Nobility In The Kingdom Of Hungary

The Hungarian nobility consisted of a privileged group of individuals, most of whom owned landed property, in the Kingdom of Hungary. Initially, a diverse body of people were described as noblemen, but from the late 12th century only high-ranking royal officials were regarded as noble. Most aristocrats claimed ancestry from a late 9th century Magyar leader. Others were descended from foreign knights, and local Slavic chiefs were also integrated in the nobility. Less illustrious individuals, known as castle warriors, also held landed property and served in the royal army. From the 1170s, most privileged laymen called themselves royal servants to emphasize their direct connection to the monarchs. The Golden Bull of 1222 enacted their liberties, especially their tax-exemption and the limitation of their military obligations. From the 1220s, royal servants were associated with the nobility and the highest-ranking officials were known as barons of the realm. Only those who owned allodslands free of obligationswere regarded as true noblemen, but other privileged groups of landowners, known as conditional nobles, also existed.

In the 1280s, Simon of Kéza was the first to claim noblemen held real authority in the kingdom. The counties developed into institutions of noble autonomy, and the nobles' delegates attended the Diets (or parliaments). The wealthiest barons built stone castles enabling them to control vast territories, but royal authority was restored in the early 14th century. Louis I of Hungary introduced an entail system and enacted the principle of "one and the selfsame liberty" of all noblemen. Actually, legal distinctions between true noblemen and conditional nobles prevailed, and the most powerful nobles employed lesser noblemen as their '' familiares'' (retainers). According to customary law, only males inherited noble estates, but the kings could " promote a daughter to a son", authorizing her to inherit her father's lands. Noblewomen who had married a commoner could also claim their inheritancethe daughters' quarter (that is one-quarter of their father's possessions)in land.

The monarchs granted hereditary titles and the poorest nobles lost their tax-exemption from the middle of the 15th century, but the '' Tripartitum''a frequently cited compilation of customary law published in 1514maintained the notion of all noblemen's equality. In the early modern period, Hungary was divided into three partsRoyal Hungary, Transylvania and Ottoman Hungarybecause of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire. The princes of Transylvania supported the noblemen's fight against the Habsburg dynasty in Royal Hungary, but they prevented the Transylvanian noblemen from challenging their authority. Ennoblement of whole groups of people was not unusual in the 17th century. Examples include the 10,000 who received nobility as a group in 1605. After the Diet was divided into two chambers in Royal Hungary in 1608, noblemen with a hereditary title had a seat in the Upper House, other nobles sent delegates to the Lower House.

Most parts of medieval Hungary were integrated into the Habsburg monarchy in the 1690s. Monarchs confirmed the nobles' privileges several times, but their attempts to strengthen royal authority regularly brought them into conflicts with the nobility, who made up about four-and-a-half percent of society. Reformist noblemen demanded the abolition of noble privileges from the 1790s, but their program was enacted only during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. Most noblemen lost their estates after the emancipation of their serfs, but the aristocrats preserved their distinguished social status. State administration employed thousands of impoverished noblemen in Austria-Hungary. Prominent (mainly Jewish) bankers and industrialists were awarded with nobility, but their social status remained inferior to traditional aristocrats. Noble titles were abolished only in 1947, months after Hungary was proclaimed a republic.

Origins

The Magyars (or Hungarians) dwelled in the Pontic steppes when they first appeared in written sources in the mid 9th century. Muslim merchants described them as wealthy nomadic warriors, but they also noticed the Magyars had extensive arable lands. Masses of Magyars crossed the Carpathian Mountains after the Pechenegs invaded their lands in 894 or 895. They settled in the lowlands along the Middle Danube, annihilated Moravia and defeated the Bavarians in the 900s. According to scholarly theories, at least three Hungarian noble clansThey refer to the Hont-Pázmány, Miskolc and Bogát-Radvány clans. were descended from Moravian aristocrats who survived the Magyar conquest. Historians who say that the Vlachs (or Romanians) were already present in the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century propose the Vlach (or chieftains) also endured. Neither of the two continuity theories is universally accepted.

Around 950, Constantine Porphyrogenitus (d. 959) recorded the Hungarians were organized into tribes, and each had its own "prince". The tribal leaders most probably bore the title ''úr'', as it is suggested by Hungarian terms''ország'' (now "realm") and ''uralkodni'' ("to rule")deriving from this noun. Porphyrogenitus noted the Magyars spoke both Hungarian and "the tongue of the Chazars", showing that at least their leaders were bilingual.

Archaeological research revealed that most settlements comprised small pit-houses and log cabins in the 10th century, but literary sources mention tents still in use in the 12th century. No archeological finds evidence fortresses in the Carpathian Basin in the 10th century, but fortresses were also rare in Western Europe during the same period. A larger log cabinmeasuring which was built on a foundation of stones in Borsod was tentatively identified as the local leader's household.

More than a 1,000 graves yielding sabres, arrow-heads and bones of horses show mounted warriors formed a significant group in the 10th century. The highest-ranking Hungarians were buried either in large cemeteries (where hundreds of graves of men buried without weapons surrounded their burial places), or in small cemeteries with 25–30 graves. The wealthy warriors' burial sites yielded richly decorated horse harness, and sabretaches ornamented with precious metal plaques. Rich women's graves contained their braid ornaments and rings made of silver or gold and decorated with precious stones. The most widespread decorative motifs which can be regarded as tribal totemsthe griffin, wolf and hindwere rarely applied in Hungarian heraldry in the following centuries. Defeats during the Hungarian invasions of Europe and clashes with the paramount rulers from the Árpád dynasty had decimated the leading families by the end of the 10th century. The , which was written around 1200, claimed that dozens of noble kindreds flourishing in the late 12th centuryThe Bár-Kalán, Csák, Kán, Lád and Szemere kindreds regarded themselves as descendants of one of the legendary seven leaders of the Hungarian Conquest. had been descended from tribal leaders, but most modern scholars do not regard this list as a reliable source.

Middle Ages

Development

Stephen I (), who was crowned the first king of Hungary in 1000 or 1001, defeated the last resisting tribal chieftains. Earthen forts were built throughout the kingdom and most of them developed into centers of royal administration. About 30 administrative units, known as counties, were established before 1040; more than 40 new counties were organized during the next centuries. Each county was headed by a royal official, the ''ispán''. The royal court provided further career opportunities. Actually, as Martyn Rady noted, the "royal household was the greatest provider of largesse in the kingdom" where the royal family owned more than two-thirds of all lands. The palatinethe head of the royal householdwas the highest-ranking royal official.

The kings appointed their officials from among the members of about 110 aristocratic clans. These aristocrats were descended either from native (that is, Magyar, Kabar, Pecheneg or Slavic) chiefs, or from foreign knights who had migrated to the country in the 11th and 12th centuries. The foreign knights had been trained in the Western European art of war, which contributed to the development of heavy cavalry in Hungary. Their descendants were labelled as newcomers for centuries, but intermarriage between natives and newcomers was not rare, which enabled their integration. The monarchs pursued an expansionist policy from the late 11th century. Ladislaus I () seized Slavoniathe plains between the river Drava and the Dinaric Alpsin the 1090s. His successor, Coloman (), was crowned king of Croatia in 1102. Both realms retained their own customs, and Hungarians rarely received land grants in Croatia. According to customary law, Croatians could not be obliged to cross the river Drava to fight in the royal army at their own expense.

The earliest laws authorized landowners to dispose freely of their private estates, but customary law prescribed that inherited lands could only be transferred with the consent of the owner's kinsmen who could inherit them. From the early 12th century, only family lands traceable back to a grant made by Stephen I could be inherited by the deceased owner's distant relatives; other estates escheated to the Crown if their owner did not have offspring or brothers. Aristocratic families held their inherited domains in common for generations before the 13th century. Thereafter the division of inherited property became the standard practice. Even families descended from wealthy kindreds could become impoverished through the regular divisions of their estates.

Medieval documents mention the basic unit of estate organization as ''praedium'' or ''allodium''. A ''praedium'' was a piece of land (either a whole village or part of it) with well-marked borders. Archaeologist Mária Wolf identifies the small motte forts, built on artificial mounds and protected by a ditch and a palisade that appeared in the 12th century as the centers of private estates. Most wealthy landowners' domains consisted of scattered ''praedia'', in several villages. Due to the scarcity of documentary evidence, the size of the private estates cannot be determined. The descendants of Otto Győr remained wealthy landowners even after he donated 360 households to the newly established Zselicszentjakab Abbey in 1061. The establishment of monasteries by wealthy individuals was common. Such proprietary monasteries served as burial places for their founders and the founders' descendants, who were regarded as the co-owners, or from the 13th century, co-patrons, of the monastery. Unfree peasants cultivated part of the ''praedium'', but other plots were hired out in return for in-kind taxes.

The term "noble" was rarely used and poorly defined before the 13th century: it could refer to a courtier, a landowner with judicial powers, or even to a common warrior. The existence of a diverse group of warriors, who were subjected to the monarch, royal officials or prelates is well documented. The castle warriors, who were exempt from taxation, held hereditary landed property around the royal castles. Light-armored horsemen, known as ' (or archers), and armed castle folk, mentioned as ' (or guards), defended the borderlands.

Golden Bulls

Official documents from the end of the 12th century only mentioned court dignitaries and ''ispáns'' as noblemen. This group had adopted most elements of chivalric culture. They regularly named their children after Paris of Troy, Hector, Tristan, Lancelot and other heroes of Western European chivalric romances. The first tournaments were held around the same time.

The regular alienation of royal estates is well-documented from the 1170s. The monarchs granted immunities, exempting the grantee's estates from the jurisdiction of the ''ispáns'', or even renouncing royal revenues that had been collected there. Béla III () was the first Hungarian monarch to give away a whole county to a nobleman: he granted Modrus in Croatia to Bartholomew of Krk in 1193, stipulating that he was to equip warriors for the royal army. Béla's son, Andrew II (), decided to "alter the conditions" of his realm and "distribute castles, counties, lands and other revenues" to his officials, as he narrated in a document in 1217. Instead of granting the estates in fief, with an obligation to render future services, he gave them as allods, in reward for the grantee's previous acts. The great officers who were the principal beneficiaries of his grants were mentioned as barons of the realm from the late 1210s.

Donations of such a large scale accelerated the development of a wealthy group of landowners, most descending from high-ranking kindreds. Some wealthy landownersAndronicus Aba built a castle at Füzér, and the castle at Kabold (now Kobersdorf in Austria) was erected by Pousa Szák. could afford to build stone castles in the 1220s. Closely related aristocrats were distinguished from other lineages through a reference to their (actual or presumed) common ancestor with the words ''de genere'' ("from the kindred"). Families descending from the same kindred adopted similar insignia.The families from the Aba clan had an eagle on their coat-of-arms, and the Csáks adopted the lion. The author of the fabricated genealogies for them and emphasized that they could never be excluded from "the honor of the realm", that is from state administration.

The new owners of the transferred royal estates wanted to subjugate the freemen, castle warriors and other privileged groups of people living in or around their domains. The threatened groups wanted to achieve confirmation of their status as royal servants, emphasizing that they were only to serve the king. Béla III issued the first extant royal charter about the grant of this rank to a castle warrior. Andrew II's Golden Bull of 1222 enacted royal servants' privileges. They were exempt from taxation; they were to fight in the royal army without proper compensation only if enemy forces invaded the kingdom; only the monarch or the palatine could judge their cases. According to the Golden Bull, only royal servants who died without a son could freely will their estates, but even in this case, their daughters were entitled to the daughters' quarter. The final article of the Golden Bull authorized the bishops, barons and other nobles to resist the monarch if he ignored its provisions. Most provisions of the Golden Bull were first confirmed in 1231.

The clear definition of the royal servants' liberties distinguished them from all other privileged groups whose military obligations remained theoretically unlimited. From the 1220s, the royal servants were regularly called noblemen and started to develop their own corporate institutions at the county level. In 1232, the royal servants of Zala County asked Andrew II to authorize them "to judge and do justice", stating that the county had slipped into anarchy. The king granted their request and Bartholomew, Bishop of Veszprém, sued one Ban Oguz for properties before their community.

The first Mongol invasion of Hungary in 1241 and 1242 proved the importance of well-fortified locations and heavily armored cavalry. During the following decades, Béla IV of Hungary () gave away large parcels of the royal demesne, expecting that the new owners would build stone castles there. Béla's burdensome castle-building program was unpopular, but he achieved his aim: almost 70 castles were built or reconstructed during his reign. More than half of the new or reconstructed castles were in noblemen's domains. Most new castles were erected on rocky peaks, mainly along the western and northern borderlands. The spread of stone castles profoundly changed the structure of landholding because castles could not be maintained without proper income. Lands and villages were legally attached to each castle, and castles were thereafter always transferred and inherited along with these "appurtenances

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