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A Duna–Tisza–Maros köz és Temesvár a középkorban

Author(s): István Petrovics / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 12/2020

After discussing the notion of Bánság (Romanian, German, Serbian: Banat) and the geographical and political-administrative characteristics of the region in question, the paper focuses on the development of Temesvár, medieval precursor of modern Timişoara, in the period that preceded the mid-16th century. Temesvár was and remained the centre of Temes county and the seat of the archdeaconry of Temes, and was the place where between 1315 and 1323 Charles I of Anjou, king of Hungary, had his royal residence. Later, in parallel with the Balkans policy of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Ottoman menace, the importance of Temesvár increased significantly, especially from the military point of view. This situation, however, restricted the self-government of the town to that extent that Temesvár did not succeed in gaining admittance to the category of the most developed towns (royal free towns) of the realm in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. After averting a siege in the fall of 1551, Temesvár finally fell to the Ottomans in 1552. This opened a new chapter in the history of the town.

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A Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára 1526–1570 közötti iratainak adatbázisa és felhasználásának lehetőségei

Author(s): György Laczlavik / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: VII/2020

On the 29th of August 2026 there will be 500 years since the forces of the Ottoman Empire had inflicted a devastating defeat upon the army of King Louis II of Hungary on the plains of Mohács. The tragic event was determinant in several ways. Among others, it is considered to mark the end of the Middle Ages in Hungary. Although the amount of the surviving archival sources for the decades after the battle does not differ from those predating it, their use required a lot more effort from the researchers. All this because – in contrast to the concise database of the pre-1526 documents – the archival records had been dispersed in hundreds of different locations. In the spring of 2016 the National Archives of Hungary started to gather, to digitize and to process its documents dated between the 29th of August 1526 and 1570. Nearly 90,000 digitized documents are being processed in an online database, and the results were first published in the autumn of 2018 (nearly 20,000 records), followed by a second publication in the spring of 2020, but the work is going on. The namespace of the NAH is being developed in parallel with the processing of the documents, too. With the help of these two databases many archival sources may be found on the history of central jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Hungary (and Transylvania) and of the jurisdiction and administration of the counties, as well. Thus, we have the opportunity to establish hitherto unknown genealogical relationships and to promote family, estate, social and local historical research concerning the whole territory of the Carpathian Basin.

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Un document mai puţin cunoscut, posibil un fals, astăzi pierdut, de la Radu Leon

Author(s): M.Mihail Andreescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 6/2013

Radu Leon was ruler of Wallachia from 1664 to 1669. He had the byname Radu the Oyster-seller. Son of Wallachian ruler Leon Tomşa, and putative grandson of Ştefan Tomşa, ruler of Moldavia, Radu Leon replaced the deposed ruler Grigore I Ghica in December 1664. The article analyzes a document from the times of Radu Leon, trying to establish whether it is a fake or not.

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Masa curții episcopale de la Alba Iulia la începutul secolului al XVI-lea

Author(s): Mihai Kovács / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 28/2020

The paper is an attempt to reconstruct the importance of alimentation for the economic and cultural development of an episcopal town in Medieval Transylvania, by the example of Alba Iulia (Gyulafehérvár, Weissenburg) in the first decades of the 16th century. The inquiry is based mainly on sources from the family archive of bishop Ferenc Várdai (1513–1524): accountable registers, missives, testament etc. The text is divided into three parts, the first traces the provenience of consumed food, while the second and third one show the personnel and inventory related to the nourishment of the bishop and his household. The bishop played an ambivalent part in the economic development of his residence town. On one hand, he stimulated its development by granting privileges, creating workplaces and attracting a large number of potential buyers, on the other hand, he inhibited economic growth by spending relatively small sums on food purchases in the town, retaining the monopoly of wine trade and imposing taxes. Sumptuous meals aimed to express the power and wealth of the bishop and thus to attract more and more people, familiars, into his household. The episcopal household from Alba Iulia had certainly a significant part in disseminating the Renaissance lifestyle throughout Transylvania.

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Gyulafehérvár falakon kívüli főtere és a városvezető réteg a 16. század végén

Author(s): Emőke Gálfi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2018

The study explores the connections between the main square of Gyulafehérvár outside the walls and the town’s political elite in the late sixteenth century. A princely residence, the town of Gyulafehérvár had two main squares: while the one within the walls was surrounded by the high-quality mansions of the courtly nobility, the other, situated outside the walls, was a true reflection of the town’s social structure, and functioned as its market square. This outer square was shared by the three layers of urban society, that is, the courtly nobility, the courtly military and the well-to-do members of the townspeople. In the last third of the sixteenth century the town was governed by the chief judge, twelve jurors and fourty council members referred to as senators. The independent municipality of burgesses who had fled to the town from Lippa and Temesvár in the middle of the sixteenth century ceased by the end of it, or rather merged into the town’s administration, whereas the cnez of the Romanian district continued to function. Only the richest burgesses were able to acquire real estate on the outer square, and the connections between this group and the one which furnished the town magistracy are evident. The study accordingly explores this layer of town society through the examination of a woman burgess and her five consecutive husbands.

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Oláh Miklós formuláskönyve. Bevezető tanulmány egy készülő kiadáshoz

Author(s): Gábor Mikó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 04/2019

The paper presents the history and content of a formulary from the Jagiellonian period which, in the sixteenth century, came into the possession of the renowned humanist, Miklós Oláh. The manuscript is one of the most important formularies compiled in the territory of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Its importance is constituted by the fact that it contains a great number of such letters and charters from the period between 1510 and 1514 whose originals have not survived. They not only offer insight into the domestic politics of that period, but also offer valuable help for the reconstruction of several details of Ottoman-Hungarian warfare in the decade before Mohács.

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Megjegyzések II. Lajos király halálához

Author(s): Szabolcs Varga / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

Louis (II) Jagiellon, King of Hungary and Bohemia, died on 29 August 1526 while fleeing from the battlefield of Mohács. While this event can hardly be qualified as unknown, several of its details have remained obscure. This situation has given birth to several legends, such as that the king may have been killed by his own men, or that he did not die where he has been thought to have perished by Hungarian historical memory. Yet a new scrutiny of the sources has led to the conclusion that Louis, on the run after the battle, in fact died along the right bank of the Danube, while crossing the creek called Csele. The king’s entourage was aware of the features of the landscape. While they knew that traffic in this area was difficult even in normal weather conditions, they did not count with the possibility that torrential summer rain may render the road from Mohács to Buda practically impassable, thereby making it a deathly trap for the ruler arriving on a tired mount, and perhaps wounded himself. Louis was not far from the final escape, and his fate was very much determined by the extreme weather conditions.

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II. Lajos halálának helye

Author(s): Norbert Pap,Péter Gyenizse,Máté Kitanics,Gábor Szalai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

Louis (II) Jagiellon, like most of the battle’s survivors, together with his two attendants moved on towards the narrow western branch of the Danube from the Turkish pursuers. They sought to find shelter on the Danube’s flood plain but in the course of crossing the river branch they became, with the exception of Ulrich Czettricz, royal chamberlain, victims of misfortune and got drown. The only eyewitness, Czettricz returned to the scene of the accident and his companions confirmed his words about the circumstances of the accident. The king lost his life in a muddy pit overflowed by the Danube where his horse and weapons were also found. Regarding the environment and water system the most important elements are the marsh, the flood plain and the presence of sludge. In the memory of the place of death the Csele stream became stronger only from the end of the 16th century and in the process of time it competely displaced the Danube as a possible venue.

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Földvár falu a török korban

Author(s): Balázs Sudár / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

Földvár was a small village in the southern part of Hungary, close to the Danube. Although it has disappeared by now, it is still relatively widely known due to the fact that it is mentioned in a contemporary description of the fateful battle of Mohács (1526) as one of the sites of the struggle. The present paper surveys the history of the village in the one and a half centuries after the battle. While, in point of fact, the „history” of such a small settlement cannot be written, we do possess a relatively important amount of evidence thank to the surviving Ottoman registers. This evidence mainly sheds light on the number, structure and economic performance of the population. The picture that emerges on this basis is that of a modest village of limited material wealth which, however, had a constant population since the Middle Ages, and secured a stable existence during the Ottoman period. Moreover, it also survived the war of reconquest in the late seventeenth century, and only disappeared in the eighteenth, probably due to the transformation of the economic system.

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Sem nem Majs, sem nem Sátorhely. Megjegyzések Pap Norbert és szerzőtársai Sátorhely vagy Majs? című tanulmányához

Author(s): János B. Szabó / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

The paper collectively authored by Norbert Pap, Máté Kitanics, Péter Gyenizse, Gábor Szalai and Balázs Polgár on the environmental features of the medieval village called Földvár was published in the 2019/2 issue of the review Történelmi Szemle. Its title promised to finally localise the central area of the 1526 battle of Mohács. Measured to this promise, the content is rather disappointing. The previous results of the research into the location of the medieval village of Földvár, thought to have lain in the centre of the battle, were not determined by the fact that these were formulated by persons with military experience or by civilians. And yet Pap and his co-authors, by localising Földvár into the vicinity of today’s Sátorhely, lock into a research strand of military historical background which they previously blamed for the neglect of written sources and whose methods it was they declared aim to pass by. Those researchers, however, whether soldiers or civilians, who did use the evidence offerred by the charter material, all excluded Sátorhely from the possible localisations of Földvár. The long sections in the paper that deal with medieval charters and early medieval written sources are completely useless, since they use their testimony fairly selectively, and thus the site that can in fact be surmised on the basis of the medieval written evidence, namely the area around today’s Udvar, did not even come to their minds.

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Reflexiók B. Szabó János „Egy Mátyás-kori oklevél…” és „Sem nem Majs, sem nem Sátorhely” című tanulmányaiban vázolt koncepciójára

Author(s): Norbert Pap,Máté Kitanics,Péter Gyenizse,Gábor Szalai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

According to János B. Szabó’s latest suggestions, detailed in his two studies, the settlement named Földvár, thgought to have been in the center of the 1526 Battle of Mohács, might be found east of the Borza stream but south of the settlement of Sátorhely, in what is now Croatia. Our response examines the arguments that underpin this claim. The authors’ conclusion is that the arguments in favour of the Croatian site cannot be supported by evidences, these statements are based on B. Szabó’s misunderstanding. The present study confirms the arguments for the Földvár-Sátorhely continuity.

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Észrevételek a történeti források interpretációs lehetőségeiről és az interpretáció határairól a mohácsi csatamező új földrajzi kutatása kapcsán

Author(s): János B. Szabó,Gábor Máté / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 01/2020

The clarification of the hitherto unsolved problems connected to the battle of Mohács (1526) cannot be undertaken without the widest possible cooperation of a number of scientific disciplines. In the framework of this cooperation, geography must undoubtedly play an important role. Yet the article written by Norbert Pap and his co-authors serves only to shake our confidence whether the current research follows the right path. With the exception of a handful of phrases which promise, under the heading of “complex methods”, the collation of “historical, landscape historical and geographical” evidence, the explorations and methodology as defined by Pap and al. do not reveal much about the “how”. In fact, most of the evidence used by the authors are historical sources, which they do try to look at through “geographical eyes”, but when doing so they use them selectively and erroneously. The classic geographical and landscape morphological knowledge they bring into the analysis themselves is partly irrelevant, and partly exaggerated with regard to the debated issues, and thus repeatedly leads to mistaken conclusions in the basis historical questions.

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Tinódi történeti hitelességének kérdéséhez: kortárs beszámoló a „szalkai viadalról”

Author(s): Nándor Virovecz / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 02/2020

The poem by Sebestyén Tinódi called “About the Encounter on the Plain of Szalka” commemorated the victory won by the Hungarian border troops over the Ottoman Turks in the region of Ipolyszalka on 9 September 1544. The author of the present paper has recently found a contemporary report, namely a letter written by Tamás Dalmady to the judge of Selmecbánya, which, narrating the very subject of the poem, has made it possible to confront the two sources with each other. Before this analysis is done, the historical context is sketched, namely the Ottoman offensive in Northern Hungary in the summer and fall of 1544, as well as the landowning society of the region introduced, and the series of events reconstructed as precisely as possible. The comparison of the report and the poem has revealed important divergences and differences as regards the events themselves, the chronology, the actors and the troops involved in the battle. The analysis of the individual differences highlights those personal incentives that motivated Tinódi in writing the poem. This is important not only because a forgotten victory is concerned, but also because the analysis gets us closer to both the working methods and personality of Tinódi himself.

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Fejezetek a schmalkaldeni háború történetéből

Author(s): Barnabás Guitman / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2014

The paper summarizes the antecedents and the history of the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547). In 1545–1546 Emperor Charles V considered that favourable circumstances made it possible for him to discipline the Protestant estates of his empire. The occupation of Geldern (1543), the peace reached with the French (1544) and the Turks (1545),considerable financial and military aid from the Pope as well as unsuccessful negotiations with the Protestants incited him to enforce denominational peace and political unity in the empire by arms. Between July and October 1546, along the Danube the opposing parties intended to exhaust each other. The attack by Ferdinand, King of Hungary and Bohemia and Maurice, Duke of Saxony in November 1546 in Saxony divided the unity of the Schmalkaldenic League. In April 1547 the united imperial troops took John Frederick, Elector of Saxony captive. Although the emperor could not restore religious unity, due to the successes of his army, the Reformation, spreading irresistibly until then, lost its momentum. It became possible for the Catholic Church to reorganize itself in Central Europe. The appeasement of the rebelling Bohemian estates, seeking alliance with John Frederick, stabilized Ferdinand’s position in the Danubian Monarchy, who thus could devote significant financial sources to the defence against the Turks in the Hungarian Kingdom.

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Rendiség és honvédelem Horvátországba és Szlavóniában a 16. században

Author(s): Szabolcs Varga / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2015

Nataša Štefanec: IV. és V. Zrínyi György. In: A Zrínyiek a magyar és a horvát históriában. Szerk.: Bene Sándor–Hausner Gábor. Bp., 2007. 87–112.

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An Agnostic Approach to Ivan the Terrible

Author(s): Charles J. Halperin / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

In order to demonstrate that everything significant about Ivan’s life is contested, this article attempts to catalog as many as possible of the contested major issues touching Ivan. The author defines what we do not know about Ivan as everything that is uncertain, disputed, contested, problematic, or unexplained, even or especially if some historians think we know it but cannot “prove” it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Consequently, the author is conflating problems of source provenance, definition of concepts, interpretation, context, contradiction, and comparison, and thus reducing suggestive analysis and probable explanation to the unknown. The author has organized this survey of our ignorance under thematic rubrics: Sources, Ivan’s Life, Political History, Social History, Religion and the Church, Economic History, Foreign Policy, and Ivan’s Legacy. Any historian who proposes to study Ivan should begin by realizing the degree of uncertainty attached to historical studies of his life and reign.

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Mirroring Timurid Central Asia in Maps: Some Remarks on Knowledge of Central Asia in Ming Geographical Documents

Author(s): Qiu Yihao / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2021

Through the analysis of three Ming Chinese geographical documents which were depicted during the early sixteenth-century, this article contributes a case study on the geographical knowledge of the Timurid Central Asia in Ming Chinese documents. The article argues, according to abundant geographical information offered by these documents, we can reconstruct the active network of transnational routes that connected the Ming Empire and Timurid Central Asia. Furthermore, these documents provide the highly convincing proof that the knowledge of the Ming court to its contemporary Eurasian competitors was continuously renewed.

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Nagyszeben és polgárai a 16. században

Author(s): Cynthia KIS / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 05/2021

Mária Pakucs-Willcocks: Sibiul veacului al XVI-lea. Rânduirea unui oraş transilvânean [A 16. századi Nagyszeben. Egy erdélyi város rendje] Humanitas, Buc., 2018.

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Zapiski biograficzne i historyczne Grzegorza ze Stawiszyna (1481-1540) oraz ich kontynuacja

Author(s): Maciej Zdanek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 86/2020

Grzegorz of Stawiszyn (1481-1540), philosopher and theologian, was a professor and thrice the rector of the University in Cracow, one of the most important representatives of humanism. He owned a large library, which he donated to the University. He left interesting autobiographical and historical notes, which cover selected events from the history of Poland and Cracow during the years 1295-1540. Two continuations were later added to them, covering events from the years 1482-1552. They are an important source for the cultural history of the Cracow university circles. The paper contains their critical edition.

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Mexikói aranypesók a magyarországi oszmán terjeszkedés ellen?

Author(s): Zoltán Korpás / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2020

Few unpublished letters in the Archivo General de las Indias (Seville, Spain) puts in global perspective the Ottoman threat and expansion in Hungary. Also demonstrate that the Habsburg rulers both in Central-Eastern Europe and Spanish Empires had a far more unlimited and unified concept about their Empire, regardless of geographical distances and boundaries. In 1529, 8 years after falling of Tenochtitlán, in a very early phase of the colonization of Mexico, prior to the foundation of Viceroyalty of New Spain (1535) and just three years after the battle of Mohács (1526), the Habsburg administration in Castile asked for aid from few preeminent personalities of the first colonial administration in Mexico, including well known conquerors like Pedro de Alvarado, to protect Hungary against the Ottomans. This request can be considered as part of the dynastic finance system with the purpose of providing support to Ferdinand I, king of Hungary and Bohemia. Charles V persistently strived to help his younger brother using very different ad-hoc sources like founds from the Netherlands, debts of Venice or England, aids offered by the Castilian Cortes, including potential incomes from the new Colonies. The study shows the broad context of these financing steps.

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