cannot be written solely in terms of familiaritas and of ‘feudal’ relations. In this respect, the advice of one historian with regard to medieval England and France is instructive: Lordship was never a magnate monopoly; it was delegated, appropriated, mediatized and diffused throughout a society far more complex in its workings than the starkly contractual terms of an indenture of retainer suggest. Bastard feudalism was no more an affair of ‘‘totalitarian” subordination of the man to the lord than feudalism itself; on examination, the relationship between lord and man that it implies turns out to be as much one of equality as dependence. For all their wealth and influence, the magnates of later medieval England maintained only a limited control over their men for, like the knights of the Mâconnais, the gentry possessed other resources, other patrons, other refuge.78 In medieval Hungary, that other resource and refuge was preeminently the noble community of the county. Page 179 Conclusion As we saw in the last chapter, Hungarian noble society was bound together by horizontal and associative bonds which manifested themselves in the county administration and in the estate or regnum of the nobility. Each of the noble communities of the realm was understood to possess a quasi-corporate character which permitted it to administer its own justice and to appoint its own deputies. The noble communities of the realm were, however, intersected by vertical bonds of familiaritas. These hierarchical relations were cemented by notions of fidelitas, were promoted to meet the military needs of the kingdom, and were lubricated by royal grants of honores and, later on, by direct subsidies. Both familiaritas and the corporate institutions of the nobility partly emerged out of the decline of older forms of social organization. The decay of the kindred, even as a legal institution, may have spurred the development of new forms of collective solidarity and protection. Instead of relying on cousins and kinsmen, Hungarian nobles increasingly sought safety in the county community and in the service of greater lords. The remoteness of the royal household, wherein the Hungarian nobles had first sought their protection, hastened this development. The Hungarian nobility had its origins in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the kings of Hungary appointed many castle-warriors and freemen as royal servientes. In some cases, the servientes were given lands; in others they were simply confirmed in the lands which they already occupied. At this point, the distinguishing feature of the nobleman was not so much his land as the immediate relationship between himself and the ruler, which promoted him to membership of the king’s fictive household. Throughout the Middle Ages, the direct and personal bond which putatively existed between king and Page 180 servant continued to define the nobleman’s status. Thus, if the terms of the nobleman’s service were specified and located in the land which he possessed, then he could not be a true noble. As we have seen, nobles who held their estates on defined terms – as was the case with praediales, filii iobagionum, lancers and knezes – lacked full nobility. By the fourteenth century, it was considered that the mark of the nobleman was that he held land which originated in a royal donation and that the possession of this property exemplified the fidelity which either he or his ancestors had displayed in the royal service. During the course of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the notion of service to the ruler was increasingly understood in terms of the provision of troops and tax revenue. A differentiation consequently began to occur within the ranks of the nobles of the kingdom. A hereditary class of barons, those with sufficient resources to field banderia, was pressed into existence. Lower down the social hierarchy, the numerous noblemen who had no peasants of their own suffered a loss of status even to the extent of becoming liable to taxation. At the close of the fifteenth century, the nobleman was no longer, therefore, just the owner of an estate but one who had peasants and who was, in the language of the time, a possessionatus. By the early sixteenth century, these ‘true’ nobles made up about one per cent of Hungary’s population. Precisely because the Hungarian nobleman by definition held his land of the king, so a hierarchical structure of tenure was rendered almost impossible. Certainly, on occasion lands were given by lords to familiares, with the lord retaining rights to the property. Such cases were not, however, frequent. It was more usual for lords to grant their familiares the fruits of the offices which they themselves held, and to apportion to their followers honores which they had received from the king. The temporary cession of subordinate offices and functions might on occasion be accompanied by acts suggestive of homage or by the publication of contracts. The majority of grants of this type do not, however, seem to have been accompanied by any such formal expressions but were comprehended instead in custom. Moreover, offices and honores were frequently held for only brief periods by familiares, some of whom demonstrated over their careers no great sense of allegiance to their lords. Others, by contrast, remained loyal even unto death. While we may detect, therefore, a hierarchy of service in medieval Hungary, we cannot convincingly demonstrate either that it affected tenurial relations on the land or that this hierarchy was possessed of the same sort of stability which fief-holding in land promoted.1 In this Page 181 sense, while Hungary may have been ‘feudal’ in respect of its manorial institutions and of its ‘mode of production’, it did not know the association of the benefice with the vassal. It did not, therefore, have feudal law. Feudal law was, however, the work of feudal lawyers. In this respect, the absence of feudal law in Hungary may also reflect the kingdom’s relative insulation from civilian texts and from the lawyerly ‘law of fiefs’ which so often accompanied these in the course of their transmission. As we have seen, the loca credibilia, the work of which so profoundly affected the terms under which land was held and transferred in Hungary, were vehicles of canonical rather than of civilian influence. Such Roman law terms as they employed were received second-hand and mediated through the canons of the church. Had the notaries of the loca credibilia and the royal chancellery known their Lombard Libri feudorum, then they might have set in motion practices whereby familiares came to understand their lands to be held from their lords in token of that fidelity which they otherwise owed. But they did not, and as a consequence patterns of development which affected parts of western Christendom were not easily reproduced in Hungary. Feudal lawyers were not, however, acting in an academic void. As Susan Reynolds has written: ‘A good many references to fiefs in the later Middle Ages often reflect lawyer’s law rather than the norms and values of lay society at large, but in so far as they reflect wider values it seems reasonable to start from the assumption that what they reflected were the values of the time.’2 Of the values which academic lawyers brought together in order to construct a ‘scheme of tenures’, were such notions as fidelity, hierarchy, mutual commitment, aid and counsel. As we have seen, medieval Hungary lacked none of these ideas. Moreover, by its exposure to canon law, Hungary may even have had a more sophisticated appreciation of the idea of the corporation than some of its neighbours: hence the vitality of its counties and regnum. What Hungary did not experience was the integration of these notions in a single legal and intellectual scheme. This failure originated partly in the significance which attached early on to property held directly of the king. It also arose, however, out of Hungary’s limited acquaintance with civilian texts which prevented the subsequent reorganization of noble landholding in terms of an academic law of fiefs. By concentrating, however, on Hungary’s supposed failure to ‘reify’ familiaritas through fiefholding we will surely miss those other features which made the Hungarian nobles so little distinguishable from Page 182 their western counterparts. In their institutions of lordship and service, in their belief in a mutuality of obligations, and by their membership of both the community of the county and the community of the realm, the Hungarian nobility lived in much the same setting and by much the same rules as other European nobilities. Such differences as existed were ones of degree, not of kind. Moreover, the absence of a ladder of service based upon landholding does not mean that the Hungarian nobility were ignorant of the principles of contract or of the concept of legal reciprocity or, as our previous study of office-holding suggests, of the notion of a hierarchy of interlocking obligations. In these respects, the failure to reify relationships through the institution of the fief indicates only that land and service had not been so conceptualized and conjoined in Hungary as to yield a way of thus organizing some of the obligations of noblemen. It signifies, therefore, very little. In short, if Hungary did follow a special road in the modern period, we should seek its starting place somewhere other than in the history of noble landholding. Page 183 Notes Introduction Werbőczy’s contention with regard to the rewards due to scholars was not just wishful 1thinking, for Sigismund had previously conceded that inter legum tractatores digne meruit collocari: ZsO, ii/2, no 5962. 2Tripartitum, I: 5–6. 3Tripartitum, I: 10; I: 14; I: 22. 4Ibid., I: 3. With reference to Tripartitum I: 3–4, in which the doctrine of the Holy Crown is most keenly expressed, Lászlo Péter writes, ‘This passage appears to imply a corporate concept of the Crown – as one that embraced the King and the nobles. However, the context in which Werbőczi put forward the thesis was quite clearly not that of political rights but the system of land donation and that of the nobles’ privileges. His intention was to state that all nobles, the poor and the wealthy alike, enjoyed exactly the same rights 5over their landed property because all land was in theory the effluence of royal grace, in other words held of the Holy Crown’, Lászlo Péter, The Antecedents of the 19th Century Hungarian State Concept: A Historical Analysis. The Background and Creation of the Doctrine of the Holy Crown, unpublished Oxford DPhil thesis, 1965, p. 14. Professor Péter has recently reminded me that, of the more than a hundred occasions upon which Werbőczy uses the concept of the crown, only one may be understood as signifying a corporation of the realm, the remainder being simply abstractions of royal majesty. In fact, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, property was frequently redonated 6 under new terms rather than awarded as a completely new gift. 7Tripartitum, I: 9. 8See thus Fred Cheyette in Speculum, 71, 1996, pp. 998–1006. György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date. Bónis always claimed that this work was published in 1948. It could not have been. It 9 was most probably published in Transylvania in 1944, a fact which Bónis later sought to conceal. The volume has an extensive French résumé. Otto Hintze, ‘Typologie der ständischen Verfassung des Abendlandes’, in Hintze, Staat und Verfassung. Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur allgemeinen Verfassungsgeschichte, (ed.) Gerhard Oestreich, Göttingen, 1970, pp. 120–39 (135–36); thus also, Jean Sedlar, 10East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, Seattle and London, 1994, pp. 71–3; Philip Longworth, The Making of Eastern Europe: From Prehistory to Postcommunism, 2nd edition, Basingstoke and London, 1997, p. 282. Heinrich Mitteis, The State in the Middle Ages: A Comparative Constitutional History of 11 Feudal Europe, (trans.) H.F. Orton, Amsterdam, Oxford and New Page 184 York, 1975, pp. 319–20, 39. The first German-language version of this important work was published in 1940. 12Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London and New York, 1979, p. 223. Jenő Szűcs, ‘The Three Historical Regions of Europe’, Acta Historica (Budapest), 29, 13 1983, pp. 131–84. István Bibó, Democracy, Revolution, Self-determination: Selected Writings, (ed.) Károly Nagy, Boulder and New York, 1991, p. 36. The original text as given in A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága (Budapest, 1946, and many subsequent editions) reads ‘a 14 demokráciai előiskola’. Bibó’s claim recalls an old East European joke as related by Katherine Verdery: antique despot, summoned from his palace to confront a slave rebellion, espies posters proclaiming ‘Feudalism – the bright new future of mankind’! 15Szűcs, ‘The Three Historical Regions’, pp. 142–3, 153–4. 16Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, p. 226. 17George Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe, London and Cambridge, MA, 1993, p. 11. Lászlo Péter, ‘Miért éppen az Elbánál hasadt szét Európa?’ in (ed.) Béla Pomogáts, 18Párbeszéd Magyarországgal. Nyugat-európai és tengerentúli magyar tanulmányok, Budapest, 1991, pp. 225–52 (228–9, 235). Péter’s essay was first published in 1980. Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford, 19 1994, p. 478. Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 67–74, 474; Georges Duby, La société aux XIe et XIIe 20 siécles dans la région Mâconnaise, Paris, 1953, pp. 553–5, 559. 21Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals, p. 479. 22Szűcs, The Three Historical Regions’, pp. 153–4. Lexikon des Mittelalters, ii, Munich and Zurich, 1983, pp. 18–19; Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó and András Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, Budapest, 1998, p. 379; M.M. 23Fryde’s oft-cited population figures for Eastern Europe, given in J.C. Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Population, Philadelphia, 1958, p. 148, should be treated with caution. 24Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, 2 vols, Oxford, 1981, i, p. 115. Jenő Szűcs, ‘Theoretical Elements in Master Simon of Kéza’s Gesta Hungarorum (1282– 2585)’, Études Historiques Hongroises, 1975, pp. 243–7. 26For Scotland, see Lexikon, p. 45. 27Journal of the Society of Archivists, 11, 1990, pp. 102–3. The exceptions, as far as medieval Hungary is concerned, are German legal texts and charters composed in the principal cities and in parts of Transylvania. Croatia also had a 28 vernacular legal tradition, as surviving charters composed in Slavonic in Glagolitic script attest. Elemér Mályusz, ‘1526 előtti okleveleink forrásértéke’, Történelmi Szemle, 10, 1967, pp. 29 416–29 (417). In the Middle Ages, Croatia consisted only of the Dalmatian littoral and its immediate 30hinterland, and had its capital at Knin. Slavonia, which included both the Zagreb region and much of the territory between the Drava and Sava rivers, had its own administration. Page 185 1 The Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries There are two excellent English-language accounts of the Hungarian invasion: C.A. Macartney, The Magyars in the Ninth Century, Cambridge, 1930, and Gyula Kristó, Hungarian History in the Ninth Century, Szeged, 1996. Both of these largely rely on the 1 written histories of the period. Topography, nomenclature and archaeological evidence can, however, if read one way, be taken to indicate that the Hungarian invasion was preceded by a slow process of infiltration stretching back to the seventh century. Some Hungarian historians are currently keen to present the ninth-century Hungarians as a homogeneous people. Burial customs and finds, linguistic evidence and skull-types 2 suggest otherwise: see in particular the account of the Szentes Borbastanya cemetery in Pál Lipták, Avars and Ancient Hungarians, Budapest, 1983, pp. 133–5. Zsolt Bernert, ‘Palaeodemográfiai adatok a Kereki-Homokbánya temető népessegéről’, in 3(eds) György Pálfi, L. Gyula Farkas, Erika Molnár, Honfoglaló magyarság – Árpád-kori magyarság. Antropológia. Régészet. Történelem, Szeged, 1996, pp. 179–88 (183). About 300 words of Turkic origin remain in modern Hungarian: Antal Bartha, Hungarian 4 Society in the 9th and 10th Centuries, Budapest, 1975, p. 49. Iván Bertényi, Kis magyar cimertan, Budapest, 1983, pp. 66–7, 70. The lion was not the totem of the Árpáds as is sometimes maintained. In accordance with the maxim, ‘he who has no device, carries the lion’, its use by the Árpáds signifies instead the lack of alternative ancestral bearings available to the house: see Bertényi, op. cit., p. 74. One 5 possible totemic emblem is the griffin borne by the Tomaj family, which was of Pecheneg descent: József Csoma, A magyar nemzetségi czimerek, Budapest, 1904, pp. 165–6; for the turul bird, see Tibor Kardos, Középkori kultúra, középkori költészet. A magyar irodalom keletkezése, Budapest, no date, p. 22. The Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle. Chronica de Gestis Hungarorum, (ed.) Dezső 6 Dercsényi, Budapest, 1969, p. 98 (Ch. 26). Thus, with respect to the supposed tribal leaders of the conquest, Ond and Előd, and 7their descendants, the Baár-Kalán and Csák families, see János Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig, 3 vols, Budapest, 1900–1, i, pp. 141, 291–2. Árpád-kori történeti földrajz, i, pp. 42, 836. Few historians agree, however, on which families may be held to originate from tenth-century chieftains. At one extreme we have László Erdélyi, A magyar lovagkor nemzetségei 1200–1408, Budapest, 1932, who 8alleges 17 houses which reach back to the ninth and early tenth centuries, as well as one of Hunnic descent! On the other hand, János Karácsonyi, op.cit., is generally dismissive of all later claims to antiquity. Péter Váczy, ‘A királyság központi szervezete Szent István korában’, Szent István 9 Emlékkönyv, (ed.) Jusztinián Serédi, 3 vols, Budapest, 1938, ii, pp. 33–69 (38). 10Gyula Kristó, A xi. századi hercegség története Magyarországon, Budapest, 1974, p. 53. 11György Györffy, István király és műve, Budapest, 1977, p. 103. Page 186 12Gyula Kristó, A xi. századi hercegség, pp. 70–1. Embers were used in divination: M. Hoppál, ‘Traces of Shamanism in Hungarian Folk Beliefs’, in (ed.) M. Hoppál, Shamanism in Eurasia, Göttingen, pp. 430–49 (438–9); the 13continuity of shamanistic ritual in the modern period has recently been questioned by Éva Pócs, Between the Living and the Dead: A Perspective on Witches and Seers in the Early Modern Age, Budapest, 1999, pp. 14–16. Péter Hajdú, ‘Stilistisch motivierte und Gattungsbedingte Änderungen in den uralischen Sprachen’, Congressus Quintus Internationalis Fenno-Ugristorum Turku 20.–27. VIII 141980, vol i, (ed.) Osmo Ikola, Turku, 1980, pp. 57–85; see also Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton, 1964, pp. 96–9. I would like to thank Dr Daniel Abondolo for drawing my attention to this signal curiosity. 15Jolán Berrár, Női neveink 1400-ig, Budapest, 1952, pp. 60–2. On the apostolic title, see György Györffy, István király és műve, Budapest, 1977, p. 190; János Karácsonyi, Szent István király oklevelei és a Szilveszter Bulla, Budapest, 16 1891, pp. 178–216. St Stephen’s apostolic reputation was well established by the mideleventh century. György Bónis, ‘Szent István törvényeinek önállósága’, Századok, 72, 1938, pp. 433–87 17 (441–2). 18Monika Jánosi, Törvényalkotás a korai Árpád-korban, Szeged, 1996, pp. 67–96. Péter von Váczy, Die erste Epoche des ungarischen Königtums, Pécs, 1935, p. 26; thus, 19‘mortis multis inultis’, Blágay család oklevéltára, p. lv; J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, The LongHaired Kings, Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1982, pp. 122–3. 20DRMH, i, pp. 3, 8, 80 (Stephen I: 2, 33). 21Bónis, ‘Szent István törvényeinek önállósága’, pp. 457–8. The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa by Otto of Freising and his Continuator, Rahewin, 22(ed.) and (trans.) C.C. Mierow, New York, 1966, pp. 66–7 (Book i, Ch. 32). Otto’s description is, most probably, a twelfth-century trope. 23Ferenc Eckhart, A szentkorona-eszme története, Budapest, 1941, pp. 35–6. Estimates of landownership before the thirteenth century are almost entirely speculative. Kristó reckons that, in the twelfth century, the largest landowners held between 1 per cent and 15 per cent of the kingdom’s territory, and the church 10 per cent: 24Magyarország története. Az előzmények és magyar történet 1242-ig, (ed.) Antal Bartha, 2 vols, 2nd edition, Budapest, 1987, i, pp. 1034–5. Bálint Hóman and Gyula Szekfű’s Magyar történet, 5 vols, 3rd edition, Budapest, 1935–6, i, opposite p. 208, ambitiously maps the royal domain in the reign of St Stephen. 25See below, p. 172. Henrik Marczali, A magyar történet kútfőinek kézikönyve, Budapest, 1901, pp. 63–6; 26György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, undated, pp. 100–1. Péter Váczy, ‘A királyi serviensek és a patrimoniális királyság, Századok, 61–2, 1927–8, 27 pp. 243–90, 351–414 (281). 28Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, p. 76; see also Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. 63–4. 29Györffy, István király és műve, p. 246; DRMH, i, pp. 18, 87 (Ladislas III: 2). 30Marczali, A magyar történet, pp. 129–30. Page 187 DRMH, i, p. 27 (Koloman, 15); The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, p. 66; The 31 Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle, p. 117 (Ch. 96). 32Alice Mezey, Ják – Szent György templom, 1999, pp. 2–3. III. Béla emlékezete, (eds) Gyula Kristó, Ferenc Makk, Ernő Marosi, Budapest, 1971, p. 33 85. 34Váczy, Erste Epoche des ungarischen Königtums, p. 40. 35Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 152. Gusztáv Heckenast, Fejedelmi (királyi) szolgálónépek a korai Árpád-korban, Budapest, 36 1970, p. 73. 37Attila Zsoldos, ‘Visegrád vármegye és utódai’, Történelmi Szemle, 40, 1998, pp. 1–32. The point is well made by Gyula Pauler, ‘Szent István alkotmánya’, Századok, 13, 1879, 38 pp. 1–30, 101–25 (103–04) For this and much of what follows, see Gyula Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása, 39 Budapest, 1988, especially pp. 144–6. Gusztáv Heckenast, Fejedelmi (királyi) szolgálónépek, pp. 52–68; (ed.) Érvin Liptai, 40Magyarország hadtörténete, 2 vols, Budapest, 1984, i, p. 31; Christian Lübke, Arbeit und Wirtschaft im östlichen Osteuropa, Stuttgart, 1991. Of course, it might equally be the other way round – that the offices of the royal court 41imitated those already in use in ecclesiastical households: Bónis, Hűbériség es rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, p. 182. Ilona Bolla, ‘A közszabadság a xi.–xii. században (A liber és libertas fogalom az Árpád42 korban)’, Történelmi Szemle, 1973, pp. 1–29 (7). 43DRMH, i, p. 6 (Stephen I, 23–5). ‘servum vel servientem … qui domino suo sine ipsius voluntate alienari non potest’: 44DRMH, i, p. 66 (Synod of Esztergom: 69); grants of freedom were thus commonly associated with right of movement: PRT, i, pp. 598, 602. DRMH, i, pp. 35–6 (1222: 14, 19); the property of one castle-warrior, confiscated on account of treason in 1198, thus amounted to 13 mansiones (generally, mansio = aratrum = circa 35 hectares): RR, i, no 172. In the thirteenth century, we have 45 knowledge of 12 castle-warriors in Ung county owning altogether 150 aratra: see Attila Zsoldos, ‘Iobagio Castri Possessionem Habens. A várjobbágyi jogállás anyagi hátterének kérdései’, Századok, 128, 1994, pp. 254–72 (255–7). 46A Váradi Regestrum, (ed.) Kandra Kabos, Budapest, 1898, pp. 114, 270–2, 296, 486. Lászlo Erdélyi, ‘Árpádkori társadalomtörténetünk legkritikusabb kérdései, i’, Történeti 47 Szemle, 3, 1914, pp. 517–61 (556–8). Martyn Rady, Medieval Buda: A Study of Municipal Government and Jurisdiction in the 48 Kingdom of Hungary, Boulder and New York, 1985, pp. 14–15. For this and much of what follows, see László Erdélyi, ‘Árpádkori társadalomtörténetünk 49 legkritikusabb kérdései, iv’, Történeti Szemle, 4, 1915, pp. 334–52 (344–5). AUO, v, p. 515. The very full records from thirteenth and early fourteenth- century Slavonia, which preserved several older Hungarian institutions, are in this respect 50suggestive: Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicz, Orbász, Szana) 1244–1710, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912, pp. 18–19; Smičiklas, vi, pp. 25–8, 198–9, 242–3; ibid., x, pp. 283–4. Page 188 A Váradi Regestrum, pp. 270–2, 296, 304-6, 372, 426, 442; Zimmermann-Werner, i, pp. 51 7–9; RR, i, no. 108. Smičiklas, iv, pp. 597, 613–15; ibid., v, pp. 67–8, 602–3; Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. 52 18–20. Hansgerd Göckenjan, Hilfsvölker und Grenzwächter im mittelalterlichen Ungarn, Wiesbaden, 1972, pp. 230–2; Zoltán Körde, ‘A magyarországi besenyők az Árpád53 korban, Acta Historica (Szeged), 90, 1990, pp. 3–21 (16–19); the text of the 1279 Cuman privilege is given in DRMH, i, pp. 69–72. Károly Tagányi, ‘A földközösség története Magyarországon’, Magyar Gazdágtörténelmi 54 Szemle, 1, 1894, pp. 199–238 (223–9). Eszter Waldapfel, ‘Nemesi birtokjogunk kialakulása a középkorban’, Századok, 65, 1931, 55 pp. 136–67, 259–72 (137). 56László Erdélyi, A magyar lovagkor nemzetségei 1200–1408, Budapest, 1932, pp. 8, 20. Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok. A középkori magyar arisztocrácia fejlődése, 57 Budapest, 1986, pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 79; a possible earlier reference is to Zeri Nana de genere Kalán, Bishop of Pécs 581183–1218. The document is, however, undated: see Mór Wertner, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig, 2 vols, Temesvár, 1891–92, i, p. 81. 59Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. xlvi–xlviii. 60Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig, ii, pp. 109–11. The text, as reported by Thomas of Spalato, is given in Joannes Kukuljević, Jura Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, 2 vols, Zagreb, 1862, i, pp. 24–5; Damir Karbić, ‘Defining the Position of Croatia during the Restoration of Royal Power 1345–1361: An 61 Outline’, in (eds) Balázs Nagy and Marcell Sebők, … The Man of Many Devices who Wandered Full Many Ways … Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, New York and Budapest, 1999, pp. 520–6 (523). 62Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok, p. 116. Péter Váczy, ‘A Hűbériség szerepe Szent István királyságában’, Századok, 66, 1932, pp. 63 369–92 (374). DRMH, i, pp. 2, 80 (Stephen I, 1). The text follows verbatim, however, canon 6 of the 64847 Synod of Mainz and may have been inserted in the lawcode after Stephen’s death. 65DRMH, i, pp. 3, 6, 9 (Stephen I, 6, 26; ibid., II, 2). For this and what follows, see DRMH, i, p. 27 (Koloman, 20); Eszter Waldapfel, ‘Nemesi 66 birtokjogunk kialakulása a középkorban’, Századok, 65, 1931, pp. 143–4 As with iobagiones/liberi Sancti Regis, reference to St Stephen was a shorthand which 67 meant from time immemorial. 68DRMH, i, pp. 34, 42, 43, (1222: 4; 1267: 6, 9) 69Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London, 1974, p. 232. 2 Origins of the Hungarian Nobility 1DRMH, i, pp. 14, 18, 21 (Ladislas II: 11; ibid., III: 2; ibid., III: 12). 2Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 423 (dated 1124–31). Page 189 Erik Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok. A középkori magyar arisztokrácia fejlődése, 3Budapest, 1986, p. 53; Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, pp. 124–32. Gyula Kristó, ‘Keán, Szent István király ellenfele’, Acta Historica (Szeged), 98, 1993, pp. 15–28; Zoltán Körde, ‘A magyarországi besenyők az Árpád-korban’, Acta Historica (Szeged), 90, 1990, pp. 3–21 (4–5). DNA tests suggest a substantial Slavonic 4 admixture in even the oldest Hungarian families: see Kálmán Magyar’s essay, ‘Who is the Hungarian? What is the Hungarian?’, in (ed.) K. Magyar, A honfoglalás- és az Árpád-kor régészeti emlékei …, Kaposvár, 1993, pp. 167–73. Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 277 (the otherwise incomprehensible charter of 5 Nezdinus, dated 1090–93). Kornél Bakay, Castrum Kwszug. A kőszegi felsővár és a milléniumi kilátó, Kőszeg, 1996, pp. 69–109; Erik Fügedi, Vár és társadalom a 13–14. századi Magyarországon, 6 Budapest, 1977, pp. 147, 156; for other possible examples, see Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–1437), Budapest, 1986, p. 48. Eszter Waldapfel, ‘Nemesi birtokjogunk kialakulása a középkorban’, Századok, 65, 1931, 7 pp. 136–67, 259–72 (137). 8Mon. Strig., i, p. 324. Janos Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig, 3 vols, Budapest, 9 1900-1, i, p. 143. 10Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. lxxvi, lxxxiv–v. Erik Fügedi, ‘Some Characteristics of the Medieval Hungarian Noble Family’, Journal of 11 Family History, 7, 1982, pp. 27–39 (28). Martyn Rady, ‘Erik Fügedi and the Elefánthy kindred’, Slavonic and East European 12 Review, 77, 1999, pp. 295–308 (300–1). Magyarország története. Az előzmények és magyar történet 1242-ig, (ed.) Antal Bartha, 13 2 vols, 2nd edition, Budapest, 1987, ii, p. 1036. 14(ed.) Béla Köpeczi, Erdély története, 3 vols, Budapest, 1986, i, p. 288. 15Gyula Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása Magyarországon, Budapest, 1988, pp. 170–2. Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása Magyarországon, pp. 156–7; Árpád-kori történeti 16földrajz, iii, p. 396. Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon, Budapest, 1979, pp. 150–9; 17József Holub, Zala megye története a középkorban, Zala, 1929, p. 95; the earliest such grant is circa 1156: RR, i, no 85. RR, i, no 154: although the existing text of the Modrus donation is interpolated, its 18substance may be regarded as authentic; Frigyes Pesty, Az eltűnt régi vármegyék, 2 vols, Budapest, 1880, ii, pp. 225–9; Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás, pp. 153–5. Imre Hajnik, Az örökös főispánság a magyar alkotmánytörténetben, Budapest, 1888, pp. 19 3–5. James Ross Sweeney, ‘The Decretal Intellecto and the Hungarian Golden Bull of 1222’, 20 Album Elemér Mályusz, Brussels, 1976, pp. 88–97 (94–5). Elemér Mályusz, ‘A magyar köznemesség kialakulása’, Századok, 76, 1942, pp. 273– 21 305, 407–34 (284–5). Ilona Bolla, ‘A közszabadság a xi-xii században (A liber és libertas fogalam az Árpád22 korban’, Történelmi Szemle, 16, 1973, pp. 1–29 (16, 23). Page 190 23Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, p. 106. 24Mon. Strig., i, p. 316. 25Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, p. 107. 26Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, pp. 83, 87. Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. xxi, liii–iv, lxxxvii, xcix, c, cv, cviii, 7–8, 18–20, 53–4; Lajos 27 Thallóczy, Tanulmányok a bosnyák bánság kezdetéről, Budapest, 1905, p. 55. Jenő Szűcs, ‘A 1267. évi dekrétum és háttere. Szempontok a köznemesség 28 kialakulásához, Mályusz Elemér Emlékkönyv, 1984, pp. 341–94 (384–5). 29RR, i, no 104. For this and much of what follows, see Péter Váczy, ‘A királyi serviensek és a 30 patrimoniális királyság’, Századok, 61–2, 1927–8, pp. 242–90, 351–414. For reasons completely unknown to me, there are no references to servientes in the 31 early thirteenth-century Várad Register. 32Zimmermann-Werner, i, p. 7. Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, p. 16; Ágnes Kurcz, ‘Arenga und Narratio ungarischer 33Urkunden des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 70, 1962, pp. 323–54 (338–41). 34Mályusz, ‘A magyar köznemesség kialakulása’, p. 297. Péter Váczy, ‘A népfelség elvének magyar hirdetője a xiii. században. Kézai Simon mester’, Karolyi Árpád Emlaékkönyv, Budapest, 1933, pp 546–63. Kézai’s chronicle is 35now available in an English translation: Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum. Simon of Kéza, the Deeds of the Hungarians, edited and translated by László Veszprémy, Frank Schaer, with a study by Jenő Szűcs, Budapest and New York, 1999; Tripartitum, I: 3. 36Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, p.100; Szűcs, ‘A 1267. évi dekrétum’, pp. 341–5. 37Mályusz, ‘A magyar köznemesség kialakulása’, pp. 411–12. 38DRMH, i, p. 44 (1290: 3). 39Smičiklas, iii, pp. 375–6. 40L. Bernát Kumorovitz, A magyar pecséthasználat története a középkorban, Budapest, 1993 (first published, 1944), pp. 64–5. 41PRT, i, p. 757. 42Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, pp. 62–3. 43Szűcs, ‘ A 1267. évi dekrétum’, pp. 379–80. 44Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, p. 132. 45Szűcs, ‘A 1267. évi dekrétum’, p. 360. 46Elemér Mályusz, Turóc megye kialakulása, Budapest, 1922, pp. 144–6. 3 Territorial Lordship 1Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon, Budapest, 1979, p. 145. Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 45–56; János Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. 2 század közepéig, 3 vols, Budapest, 1900–1, i, pp. 361–71. 3Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 41–4, 90–9, 142–3, 178–80. 4AO, iv, pp. 333–4. 5Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 40, 430. 6Ibid., i, pp. 107, 114–15, 135. Page 191 Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998, 7 pp. 38–40. Pál Engel, ‘Birtok- és családtörténet (Kisérlet egy 14. századi rekonstrukcióra)’, in (ed.) 8Ferenc Glatz, Európa vonzásában. Emlékkonyv Kosáry Domokos 80. születésnapjára, Budapest, 1993, pp. 23–36 (24). To my knowledge, little research has been done on this. Marija Karbić in a most interesting essay on ‘Property and family in the nobilis communitas Campi Zagrabiensis’ 9indicates generational replacement at 20–25 years (forthcoming, [ed.] J.M. Bak, Nobility in Medieval Central Europe); for a later period see Erik Fügedi, A 15. századi magyar arisztokrácia mobilitása, Budapest, 1970, pp. 81, 208 (with English-language summary). Károly Tagányi, ‘A földközösség története Magyarországon’, Magyar 10 Gazdasagtörténelmi Szemle, 1, 1894, pp. 199–238 (203, 223–6, 232). Smičiklas, ix, pp. 316–17; see also, A Váradi Regestrum, (ed.) Kabos Kandra, Budapest, 11 1898, pp. 108–10. 12István Szabó, A középkori magyar falu, Budapest, 1969, pp. 73–4. 13The earliest example of such sabotage is from 1133: Smičiklas, ii, pp. 40–1. 14Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 558–9. 15Smičiklas, iii, p. 10. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 90, 113, 134; Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicza, 16Orbász és Szana vármegyék) 1244–1710, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912, p. 172; Smičiklas, x, p. 120. Dl. 3270; Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 462; on the baluanku, see AUO, viii, pp. 10, 17 174; ibid., xi, p. 547; Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 380. 18Szabó, A középkori magyar falu, pp. 110–20. 19AUO, i, 116, 118. 20Fügedi, The Elefánthy, p. 30. 21Szabó, A középkori magyar falu, p. 19. 22Oklevéltárl a Gróf Csáky család történetéhez 1229–1499, (ed.) László Bártfai Szabó, Budapest, 1919, pp. 10–11. Ferenc Maksay, ‘A sok nemes országa’, Mályusz Elemér Emlékkonyv, Budapest, 1984, 23 pp. 277–96 (287–92). 24Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon, pp. 146–7, 186. 25Ibid., pp. 144–59. Gyula Kristó, Csák Máté tartományúri hatalma, Budapest, 1973, pp. 158–9; Lexikon, pp. 26 41–2, 446–7 (entries by István Draskóczy and Gyula Kristó). Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–1437), Budapest, 1986, pp. 27 53–4. 28Ibid., p. 72. 29Ibid., p. 75; Árpád-kori történeti földrajz, i, p. 638. A Frangepán család oklevéltára, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Samu Barabás, Budapest, 1910, 30pp. 188, 201, 251; Vladimir Mažuranić, Prinosi za Hrvatski Pravno-Povjestni rječnik, v, Zagreb, 1914, p. 682. 31Gyula Kristó, A rozgonyi csata, Budapest, 1978, pp. 92–4. Gyula Kristó, Csák Máté tartományúri uradalom, pp. 201–2; Erik Fügedi, Vár és 32 társadalom a 13–14. századi Magyarországon, Budapest, 1977, pp. 134, 143–4. 33Fügedi, Castle and Society, p. 99. For what follows, see Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, p. 109; Árpád34 kori történeti földrajz, i, pp. 579–676, especially pp. 579–82. Page 192 35Karácsonyi, A magyar nemzetségek a xiv. század közepéig, ii, pp. 9, 91. 36DRMH, i, pp. 27, 30 (Koloman: 22, 50–5). 37Ibid., i, pp. 14, 21 (Ladislas II: 11; ibid., III: 12). 38Ibid., i, p. 30 (Koloman: 51). For the Freiung in general, see Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship: Structures of 39Governance in Medieval Austria, translated and with an introduction by Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton, Philadelphia, 1992, p. 211–13. 40Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, pp. 267–8 (Somogyvár, 1091). Péter Váczy, ‘Immunitas és Jurisdictio’, A Bécsi Magyar Történeti Intézet Évkönyve, 1, 41 1931, pp. 13–40 (14–16). 42Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 301. DRMH, i, p. 21 (Ladislas III: 12); Váczy, ‘Immunitas és Jurisdictio’, pp. 21–8; Antal 43Bartal, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis Regni Hungariae, 1901, p. 353 (noted in DRMH, i, p. 88). Váczy, ‘Immunitas és Jurisdictio’, p. 33; Biograd is sometimes referred to in Hungarian 44 literature as Dalmátfehérvár. Ambrus Pleidell, ‘Egyházi és világi immunitas’, A Bécsi Magyar Történeti Intézet 45 Évkönyve, 4, 1934, pp. 42–55 (45). 46Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, pp. 40, 119. 47DRMH, i, p. 49 (1290: 9); PRT, ii, p. 582. Martyn Rady, ‘The German Settlement in Central and Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages’, (eds) Robert Bartlett, Karen Schönwalder, The German Lands and Eastern 48 Europe: Essays on the History of their Social, Cultural and Political Relations, Basingstoke, London and New York, 1999, pp. 11–47 (39–40). 49Váczy, ‘Immunitas és Jurisdictio’, pp. 26–7. 50DRMH, i, p. 35 (1222: 5). DRMH, ii, pp. 6, 12 (1328; 1351: 18); in the early fifteenth century, a new attempt was 51made to restrict landowners’ judicial authority to lesser crimes: ZsO, ii/2, nos 6934, 7735. 52Szabó, A középkori magyar falu, pp. 91–4. For this and what follows, see György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar 53 jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, pp. 445–7. Ibid., pp. 445–6; but the presumption of nobility with landownership may be yet earlier, 54see Jenő Szűcs, ‘A 1267. évi dekrétum és háttere. Szempontok a köznemesség kialakulásához’, Mályusz Elemér Emlékkonyv, 1984, pp. 341–94 (355, 360). Zala vármegye története. Oklevéltár, (eds) Imre Nagy, Dezső Véghely, Gyula Nagy, 2 55vols, Budapest, 1886–90, i, pp. 430–1; Sopron vármegye története. Oklevéltár, (ed.) Imre Nagy, 2 vols, Budapest, 1889–91, i, pp. 164–5. 56DRMH, i, p. 45 (1290: 6). 57Magyar Történelmi Tár, 2, 1856, p. 200. 58DRMH, i, p. 27 (Koloman: 20). Eszter Waldapfel, ‘Nemesi birtokjogunk kialakulása a középkorban’, Századok, 65, 1931, 59 pp. 136–67, 259–72 (152). Erik Fügedi, ‘Verba volant … Oral Culture and Literacy among the Medieval Hungarian 60Nobility’, (ed.) J.M. Bak, Erik Fügedi. Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, London, 1986, Essay vi, pp. 1–25 (22). Page 193 Confiscation thus occurred on the grounds that the owners held the land sub taciturnitate et sine regia collatione: ZsO, i, nos 3098, 3378. Even estates held for a century were 61 liable to escheat: ibid., i, no 2062; ibid., ii/2, no 7793; see also, Gábor Gyula, A megyei intézmény alakulása és működése Nagy Lajos alatt, Budapest, 1908, pp. 125–6. 62Tripartitum, I: 3–4; see back, pp. 1–2. 4 Authentication V.H. Galbraith, Studies in the Public Records, 1948, p. 26, cited in M.T. Clanchy, From 1Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edition, Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1993, p. 4. István Hajnal, L’enseignement de l’écriture aux universités médiévales, 2nd edition, 2 Budapest, 1959, p. 20. 3Smičiklas, xiii, pp. 79–83. 4László Fejérpataky, Oklevelek II. István király korából, Budapest, 1895, p. 8. 5DRMH, i, p. 18 (Ladislas III: 2). B.L. Kumorovitz, ‘Die erste Epoche der ungarischen privatrechtlichen Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter (xi–xii. Jahrhundert)’, Études Historiques Hongroises, 2 vols, Budapest, 1960, 6 i, pp. 253–90 (261–8); László Fejérpataky, Kálmán király oklevelei, Budapest, 1892, pp. 3–5. András Kubinyi, ‘Királyi kancellária és udvari kápolna Magyarországon a xii. század 7közepén’, Levéltári Közlemények, 46, 1975, pp. 60–121; Fejérpataky, Oklevelek II. István király korából, p. 34. 8Frigyes Pesty, A perdöntő bajvivások története Magyarországon, Pest, 1867, p. 128. Franz Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte Ungarns im Mittelalter’, Mitteilungen des Instituts 9 für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband 9, 1915, pp. 395–558 (398). 10Imre Hajnik, Okirati bizonyitás a középkori magyar perjogban, Budapest, 1886, p. 6. 11Hajnal, L’enseignement de l’écriture, p. 198. Fejérpataky, Kálmán király oklevelei, p. 43; the village in which the witness lived was 12often also noted: A Váradi Regestrum, edited by Kabos Kandra, Budapest, 1898, pp. 122, 124, 126, 131, etc. For this and much of what follows, see Imre Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és 13perjog az Árpád- és a vegyes-házi királyok alatt, Budapest, 1899, pp. 154–9; Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, pp. 403–7. ‘The Code of Stephan Dušan’, art. 56 ([ed.] Malcom Burr, Slavonic and East European 14 Review, 28, 1949–50, pp. 198–217, 516–39 (209). 15PRT, i, p. 591. 16Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, p. 399. Thus the following twelfth-century inscription on a stone presently in the Budapest 17Historical Museum: Bela rex batizavit filium Adelehardi dedit terram cum patri suo ospide super hoc pristaldus helia comes anno vii. The psychological intimidation to which the pristaldus might be subjected is evident from 18 a verbatim fifteenth-century Croatian record: Blágay család oklevéltár, pp. 370–1. Page 194 19DRMH, i, p. 40 (1231: 10). Simonis de Kéza, Gesta Hungarorum. Simon of Kéza, The Deeds of the Hungarians, (ed. and trans. László Veszprémy, Frank Schaer with an introduction by Jenő Szűcs), Budapest and New York, 1999, pp. 144–5 (Chapter 69); László Fejérpataky, III. Béla 20 oklevelei, Budapest, 1900, p. 29; see also József Gerics, ‘Az irásbeli peticiók bevezetéséről szóló krónikahely magyarázatához’, in Gerics, Egyház, állam és gondolkodás Magyarországon a középkorban, Budapest, 1995, pp. 240–3. 21Tripartitum, II: 6 (12); Imre Szentpétery, Magyar oklevéltár, Budapest, 1930, p. 154. 22RR, i, nos 23, 67, 72, 73, 74, 75, 78, 81, 82, 85, 117. 23Hajnik, Okirati bizonyitás a középkori magyar perjogban, p. 7. 24AO, ii, pp. 496–7. Hajnik, Okirati bizonyitás a középkori magyar perjogban, pp. 8–10; Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, pp. 427–9; Martyn Rady, Medieval Buda: A Study of Municipal 25 Government and Jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Hungary, Boulder and New York, 1985, pp. 62–8. Imre Hajnik, A királyi könyvek a vegyes házakbeli királyok korszakában, Budapest, 1879, 26 pp. 4–8. Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, p. 484; Gyula Prokopp, ‘Az esztergomi primási 27 levéltár xv. századi leltára’, Levéltári Közlemények, 37, 1966, pp. 112–38. Diplomata Hungariae Antiquissima, p. 312; Oklevelek Temesvármegye, p. 429; Árpád28kori történeti földrajz, ii, p. 142; Sándor Horváth, ‘A liptói és turóczi registrum 1391’, Történelmi Tar, 1902, pp. 1–57, 194–230 (38–9). Hajnik, Okirati bizonyitás a középkori magyar perjogban, pp. 23–4; Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, p. 489–90; Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicza, Orbász és Szana vármegyék) 1244–1710, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912, p. 121; 29 chapters often used an abbreviated formula to confirm charters which they themselves had previously issued: non abrasum, non cancellatum, non vitiatum sed omni suspicione carentem, etc. 30DRMH, i, p. 40 (1231: 10). Few pristaldi thus appear in the Várad Register with the honorific title of comes. In 31 Croatia, by contrast, pristaldi were frequently drawn from the nobility. Litterae inquisitoriae issued by the chancellery thus commonly include the names of 32 nobles who might be employed as homines regii. Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár, pp. 59–63; A zichi és vásonkeői Gróf Zichy-család idősb ágának okmánytára, 12 vols, Pest–Budapest, 1871–1931, iii, pp. 328–31; Oklevelek 33 Temesvármegye, i, pp. 395–97, 523, 553–5; Smičiklas, xv, pp. 309–10; Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. 197–9. For this and much of what follows, see Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog, 34 pp. 284–306; József Holub, Zala megye története a középkorban, Zala, 1929, 244–56. E. Hurmuzaki, Documente privitóre la istoria românilor, 19 vols, Bucharest, 1887–1938, 35 i/1, p. 678. See, however, three otherwise unrelated cases all dating from the 1360s: Smičiklas, xiii, 36pp. 66–7; Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár, pp. 60–2; Dl. 70556 (Bereg county); also, Holub, Zala megye története, p. 253. The view which Page 195 associates the per modum inquisition with the decline of county assemblies presided over by the palatine probably needs adjustment. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 249–50; additional iurati might be empanelled as 37 roving inquisitors: Smičiklas, xiii, pp. 70, 88. Géza Istványi, ‘A generalis congregatio’, Levéltári Közlemények, 17 and 18–19, 1939, 38 1940–41, pp. 50–83, 179–207 (78). 39PRT, iii, p. 617, noted by Eckhart, ‘Die glaubwürdigen Orte’, p. 447. 40Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog, pp. 278–82. ‘… dicentes … quod si iurarent ipsos fore debere periuros’: Smičiklas, viii, p. 498; ibid, 41 xii, p. 40; Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 307. 42Smičiklas, ix, p. 343. A zichi és vásonkeői Gróf Zichy-család idősb ágának okmánytára, i, p. 204: discussed by 43 Imre Hajnik, Okirati bizonyitás a középkori magyar perjogban, p. 3. 44DRMH, iii, pp. 49, 109 (1486: 18). György Bónis, Einflüsse des römischen Rechts in Ungarn, (Ius Romanum Medii Aevi, 45 5/10), Milan, 1964, p. 76. 46Ibid., pp. 38–9. 47Ibid., p. 91. 48ZsO, ii/2, no 7324. 49Ibid., i, nos 294, 2972, 3042, 3261, 3784, 5867; ibid., ii/2, no 5405. 50Ibid., ii/1, nos 1734, 1994; ibid. ii/2, nos 6849, 7710; ibid., iii, no 1126. 51Dezső Csánki, ‘Kuncz ispán majora Budán’, Századok, 40, 1906, pp. 685–725 (697). 52ZsO, iii, no 1429 53Tripartitum, I: 81. 54György Bónis, Középkori jogunk elemei, Budapest, 1977, p. 89. Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998, 55pp. 24–5; Antal Murarik, Az ősiség alapintézményeinek eredete, Budapest, 1938, pp. 153–6; Bónis, Einflüsse des römischen Rechts in Ungarn, pp. 97–9. György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, p. 56 259. The terminology followed here borrows from T.F.T. Plucknett (Concise History of the 57Common Law, 1936), cited in Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: Public Law and the State 1100–1322, Princeton, NJ, 1964, p. 188 Ferenc Kovács, A magyar jogi terminológia kialakulása, Budapest, 1964, p. 168; for 58örök, see also V. Costachel, Les immunités dans les principautés roumaines aux XIVème et XV-ème siècles, Bucharest, 1947, pp. 72–3. Such Roman law compendia as made their way into Hungary, as for instance by Jacob de Belvisio, Mincuccius or Raymundus Parthenopeius, are of fifteenth-century 59 provenance: Emma Bartoniek, Codices Latini Medii Aevi, Budapest, 1940, pp. 54, 106, 321; for Parthenopeius, see also Rady, Medieval Buda, p. 123. 5 Conditional Nobles Antal Fekete Nagy, ‘Az országos és particularis nemesség tagozódása a középkorban’, 1 Domanovszky Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1937, pp. 159–84 (160–1). Page 196 2AUO, viii, p. 49, 321–2. 3Gyula Kristó, A vármegyék kialakulása Magyarországon, Budapest, 1988, pp. 296, 319. 4AUO, xii, p. 286. Joannes Kukuljević, Jura Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, 2 vols, Zagreb, 1862, i, 5 p. 125; thus also, Smičiklas, xii, pp. 238–40. Kukuljević, Jura Regni Croatiae, Dalmatiae et Slavoniae, i, pp. 87–8; C.A. Macartney, 6 The Habsburg Empire 1790–1918, London, 1971 (Corrected Edition), p. 228. 7Smičiklas, v, pp. 329–30. Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicza, Orbász és Szana vármegyék) 1244–1710, (eds) 8 Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912, p. 59. 9Smičiklas, iv, pp. 597, 613–15. Iván Borsa, ‘A zágrábi püspökség prédiálisai a xv. század elején’, Levéltári Közlemények, 10 66, 1995, pp. 19–27 (20). György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, p. 11 348. 12Borsa, ‘A zágrábi püspökség prédiálisai’, pp. 24–5. For this and much of what follows, see Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar 13 jogban, pp. 187–215. 14ZsO, ii/1, no 470; ibid., ii/2, no 6118. 15Dl. 4985. 16ZsO, ii/1, no 245. 17AO, ii, p. 537. 18Smičiklas, viii, p. 226; PRT, viii, p. 569. 19Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, p. 212. 20ZsO, iii, no 1937; see also, Mon. Strig., i, p. 603 (1272). 21Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, pp. 211, 214; but see also DRMH, iii, p. 71 (1467). 22Árpád-kori történeti földrajz, i, p. 523. 23Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, pp. 39–47. Antal Fekete Nagy, A Szepesség területi és társadalmi kialakulása, Budapest, 1934, pp. 24 10–12; Bálint Ila, Gömör megye. A megye története 1773-ig, Budapest, 1976, p. 143. Sándor Horváth, ‘A liptói és turóczi registrum 1391’, Történelmi Tár, 1902, pp. 1–57, 25 194–230 (31–32, 225). 26Árpád-kori történeti földrajz, i, p. 45; Zimmermann-Werner, i, pp. 7–9. 27Nagy, A Szepesség területi és társadalmi kialakulása, p. 261. Elemér Mályusz, ‘A magyar köznemesség kialakulása’ Századok, 76, 1942, pp. 273– 28 305, 407–34 (280); Nagy, A Szepesség területi és társadalmi kialakulása, pp. 264–5. 29Mályusz, ‘A köznemesség kialakulása’, p. 279; Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, p. 17. 30Horváth, ‘A liptói és turóczi registrum 1391’, pp. 32–3, 37. On John Litteratus, see Alexander Húščava, Ján Literát a liptóvske falzá, Bratislava, 31 1936 (with German Zusammenfassung, pp. 181–9). 32Horváth, ‘A liptói és turóczi registrum 1391’, pp. 37, 218. 33Mályusz. Turóc megye kialakulása; Horváth, ‘A liptói és turóczi registrum 1391’, p. 209. Page 197 Antal Fekete Nagy, ‘ Az országos és particularis nemesség tagozódása a középkorban’, 34 Domanovszky Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1937, pp. 159–84 (165–6). 35RR, i, no 1041. 36Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, pp. 362–3. 37ZsO, i, no 2543. 38RR, i, no 1060; Smičiklas, v, pp. 53–5; AO, v, p. 228. 39Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, p. 361–4. Ibid., p. 369; Mályusz, Turóc megye kialakulása, pp. 142–6; Antal Fekete Nagy, 40 Trencsén vármegye, Budapest, 1941, pp. 51–4. József Hradszky, A szepesi, tiz-lándsások széke vagy a ‘kisvármegye’ története, Lőcse, 41 1895, p. 9. 42Nagy, A Szepesség területi és társadalmi kialakulása, pp. 269–73, 278, 296–300. Paul Stephenson, ‘Manuel I Comnenus, the Hungarian crown and the ‘‘feudal subjection” 43 of Hungary, 1162–1167’, Byzantino-Slavica, 57, 1996, pp. 33–59 (57). Ferenc Makk, The Árpáds and the Comneni: Political Relations between Hungary and 44Byzantium in the 12th Century, Budapest, 1989, p. 99; Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos, trans. Charles M. Brand, New York, 1976, p. 85. For Frangochorion, see György Györffy, ‘Das Güterverzeichnis des griechischen Klosters Szávaszentdemeter (Sremska Mitrovica) aus dem 12. Jahrhundert’, Studia Slavica, 5, 45 1959, pp. 9–74 (10–14); Gyula Moravcsik, Az Árpád-kori magyar történet bizánci forrásai, 2nd edition, Budapest, 1988, p. 168. Petre Diaconu, Les Coumans au Bas-Danube aux XIe et XIIe siècles, Bucharest, 1978, p. 98–9; the earliest Cuman attack on Hungary is frequently put at 1068 but this is surely 46too early – Béla Kossányi, ‘Az úzok és kománok történetéhez a xi–xii. században’, Századok, 57–8, 1923–4, pp. 519–37 (532); R. L. Wolff, ‘The “Second Bulgarian Empire.” Its Origin and History to 1204’, Speculum, 24, 1949, pp. 167–206. Krassó vármegye története, iii, Budapest, 1882, p. 71; Diaconu, Les Coumans au Bas47Danube, p. 22; Gábor Lükő, ‘ Havaselve és Moldva népei a x–xii. században’, Ethnographia – Népélet, 46, 1935, pp. 90–105 (92). Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos, p. 78; Constantin C. Giurescu, 48A History of the Romanian Forest, Bucharest, 1980, pp. 44–5. István Kniezsa, ‘Magyarország népei a xi–ik században’, Szent István Emlékkönyv, ii, Budapest, 1938, pp. 365–472 (450); to use Anonymus’s chronicle as anything other than 49 a thirteenth-century romance is absurd – almost all accounts of early Romanian and Hungarian history which are based on this fable are equally fabulous. Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus by John Kinnamos, p. 195; Adolf Armbruster, 50 Romanitatea românilor. Istoria unei idei, Bucharest, 1993, pp. 32–5. 51László Makkai, A milkói püspökség és népei, Debrecen, 1936, p. 15–17. For this and what follows, see Árpád-kori történeti földrajz, ii, pp. 97–124; Walter 52 Horwath, ‘ Die “Terra Loysta”’, Südost-Forschungen, 11, 1946–52, pp. 290–7. Page 198 Lajos Elekes, ‘A román fejlődés alapvetése’, Századok, 74, 1940, pp. 278–313, 361–404 53 (285). 54Elekes, ‘ A román fejlődés alapvetése’, pp. 284–85, 290–91. E. Hurmuzaki, Documente privitóre la istoria românilor, 19 vols, Bucharest, 1887–1938, 55 i/1, p. 249–53. György Györffy, ‘Adatok a románok xiii. századi történetéhez és a román állam 56 kezdeteihez’, Történelmi Szemle, 7, 1964, pp. 1–25, 538–68 (538–9). Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon, Budapest, 1979, p. 144; Frigyes Pesty, A szörényi bánság és szörény vármegye története, 3 vols, Budapest, 57 1877–78, i, pp. 27–28. Elekes, ‘A román fejlődés alapvetése’, p. 292, citing I.C. Filetti, ‘Banatul Olteniei şi Craiovestii’, Arhivele Olteniei (undated offprint), pp. 18–21. Stefan Pascu, Voievodatul Transilvaniei, 4 vols, Cluj, 1971–1989, iv. pp. 13–68; Bónis, 58 Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, pp. 379–90. Frigyes Pesty, A szörény vármegyei hajdani oláh kerületek, Budapest, 1876, pp. 4, 25, 5953, 55–7, 73, 76, 82; Pesty, A szörényi bánság, iii, pp. 11, 17, 23–4, 33–4, 56–7, 61–4, 66–8, 93–5. Pesty, A szörény vármegyei hajdani oláh kerületek, pp. 52–3, 73–5; Pesty, A szörényi 60 bánság, iii, pp. 61–2. Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, p. 386; Emericus Lukinich, 61Documenta historiam Valachorum in Hungaria illustrantia, Budapest, 1941, pp. 66–8, 250, 323. 62Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 138 63Dl. 9776. György Petrovay, ‘A máramarosi oláhok. Betelepedésük, vajdáik és kenézeik’, 64 Századok, 45, 1911, pp. 607–26 (623); Pesty, A szörényi bánság, iii, pp. 11, 66–8. 65Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 374. Gunther Erich Rothenberg, The Austrian Military Border in Croatia, 1522–1747, Urbana, 1960, pp. 28–9; see also, Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘The Origins of the Austrian Military 66 Frontier in Croatia and the Alleged Treaty of 22 December 1522’, Slavonic and East European Review, 38, 1960, pp. 492–8. 67Pesty, A szörényi bánság, iii, p. 9. Pesty, A szörény vármegyei hajdani oláh kerületek, pp. 54–5; see also, ibid., pp. 67, 6871–3; Pesty, A szörényi bánság, iii, pp. 81–2; Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 328, 395, 421–2. 69Erdély története, (ed.) Béla Köpeczi, 3 vols, Budapest, 1986, i. p. 329–30, 333. 70Nagy, ‘Az országos és particularis nemesség tagozódása a középkorban’, p. 181. 6 The Kindred and the Quarter 1Mon. Strig., i, p. 324. Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó and András Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, 2 Budapest, 1998, p. 62. 3For such an example, see Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 563–4. Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998, 4 pp. 79–80. Page 199 Kálmán Haiczl, ‘A Kistapolcsányiak’, Turul, 46, 1932, pp. 20–51 (22–23); Alfréd Czobor, 5‘A Helmecziek nemzetsége a középkorban és annak Korláth ága’, Turul, 49, 1935, pp. 5– 23 (15–18). Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 145–7, 155, 191–3, 240–1, 371–4; Krassó vármegye 6 története, iii, pp. 171, 235, 245, 302-3, 313, 335, 340–1, 361–2. For some brief anthropological reflections on this phenomenon, see Martyn Rady, ‘Erik 7Fügedi and the Elefánthy kindred’, Slavonic and East European Review, 77, 1999, pp. 295–308 (300–1). On the meaning of avus, see Erik Fügedi, ‘The avus in the Mediaeval Conceptual 8 Framework of Kinship in Hungary’, Studia Slavica, 25, 1979, pp. 137–42. 9DRMH, i, pp. 34, 42–3, 46–7 (1222: 4; 1267: 6; 1290: 19). József Holub, ‘A vásárolt fekvő jószág jogi természete régi jogunkban’, Emlékkönyv 10 Károlyi Árpád, Budapest, 1933, pp. 246–54. Erik Fügedi, ‘A köznemesi klán szolidáritása’, Századok, 118, 1984, pp. 950–73 (952– 11 53); Fügedi, The Elefánthy, pp. 50–1. József Illés, A törvényes öröklés rendje az Árpádok korában, Budapest, 1904, pp. 59– 1266; see also Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás Magyarországon, Budapest, 1979, p. 149. Pál Engel, ‘Nagy Lajos ismeretlen adományreformja’, Történelmi Szemle, 39, 1997, pp. 13 137–57 (141–3). 14RR, i, nos 574, 805, 829, 875, 1284, 1285. 15Illés, A törvényes öröklés rendje, p. 66. Engel, ‘Nagy Lajos ismeretlen adományreformja’, p. 146–7; for a judgement in Dalmatia 16by Sicilian customs, see Imre Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog az Árpádés a vegyes-házi királyok alatt, Budapest, 1899, p. 134. 17Fügedi, The Elefánthy, pp. 59–61. For much of what follows, see Engel, ‘Nagy Lajos ismeretlen adományreformja’, pp. 18144–53. A summary of Engel’s conclusions may be found in Rady, ‘Erik Fügedi and the Elefánthy kindred’, pp. 305–6. An earlier example of nova donatio is from 1320 and involves the cession by Charles 19Robert to Lawrence son of Paul of the Zsombor kindred of a charter permitting female inheritance to his lands: Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 21. 20Engel, ‘Nagy Lajos ismeretlen adományreformja’, p. 151; Tripartitum, I: 43. 21Engel, ‘Nagy Lajos ismeretlen adományreformja’, p. 147. Dl. 40467, AO, ii, p. 317; more generally, György Bónis, Einflüsse des römischen Rechts 22 in Ungarn, Milan, 1964, pp. 80–1. 23Dl. 6631; Fügedi, The Elefánthy, pp. 84–6. 24DRMH, ii, p. 9 (1351: proemium). 25DRMH, ii, pp. 25, 181 (1397: 54); DRH 1301–1457, p. 141 (before 1382). Even so, a brief statistical survey from Transylvania suggests that in the thirteenth century only about a half of all property-sales recorded the consent of neighbours: 26 Erdélyi okmánytár, (ed) Zsigmond Jakó, i, Budapest, 1997, nos 223, 227, 383, 432, 510, 537 (with consent); ibid., nos 214, 229, 264, 299, 363, 489, 491 (without consent). Some later examples are given in A kolozsmonostori konvent jegyzőkönyvei, (ed.) 27 Zsigmond Jakó, 2 vols, Budapest, 1990, i, no 1494; ibid., ii, no 3706. For this and almost all of what follows, see Martyn Rady, ‘The filial quarter and female 28 inheritance in medieval Hungarian law’, … The Man of Many Page 200 Devices, Who Wandered Full Many Ways … Festschrift in Honor of János M. Bak, (eds) Balázs Nagy, Marcell Sebők, Budapest and New York, 1999, pp. 422–31. 29DRMH, i, p. 34 (1222: 4). The provisions of the lex Falcidia fit exactly with the understanding of the 1222 Golden Bull that the father had the right of free testamentary disposition; see also The 30Statesman’s Book of John of Salisbury, (ed. and trans.) John Dickinson, New York, 1927, p. 262 (Policraticus, vi, 25). I am most grateful to Péter Banyó for drawing my attention to this text. 31Antal Murarik, Az ősiség alapintézményeinek eredete, Budapest, 1938, p. 173–6. Fügedi, The Elefánthy, pp. 32–3; but see M.G. Kovachich, Formulae Solennes Styli, 32 Pest, 1799, p. 126. Tripartitum, I: 88; recent research by Péter Banyó suggests that roughly a half of all 33quarters were given in land (unpublished MA thesis, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, 1999). 34AO, ii, pp. 466–7. József Holub, ‘La “Quarta Puellaris” dans l’ancien droit hongrois’, Studi in memoria di 35 Aldo Albertoni, 3 vols, Padua, 1938, iii, pp. 275–97 (281). 36Fügedi, The Elefánthy, p. 47. 37For this and what follows, see Rady, ‘Erik Fügedi and the Elefánthy kindred’, pp. 303-4. 38For this and what follows, see Fügedi, The Elefánthy kindred, pp. 53–62. 39József Holub, ‘Középkori fiúsitások’, Turul, 41, 1927, p. 84–8. 40Rady, ‘The filial quarter’, p. 427. 41Fügedi, The Elefánthy kindred, p. 26. 7 Familiaritas (Eds) Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák and Tibor Frank, A History of Hungary, London and New York, 1990, p. 47 (Pál Engel); ‘as the basis of the entire governmental and 1 administrative structure’: Elemér Mályusz, ‘A magyar rendi állam Hunyadi korában’, Századok, 91, 1957, pp. 46–123, 529–602 (53). 2Discussed in Michael Hicks, Bastard Feudalism, London and New York, 1995, pp. 14–16. 3Gyula Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, Budapest, 1912, pp. 72, 77–8, 89, 121. Elemér Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában. A Hűbériség és rendiség 4problémája’, in (ed.) Imre Lukinich, Mátyás király Emlékkönyv, 2 vols, Budapest, 1938, i, pp. 309–433 (331). Iván Janits, Az erdélyi vajdák igazságszolgállátó és okleveladó működése 1520-ig, Budapest, 1940, p. 59; Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában’, pp. 396, 5 409. A rather more subtle formulation is given in György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, pp. 56, 60–1, 311, 546. 6For another interpretation, see Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, pp. 117–21. A veszprémi püspökség 1524. évi urbáriuma, (eds) László Kredics, László Solymosi, 7 Budapest, 1993, pp. 45–7, 83. Page 201 8Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. xcix, 43. AO, ii, pp. 403-04; ibid., vi, pp. 431, 517–18; Gyula Kristó, A feudális széttagolódás 9 Magyarországon, Budapest, 1979, pp. 168–9. 10DRMH, i, p. 52 (1298: 12). 11M.G. Kovachich, Scriptores rerum Hungaricarum minores, 2 vols, Buda, 1798, ii, p. 15. Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998, 12 p. 112. A veszprémi püspökség 1524. évi urbáriuma, p. 90; András Kubinyi, ‘A Mátyás-kori 13 államszervezet’, Hunyadi Mátyás Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1990, pp. 53–147 (64). Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, p. 239–40, 250; Bálint Ila, ‘A Szentgyörgyi és Bazini 14 grófok birtokainak kialakulása’, Turul, 44, 1927, pp. 36–71 (67). 15Dl. 47031; Dl. 58301; Dl. 63048. András Kubinyi, ‘A kaposújvári uradalom és a Somogy megyei familiárisok szerepe Újlaki 16Miklós birtokpolitikában’, Somogy Megye Múltjából. Levéltári Évkonyv, 4, Kaposvár, 1973, pp. 3–44 (23). József Holub, ‘A főispán és alispán viszonyának jogi természete’, Emlékkönyv 17 Fejérpataky László, Budapest, 1917, pp. 186–211 (200). AO, i, pp. 428–29; Simeon Ljubić, Commissiones et Relationes Venetae, i, Zagreb, 1876 18 (Monumenta Spectantia Historiam Slavorum Meridionalium, vi), pp. 99–100. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 352, 359–62, 364, 356–57, 367; Pál Engel, 19 Magyarország világi archontológiája 1301–1457, Budapest, 2 vols, 1996, ii, p. 100. 20Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában’, p. 321. 21Joseph Held, Hunyadi: Legend and Reality, Boulder and New York, 1985, p. 10. Elemér Mályusz, Thuróczy János krónikája, Budapest, 1944, pp. 4–7. (I am grateful to the late Professor Mályusz for giving me a copy of this work.) See also Pál Engel in 22 János Thuróczy. Chronicle of the Hungarians, (trans.) Frank Mantello, Bloomington, 1991, p. 6. 23Vilmos Fraknói, Werbőczi István életrajza, Budapest, 1899, pp. 13, 20, 32–3, 50. 24Kubinyi, A kaposújvári uradalom, pp. 29–30; József Bessenyei, Enyingi Török Bálint, Budapest, 1994, p. v. György Bónis. A jogtudó értelmiség a Mohács előtti Magyarországon, Budapest, 1971, 25 pp. 337–8. 26Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában’, 322. Pál Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánsag. Tanulmányok az Anjou-királyság kormányzati 27 rendszeréről’, Századok, 116, 1982, pp. 880–922 (894). 28Kubinyi, ‘A kaposújvári uradalom’, p. 29. 29Dl. 58301. 30Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánsag’, pp. 895–6. 31Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában’, pp. 326–7. Gusztáv Wenzel, ‘Okmánytár Ozorai Pipó történetéhez’, Történelmi Tár, 1884, pp. 1–31, 220–47, 412–37, 613–27 (425); A Magyarország és Szerbia közti összeköttetések 32 oklevéltára 1198–1526, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Antal Aldásy, Budapest, 1907, pp. 62–3, 86; Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 365. Page 202 Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 223–5; Magyarország története 1526–1686, (ed.) 33 Ágnes Várkonyi, 2 vols, 2nd edition, Budapest, 1987, i, p. 390. 34AUO, xi, p. 335. 35Ibid., viii, p. 321–2, noted by Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, p. 29. 36Történelmi Tár, 1889, p. 415. 37AO, i, pp. 428–9. Gyula város oklevéltára (1313–1800), (ed.) Endre Veress, Budapest, 1938, pp. 77–9; 38on the extensive estates belonging to the castle, see József Implom, Gyula város története 1214–1972, Gyula, 1973, p. 8. András Kubinyi, ‘A kincstári személyzet a xv. század második felében’, Tanulmányok 39 Budapest Múltjából, 12, 1957, pp. 25–49 (27). Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 496–8; András Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország 40 történetének vázlata’, Századok, 128, 1994, pp. 288–319 (292). 41DRMH, iii, p. 71 (1467: 1). 42Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, p. 310 Ágnes Kurcz, Lovagi kultúra Magyarországon a 13–14. században, Budapest, 1988, p. 43 17. 44Kubinyi, ‘A kincstári személyzet’, p. 29. 45Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, p. 97. 46For this and what follows, see Kubinyi, ‘A kaposújvári uradalom’, pp. 3–44. 47Dl. 37754; Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 224, 228. Székely oklevéltár, (eds) Károly Szabó, Lajos Szadeczky, 7 vols, Kolozsvár, 1872–98, i, 48 p. 277. 49Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, p. 76. 50Kurcz, Lovagi kultúra Magyarországon, 65–6. 51DRMH, ii, p. 66, 95 (8 March 1435: 6; March 1443: 3); see also DRMH, i, p. 75. 52Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, p. 280. 53Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, p. 71. Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, 296–7; András Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország 54 történetenek vázlata’, pp. 293–4. 55Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, pp. 49–50. 56Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 250, 297. 57Ibid., pp. 256–57. 58AO, i, p. 342 Mon. Strig, i, p. 430. 59For this and much of what follows, see Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 238, 266–79. 60Ibid., p. 279. 61Ibid., pp. 278–9. 62Dl. 22183. 63Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 275–6. 64Tripartitum, I: 69. A Héderváry család oklevéltára, (eds) Béla Radvánszky, Levente Závodszky, 2 vols, 65 Budapest, 1909–22, i, pp. 262–3. 66Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 190, 268, 273, 278–9. Erik Fügedi, Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok. A középkori magyar arisztokrácia fejlődése, 67 Budapest, 1986, p. 133. 68Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség, pp. 163–68, 311–12, 526. 69Zimmermann-Werner, ii, pp. 12–14. Page 203 70Szekfű, Serviensek és familiarisok, 78–84. The distinction between aula and curia is addressed by András Kubinyi, ‘A Mátyás-kori 71 államszervezet’, Hunyadi Mátyás Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1990, pp. 53–147 (62–63). 72For this and much of what follows, Kurcz, Lovagi kultúra Magyarországon, pp. 34–77. 73Ibid., p. 49. 74Ibid., pp. 67–9. Tibor Kardos, Középkori kultúra, középkori költészet. A magyar irodalom keletkezése, 75 Budapest, no date, pp. 93–5; Fügedi, The Elefánthy kindred, pp. 69–70. Codices Latini Medii Aevi, (ed.) Emma Bartoniek, Budapest, 1940, nos 17, 91–94, 132, 76 191, 214–16, 317, 318, 334, 359, 395, 408, 431. Küküllei János és a névtelen minorita krónikája, (trans.) László Geréb, Budapest, 1960, 77 p. 35. The text of the charter founding the Order is given together with a facsimile of the original 78in A magyar nemzet története, (ed.) Sándor Szilágyi, 10 vols, Budapest, 1895–98, iii, pp. 138–9. 79Kurcz, A lovagi kultúra Magyarországon, pp. 135–7. Ibid., pp. 166–87; Ágnes Kurcz, ‘Arenga und Narratio ungarischer Urkunden des 13. 80Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 70, 1962, pp. 323–54 (338–41); Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, p. 101. 81RR, i, no 1051. Ágnes Kurcz, ‘Arenga und Narratio’, pp. 325, 339; on the narrationes of Hungarian charters, see in particular, Elemér Mályusz ‘La chancellerie royale et la rédaction des 82 chroniques dans la Hongrie médiévale’, Le Moyen Âge, 75, 1969, pp. 51–86, 219–54 (55–86). Veszprémi regeszták, (ed.) L. Bernát Kumorovitz, Budapest, 1953, no 634; see also a German verse, circa 1400, which opines that although the Hungarians have good maces 83and long beards, and all wish to be counts, nit vil ritter ist under in: Károly Mollay, ‘XIV. századi német vélemény a magyar parasztról és a magyarországi nemesekről’, Ethnographia, 68, 1957, pp. 356–7 (357). 84Mályusz, ‘A magyar társadalom a Hunyadiak korában’, p. 330. 85Walter Ullmann, The Individual and Society in the Middle Ages, London, 1967, pp. 8–9. 8 Offices and Honores 1János Bak, Pál Engel and James Ross Sweeney in DRMH, ii, p. 253. 2Henrik Marczali, A magyar történet kútfőinek kézikönyve, Budapest, 1901, p. 228. György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, pp. 3 226–7. Pál Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánság. Tanulmányok az Anjou-királyság kormányzati 4rendszeréről’, Századok, 116, 1982, pp. 880–922 (882). A more profitable analogy might be the fief-rente, except that this was only rarely Page 204 ‘subinfeuded’: see Bryce D. Lyon, From Fief to Indenture, Cambridge, MA, 1957, p. 84. (Eds) Peter F. Sugar, Péter Hanák, Tibor Frank, A History of Hungary, London and New 5York, 1990, pp. 45, 55; Pál Engel, Társadalom és politika az Anjou-kori Magyarországon, Budapest, 1988, p. 7–8. Erik Fügedi, Castle and Society in Medieval Hungary (1000–1437), Budapest, 1986, pp. 675–6; Pál Engel, Királyi hatalom és arisztokrácia viszonya a Zsigmond-korban (1387– 1437), Budapest, 1977, p. 14. 7DRMH, i, p. 9 (Stephen II: 2). Sopron vármegye története. Oklevéltárr, 2 vols, (ed.) Imre Nagy, Sopron, 1889–91, i, p. 8 3. 9Marczali, A magyar történet kútfőinek kézikönyve, pp. 129–30. Pál Engel, ‘A honor (A magyarországi feudális birtokformák kérdéséhez)’, Történelmi 10 Szemle, 34, 1981, pp. 1–19 (17). 11DRMH, i, p. 35 (1222: 10). 12Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánság’, p. 901. 13Ibid., pp. 908–9. Erik Fügedi, ‘Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér?’, Történelmi Szemle, 25, 1982, pp. 482–509 14 (487–8); Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánság’, p. 903. 15Fügedi, ‘Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér?’, pp. 486–7. 16Ibid., pp. 487–8. 17Engel, Királyi hatalom és arisztokrácia viszonya, pp. 15, 116, 125. Fügedi, ‘Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér?’, p. 487–8; (ed.) Sugar, A History of Hungary, p. 45; the second figure, which is based on Pál Engel’s research, is almost certainly an 18 underestimate, for Engel does not take into account the very large number of bordercastles situated on the southern frontier: Fügedi, Castle and Society, p. 145. 19Fügedi, Castle and Society, p. 125. The rapid erosion of the royal demesne is most graphically illustrated in the end-plates of 20Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó, András Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, Budapest, 1998. 21Engel, Királyi hatalom és arisztokrácia viszonya, pp. 174–5, 177, 183–4. 22Ibid., pp. 38, 51, 79–81, 203–4. Bálint Hóman, Gyula Szekfű, Magyar történet, 5 vols, 3rd edition, Budapest, 1935–6, ii, pp. 433–4; András Kubinyi, ‘A kaposújvári uradalom és a Somogy megyei familiárisok 23 szerepe Újlaki Miklós birtokpolitikában’, Somogy Megye Múltjából. Levéltári Évkönyv, 4, Kaposvár, 1973, pp. 3–44. Jajcza (bánság, vár és város) története 1450–1527, (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor 24 Horváth, Budapest, 1915, pp. cvi–vii, clvi. Ibid., pp. clxv, clxxxiii; ‘Registrum omnium proventuum Regalium 1494–95’, in Johann Christian von Engel, Geschichte des Ungrischen Reichs und seiner Nebenländer, i, Halle, 251797, pp. 17–181 (54, 60, 69, 74, 91–2, 97, 121, 128–9, 162); Ludwig v. Schedius, ‘Etwas über den Zustand der ungrishen Finanzen im Anfänge des xvi. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift von und für Ungarn, 3, 1801 (Pest), pp. 99–106 (102–3). 26Engel, ‘A honor’, p. 8. 27Ibid., p. 9; Fügedi, ‘Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér?’, pp. 494–5; see also DRMH, ii, p. 215. Page 205 ‘A temesvári királyi uradalom 1372. évi számadásai’, given in Engel, ‘Honor, vár, 28 ispánság’, pp. 917–20. 29Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 498–514. 30Engel, ‘A honor’, p. 10. 31Fügedi, ‘Királyi tisztség vagy hűbér?’, pp. 487–8. 32Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 87; see also, Dl. 104928. 33Dl. 31214. 34Engel, ‘A honor’, pp. 12–13; Dl. 101919. 35DRMH, ii, pp. 95, 98, 113 (March 1443: 4; 18 April 1444: 2; 13 June 1446: 3). 36Dl. 66412; Dl. 64677 (discussed by Engel, ‘Honor, vár, ispánság’, p. 883). 37Frigyes Pesty, A szörényi vármegyei hajdani oláh kerületek, Budapest, 1876, pp. 13–14. József Holub, ‘A főispán és alispán viszonyának jogi természete’, Emlékkönyv 38 Fejérpataky László, Budapest, 1917, pp. 186–211 (200). József Holub, Zala vármegye története a középkorban, Zala, 1929, pp. 457–61; Pál 39Engel, Magyarországi világi archontológiája 1301–1437, 2 vols, Budapest, 1996, i, pp. 183–4. 40Smičiklas, x, pp. 120, 155, 283, 495; ibid., xi, 45, 147, 269. Székely oklevéltár, (eds) Károly Szabó, Lajos Szádeczky, 7 vols, Kolozsvár, 1872–98, i, 41 pp. 211–14. DRMH, ii, p. 66 (8 March 1435: 6); for honor as a subordinate function, see Emerich 42Lukinich, Documenta historiam Valachorum in Hungaria illustrantia, Budapest, 1941, pp. 245, 321; Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 135. 43Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 496–8. Engel, ‘A honor’, p. 15; András Kubinyi, ‘A budai vár udvarbirói hivatala 1458–1541’, 44 Levéltári Közlemények, 35, 1964, pp. 67–98. Imre Hajnik, Az örökös főispánság a magyar alkotmánytörténetben, Budapest, 1888, pp. 4539, 47, 49, 52, 55, 57–9, 62, 66, 68, 78, 84, 91, 92. 46Engel, ‘A honor’, p. 15. Sermones dominicales, (ed.) A. Szilády, ii, Budapest, 1910, p. 267, noted by Engel, ‘A 47 honor’, p. 13. Simon of Kéza. The Deeds of the Hungarians, (ed and transl.) László Veszprémy, Frank 48Schaer, Budapest and New York, 1999, pp. 148, 170, 174, 182 (ch. 74, 91, 94, 97); Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, pp. 315, 323. 9 Military Obligation Péter Váczy, ‘A királyi serviensek és a patrimoniális királyság’, Századok, 61–2, 1927–8, 1 pp. 243–90, 351–414 (253). 2ZsO, i, no 4187; ibid., i/2, no 7873; CJH, i, p. 802 (1522: 54). Ágnes Kurcz, ‘Arenga und Narratio ungarischer Urkunden des 13. Jahrhunderts’, 3Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 70, 1962, pp. 328–54 (339). 4DRMH, ii, p. 141 (Propositiones 1432/33: 2); CJH, i, p. 814 (1523: 20). 5Magyarország hadtörténete, 2 vols, (ed.) Érvin Liptai, Budapest, 1984, i, p. 97. 6ZsO, i, nos 4511, 4530, 5568, 6134. Page 206 7Gyula Kristó, Az Anjou-kor háborúi, Budapest, 1988, p. 211. Magyarország hadtörténete, i, pp. 64, 97, 113; András Kubinyi, ‘The Road to Defeat: Hungarian Politics and Defense in the Jagiellonian Period’, in (eds) János M. Bak, Béla K. 8 Király, From Hunyadi to Rákóczi: War and Society in Late Medieval and Early Modern Hungary, New York, 1982, pp. 159–78 (167). Elemér Mályusz, Az erdélyi magyar társadalom a középkorban, Budapest, 1988, pp. 23– 9 24; József Illés, Az Anjou-kori társadalom és az adózás, Budapest, 1900, p. 54. 10CJH, i, p. 792–94 (1522: 17). Attila Zsoldos, ‘Iobagio Castri Possessionem Habens. A várjobbágyi jogállás anyagi 11 hátterének kérdései’, Századok, 128, 1994, pp. 254–72 (263–4). 12DRMH, i, pp. 34, 39 (1222: 3; 1231: 3). 13Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, pp. 70, 74, 126; Lexikon, pp. 574–5. 14Illés, Az Anjou-kori társadalom és az adózás, p. 47; DRMH, ii, p. 11 (1351: 12). Bálint Hóman, A magyar királyság pénzügyei és gazdaságpolitikája Károly Róbert 15 korában, Budapest, 1921, p. 78. 16DRH 1301–1457, p. 91 (Cameral contract of 1336: 5). 17DRMH, ii, p. 11 (1351: 12). 18DRH 1301–1437, pp. 216–17. DRMH, ii, p. 121 (25 March 1447: 36); see also ibid., ii, p. 233. Nobles of Transylvania had been exempted from payment of the lucrum camerae as early as 1366. The 19lucrum was replaced by the tributum fisci regalis in 1467 from which nobles were also exempt: DRMH, iii, pp. 71–2 (1467 Registrum); but to confuse matters, see ibid., iii, p. 25 (1471: 11). 20Magyarország hadtörténete, i, p. 51; CJH, i, p. 606 (1498: 21). Ágnes Kurcz, Lovagi kultúra Magyarországon a 13–14. században, Budapest, 1988, pp. 21 46–7. 22For this and much of what follows, see Kristó, Az Anjou-kor háborúi, pp. 196–7. 23Pál Engel, Gyula Kristó, András Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, Budapest, 1998, p. 59. Substantial uncertainty still surrounds the relationship in the fourteenth century between 24 the banderia of the counties and those fielded by the principal office-holders of the realm. 25Magyarország hadtörténete, i, pp. 64–6. 26Kristó, Az Anjou-kor háborúi, pp. 205–6. 27Magyarország hadtörténete, i, pp. 86–9. Pál Engel, ‘Magyarország és a török veszély Zsigmond korában (1387–1437), Századok, 28128, 1994, pp. 273–87; Ferenc Szakály, ‘The Hungarian–Croatian Border Defense System and its Collapse’, in (eds) Bak, Király, From Hunyadi to Rákóczi, pp. 141–58. 29DRMH, ii, p. 141 (Propositiones 1432/33: 1). Joseph Held, ‘Military Reform in Early Fifteenth Century Hungary’, East European Quarterly, 11, 1977, pp. 129–39; András Borosy, ‘The Militia Portalis in Hungary before 30 1526’, in (eds) Bak, Király, From Hunyadi to Rákóczi, pp. 63–80; Joseph Held, ‘Peasants in Arms, 1437–38 and 1456’, in ibid., pp. 80–101. Page 207 Pál Engel, ‘Ung megye településviszonyai és népessége a Zsigmond-korban’, Századok, 31 119, 1985, pp. 941–1005 (997–1002). 32CJH, i, pp. 604, 752 (1498: 17; 1518: 1). 33Ibid., i, pp. 746, 836 (1518: 5; 1525: 34). 34Borosy, ‘The Militia Portalis’, pp. 63–8. András Borosy, A telekkatonaság és a parasztság szerepe a feudális magyar 35 hadszervezetben, Budapest, 1971, pp. 25, 40. 36Magyarország hadtörténete, i, pp. 66, 82, 113. 37Elemér Mályusz, Kaiser Sigismund in Ungarn 1386–1437, Budapest, 1990, p. 144. DRH 1458–90, p. 13 (Zsuzsa Teke); Erik Fügedi, ‘Mátyás király jövedelme 1475-ben’, 38 (ed.) Gábor Bárta, Mátyás király 1458–90, pp. 41–61. 39Kubinyi, ‘The Road to Defeat’, pp. 160–1. András Kubinyi, ‘A Mátyás-kori államszervezet’, Hunyadi Mátyás Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 40 1990, pp. 53–147 (60–1). ‘Registrum omnium proventuum Regalium 1494–95’, in Johann Christian von Engel, Geschichte des Ungischen Reichs under seiner Nebenländer, i, Halle, 1797, pp. 17–181 (20–36, 41–5, 75, 77, 78, 91, 99, 127–30, 151, 154–6, 160, 162); Ludwig von Schedius, 41 ‘Etwas über den Zustand der ungrischen Finanzen im Anfänge des xiv. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift von und für Ungarn, iii, Pest, 1801, pp. 99–106 (102–3); Kubinyi, ‘The Road to Defeat’, pp. 161–4. 42DRMH, ii, pp. 149–52 (Propositiones 1432/33: Divisio). CJH, i, p. 492 (1492: 20); later legislation accepted, however, that banderia of only 50 43 warriors might be deployed: ibid., i, p. 830 (1525: 12). 44Ibid., i, pp. 606–8 (1498: 20–2). 45Jenő Szűcs, Az utolsó Árpádok, Budapest, 1993, p. 98. Bódog Schiller, Az örökös főrendiség eredete Magyarországon, Budapest, 1900, pp. 31– 46 3. András Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország történetének vázlata’, Századok, 128, 471994, pp. 288–319 (288–9); Nándor Knauz, Az országos tanács és az országgyűlések története 1445–52, Pest, 1859, p. 9. 48Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország történetének vázlata’, p. 289. 49An early example is from 1421: Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 296. Erik Fügedi, ‘The Aristocracy in Medieval Hungary (Theses)’, in (ed.) J.M. Bak, Erik 50Fügedi. Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungary, London, 1986, Essay iv, pp. 1–14 (14). Engel, Kristó, Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, pp. 307–11; Erik Fügedi, 51Ispánok, bárók, kiskirályok, Budapest, 1986, pp. 380–87; György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, pp. 484–9. Kubinyi, ‘The Road to Defeat’, pp. 163–4, 166; see also CJH, i, p. 746, 802 (1518: 6; 52 1522: 52). Ferenc Maksay, ‘‘A sok nemes országa”, Mályusz Elemér Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1984, 53 pp. 277–95 (290). 54Engel, Kristó, Kubinyi, Magyarország története 1301–1526, p. 316. 55‘Registrum omnium proventuum Regalium 1494–95’, pp. 23–8, 31, 33, 36. Tripartitum, I, 6. Although the so-called ‘armalist’ may well have been an invention of 56 Werbőczy, armalists later accounted for 40 per cent of all Page 208 Hungarian nobles: István Rácz, Városlakó nemesek az Alföldön 1541–1848 között, Budapest, 1988, p. 43; P.G.M. Dickson, Finance and Government under Maria Theresa 1740–80, 2 vols, Oxford, 1987, i, p. 106. László Makkai, ‘Robot – summa – taxa’, Történelmi Szemle, 7, 1964, pp. 330–7 (332– 3); Gusztáv Wenzel, A magyar és erdélyi magánjog rendszere, 2 vols, Buda, 1863–4, i, 57 pp. 273–5; István Szabó, Jobbágyok-parasztok. Értekezések a magyar parasztság történetéből, Budapest, 1976, p. 240. Péter Schimert, ‘The Hungarian Nobility in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in 58(ed.) H.M. Scott, The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 2 vols, London and New York, 1995, ii, pp. 144–82 (148–9). For this and what follows, Maksay, ‘A sok nemes országa’, pp. 289–92; Magyarország 59története 1526–1686, 2 vols, (ed.) Ágnes Várkonyi, 2nd edition, Budapest, 1987, i, p. 384. In establishing overall figures, much depends here on the relationship of household60membership to population. Given the same multiplier, however, percentages and proportions remain unaffected. 61Szabó, Jobbágyok-parasztok, p. 241. Jenő Szűcs, ‘The Three Historical Regions of Europe: An outline’, Acta 62 Historica (Budapest), 29, 1983, pp. 131–84 (155). 10 Counties and Corporations Howard Kaminsky and James Van Horn Melton, in Otto Brunner, Land and Lordship: 1Structures of Governance in Medieval Austria, trans. Kaminsky, Melton, Philadelphia, 1992, p. xviii. Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford, 2 1994, pp. 34–5. 3Ferenc Eckhart, A Szentkorona-eszme története, Budapest, 1941, pp. 68–9, 71–2. 4Ibid., p. 79. A.J. Gurevich, Categories of Medieval Culture, London, 1985, p. 187; see also, Émil 5 Lousse, La société d’ancien régime, Louvain and Bruges, 1943, p. 129–30. 6Antonio Marongiu, Medieval Parliaments: A Comparative Study, London, 1968, pp. 52–3; Lousse, La Société d’ancien régime, pp. 160–1, 290–2. See thus generally, H.M. Cam ‘The Theory and Practice of Representation in Medieval 7England’, (eds) E.B. Fryde, Edward Miller, Historical Studies of the English Parliament, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1970, i, pp. 262–78 (277). DRH 1458–1490, p. 34 (Zsuzsa Teke); Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought: 8 Public Law and the State 1100–1322, Princeton, NJ, 1964, pp. 8–9, 384–5. 9Eckhart, A Szentkorona-eszme, pp. 97, 104–8, 192–7, 207. DRH 1458–90, pp.36–8 (Zsuzsa Teke); Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A 10 Study in Mediaeval Political Theology, Princeton, NJ, 1957, pp. 310–11. György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban, Kolozsvár, no date, p. 11 523. Page 209 Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 96–99; ZsO, i, no 5990; ibid., ii/1, no 5080; ibid., ii/2, 12 nos 6672, 6787, 7105. Ibid., iii, no 1125; Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 246–7, 254, 307; Oklevelek 13 Temesvármegye, i, pp. 294–5, 320, 404-6; Blágay család oklevéltára, pp. 382–4. Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicza, Orbász és Szana vármegyék) 1244–1710, (eds) 14 Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912, pp. 60–5. 15Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 476–8. Dl. 18997; a similar attack in 1370 met with equal royal concern: Krassó vármegye 16 története, iii, pp. 94–5. Ibid, iii, pp. 56–7, 160–1, 234, 247, 258–9, 262, 363; Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 17 374–8, 623–4. Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998, 18 p. 121. Thus, the repeated robberies done by the castellan of Gyula castle in the 1460s, ([ed.] Endre Veress, Gyula város oklevéltára [1313–1800], Budapest, 1938, pp. 17–23); or the 19 vexed diversion of the Borza River in Krassó county (Krassó vármegye története, iii, 508, 558–9). The threat over the boundary markers is given in ibid., iii, p. 111. Ibid., iii, p. 55; András Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország történetének vázlata’, 20 Századok, 128, 1994, pp. 288–319 (295). Dl. 270205: discussed in Martyn Rady, Medieval Buda: A Study of Municipal Government 21 and Jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Hungary, Boulder and New York, 1985, p. 151. Zsigmond Jakó, ‘Az erdélyi vajdai kancellária szervezete a xvi. század elején’, Irás, 22könyv, értelmiség. Tanulmányok Erdély történelméhez, Bucharest, 1976, pp. 42–61 (47); . . . vix in una hominis [a]etate finaliter causa terminari posset: DRMH, iii, p. 43 (1486: 4). Iván Bertényi, Az országbirói intézmény története a xiv. században, Budapest, 1976, pp. 23118–19; Imre Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog az Árpád- és a vegyes-házi királyok alatt, Budapest, 1899, pp. 209–11. 24DRMH, ii, p. 73 (8 March 1435: 17); ibid., iii, pp. 52, 107 (1486: 25–6). Zala vármegye közgyűlési jegyzőkönyvek regesztái 1555–1711, (eds) Irén Bilkei, Éva Turbuly, i, Zalaegerszeg, 1989, pp. 5–6; Alajos Degré, ‘Megyei közgyűlések a xvi–xvii. 25századi török háborúk korában’, in (eds) Alajos Degré, György Bónis, Tanulmányok a magyar helyi önkormányzat múltjából, Budapest, 1971, pp. 35–52 (45–7). 26Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 306; Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 326. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 364–5; Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 438, 518– 27 19. ZsO, ii/2, nos 7426, 7735; DRMH, ii, p. 45 (31 August 1405: 10); József Holub, Zala 28 megye története a középkorban, Zala, 1929, 229–30. Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog, pp. 82–84; Gyula Gábor, A megyei 29intézmény alakulása és működése Nagy Lajos alatt, Budapest, 1908, pp. 151–57; Holub, Zala megye története, pp. 208–9. 30Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 135, 195. 31Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 245–6, 286–7, 302-04, 340–1. 32DRMH, ii, p. 181. 33Ibid, ii, p. 80 (12 March 1435: 7). Page 210 For this and a part of what follows, see Géza Istványi, ‘A generalis congregatio’, 34 Levéltári Közlemények, 17, 1939, pp. 50–83; ibid., 18–19, 1940–1, pp. 179–207. 35See back, pp. 72, 194–5. 36Hajnik, A magyar birósági szervezet és perjog, pp. 303-6. 37Holub, Zala megye története, pp. 253–56; DRMH, iii, pp. 43, 107, 133 (1486: 2). 38DRMH, ii, p. 48 (31 August 1405: 10). 39Ibid., ii, pp. 80, 117 (12 March 1435: 7; 25 March 1447: 7). 40DRH 1301–1457, p. 233. 41Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, pp. 278, 420. Elemér Mályusz, ‘A magyar rendi állam Hunyadi korában’, Századok, 91, 1957, pp. 46– 42 123, 529–602 (65–7). Later examples suggest, however, that village headmen might on occasions be invited to attend sessions of the county: Degré, ‘Megyei közgyűlések a xvi–xvii. századi török 43 háborúk korában’, p. 42; non-nobles otherwise attended sessions until at least the 1460s: DRH 1458–90, p. 164. József Holub, ‘A főispán és alispán viszonyának jogi természete’, Emlékkönvv 44Fejérpataky László, Budapest, 1917, pp. 186–211 (206–8); Holub, Zala vármegye története, pp. 148–9. 45DRMH, i, p. 43 (1267: 8). 46See thus the preface to Andrew III’s decree of 1298: DRMH, i, p. 48. 47DRMH, ii, p. 16. 48Ibid., ii, p. 21 (October 1397: preface). The presence of noble representatives can only be established at the assemblies of 1397 49 and 1435. Mályusz, ‘A magyar rendi állam’, p. 87; János M. Bak, Königtum und Stände in Ungarn im 14.–16. Jahrhundert, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 59; DRH 1458–90, pp. 14–17 (Zsuzsa Teke); 50 András Kubinyi, ‘A királyi tanács köznemesi ülnökei a Jagelló-korban, Mályusz Elemér Emlékkönyv, Budapest, 1984, pp. 257–68. 51Mályusz, ‘A magyar rendi állam’, pp. 86–8. 52Bak, Königtum und Stände, p. 53. Vilmos Fraknói, Oklevéltár a magyar királyi kegyúri jog történetéhez, Budapest, 1899, p. 53 20; see also Eckhart, A Szentkorona-eszme története, p. 181. 54Mályusz, ‘A magyar rendi allam’, pp. 547–9. 55Bak, Königtum und Stände, pp. 49–50. 56DRMH, iii, pp. 73–5 (Articuli palatinales: 6). DRH 1301–1437, pp. 301–3, 334–7; Vilmos Fraknói, A magyar országgyűlések 57 története, i, Budapest, 1874, pp. 51–5. 58DRH 1458–1490, p. 109, 158. Joseph Holub, ‘La répresentation politique en Hongrie au Moyen Âge’, Xe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques. Études presentées à la Commission 59Internationale pour l’Histoire des Assemblées d’États, Rome 1955, Louvain and Paris, 1958, pp. 77–121 (105–6); see also, Horst Hasselsteiner, Joseph II. und die Komitate Ungarns, Vienna, Cologne and Graz, 1983, pp. 76–9. 60Cited in H.M. Cam, ‘The Theory and Practice of Representation’, p. 277. 61Holub, Zala vármegye története, p. 224. 62Ibid., pp. 478–4. Page 211 63Tivadar Lehoczky, ‘Bereg-vármegyei királyi emberek’, Történelmi Tár, 1879, pp. 187–91. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 5, 50, 89, 127–8, 242, 355–6; Oklevelek 64 Temesvármegye, i, pp. 111, 142. 65Krassó vármegye története, iii, p. 253. 66Ibid., iii, p. 308. András Kubinyi, ‘A Jagelló-kori Magyarország történetének vázlata’, Századok, 128, 67 1994, pp. 288–319 (294). DRH 1301–1457, pp. 301–2; Dezső Csánki, Magyarország történelmi földrajza a 68 Hunyadiak korában, 5 vols, Budapest, 1890–1913, ii, p. 118; ibid., i, p. 501. 69Ibid., ii, pp. 376–7. Ibid., i, pp. 629, 640; Dezső Szabó, A magyar országgyűlések története II. Lajos 70 korában, Budapest, 1909, p. 133. 71Csánki, Magyarország történelmi földrajza, i, pp. 690–9, 702. 72Ibid., ii, pp. 84, 436. 73Kubinyi, ‘A királyi tanács köznemesi ülnökei’, pp. 261–4. Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: the Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred, Budapest, 1998; 74see also my own comments, ‘Erik Fügedi and the Elefánthy Kindred’, Slavonic and East European Review, 77, 1999, pp. 295–308. László Péter, ‘Introduction’, in (ed.) Péter, Historians and the History of Transylvania, 75Boulder and New York, 1992, pp. 1–51 (7–8); or thus the universitas divitum et pauperum inter Capolna commorantes: Oklevelek Temesvármegye, i, p. 601. 76Holub, ‘La répresentation politique en Hongrie’, p. 118. Krassó vármegye története, iii, pp. 336, 350, 356–7; István Petrovics, ‘Temesvár és 77Nagyszeben’, in (ed.) László Koszta, Kelet és Nyugat között. Történeti Tanulmányok Kristó Gyula tiszteletére, Szeged, 1995, pp. 401–12 (410). 78Simon Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity 1361–1399, Oxford, 1990, p. 261. Conclusion Or did it? For another view, see Bryce D. Lyon, From Fief to Indenture, Cambridge, MA, 1 1957, pp. 66, 149. Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted, Oxford, 1994, 2 p. 478. Page 212 Page 213 Works Cited 1. Unpublished sources Hungarian National Archive, Budapest, Collectio Ante-Mohácsiana (Dl.). 2. Published primary sources Alsó-Szlavóniai okmánytár (Dubicza, Orbász és Szana vármegyék) 1244–1710, (Monumenta Hungarica Historica, 36), (eds) Lajos Thallóczy, Sándor Horváth, Budapest, 1912. Anjou-kori okmánytár (Codex Diplomaticus Hungaricus Andegavensis), (ed.) Imre Nagy, Gyula Nagy, 7 vols, Budapest, 1878–1920. Árpád-kori új okmánytár (Codex Diplomaticus Árpádianus Continuatus), (ed.) Gusztáv Wenzel, 12 vols, Pest-Budapest, 1860–78. 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Zsoldos, Attila, ‘Visegrád vármegye és utódai’, Történelmi Szemle, 40, 1998, pp. 1–32. Page 225 Index Aba kindred 13, 23, 49; Amadé Aba, 49–52, 54, 58 acquisita 26, 98, 104–6, 115 admonitio 74 adoption 77, 82 aestimatio 104 allod, allodial 3–5, 108 Anderson, Perry 4, 5 Andrew I (1046–60) 14 Andrew II (1205–35) 32–3, 39, 41–2, 70, 145 Andrew III (1290–1301) 113, 132 Anonymus Chronicle 9, 12, 17, 23, 39, 128, 197 appeals 57–8, 82, 165–6, 168 arbitration 15, 166 archers 150; English or Welsh, 148 armalists 155–6, 207–8 Árpád, Prince (before 895–907) 11, 13, 128 Ars Notarialis 74, 75 Arthurian romances 129 Attila 39 aula 36, 127–31, 135, 147, 203 Avars 12 aviticitas 97 avus 97, 199 Babonić kindred (de Vodiča) 30, 34–5, 49, 113 bailiff 28, 65, 70–2, 81, 169, 174–5; see also homines regii et communes Bak, János 172 banderium, banderia 120, 147–57, 180, 206 bans, banates 18, 49, 69, 92–4, 110, 117, 128, 135–7, 149, 153; see also Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Jajce, Macsó, Slavonia, Szörény barons 33, 38, 40, 69, 132, 153–5, 159, 168, 171–2, 180; barones naturales, 154 bastard feudalism 7, 110–11 Bazarab 90, 92 beard, pulling of 163; long, 203 Béla I (1060–63), collapsing throne of 17 Béla III (1172–96) 66–7, 69, 134; income of, 17, 134 Béla IV (1235–70) 37, 39, 40, 42, 53, 69, 70, 80–1, 85–8, 99, 130, 144 Belgrade 90, 136–7 beneficium 88, 124–6, 139, 181 Bibó, István 5 Bihar county 32, 48–9, 51–4, 136, 138–41, 176 bloodfeud 15, 23 bondsmen 20–1, 25, 44–5, 55 Bónis, György 4, 76, 183 border tariff (tricagesima) 171 Borsa kindred 49, 53–4 Bosnia 34, 92, 117, 137 boundaries 47–8, 163 brevis 167 Buda 9, 127, 164 Bulgaria 90, 92, 139 Byzantium 12, 14, 90–1 canon law 74–7, 104, 181 cartula sigillata 64 castellans 51, 54, 114–19, 122, 128, 139–41 castles 19, 21, 29, 32–3, 42, 48–54, 67, 80–1, 85–6, 88, 92–3, 112, 117, 133–41, 148–9, 152, 168, 177; number of, 50, 133–4, 136–7, 152, 204 castle-warriors 18–22, 23, 31, 35, 36, 39, 41, 42, 46, 50, 64, 80, 82, 86, 112, 118, 146, 187 castrenses 19–20, 32, 46, 48–9, 54, 146 celatores iurium regalium 60, 109, 193 chancellery, chancellor 38, 43, 47, 66, 68, 71, 74, 114–16, 127, 130–1, Page 226 chancellery, chancellor continued 163–4, 166–7, 181; personalis, 116, 163; rare humour of, 47 chansons de geste 128 chapel, royal 64, 67 chapters, ecclesiastical 33, 64, 67–70, 73–4, 76, 83, 122, 153, 160; see also loca credibilia Charles Robert (1307–42) 51, 60, 68, 92, 97, 100, 133, 135, 148 charters, volume of, 9–10, 67; language of, 10, 127; narrationes of, 130, 144, 203; didactic function of, 63, 129–30, 144; form of, 15, 63, 68; confirmation of, 69–70, 194 chess board 45 chirograph 69 chivalry 126–31; orders of, 129; chivalric courts, 74 civil law see Roman law clergy 15, 17, 25, 33, 47, 55–7, 64, 67, 74, 98, 104–6 cognati 23, 26 coinage 146 collecta generalis 146 comes capellae 64, 67 comes curialis 19, 22, 113 comes terrestris 82 communal landownership 21, 23, 29, 45–7, 64, 67, 96, 100 concealers of royal rights see celatores conditional nobles 3, 80–95, 144 congregatio generalis see under counties consent to sale 30, 88, 97, 103, 109, 199 contracts 5, 20, 75, 119, 141, 143, 180, 182 corporations 2, 41, 44, 111, 158–79, 181 council, royal 153, 171–2, 176–7 counties 7, 8, 18–20, 22, 32, 34–5, 39–44, 50, 70–1, 82, 84–6, 153–6, 161–79, 182; assembly (congregatio generalis) , 42, 72, 84, 106, 119, 121, 127, 162, 166–7, 170, 177, 210; ‘royal’ into ‘noble’, 22, 34–5; seals of, 41–2, 44; sedria (court), 41, 123, 140, 164–8, 174, 177; see also homines regii et communes, inquisitions, ispán, nuncii, szolgabirák Croatia 10, 24, 31–2, 63, 65–6, 90, 136, 153, 184 Csák kindred 45, 49–52, 176; Máté Csák, 49–54, 113 Csanád kindred 13, 45, 53, 92, 185 Cumania 90–1 Cumans 22, 90–1, 197 curial nobles, curialists 85, 154–6 daughters’ inheritance 103–9, 200 Davies, Norman 8 defectus seminis 2, 3, 26, 30, 99, 102, 107, 109, 154 de genere 23, 58, 96 demesne, royal 13, 16–17, 30–7, 64, 80, 85–6, 133–6, 141, 152–3, 186, 204 deposit boxes 69 descensualis estates 25–6, 60 descensus 18, 81 diet 7, 8, 37–40, 119, 161, 170–3, 176–7; see also nuncii division of land 29, 45–8, 67, 96 Domesday, lost Hungarian 17, 64 dominium 75–6, 108, 124, 137, 139, 142–3 donation, royal 1–4, 25–6, 31, 36–7, 44, 60–4, 79, 85–7, 98–102, 107, 124; private, 82–5, 88, 103–9, 106, 123–6; see also ‘new donation’ donatio reservato usufructu 75 dower, dowry 76, 103, 154 Duby, Georges 6 duel 74 Eckhart, Ferenc 16 Elefánthy kindred 97, 102 embezzlement 119, 123 Engel, Pál 101, 204 Esztergom 32, 66, 69, 84, 141 evictio 74 ewrii see guardsmen exchange of land 71, 82–3, 88, 102–3, 109 ex scitu, ex auditu 72 Page 227 execution 58, 72 expeditoria cautio 74 facultas conversandi 36–7 familiares, familiaritas 7–8, 16, 79, 110–31, 139–42, 147–52, 155, 164, 173–8, 179–81 familiares aulae 128 Fehér county 45, 91, 114 fences 47, 83 feudum 142 fidelity 4, 37, 39, 44, 60–1, 79, 80–3, 88, 94–5, 110–12, 117–26, 130, 132–3, 142–4, 179–81 fiefs 4–6, 77–8, 126, 133, 143, 180–2 filii iobagionum 22, 86–8, 180 fines 83, 140, 144, 166 forests 16, 18–19 , 45, 47, 85, 90, 133, 162 Frangepán kindred 31, 49, 119 Frangochorion 90 Franks 12, 15, 19, 25, 90 fratres condivisionales 109 freemen 20–2, 32, 34–6, 39, 41–3, 46, 49, 54, 166 Freising, Otto of 16–17, 186 Fügedi, Erik 126, 177 generatio 22, 30, 96, 102 genus 1, 22, 30, 39, 43, 96–7, 100 Germans 17, 22–4, 29, 38, 85, 91 Glagolitic script 184 guardsmen 21–2 genus 1, 22, 39, 43 Golden Bull (1222) 26, 39, 40, 54, 57, 79, 134, 144, 146, 170, 200 Gurevich, A.J. 159–61 Gypsies 51, 163 gyula 13, 19, 24, 91 haereditates, haereditaria 77, 105 heraldry 12, 30, 129, 185 hiders of royal rights see celatores Highlands (Felvidék) 10, 11, 80, 85–9, 135 Himfi kindred 10, 96–7, 115, 117–18, 139, 175 Hintze, Otto von 4 Holy Crown 2, 159, 183 homage 3, 6, 84, 94, 126, 180 homagium 84, 154 homines cuiusvis status et conditionis 169 homines regii 70–2, 81, 175; communes, 71, 175 honores 7, 126, 132–43, 147–9, 152–3, 180, 205 hospites 22, 56; hospites domestici, 29 Hospitallers 92, 147 household Freiung, 55, 192; private, 18, 20–1, 29, 33, 55, 79, 110–14, 122, 187; royal, 15–21, 26–9, 33, 35–40, 64–5, 111–12, 127–31, 147, 179, 187; Hunyadi, John 116, 128, 137, 172 Iharosfi kindred 34–5 immunity 18, 33–4, 54–8 impignoratio 76–7; see pledge in land inheritance 22–7, 46, 77, 88–9, 97–109, 112, 154 inquisitions 41, 48, 70–3, 105, 130, 163–8, 175; communis inquisitio, 71; inquisitio generalis, 72, 166–7; inquisitio per modum congregationis proclamatae, 72, 92, 167–8, 195; inquisitio simplex, 71, 165 insurrectio 144–5 iobagiones see peasantry iobagiones castri see castle-warriors ispán (comes) 19–22, 27–36, 41, 49, 51, 53, 57, 58, 64, 68, 71, 80–1, 84–5, 88–9, 94, 110, 114–18, 121–2, 125, 128, 132–40, 147–9, 153, 164, 168–70, 174–7; perpetual ispánate, 32, 81, 141, 143, 154; vice-ispán, 41, 84, 114–18, 139–40, 164, 167, 170, 174– 6; vice-vice-ispán, 114 iudex curiae 49, 50; see also justiciar iudex suspectus 115, 175 iudex terrestris 22 iudices nobilium see szolgabirák iuramenta horribilia 48 iuvenes aulae 128 Jajce, banate of 117, 137 Ják kindred 17, 23, 46, 99 Jews 64 Page 228 jókszedő 56 judges 15, 22, 37, 55–6, 58, 65, 70, 74, 81–2, 89, 100 jurymen see inquisitio generalis justiciar (iudex curiae regis) 43, 49, 69, 71, 74, 87, 99, 116–17, 135–7, 139, 142, 164 Kabars 12–13, 85 Kán kindred 28, 49 Kéza, Simon of (Kézai Simon) 39, 142, 190 kindred 1, 3, 10, 12–13, 15, 22–9, 34–5, 43, 45–6, 49, 51, 59, 67, 77, 88, 96–109, 156, 174–7, 179; attenuation of, 30, 97, 103, 106, 109 knez, knezes 91–4, 138, 161, 180 knights 17, 67, 87, 127–31, 135, 203 Knin 137, 184 Koloman (1095–1116) 17, 31–2, 55, 60, 64 Komárom county 31, 43, 47, 84, 136, 139, 156 Kossuth 87 Krassó county 10, 45, 92, 97, 115, 117, 140, 175, 209 krajnik 93 Kubinyi, András 176 Ladislas I, king and saint (1077–95) 14, 16, 28, 55–6, 65, 129 Ladislas IV (1272–90) 59 Ladislas V (1453–57) 171 language 10–12, 91, 127, 184 leases 75–6 lex Falcidia 104, 200 Leopold II (1790–92) 85 liber 20–1, 32; see also freemen liberi sancti regis 22 Libri feudorum 77, 181 libri traditionum 64 litterae admonitoriae et evocatoriae 73 litterae inquisitoriae et evocatoriae 73 litterae introductionales 73 litterae privilegiales 73 litterae querimoniales 167 livery of maintenance 113 livery of seisin see statutio loca credibilia 68–77, 118, 181 Locsmánd 31, 80, 118, 134 Louis I (1342–82) 40, 63, 101–2, 107–8, 133–5, 139, 145, 148–9, 162, 171 Louis II (1516–26) 9 lucrum camerae 146, 151–2, 168, 171, 206 Macsó, banate of 135 Máramaros county 92–3, 133 marriage, strategies of 46, 113, 115, 128, 154, 191 Mary (1382–95) 102, 108, 152, 171 Matthias Corvinus (1458–90) 116, 120, 137, 141, 151–4, 162–3, 167, 171 mercenaries 50, 147–8, 151–4 military organization 7, 16, 20–1, 25, 27, 29, 31, 37–9, 48, 50, 79–80, 82, 85–9, 91–2, 111, 120–1, 144–57, 180 milites aulae 127, 135 militia portalis 150–1, 154 Mitteis, Heinrich 4, 5 Modrus 31, 57, 189 Mohács, battle of (1526) 9, 145 Mongols, Mongol-Tatars, invasion of 1241 38, 42, 50, 64, 85, 99, 146, 148 murder 58, 97, 162, 165 ‘new donation’ 100–1, 107, 199 Nezdinus 189 ‘ninth’ 54 nobiles iobagiones, exercituantes 79, 81–2 nobiles kneziales 93, 94 nobiles praediales see praediales nobleman definition of, 1–4, 27–30, 38, 41–4, 58–61, 79, 80, 84, 105, 120, 155–6, 179– 80; ennoblement, 2–3, 35–8, 40–4, 50, 58–61, 89, 94, 99, 105, 120, 127, 144, 155, 170, 172; as an estate, 2, 37–40, 44, 171–3; fidgeting of, 127; as fratres and amici, 177; number of, 48–9, 155–7, 180; and peasants, 54–5, 57–8, 60, 123, 130, 145, 165, 192; veri nobiles, 43, 79, 120 Page 229 nota infidelitatis 2–3, 109 nova donatio see ‘new donation’ novae institutiones 32 nuncii 173 oaths 41, 48, 62–3, 71–3, 82, 118–19, 132–3, 141, 167, 175, 177; see also iuramenta horribilia oath-helpers 73–4 office-holding 7, 8, 33–5, 38, 51, 54, 110, 132–43, 153, 182 officialis 114, 122–3 Oguz Ban 41 ordeal 21, 62, 64, 65, 74 örök, örökség 77, 195 ország 16, 172 outlawry (proscriptio) 58, 72, 106, 162, 165–7 palatine 17, 20–1, 40–2, 44, 49–51, 54, 71, 113, 117, 135, 142, 165–7, 172, 176–7, 195; Articles of 1486, 172–3 Pannonhalma abbey 30, 56, 65 parentela 30, 96–100, 103, 109 parentes 15, 23 patrimonium 16 peasants (iobagiones) 4, 21–2, 32, 41, 46–7, 54, 57–60, 76, 93, 121–3, 130, 138, 145–6, 150–6, 163–8, 180; peasant assessors, 58 Pechenegs 11–12, 22, 28, 36, 147, 185 peculium (quasi) castrense 2 per eum 101 per se et personaliter 37, 48, 79, 86, 144–5 perjury 73–4, 195 perpetual county or lordship, see under ispán Péter, László 5, 6, 183 Pipo of Ozora (Ozorai Pipó, Filipo Scolari) 118, 136 pledge in land 3, 76–7, 109, 124 plenitude of power 101, 107, 160 population 8, 11, 156, 184, 208 possessionatus 1, 59–60, 155, 180 possessiones 59, 77 praediales 79, 81–5, 88, 93, 112, 119–20, 124, 180 praedium 57, 82, 88 praescriptio 75 preemption 30, 125 prefection 107–9 pristaldus 65–7, 70, 71, 193–4 Prokuj 13, 19, 91 proprietas, proprietates 57, 75–7 proprietory monasteries 19, 29–30, 33, 53, 69 proscriptio see outlawry proximi 23, 26, 102, 109 public notary 74 quinquagesima 93 reambulatio 47–8, 65, 70–3, 114 regnum 2, 6, 16, 156, 159–61, 169, 172–4, 179; membra regni, 172 rents 54, 75–6, 83 renunciatio 75 requisitio 72, 82, 166 Reynolds, Susan 6, 158, 181 robbery 57 Roman law 4, 16, 74–7, 101, 181, 195 Romanians see Vlachs, Wallachian districts Rovišće (Rojcsa) 81–2 royal presence 164 sale of land 30, 64, 71, 75–7, 83, 88, 95, 97, 102–3, 109 Sarchas, judge 64; see also Domesday Saxons 59, 94, 161 Schöpflin, George 5 seals 41–2, 44, 55, 64, 67–9, 73, 93, 159–60, 167, 173 Secretum Secretorum 129 seigneurial courts 58, 114, 165, 168 Serbia 65, 118, 135, 149 serviens, servientes 1, 36–44, 46, 49, 67, 86, 144, 146, 179, 190 servitors, 110; see also castle-warriors, castrenses, udvarniks servus 20, 21 shamanism 11–12, 14, 26, 186 Page 230 shepherds 51, 163 Sigismund (1387–1437) 87, 94, 102, 115, 122, 136, 141, 149–52, 162, 166, 170 Slavonia 10–11, 18, 31, 34, 47, 49, 51, 57, 80–4, 90, 113–14, 128, 135–8, 162–3, 177, 184, 187 Slovakia see Highlands Somogy county 34, 42, 73, 83, 121, 136, 168–9 speculatores 22 statutio 48, 72–3, 103, 106, 139 Stephen I, king and saint (1000–38) 13–15, 19, 21, 23, 25–6, 29, 38, 59, 60, 86, 134, 186, 188 Stephen III (1162–72) 134 Stephen V (1270–72) 40, 48 Stubbs, Bishop 173 subinfeudation 4, 126, 204 subsidium 151–2, 154–5 summoning 56, 65, 70, 154; short summons, see brevis Szekels 91, 94, 122, 140, 147–9, 161 Szekfű, Gyula 111, 123, 127 Szepesség, Szepes county 22, 50, 80, 85–9, 141 Szepes lancers 86–9, 180 szolgabirák 41–2, 44, 69, 71–2, 84, 93, 164–7, 170, 174–5, 177 Szörény (Turnu Severin), banate of 90–4, 128, 136, 139–40 Szűcs, Jenő 5 Tallóci brothers 115, 118, 136–7 tárnoks 18, 20, 36–7 tavernicus 113, 120, 128, 135, 142 taxation 81, 112, 114, 116, 121, 138, 145–6, 150–2, 154–5, 171, 180; noble exemption from, 3, 39, 84, 145–6, 150, 155, 180, 206 Temes county 45–6, 92–3, 97, 115, 117, 140, 153, 175–6 Temesvár (Timişoara) 108, 138 Templars 81, 147 testament 25–6, 98, 104–7, 115, 200 testimony 23, 61–74, 70–4, 77 Teutonic Knights 91, 92, 147 Thuróczy, John 116 tithe 54, 57, 146 Törcsvár (Bran) 148 totems 12, 26, 185 towns 21–2, 57, 69, 138, 164–5 Transylvania 11, 19, 22, 31, 49, 51, 53, 59, 86, 88–92, 114, 116, 137, 140, 145, 148, 153, 161, 164, 184, 199, 206 treasury 120–1, 137–8, 141, 152; provisor, 141 trespass 34, 47, 71, 83, 97, 162–3, 166–9 tribal organization 11–14, 21, 26 Turks 8–9, 10, 64, 149, 151, 162, 171 Turóc county 43–4, 80, 85–7, 118 Turopolje (Túrmező) 81 udvarniks 18, 20, 36–7, 42, 85 Újlaki kindred 10, 116; Nicolas Újlaki, 117, 120, 137 Ullmann, Walter 131 una et eadem libertas 2, 60, 123 unicuique quod suum est 42 universitas 22, 40–1, 44, 169 usufruct, use 75–6, 124–5, 139 usury 76 Uzsai, John 74 Várad Register 55, 64, 190 vassalage 6–7, 181; vassalus, 84 Verbotsformel 55, 67 villages 21, 23, 30–1, 34, 46, 48, 50, 82, 92, 114–15, 121, 132–4, 136–9, 153, 176 vinculum 166 Vlachs 90–1 voevode 18, 49, 53, 69, 110, 114, 116, 118, 122, 135, 137, 140, 142, 153; vice-voevode, 140 Vrana (Aurana) 137 Wallachian districts 92–3 Werbőczy, Stephen 1–3, 8, 39, 60, 66, 76, 104, 106, 108–12, 116–17, 155, 172, 183 widows 76, 97, 103, 106, 154 witnesses 64–5 Page 231 Wladislas I (1440–44) 168, 171 Wladislas II (1490–1516) 152 woodland see forests Zách, Felicián 97 Zagreb 66, 81–2, 114, 118, 136, 162 Zala county 41, 44, 59, 106, 115, 117, 140, 149, 174 Zápolyai kindred 116–18, 137, 154, 176 Zólyom county 85–6, 88–9 župans 24, 34, 81