Preface This book was written for the non-Hungarian reader who wishes to discover what happened in the Carpathian basin during the Middle Ages. Ibis to be hoped that nobody living in that region who has strong national feelings will find comfort in it. Each of the nations of the region has its own vision of the past, incompatible with that of the others, and it was my firm intention that none of these visions should bbe represented in this volume. Throughout this book are to be found topics which do not sit ‘comfortably with particular national perspectives on the past. Many Slovakians do not like to read, for instance, that their country was once merely part of Hungary. Similarly, many Romanians prefer not to be reminded that in the Middle Ages Transylvania was a Hungarian prov ince, for they would like to believe that it was in fact a Romanian principality, only loosely attached to a foreign power. All Croatians know well that Croatia as a kingdom was older than Hungary, but ‘many of them would prefer to forget that this kingdom was much smaller than modern Croatia and that their modern capital, Zagreb, lay in Hungary. As for Hungarians, they sill eling on to the fiction that there has only ever been one Hungary: the one that was founded by St Stephen in 1000 AD, and which still survives after a thousand years, even if it happens to be much smaller now than it once was. They will never accept the obvious fact that the republic of Hungary is not iden- tical to the ancient kingdom of Hungary; that, as political entities, these are as different as are Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. ‘A particular area of sensitivity where national feelings are concerned is the use of personal names and place names. There are as many name forms as there are languages in the region, but there is no rule to determine which form is correct when the language of communication is English. Kosice in modern Slovakia can be called Kassa, for it was, after all, a town in Hungary; but it was also known as Kaschau, for atthat time it was inhabited by Germans, and also Cassovia, for this was the Latinised name of the town, used in contemporary records. To make things easier, and also for the convenience of the reader, the modern names of localities, the names which can be found on a modern map, have been used in this book. (References to other names can be found in the index.) The only exceptions to this rule are recently created names, use of which would have involved obvious anachro- nisms. One should not refer to Budapest before 1873 when the three Cities of Buda, Obuda and Pest were administratively united to form the modern capital. Also inappropriate in this book would be Brat- islava or Cluj-Napoca, since both names were created in recent times, ‘Most persons who appear in this book have also had different names in the vernacular languages of the region, while bearing a Latinised name in contemporary records. It is often impossible to say which of these names is historically ‘correct’. Johannes de Hunyad may equally be called Tancu de Hunedoara (Romanian) or Janos Hunyadi (Hungarian), because he was born a Romanian, but became a Hungarian nobleman and also regent of Hungary. The lords de Gara were Hungarian lords and can be referred to as Garai (Hungarian); but they had many Croatian subjects who probably called them Gorjanski (Croatian). However, it would have been nonsensical to differentiate herween Hungarian lords according to their ‘modern nationality’; nor would it have been meaningful to use their Latinised names, for these people were not Romans. They were or became Hungarians, so in each ‘case the name that has been accepted in Hungarian historiography has been used in this book, apart from their Christian names, which are always given in the English form, In preparing the manuscript I have very much profited from the comments of Jorg K. Hoensch (Saarbriicken), Martyn Rady (London), Janos M. Bak, Enikd Csukovits, Zsuzsanna Hermann, Andras Kubinyi, Istvan Tringli and Auila Zsoldos (Budapest). | am peculiarly indebted to Tamas Pélosfalvi for the vast amount of work that he put into preparing the rough English version of my Hungarian text; and to Andrew Ayton, who expended no less effort going through the text meticulously word by word, making many suggestions and reworking the prose extensively, thereby shaping the text into its now readable form. I am also grateful to Béla Nagy for drawing the maps. But, in the first place, I am indebted to my wife for supporting me with infinite patience while I was writing this book, Pal EngelIntroduction Hungary is now one of the smallest countries of Europe. This book, however, is concerned with the medieval period, and here the name “Hungary’ will refer to the former kingdom of Hungary, which (even without the kingdom of Croatia which was once united with it) was more than three times larger than the present-day republic, and also somewhat larger than the combined area of Great Britain and Ireland. Itextended over the whole of the Carpathian basin, including not only present-day Slovakia, but also considerable parts of Romania, Ukraine, Austria, Yugoslavia and Croatia. Although the kingdom of Hungary ceased to exist as an independent country at the end of the Middle Ages, politically it survived as an autonomous part of the Habsburg Empire until the end of the First World War in 1918. LANDSCAPE AND HISTORY ‘The medieval kingdom of Hungary was born in a geographically well- defined region that is usually called the Carpathian basin. ‘This is the drainage-area of the middle Danube valley, and is named after those ‘mountain ranges with 2000 metre peaks that border it to the north, the east and the south. It is divided by the Danube into two parts of ‘unequal proportions, and its centre is surrounded by mountain ranges of medium height. The region to the west of the Danube has been called Transdanubia since the period of the Ottoman occupation when the capital of the country was temporarily moved from Buda to Press- burg, on the northern bank of the river. The climate here is predominantly temperate, with a relatively heavy rainfall. This is a fertile landscape with hills of modest elevation interrupted by valleys and basins, and with the Balaton, the largest warm-water lake in Europe, at its heart. There are also mountain ranges ~ the Mecsek ithe south-east, the Bakony and the Vértes north of the Balaton — but none rises higher than 600 metres. The landscape east of the Danube is profoundly different. The Great Hungarian Plain, which stretches without a single hill fiom Budapest to Oradea in the east and Belgrade hh, can be regarded as a kind of appendix to the Eurasian steppe. The climate is rather mote exueme here, with hot, dry summers, but the region is abundantly supplied with water by its main river, the Tisea, and its ibutaries, which, before the nineteenth- century regulation works, meandered across the Great Plain, These rivers were lanked by marshlands, swamps and inundation forests, and also by fertile pastures and meadows, offering favourable conditions for fishing and livestock breeding. To the north, cast and south-east of the Great Plain, in present-day Slovakia and Romania, there are moun tain ranges that become progressively higher as one travels outwards from the Plain. Th with the exception of the valleys, they have never been propitious to hhuman settlement. Consequently, until the late Middle Ages these mountains were covered by forests and largely uninhabited, and coloni- zation of them continued into the early modern period. When, in the ninth century, the Hungarians emerged from the obscurity of prehistoric times they were living as nomadic horsemen on the steppe along the Black Sea. They spoke a language of Finno-tIgric origin, but their culture in general resembled that of the Turkic peoples of the steppe. In 895 they moved into the Carpathian basin tunder the leadership of their pagan prince, Arpéd, Here they soon became notorious through their plundering raids into Westen Europe in the tenth century. But Hungary asa political unit can only be spoken, of from the year 1000, when Stephen I, a descendant of Arpad and later to be known as Saint Stephen, converted to Christianity and was crowned king. The kingdom founded by him became one of the great powers ofthe region and remained so for 500 years, until the sixteenth century, when it was crushed by the expanding Ottoman Empire. 1526, the year of the batle of Mohdcs, where King Louis It himself was Killed, constitutes the traditional closing date of the history of medieval Hungary. The central part of the kingdom, including Buda, the capital, was soon overrun by the Turks and incorporated into their ‘empire. In the east, Transylvania became an autonomous principality under Ottoman contol, while the rest of the kingdom, which was defensible against the Turks, was to be governed by kings from the Habsburg dynasty until 1918, The latter, who were at the same time rulers of Austria and Bohemia and also Holy Roman Emperors, consis- tently regarded Hungary as one of their hereditary dominions Between 1683 and 1699 they finally expelled the Turks from Hungary, annexing Transylvania in 1690, but the integrity of medieval Hungary y were formerly extremely rich in minerals; but,| | 1 was only restored in 1867, when the Austro-Fiungarian monarchy was founded. However, the end of the First World War brought about the total dismemberment of this shorelived empire, and the ‘Treaties of ‘Trianon and Versailles alloted more than two thirds of the former Kingdom of Hungary to the newly born national states of Czechoso vakia, Ansria, Romania and Yugoslavia. “The medieval history of Hungary can be divided into three periods. The age of the rulers of Arpéa's dynasty (1000-1301), atleast during the fist ewo centuries, sil recalls in some respects the barbarian kings dloms of the Dark Ages. The thirteenth century, when Hungaty had to face, if only for a moment, the invasion of Dzinghis Khan's successors (1241, witnessed spectacular changes inthe structure of both society and the economy. From this time on, by its outlook as well as by the nature of its institutions, Hungary increasingly resembled dhe elder Kingdoms of Christian Europe, although, lying on the pesiphery of Christendom, it quite naturally preserved a number of features pec lar to itself. The period of the Angevin rulers (1301-1382) and Kang Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387-1437) can be deseribed as. the apogee of medieval Hungary: It is marked by strong royal powes, an aggressive foreign policy and, somewhat in contrast to the manifold crisis that was then gripping the West, dynamic economic develop- ment. ‘The main feature of the last century of medieval Hungasy (1487-1526) was the defence against the increasing Ottoman threat ‘This was accompanied by the decline of royal power, which was nat rally not unconnected with the growing importance of the Estates, The ‘wo personalities who dominated this petiod were the regent, John Hunyadi (, 1456), hero of the Otoman wars, and bis som, King Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490), who is remembered. lest asthe conqueror of Vienna than asa generous patron of Renaissance art and humanism. The union with Bohemia under the feeble Jagiellonian Kings (1490-1526) was merely a prelude to the fll of the medieval kingdom, SOURCES ‘The history of Hungary is poorly endowed with narrative sources. Even those that we have are not very informative. There are almost no ‘monastic annals and no family chronicles. Diaries, memoirs and other ‘genres of historical literature are also unavailable. Up to the end of the fifteenth century, no period is illuminated by more than a single account, with the exception of one decade (1345-1355), which is covered by two works. Moreover, there are certain periods, such as that between 1150 and 1270, for which there is no narrative source at all,but only short chronological notices marking the dates of accession and death of successive rulers. The oldest texts can only be recon- structed from later redactions, and there will always remain a good deal of uncertainty around them, An example is the putative ‘Primeval ggesta’, now lost but usually dated to the eleventh century. Those works that have survived, like the Gesta of Simon Kérai (c. 1285), the Ilumi- nated Chronicle (¢. 1360) or the Chronicle of John Thuréczy (1488) give only a brief and fairly terse report of events. The longest, ‘Thurdczy's Chronicle, which covers the period from Attila to Corvin could be published quite comfortably in a single volume of modest ‘The Hungarian narrative sources do not, therefore, provide suffi ient detail for the proper reconstruction of events, a fact that explains why contemporary foreign sources are often of great importance, For the first centuries of Hungarian history the annals of certain German and Russian monasteries, as well as Byzantine, Dalmatian, Austrian and Bohemian chronicles, are especially rich in information concerning Hungary. Equally indispensable are the writings of some later authors, like the chronicle of the Florentine Villani brothers for the Angevin period or that of the Polish Jan Dlugosz for the age of the Hunyadis. As regards the political situation in the decades immediately preceding the battle of Mahaes, particulaely informative are the diploy matic correspondence and reports of foreign (Venetian, Papal, Austrian, and Polish) envoys. From the beginning of the thirteenth insignificance of the narrative sources is somewhat counterbalanced by a distinctively Hungarian type of source, namely the narratives incorporated in royal grants of privileges. These docu- ments provide valuable information on the ‘meritorious deeds performed by the grantee in the campaigns of the king. Some of these accounts are quite lengthy, covering several years, and often illuminate ‘events for which no other sources are available. Unlike the narrative sources, the archival material of medieval Hungary is, with the exception of the earliest period, relatively exten- sive. From the cleventh and twelfth centuries, apart from some important collections of laws, only a handful of ¢ favour of ecclesiastical institutions, have been preserved; but the number of documents increases rapidly from around 1200 when the laity began to feel the necessity of putting down their property (and other) rights in a written form. As a result, roughly 10,000 documents have survived from the chirteenth century and about 300,000 from the period berween 1301 and 1526. About half of this corpus is now preserved in the Hungarian National Archives at Budapest, the rest being scattered in collections within Hungary and abroad, mostly in Vienna, Bratislava, Cluj and Zagreb. (Photographic copies of all of century the relati arters, issuedthem are available in the Hungarian National Archives) Most ofthese documents are unpublished, and atleast haf have not been inven Fied. OF the other archives where sources concerning the history of medieval Hungary are tobe found, the most important are those ofthe Vatican, which ill cannot be sid to have been fully exploited The documents in question were party the products of central administration and jurtliction, and partly records of legal transi tions between private persons and institutions, ‘The use of written administrative documents, in the first place the issue of royal writs, began sporadically under the lat Arpadians and became a daily routine der the Angevins. By that time the central courts had also adopted the methods employed by the chancellery and began to produce thousinds of Teters ordering inquires, prorogations and compensations, of pronouncing final decsions for the interested partes. The orders issued by the chancellry and the courts were Carried out by local ecclesiastical institutions, called ‘places of authenti- cation’ (loa crediila), which at the same time performed a notary office function, drawing up contracts becween indvial parties The documents that have come dawn tows represent only one oF 60 per cent of those that were once isued. Private collections that had never been accessible to scholars were destroyed as late as the Second World War Many docwments, judged irctovant for one tea oF another, have been thrown away during the course of the cencuies, among them the bulk of private letters and papers concerning mano. Fal administration. Be the greatese destruction ofall seem to have been caused by the Ottoman conquest in the siteenth century. All the archives that were not removed in time from the path of the invading army disappeared without trace. This i what happened to the most important and probably greatest collection of the realm, namely the documents of central administration that had previously been preserved at Buda. This lost collection included the private and diplo- mati correspondence of kings (only some leters of Matthias Convio have survived in a codex), the volumes in which charters and writs issued by the chancellery had been registered sine the Angevin period (the Hungarian equivalent of the English chancery roll), and the Iwhole of the chambers administrative records, including tax asses ment lists. (Although certain sections of the archives were. probably only burned during the siege of Buda in 1686, they had remained inac- cessible under Ottoman rile) Most of the material that has survived, therefore, consists ofthe private archives of maghate and gentry fami lies, and, to a certain extent, those of ecclesiastical institutions and municipalities. The majority of the documents concern western ad northern Hungary, Slavonia (part of modern Croatia) and ‘Tansyl- Vania. They are for the most part legal documents issued by places Ofauthentication, the chancellery or the courts, and are generally written in Latin, the official language of multinational Hungary until 184. It was only in a few cities, like Sopron or Pressburg (Bratislava), that German was used for internal affairs from the fourteenth century. As for Hungarian, it did not emerge as an instrument of written commu- nication before the early modern period, and even then only as the language of private correspondence and local administration, LIMITS OF MODERN RESEARCH The possibilities of modern historical research are, therefore, fairly limited. It is as if the history of medieval England had to be written without access to the Public Record Office or the archives of the southern counties. Compared to Russia or the Balkan states, however, where medieval documents are counted in hundreds, Hungary is well endowed with records and the predicament of a historian unquestion- ably advantageous. The source material is particularly suitable for historical research focusing on government or the land-owning classes. We have relatively abundant chronological, archontological and proso- pographical information from the thirteenth century onwards, and the Picture we can draw becomes still more detailed from the Angevin period, when the great majority of documents were already being dated by the day of issue. (Between 1308 and 1323, for example, only fone document in fourteen was issued without indication of the day.) Lists of prelates and principal lay officeholders can be established rela- tively fully from 1190 onwards with the help of the names of dignitaries included in royal grants. ‘The reconstruction of royal itineraries, the main source of late medieval political history, is only made possible from 1310 by the increasing number of royal charters. The genealogy of many noble families can be pieced together from the thirteenth century, but only in the male line, since daughters are rarely mentioned before the fifteenth century. From the late medieval period we have scattered biographical data concerning several thousand people belonging to the elite, but exact dates of birth and death can rarely be established outside the royal family before the end of the Middle Ages. In contrast to the history of administration and of the nobility, the economic and demographic conditions of the medieval period remain obscure. No comprehensive register of the taxpayers or the settlements of the medieval kingdom is known to exist. The only surviving source of this kind are the lists, drawn up by the papal tax collectors sent from Avignon between 1332 and 1337, of the parishes of the Hungarian bish- optics and of the tax paid by them. However, the historical importanceof these lists lies primarily in the sphere of ecclesiastical geography. Moreover, they do not cover all bishoprics. Rolls enumerating all the landowners of the country and their peasant households by counties and villages are supposed to have been drawn up regularly for military ‘or fiscal purposes since the reign of Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387— 1437), but only a few pieces have survived before 1531. As for the reve- rues of the kingdom, a rough estimate can be made for the last years of Sigismund’s reign, but the earliest detailed evidence comes from the accounts of the treasurer Sigismund Ernuszt, bishop of Pécs, concerning the years 1494-95. They contain, among other things, the number of peasant holdings in the kingdom and their distribution by counties ‘What of local economic conditions? The recording of seigneutial rev rnues in written form was exceptional before the end of the fifteenth century, and even thereafter few lords kept regular accounts, This fact enhances the value of the accounts that were prepared for Cardinal Ippolito Este, archbishop of Esztergom and bishop of Eger (d. 1520), by his Italian stewards in Hungary. For the everyday life of the peasantry wwe have innumerable allusions scattered among the archives of noble families, due to the fact that every lord went to law personally in cases of damage done to, or caused by, his peasants, What we lack in this respect is documentary evidence of a more coherent nature, such as records of lawsuits pursued before the seigneurial courts. Recor. of this kind do not seem to have been produced. Much more is known about urban life, thanks to some carefully preserved archives. From the reign of Louis the Great (1342-1382) onwards, municipal tax assessment lists, accounts, wills and other documents have survived in increasing numbers and for the most part remain unpublished. Given the particular nature of the written sources, the evidence provided by other disciplines is indispensable, especially for the tenth to twelfth centuries. Archaeology has developed rapidly since the 1940s, producing important results, despite being forced until the end of the Communist era to dispense with its most effective tool, aerial photography, because of its political and military implications, Another related discipline is linguistics, or more exactly toponymy, whose evidence is simply indispensable for the reconstruction of the topog- raphy and ethnic structure of medieval Hungary. The memory of thousands of vanished settlements and other place names has been preserved in medieval and early modern documents, and most of them can be localised by reference to modern maps and by collecting still surviving toponyms. Although the ancient network of settlement in the southern regions had been practically destroyed by the end of the Otcoman occupation, the tax assessments from the first period of Ottoman rule (1540-1590) help us to reconstruct late medieval conditions.