Communication between the Towns and the County Authority: The Free Royal Towns and Šariš County at the Beginning of the 16th Century (original) (raw)
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Historical Studies on Central Europe, 2021
The study presents the possibilities and framework for cooperation between towns in Hungary through the operation of the Town League of Upper Hungary. The cooperation of towns in the Kingdom of Hungary happened primarily through regional relations. At first, the basis for cooperation was provided by common economic interests, but this area broadened considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the battle of Mohács (1526), the towns of Hungary became full members of the Hungarian Estates. The Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the Habsburg Monarchy, gained considerable autonomy in internal politics. This was based on a compromise with the Habsburg rulers to ensure protection against the Ottoman Empire. The free royal towns were the least influential members of this country that had strong Estates. Nevertheless, cooperation between the towns became nationwide. The diets provided the forum for all free royal towns in the country to represent their common interests in a coordinated way. There are traces of this nationwide cooperation as early as the mid-sixteenth century, but it was from the early seventeenth century that it was the strongest. The reason was that in those decades state taxes were becoming heavier and more burdensome for towns. This nationwide cooperation was not only manifested in the field of taxation, but from the first quarter of the seventeenth century onwards, it increasingly extended to religious matters. In the background, there was the increasing recatholization of the Habsburg Monarchy. In this special matter, close links were forged also with the otherwise strongly anti-urban lower nobility. Cooperation between towns worked well, despite the fact that the dominance of Košice (Kassa, Kaschau) clearly influenced the issues that the League members jointly raised. Indeed, the presence of the army, military burdens and denominational issues were most prominent in Košice, the center of the region. The guild association, which determined the internal trade and industrial policy of cities, contributed most to the dominance of Košice craftsmen and merchants in the regional economy. There were significant economic conflicts between Košice and other towns, such as Levoča (Lőcse), Bardejov (Bártfa), Prešov (Eperjes), Sabinov (Kisszeben, Zeben), and Kežmarok (Késmárk). However, the union of towns was also beneficial for the smaller towns, as on their own they would have been unable to represent their interests so effectively.
Dubrovnik Annals, 2019
This article addresses the closing of the nobility and Major Council of Dubrovnik as a long-term process most clearly articulated in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Analysed are the criteria used for the definition of nobility and its closing before the actual closure of the council, while special attention has been given to the preserved lists of the Major Council membership from the mid-thirteenth and early fourteenth century, their purpose and effect. As the Venetian Serrata of the last decades of the thirteenth and first decades of the fourteenth century proved to have been a model and impetus for the closing of the Ragusan along with other Dalmatian councils, its meaning as well as different interpretations of this process are being thoroughly considered. The article compares the method and effects of the closing of the Ragusan council with those of other cities of the Eastern Adriatic. The interpretation of these processes as presented in Ragusan chronicles inaugurates the final assessment of the significance and consequences of the closing of the Major Council of Dubrovnik.
Transylvanian Review, 2017
T he region we survey geographically belongs to the great hungarian plain, more precisely to its eastern section. it is bordered to the north by the Mureş river, on the eastern side by the Carpathians, to the west by the Tisza river and to the south by the Bârzava river. historically, in the Modern era it was called the Banat of Timiş (Temescher Banat, in german). in the late Middle ages, the time-frame we investigate, this part of the Kingdom of hungary was characterized by a low urban network, with only a few towns, being predominantly composed of market towns and villages 1. historian erik Fügedi has already underlined the positive role of the presence of an estate administration center for the development of a settlement 2. andrás Kubinyi, on the other hand, admitted also the opposite: the authority of a landlord would have had a restrictive influence over the self-administration of the market towns he owned 3. The jurisdictional role the landlord fulfilled in the litigations of the inhabitants and his intervention, as a patron, into matters of the church administration, for example (appointment of priests, benefit of the tithe), could be such negative aspects. according to the survey of Kubinyi, 90% of 15 th century noble residences were to be found near urban settlements, or at least the use of the term oppidum designating the residence settlements becomes more frequent during the 15 th century. The role of residential and administrative center of both royal and noble seat settlements is nevertheless taken into consideration in Kubinyi's centrality analyses. lately, szabolcs gulyás, in his study on the relation of noble residences and thus of administrative centers and market towns from the northeastern part of medieval hungary stressed the fact that a pattern does not exist in what the interaction between settlement development and residence founding is concerned 4. The development of market towns in the region of the hungarian plain presents certain particularities derived from the geographical, and thus also from the economic character of the region. it is mostly a rural landscape, focused in consequence on agricultural production. The smaller area within the plain of the Timiş river, due to its zsuzsanna KoPEczny
Series: Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, vol. 41 This book is the first comprehensive overview of how written administration was established in the royal towns of medieval Hungary. Using the conceptual framework of trust and authority, the volume sheds light on the growing complexity of urban society and the impact that the various uses of writing had on managing this society, both by the king and by the local magistrates. The present survey and analysis of a broad range of surviving sources reveals that trust in administrative literacy was built up gradually, through a series of decisive and chronologically distinct steps. These included the acquisition of an authentic seal; the appointment of a clerk or notary; setting up a writing office; drawing up town books; and, finally, establishing an archive from the assemblage of collected documents. Although the development of literacy in Hungarian towns has its own history, the questions posed by the study are not unlike those raised for other towns of medieval Europe. The study of Central European towns can therefore be used both to broaden seemingly disparate research frameworks and to contribute to studies that take a more general approach to Europe and beyond.
REPREZENTACE A PRAXE SOCIÁLNÍ KONTROLY V POZDNĚ STŘEDOVĚKÝCH MĚSTECH (Representation and Practice of Social Control in Late Medieval Cities), 2023
Monograph: The book opens a little-explored topic in Czech historiography: the beginnings of institutionalized social control in late medieval towns. The presented interpretation of urban riots in the 15th and 16th centuries combines the approaches of modern urban historiography with extensive archival heuristics. A fundamental transformation of political communication is characterized in the book. The authors have formulated a hypothesis about a change in the policy of town councils. The aldermen began to replace negotiating a compromise with major guilds by controlling the entire town space. The assembled authors describe this change from different points of view, including the tools that town councils used for overall control. The transformations in Bohemian towns are interpreted as part of processes acting all over Europe, and on the contrary, the thesis about the difference in the development of the domestic environment as a result of Hussitism is weakened.
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ELITES IN EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE (15TH–18TH CENTURIES
The volume contains sixteen essays on aspects of the development of commercial, ecclesiastical, noble and military elites in the Romanian Principalities, Poland-Lithuania, the Ionian Islands and the Ottoman Balkans. A hard copy of the book is available from the UCL online store, priced at £22.50. See http://onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk/browse/department.asp?compid=1&modid=1&deptid=135
The registers of the Lettere e Comissioni di Levante represent one of the most important and substantial but still underused collections of the Dubrovnik State Archives. They contain copies of letters sent by the Ragusan government to rulers and nobles in their immediate continental hinterland and beyond, as well as copies of extensive, comprehensive and detailed written instructions to their ambassadors who visited or resided in the courts of these nobles and rulers. In a chronological sense the registers span from 1359 to the end of the Ragusan Republic in 1808, while the fifteenth century is covered by 16 separate books, each containing around a hundred separate documents on average. Some of these letters or instructions also treat various political discussions that took place at the time, making them a vital and unavoidable source for the reconstruction and understanding of diplomatic negotiations. The aim of this paper is to present some basic information about the registers of the archival collection Lettere e Comissioni di Levante and to provide an assessment of the potential that they have for the reconstruction of diplomatic negotiations in the fifteenth century. Particular focus will be placed on three case studies which will analyse the communication strategies and mechanisms that the Ragusans employed in order to navigate the political tensions which arose during their wars with king Stefan Ostoja from 1403 to 1404, with voivode Radosav Pavlović from 1430 to 1432, and with duke Stjepan Vukčić from 1450 to 1453.