Etnie și dări pe domeniile episcopale transilvănene în Evul Mediu târziu / Ethnicity and Taxation on the Estates of the Transylvanian Bishopric in the Late Middle Ages (original) (raw)

2023, Realități vechi - interpretări noi. Fenomene transculturale maghiaro-româno-germane în Bazinul Carpatic. Coord. Nagy Levente, Florin-Ionel Oprescu, Vincze Ferenc. Budapesta

The Hungarian and Romanian literature has for a while detected that in the eastern part of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary certain types of taxes were associated exclusively with certain ethnic groups. This paper examines the validity of this thesis on the basis of a recently discovered source, the land register (urbarium) of the estates of the Transylvanian bishopric, which was compiled around 1552 and contains the feudal obligations for the settlements (i.e. 1 city, 4 market towns and 32 villages) belonging to the Alba Iulia/Gyulafehérvár and Gilău/Gyalu manors. The study of this correlation required a reconstruction of the ethnic structure of the region, too, based on certain, critically reviewed methods. According to this, the manor of Alba Iulia included 7 Hungarian, 1 Saxon (i.e. German), 1 mixed Saxon-Hungarian, 2 Hungarian-Romanian and 5 Romanian settlements, while the manor of Gilău included 11 Hungarian, 2 Hungarian-Saxon and 8 Romanian settlements (sometimes explicitly distinguished from each other by the source). Among the various annuities, the fiftieth of sheep (quinquagesima ovium), the pig tithe and the tax of kenezii were paid exclusively by Romanian communities, while the tithe of wine, grain, lamb and piglet, the levy called pasyth dyzno (i.e. pig on the grass) and – as a local peculiarity – the traditional land rent (census, terragium) were paid by the Hungarian and Saxon communities. On festive occasions, the Hungarians and Saxons typically gave the landlord a certain amount of wine and oats, while the Romanians gave leather and woolen products. Other gifts (chicken, bread) and the extraordinary dues (taxa extraordinaria), however, were not linked to ethnicity.