Coherence of Translation Programs and the Contexts of Translation
Movements, ca. 1000–1700 AD

Péter Bara

HUN-REN Research Center for the Humanities, Institute of History

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 2 (2025): 155-157 DOI 10.38145/2025.2.155 

Why did pre-modern translators produce their translated texts? What societal, scholarly, and historical factors influenced their activities? How did such factors together create a coherent set of triggers behind translation efforts and the goals translators pursued? This Special Issue aims to explore the complex historical, literary, and material backgrounds that fostered the production of translations between an array of source and target languages, including Greek, Latin, Armenian, and various vernaculars. The essays span a broad timeframe, from the Middle Ages to the end of the Renaissance. The volume investigates the motivations and enabling factors that facilitated the creation of translations and their reception by different audiences. The variety of source and target languages establishes a comparative framework that enriches our understanding of the translation process as a multifaceted historical phenomenon.

Péter Bara explores translations from Greek into Latin between 1050 and 1350. Instead of focusing on a specific translator or group of translators, the essay adopts a programmatic approach to the period in question. Bara seeks to explain how translations were produced against the backdrop of specific historical contexts and the defining characteristics of the epoch. Additionally, Bara emphasizes the societal dimension of translating texts from Greek into Latin. The essay conceptualizes translation as a decision-making process in which translators, scholars, and patrons acted as key agents. The model he proposes takes into account the influence of audiences on the translation process. To this end, the essay identifies four hypotheses, each corresponding to a distinct research area.

Hiram Kümper studies the Fecunda ratis, an eleventh-century Latin didactic poem. The essay highlights several historical and cultural contexts that decisively shaped the poem’s content and generated new knowledge through their interaction. Egbert of Liège, the author, composed the poem for an audience at the cathedral school of Liège. The poem survives in a single manuscript, which shows signs of extensive use. It served to prepare students for proper, exemplary Christian conduct and for later specialization in theology. Accordingly, the second book contains versified passages from the Bible and the Church Fathers. By contrast, the first book is a collection of popular wisdom sayings translated from the vernacular into Latin verse. Kümper closely examines how vernacular sayings entered Latin thought, using contemporary theoretical literature as an analytical framework. He develops a typology of transmission and traces how popular proverbs were transformed into high-register, classicizing Latin. Kümper demonstrates that Egbert used these sayings as case studies for ethical dilemmas–personal relationships, familial obligations, and individual responsibilities–that could be memorized. The essay concludes by situating the Fecunda ratis within the broader context of eleventh-century Western pedagogical culture.

Gohar Muradyan investigates the influence of Greek and Latin models on fourteenth-century Armenian grammatical theory. Her paper demonstrates how the arrival of Catholic missionaries in late medieval Armenia created new conditions for knowledge transfer. The essay centers on the figure of Yovhannēs K‘ṛnets‘i and his grammatical treatise On Grammar. K‘ṛnets‘i belonged to a group of Armenians known as the fratres unitores, who accepted the Catholic faith and maintained close ties with Dominican missionaries. Muradyan underscores the importance of their literary work as translators and original authors and provides a list of published works produced by the unitores. She shows that K‘ṛnets‘i based his grammar on Greek and Latin grammatical theory. After reviewing previous scholarly contributions, Muradyan examines numerous newly identified passages in K‘ṛnets‘i’s grammar, arguing that the influence of the Latin grammarian Priscian and his commentator Petrus Helias is more substantial than earlier scholars had assumed.

Daniel Vaucher investigates the intricate transmission and transformation of the Prayer of Cyprian. This apotropaic prayer was traditionally attributed to Cyprian of Antioch, who was revered both as a magician and as a Christian martyr. Originally composed in Greek, the prayer crossed geographical and linguistic boundaries, appearing in Latin and multiple European vernaculars by the Renaissance. Vaucher argues that despite regional adaptations and ecclesiastical scrutiny, the prayer’s core structure and mythic framework remain rooted in Byzantine spiritual and ritual traditions. The essay proceeds in five stages. First, Vaucher shows that despite its Christian orientation, the prayer functioned both as an exorcism and a talisman, thereby blurring the line between liturgy and magic. The second section examines the Greek manuscript tradition, identifying ten extant copies from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These are divided into two functional categories: scholarly anthologies and practical ritual handbooks. Vaucher highlights manuscripts from southern Italy, Crete, and Cyprus, emphasizing their role in the transmission of Byzantine magical-exorcistic literature to Western Europe. The third section analyzes the Western vernacular translations–Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Catalan versions that began to appear in the fifteenth century. These often took the form of small-format manuals intended for popular or private use. In the fourth section, Vaucher offers a comparative philological analysis of corresponding passages in the Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Catalan versions. These reveal strong textual parallels, especially in key motifs such as demonic control over nature, binding spells, and divine liberation. The final section addresses the growing concern of the Inquisition with the Prayer of Cyprian. Despite efforts to suppress it, the prayer continued to circulate and evolve. Vaucher concludes that the Prayer of Cyprian exemplifies the long-term, translingual, and transcultural transmission of ritual literature.

Alessandro Orengo provides a detailed analysis of Oskan vardapet Erewanc‘i (1614–1674), the influential Armenian printer, scholar, and translator. Erewanc‘i’s biography illustrates how geographical movement shaped translators’ accomplishments. Born in New Julfa, he traveled across Armenia and Poland before eventually settling in Amsterdam. Educated in part by the Dominican missionary Paolo Piromalli, Oskan translated and abridged the first two books of Tommaso Campanella’s Grammaticalia. His Armenian versions–one surviving in manuscript, the other as a printed abridgement–demonstrate both fidelity to Latin grammatical structures and critical adaptation to the Armenian linguistic system. He frequently points out where Latin grammatical categories, such as gender or the superlative, do not apply to Armenian. Oskan also translated an abridged version of Koriwn’s Life of Mesrop into Latin, dictating it to François Pétis de la Croix. While the translation is largely faithful, it contains minor interpretive errors, likely due to oral transmission. Oskan’s work exemplifies the seventeenth-century phenomenon of grammatization, in which Latin served as a universal linguistic model. His translations not only bridged cultural divides but also contributed to the modernization of Armenian grammatical scholarship, balancing inherited traditions with evolving European linguistic frameworks.

The History of the Macsó and Barancs Territories until 1316

Bálint Ternovácz

Budapest City Archives

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 1 (2025): 127-146 DOI 10.38145/2025.1.127

In the early thirteenth century, the Kingdom of Hungary took control of the northern Balkan territories situated between the Drina, Sava, and Danube Rivers. This region was known as Trans-Syrmia or Sirmia Ulterior, though Southern Slavic sources commonly referred to it simply as Syrmia. At the time, this name referred to all the land south of Hungary’s borders and east of the Drina, without clearly defined boundaries. Apart from a brief period in the 1270s when forming banates was attempted, these lands were controlled by the women of the Árpád dynasty and their husbands until 1319. In 1284, the former King of Serbia, Dragutin was granted Macsó, along with Bosnia, Belgrade, and Barancs-Kucsó, and attempted to establish a vassal state of Hungary. After his death in 1316, his son Vladislav lost control, allowing King Milutin of Serbia to seize Macsó. In response, King Charles I of Hungary launched a military campaign, reclaiming the territory by 1319 and reinstating the banate and the title of ban was then given to Hungarian noble families as an honor. This study examines the history and administration of the territories known in secondary literature as the Banate of Macsó and Barancs, covering the period up to 1319 and the military campaigns of King Charles I of Hungary.

Keywords: Syrmia, Macsó, Kingdom of Hungary, Serbia, Angevin dynasty

The interest of the Kingdom of Hungary in the territory of the northern Balkans, bordered by the Drina, Sava, and Danube Rivers, reached the point of military expansion at the end of the twelfth century, as the Hungarian crown was able to take advantage of Byzantine internal struggles following the death of Byzantine Emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143–1180). These territories, known as the Trans-Syrmia or Macsó (Mačva in Serbian) and Barancs (Braničevo in Serbian), began to come into closer contact with the Kingdom of Hungary in the early thirteenth century. With the exception of the 1270s (when an attempt was made to turn the territories south of the Sava-Danube line into a so-called banate, i.e. a frontier province governed by a governor or “ban”), the women of the Árpád dynasty and their husbands held these lands until 1319.

Research into the history of the area is complicated by the fact that there is no known surviving archival source base in the archives in Serbia and Bulgaria. We can reconstruct the events of the more than one hundred years covered in this paper mainly on the basis of Hungarian source material. Narrative sources, such as the Chronicle of Antivari or the work of Serbian Archbishop Danilo II,1 make only passing mention of the areas under study. In the discussion below, I reconstruct the history of the administration of the territories referred to in the secondary literature as the Banate of Macsó and Barancs from the beginning until 1319, until the military campaigns of King Charles I of Hungary (1310–1342).

The Banate of Macsó in Hungarian and South Slavic Historiography

The history and archontology of the banate and bans of Macsó were first dealt with by Frigyes Pesty in his study published in 1875.2 The first monograph that dealt with the subject was an introductory study to the source publication compiled by Lajos Thallóczy and Antal Áldásy on the connections between Hungary and Serbia, published in 1907.3 In this study, however, the Macsó region was mentioned more as a place of diplomacy or warfare between the Hungarian kings and the Serbian rulers, without no discussion whatsoever of the process by which the territories south of the Sava River, surrounded by the Kolubara and the Drina Rivers, were organized into a Hungarian dependent territory in the thirteenth century. Thallóczy attempted to describe the topography of the Macsó province, and regarding this I would like to emphasize two main issues. In his opinion, the Macsó region extended across the Drina River, and he also included parts of Inner Syrmia and Szávaszentdemeter (today Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia). Another noteworthy detail concerning Thallóczy’s map is the location of the castle of Macsó, which he placed on the site of the present-day settlement of Valjevo.4 Alongside the introductory study to this source publication, the work of Lajos Faragó, published in 1911 in the Kaposvár State High School’s newsletter, also merits mention.5 The most recent comprehensive article on the history of Macsó in Hungarian was the encyclopedic glossary of the archaeological background of Macsó, written by Péter Rokay and Miklós Takács,6 which, being a glossary, does not contain the findings of independent research but rather offers a summary of the accepted conclusions of the existing secondary literature, mainly from the South Slavic territories. Other Hungarian researchers have touched on the thirteenth-century history of Macsó, of course, but not a single monograph has been written on the subject in the last hundred years. South Slavic (mainly Serbian) historians have shown much greater interest in the medieval history of the Macsó region. This increased interest is understandable, as the former Macsó region was and still is the province of Mačva, which was liberated from Ottoman occupation and is part of present day Serbia. I would like to highlight the work of two historians from among the writings by many South Slavic researchers. In doing so, I summarize the findings of South Slavic historians on Macsó.

Chronologically, the first work on which I focus was written by Mihajlo Dinić about the areas inhabited by Serbs in the Middle Ages.7 Although he dealt with the history of the name of Trans-Syrmia, which was used as the name of the territories south of the Sava River before the name Macsó appeared and was used from the mid-thirteenth century onwards, Dinić mainly focused on the reign of Dragutin in Syrmia (Srijem in Serbian).8 According to him, the Hungarians named the region Macsó, either because they already had a county called Syrmia (which was organically linked to the kingdom, as the county structure had already been formed) or because they wanted to name the newly acquired territory after its center.9 According to Dinić, Belgrade was part of Banate of Macsó when it was organized in the 1270s.10 He also described how the Serbian king Stephen Dragutin received the territory of Macsó after losing his throne,11 along with Usora, Soli, and Bosnia, from the Hungarian king Ladislas IV after June 11, 1284.12 Along with Macsó, Belgrade also fell into the hands of Dragutin, who then established his residence there.13 The territories ruled by Dragutin were called “the Syrmia territories” by his Serbian contemporaries, and Dragutin himself was called Stephen of Syrmia.14 Before the 1970s, the view that Dragutin had also ruled the inner parts of Syrmia was accepted in the Serbian secondary literature, but this notion was refuted in 1978 by Mihajlo Dinić.

Another noteworthy historical work on thirteenth-century Macsó in the South Slavic historiography is Sima Ćirković’s study published in 2008.15 According to Ćirković, present-day northern Serbia came into Hungarian hands in the late twelfth century.16 The province of Macsó as an institution had no Byzantine antecedents.17 The Byzantine administrative arrangement, with imperial offices and ecclesiastical centers in the larger cities, may have been preserved; the largest settlement may have been Sirmium around 1020. Referring to Byzantine sources, Ćirković claims that in the twelfth century not only Zimony (today Zemun in Serbia, north of the Sava River) but also Bács (today Bač in Serbia) on the left bank of the Danube was included in the territory of Syrmia.18 According to him, the names Inner-Syrmia19 and Trans-Syrmia,20 which referred to the area between the Danube River and the Sava River, and the area between the Drina, Sava, and Kolubara Rivers, may have been created at this time, around the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and clearly represented a Hungarian perspective.21 Among the Serbs, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the name Syrmia was used to refer to the area south of the Sava River, while among Hungarians, the name Syrmia was used only to refer to the Syrmia County between the Danube River and the Sava River. The Byzantine tradition, according to Ćirković, was established in Hungarian circles after the foundation of the bishopric of Syrmia in 1229, according to which the name Syrmia was used to refer to territories on both banks of the Sava River.22 The castle of Macsó could have stood there, hence the name of the area,23 but it is not possible to identify the precise location of the castle on the basis of archaeological or archival sources. Ćirković refutes Thallóczy’s view that the castle of Macsó would have been on the site of the present-day settlement of Valjevo. He does not attempt to pinpoint its exact location, but he explains that the castle could have been closer to Szávaszentdemeter than to Debrc, the center of Dragutin.24

According to him, the name Macsó was only used by the Hungarians. It does not appear in Serbian or Byzantine sources, and neither does Belgrade. The Orthodox Church sources mentioned only Sirmium as the suffragan bishopric of the Archbishop of Ohrid.25 He contends that in the early thirteenth century the region south of the Sava River was granted to Margaret, daughter of King Béla III, who was mentioned as the lady of Macsó. This territory had no defined borders. It extended as far as the Serbian territory of the Nemanjić dynasty.26 After the Mongol invasion, the province was given to Anna, daughter of King Béla IV of Hungary, and her husband Rostislav Mihailovich (who was then Duke of Macsó), and after Rostislav’s death in 1263, their sons Michael and Béla were given the title of Dukes of Macsó. Duke Béla was murdered in 1272, after which the bans of Macsó and Bosnia and the bans of Barancs and Kucsó appeared in the charters, while between 1280 and 1284 Queen Elizabeth was recorded as the duchess of Macsó and Bosnia.27 Ćirković did not analyze the reign of Dragutin in detail.

The most recent study of the medieval territorial extent of Macsó and the collection of medieval settlements in the territory of the banate of Macsó was carried out by Ana Vukadinović Šakanović, who focused her study on the late medieval conditions due to the more favorable availability of sources.28 Attila Pfeiffer wrote a summary study on the location of the Macsó castle.29 Đura Hardi studied the history of the lords of Macsó,30 and Márta Font wrote a thorough study on Rostislav Mihajlovich, who was a prominent lord of the province in the thirteenth century.31

In the Crossfire between Byzantium and the Kingdom of Hungary:
Trans-Syrmia at the End of the Twelfth Century

In the area bordered by the Danube, Drina, and Kolubara Rivers, which was called the Macsó territory from the thirteenth century onwards, Slavs probably settled at the encouragement of the Avars, but their presence is only indicated by place names, and archaeological finds do not support this theory. At the beginning of the ninth century, the area was captured by the Bulgarian Empire, and after this empire fell, from 1018, the area belonged to Byzantium.32

The name Syrmia, which also refers to the area south of the Sava River, first appeared in the twelfth century in the Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja. In the relevant part of the work, also known as the Chronicle of Antivari,33 in the description of the battle between Ban Beloš, who retreated after the death of King Béla II, and the Hungarians who attacked him, the name Syrmia in the chronicle referred to the territory south of the Sava River as well, since the Chronicle mentioned the town of Belyén (Bellina),34 which was south of the Sava River, as part of Syrmia (partes Sremi).35 That the presbyter meant the territory on the right bank of the Sava River as Beloš’ Syrmian parts is clear from the fact that when he wrote about the treaty after the battle lost by the Hungarians, he said that Beloš prohibited his opponents from crossing the Sava River from its beginning to the mouth of the Danube River, i.e. until Belgrade.36 The extent to which the presbyter had precise topographical knowledge of the southern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary is not known, but the southern Slavic literature accepts the description of the extent of Syrmia in the Chronicle.37 In my opinion, Ćirković’s view, according to which the distinction between the inner parts and Trans-Syrmia would have been established as early as the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, is not correct. Even if we accept the presbyter’s account, we can place the origin of the name in the mid-twelfth century at the earliest, but it is more likely that the author was mistaken in his use of the geographical name. In documentary sources, the name Inner and Trans-Syrmia first appears much later, in 1229, in the bull of Pope Gregory IX, dated March 3.38

After the death of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos in 1180, Byzantine-­­Hungarian relations were characterized by a particular dichotomy. On the one hand, King Béla III of Hungary acted as a defender of Byzantine interests, while on other occasions, he sought to acquire territories that belonged to Byzantium. Regarding Byzantine-Hungarian relations, Ferenc Makk pointed out that the Kingdom of Hungary was always the active party, taking advantage of Byzantine political infighting, while Byzantium was the passive, defensive partner.39 In 1180–1182, King Béla III first reconquered the Croatian, Dalmatian, and Bosnian territories and also Syrmia, which were annexed by Emperor Manuel in 1167. In the second phase of the Hungarian expansion against Byzantium’s Balkan territories, between 1183 and 1185, as an ally of the Serbian Grand Duke Stephen Nemanja, who was fighting for independence from Constantinople, Béla III conquered the vast territory between Belgrade and Sofia. As a result of the Hungarian conquest in the Balkans, the Bulgarians also launched their own struggle for independence.40 Relations in the territories south of the Danube-Sava line changed completely. In 1185, the Kingdom of Hungary and Byzantium made peace, which King Béla III wanted to confirm with a dynastic marriage. His daughter Margaret was married to Emperor Isaac II (1185–1195), and Margaret received the Balkan territories between Belgrade and Sofia, which had been occupied by the Hungarians, as a dowry.41

Trans-Syrmia or Macsó in the Thirteenth Century

In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, Byzantium was dissolved, but on its ashes a number of new states were born. The Serbs and Bulgarians, who had long fought for their independence, took advantage of the power vacuum to create their own states, with the territories south of the Danube River falling into Bulgarian hands. King Emeric of Hungary tried to arrange a crown for the Bulgarian Kolojan with the pope, who, recognizing the Hungarian king’s ambitions in the Balkans, bypassed Emeric and sent a crown directly to Kolojan. By accepting the papal crown, the Bulgarian Church was forced to join the Catholic Church. The (now united) Bulgarian Archbishop of Veliko Tarnovo was also given the title of Archbishop of all Bulgarians and Vlachs, bringing the orthodox bishoprics of Belgrade and Barancs under the jurisdiction of Veliko Tarnovo and thus into ecclesiastical union with Rome.42

After 1210 and by 1218 at the latest, King Andrew II of Hungary had recaptured the castles of Belgrade and Barancs, which had fallen into Bulgarian hands.43 After burying her third husband, King Béla III’s daughter Empress Margaret returned to Hungary in 1222,44 accompanied by her two sons, John (Kolojan),45 born to Emperor Isaac, and Gyletus47 (William), born to Margaret’s third husband, Nicholas Sentomna of Salona.46 In a charter issued by Pope Honorius III in 1227, Margaret was listed as a noblewoman and Empress of Constantinople, while John/Kolojan was only listed as a nobleman.47 Péter Gyetvai believes that John was listed as Prince of Syrmia in several charters of King Béla IV between 1240 and 1241,48 but I have found no evidence of this in the charters. The title of Prince of Syrmia did not exist at the time. He was first listed as lord of Syrmia (and count of Bács) in the spring of 1240.49 In his aforementioned bull of March 3, 1229, Pope Gregory IX wrote that the population of Trans-Syrmia ruled by Margaret was Greek-ritual regarding their religion, and they were mostly Greek and Slavic,50 and that the Latin bishopric of Syrmia, established in 1229, was intended to convert them to Rome.51 Although the diocese of Syrmia had its designated center at the time of its foundation, Kő (also known as Bánmonostor, today Banoštor in Serbia) or Kőér, at the northern foot of Fruška Gora, in Inner Syrmia, its jurisdiction extended mainly to the region of Trans-Syrmia.52

In 1232, after the Bulgarians had briefly gotten their hands on it, the territory of Belgrade and Barancs passed permanently into Hungarian hands.53 Pope Gregory IX, in his bull of March 21, 1232, asked the bishop of Csanád to investigate the Bulgarian bishops of Belgrade and Barancs, who had previously united with the Latin Church and who wished to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of Rome, and if they did not return to the allegiance of the Latin Church, to annex the two bishoprics to the Latin bishopric of Syrmia.54 This leads us to the conclusion that the territory of the Trans-Syrmia was not geographically defined. The term simply referred to the areas south of the Sava River and the Danube River that were under Hungarian rule, and in the years after 1220–1232, Belgrade and Barancs may have belonged to this territory. It is not known whether the two dioceses, which had moved away from Rome, were then incorporated into the bishopric of Syrmia. Around 1228, the Bulgarian Tsar John Asen II (1218–1241) broke the ecclesiastical union with Rome and established an autocephalous archbishopric in Veliko Tarnovo.55 In my view, the bishopric of Syrmia, based in Kő, could have exercised conversion and spiritual jurisdiction in the areas surrounded by the Drina, Sava, and Kolubara Rivers, later called the banate of Macsó. The orthodox bishoprics of Barancs and Belgrade (which belonged to the archbishopric of Ohrid before the rise of Veliko Tarnovo) were ecclesiastically attached to the Orthodox archbishop of Veliko Tarnovo and were secularly dependent on Hungary.

After the Mongol invasion, Béla IV gave the territories south of Sava River to his daughter Anna and her husband Rostislav Mihailovich, probably as early as 124756 but no later than 1254.57 The name Macsó first appeared in a charter in 1254. The use of the name Syrmia-Macsó for the territories south of the Sava River was not yet clear at that time. In his charter of December 17, 1256, King Béla IV issued a grant regarding land that was “in the district of Macsó, in the county of Syrmia, beyond the Sava.”58 At that time, it is clear that the name “Macsó” was used to refer to the area surrounded by the Drina, Sava, and Kolubara Rivers,59 as the area east of the Morava River was not yet under Hungarian rule.

The year 1247 was also a milestone in the history of the church in southern Hungary. It was then that the pope moved the seat of the bishopric of Syrmia from Kő, which was in the Inner Syrmia territories (which had been ravaged by the Mongols), to Szenternye (today Mačvanska Mitrovica in Serbia) in Trans-Syrmia.60 By this time, the Latin-rite ecclesiastical presence in the Macsó territories must have strengthened to such an extent that the bishop’s seat and the cathedral chapter could be moved there.

During his reign, Rostislav united the territories on the southern borders of the Kingdom of Hungary, from Bosnia to Barancs. He tried to keep good relations with the Bulgarian Tsar Michael I Asen (1246–1256) who married Rostislav’s daughter. In 1256, Tsar Michael was killed in a boyar revolt led by his cousin, Asen Kaliman.61 He seized power under the name Asen Kaliman II and married the widowed wife of Michael I Asen, but he died a few days later (with the widow’s help). In order to protect his daughter, Rostislav invaded Bulgaria, pushed all the way to Veliko Tarnovo, and laid siege to the city. He did not take Veliko Tarnovo, but retreated to Vidin, where he took the title of Tsar of Bulgaria in 1257.62 He managed to retain Vidin and the title of tsar, despite Bulgarian invasions, as well as Bosnia, Macsó, and the Barancs province until his death.63 The title of Duke of Macsó (like the earlier Trans-Syrmia) included the Barancs lands, in addition to the Macsó district defined above.64

Rostislav is referred to in the sources as the Duke of Macsó.65 Anna was men­tioned as Duchess of Macsó and Bosnia in a document dating from 1254–126466 and as Duchess of Galicia, Bosnia, and Macsó after her husband’s death in 1262.67

In the charter issued on December 17, 1256, King Béla IV defines the region of Trans-Syrmia in the following way when granting land: in county of Szerém, in the Macsó district located beyond the Sava.68

After the death of Rostislav, the title of Duke of Macsó and Bosnia was also held by the king’s youngest son, Béla.69 Duke Béla was surrounded by the power struggle between his uncle, the future King Stephen V, and his grandfather (in which he supported King Béla IV), and he was also attacked from the south by King Uroš I of Serbia.70 In this Serbian attack, Michael, son of Peter, of the Csák clan, later the count of Veszprém, came to the aid of Duke Béla and captured King Uroš’s son-in-law and son of the Serbian king’s master of treasury, for which he received a generous ransom.71 During the war, King Uroš I himself was taken prisoner by the Hungarians.72 Although Duke Béla was last mentioned in a charter in 1271,73 he died almost a year later, when he was murdered by Henrik Kőszegi in November 1272.74

The Banates of Macsó, Barancs and Kucsó

After the assassination of Duke Béla, Macsó was briefly organized as a banate. In 1272, the first documentary evidence of the new banates formed on the territories that were the vassals of the king of Hungary appeared: the bans of Macsó, Usora, Bosnia, Barancs, and Kucsó.75 The first known ban of Macsó was Roland of the Rátót clan (son of Domokos), who also held the office of the palatine of Hungary.76 It is interesting to note that in the year 1273 three persons were mentioned in the documents as bans of Macsó,77 and then between 1272 and 1279 five such officials were mentioned in the documents,78 all of whom held the title of ban of Bosnia apart from John, who seems to have been the exception, and Ákos of the Albert clan, who appeared only in a false document.79 From 1280, Queen Elizabeth’s titles included the title of Duchess of Macsó.80

After the death of Rostislav Mikhailovich in 1262, who had successfully retained and secured the Barancs province from the south with his Bulgarian conquests, his sons, Béla and Michael, shared the Barancs territories, and after Michael’s death in 1266, Béla remained the leader of Barancs, on the right bank of the Pek River, along with Bosnia and Macsó. In my opinion, the Barancs area at that time meant the area to the east of the border river of the banate of Macsó, Kolubara, bordered by the Danube River, including Belgrade. After the aforementioned murder of Béla in 1272, a ban was appointed to the head of the Barancs territories: Gregory the son of Mark of the Péc clan, who is mentioned in the documents as the ban of Kucsó and Barancs between 1272 and 1273.81

Kucsó was also situated on the right bank of the Pek River south of Barancs, and there are no significant sources from its earlier history. It probably shared the fate of Barancs, which was situated less than 40 km to the northwest. It was previously neither a religious nor a major administrative center. Like Barancs, Kucsó was ruled by Rostislav Mihailovich and his sons until the death of Duke Béla. It is possible that in 1272, when the new banates were formed, there were no separate banates of Barancs and Kucsó, but a single one made of the two territories. The case of Barancs-Kucsó was probably different from the case of Macsó and Bosnia,82 when the same person was appointed head of two provinces, which were historically and geographically separate but neighboring, sharing the fate of serving as a “buffer state.” Gregory the son of Mark of the Péc clan may have been ban of Kucsó-Barancs rather than the ban of Kucsó and the ban of Barancs. This question will probably never be answered with sufficient certainty, due to the extremely limited number of surviving sources. The name of Tekes’ son Stephen is mentioned in a source from 1279. Stephen only held the title of the ban of Kucsó.83 After this date, the title of ban of Barancs-Kucsó no longer appears in the sources, and neither Barancs nor Kucsó played a major role in the further history of medieval southern Hungary.

The Kingdom of Stephen Dragutin in Syrmia

As mentioned above, from 1280 to 1284, Queen Elizabeth, widow of King Stephen V of Hungary, held the title of Duchess of Macsó. Dragutin, the former Serbian king who had lost his throne in 1282 and had married Catherine of the Árpád dynasty (the daughter of Stephen V), received the territory of Macsó from his brother-in-law King Ladislas IV after June 11, 1284,84 as well as Usora, Soli, and Bosnia.85 Along with Macsó, Belgrade also passed into the hands of Dragutin, who could then create his residence there.86 The territories ruled by Dragutin were called “the Syrmian territories” by Serbian contemporaries, and Dragutin himself was called Stephen of Syrmia,87 the king of Syrmia. 88

Dragutin’s main ambition was to create a new Serbian state under his rule by unifying the kingdoms he had received from Ladislas IV. Presumably to prevent this, in 1291, Dorman and Kudelin, lords from Barancs, called in the Mongols (according to Ćirković, the Cumans),89 whom Ugrin of the Csák clan defeated at a port on the Sava River.90 By this time, Dragutin’s center had become Debrc, where he set up his court.91 One might ask why he did not make Belgrade his seat. In my view, Belgrade must have been a key fortress for the Hungarian king, and the Hungarian leadership could not have allowed Dragutin to establish the seat of his “Syrmian kingdom” in this strategically important settlement. Whether Belgrade was in the possession of Dragutin or the Hungarian king in the 1290s is not known for certain. According to a charter issued in 1298, the Mongols destroyed Macsó and then prepared to attack Hungary.92 A royal charter from March 20, 1310 states that the Serbian king Milutin, together with John of the Smaragd clan, son of Ajnárd, attacked Hungary and led devastating raids in the counties of Syrmia and Valkó.93 Dragutin died in 1316, and his son Vladislav inherited Macsó, but he was driven out from the territory by his uncle, King Milutin of Serbia in 1316.94

Between 1317 and 1319, there was a war between Hungary and Serbia for the Macsó territories occupied by King Milutin, and two campaigns were led by the Hungarians to retake the region. During the first campaign, in January 1317, the Hungarian army crossed the frozen Sava River to recapture Macsó, which had been occupied by the Serbs.95 In the cold winter weather, the port to cross the river was marked out by the count of Sopron, Nicholas, the son of Amádé from the Gutkeled clan, while on the other bank of the river, the Serbian army was waiting for them.96 Hungarians were also found in the Serbian army who previously had confronted King Charles of Hungary, namely Andrew, Lotár, and Dezső of the Gutkeled clan, the sons of Dénes, who was the son of Lotár.97 King Charles I of Hungary personally took part in the campaign, and he also captured the castle of Macsó that year98 and the castle of Kolobar (Kolubara).99 According to the contemporary documents, Paul Nagymartoni,100 Nicholas, the son of Amadé of the Gutkeled kindred who was the count of Sopron,101 Alexander Köcski,102 sons of Doroszló,103 Mark of Rady,104 the sons of Bereck of Bathur (of the Gutkeled clan) all fought in the war.105 After King Charles I recaptured the rest of the Serbian-occupied parts of the Macsó district, in early 1319,106 during the second campaign in Macsó, he restored the whole banate of Macsó. The office of ban was granted to Hungarian noble families, the Drugets, Ostfis, Garais, Horvatis, etc.107 On September 16, 1319, King Charles issued a charter in Macsó.108

Summary

The northern Balkan territories bordered by the Drina, Sava, and Danube Rivers came under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Hungary in the early thirteenth century. This region was called Trans Syrmia(s), Sirmia Ulterior, but Southern Slavic sources often referred to the area simply as Syrmia. At the time, this was understood to mean all the territory lying south of the borders of Hungary, east of the Drina, without any actual designated borders. Between 1230 and 1240, King Béla III’s daughter Margaret and her son John ruled the province of Trans-Syrmia as lady and lord of Syrmia. It was at this time that the Hungarian-ruled district of Macsó began to be permanently separated from the territories of Belgrade and Barancs, which were often harassed by Bulgarian military campaigns.

The territories of Trans-Syrmia (including Bosnia) were given to Rostislav Mihailovich between 1247 and 1254, who held the title of Duke of Bosnia and Macsó (Barancs and Belgrade were not among his titles, nor were they among the titles of his wife Anna). By taking Veliko Tarnovo, Rostislav gained the title of Bulgarian Tsar, securing Barancs and Belgrade from the southeast. After his death in 1262, the title of Lady of Macsó was held by his wife. He was succeeded as Duke of Macsó by his son Béla, who also shared the Barancs territories with his brother Michael. After the murder of Béla in 1272, the territory of Macsó became a banate for seven years (the title of ban of Macsó was mostly held by the same person as the ban of Bosnia). In 1284, the Serbian king Dragutin, who had lost his throne, was given Macsó, together with Bosnia (including Usora and Soli) and the territories of Belgrade and Barancs-Kucsó. According to Serbian sources, Dragutin attempted to establish a new kingdom as a Hungarian vassal state as King of Syrmia, but after his death in 1316, his son Vladislav failed to hold on to power. His uncle, King Milutin, conquered the Macsó territories (Belgrade may have remained in Hungarian hands, but the fate of Barancs is unknown). In the winter of 1317, King Charles I of Hungary personally led a campaign against Milutin, and by 1319, he had recaptured the Macsó territories, where he restored the institution of the banate of Macsó, and the title of ban was then conferred on Hungarian noble families as an honor.

Already in the thirteenth century, the areas between the Drina and Kolubara Rivers were referred to as the banate of Macsó in both historical literature and popular thought. It is clear from the above that this is incorrect: the name Macsó was first used for the region only in 1254, and the title of ban of Macsó appeared in the documents of the period under study between 1272 and 1279. It was only in the Angevin period, after 1319, that the institution of the Macsó banate took root.

Archival Sources

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian State Archives] (MNL OL)

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény (DF)

Diplomatikai Levéltár (DL)

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Marriages of Convenience, Forced Betrothals:
Dynastic Agreements in the Angevin-era Hungary

Renáta Skorka

HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 1 (2025): 96-126 DOI 10.38145/2025.1.96

The study deals with the dynastic marriages of the Angevin dynasty in Hungary during the fourteenth century. The dynastic marriages under analysis were made according to written and unwritten rules: the former was realized through the marriage contracts, and the latter covered customary elements regarding, for example, the consummation of marriage or the inspection of the bride. The marriage contracts regulated the logistics of a marriage, including, for instance, the delivery of the bride, the right of refusal of the marriage, the time of the nuptials, and details concerning property laws, with special emphasis on the financial conditions of the marriage, as well as the revenues and lands on which these rested. In this period, the king of Hungary provided a morning-gift of equal value to all the spouses of his sons and brothers and a dowry of equal size for the royal daughters and sisters. The dowry and morning gift of women who married into the Hungarian royal family were secured through the estates and revenues of the queens of Hungary. By the end of the Angevin period, the dynastic marriages were supported on a broader social scale, including the members of the ecclesiastical and secular elites and the towns. This support, furthermore, was confirmed through oaths.

Keywords: dynastic marriages, Hungary, Angevin dynasty, Central Europe, dynastic policy

In medieval Europe, feuding rulers sought to seal peace treaties and alliances between their countries by strengthening family ties when the opportunity arose, as it often did. Marriages negotiated at the negotiating table, depending on diplomatic interests and political games, sometimes involved unborn offspring, often children who were already related to each other, usually under the legal age. The situation of the betrothed couples could be further complicated if they were related to each other within four generations, in which case the fate of the agreement had to be sealed by and depended on the goodwill and will of the Holy See at the time. In addition, foreign policy and diplomatic interests could change and possibly reverse more quickly than the marriage between the parties concerned, and thus children were often forced to move from one matrimony to another after the severance of the already strictly regulated ties. This situation was naturally helped by the fact that the two betrothed had little opportunity to develop a more intimate relationship with each other. In addition to political and dynastic interests, legal and economic considerations also played an important role in the conclusion of marriage contracts in this period. Without exception, medieval marriage contracts were accompanied by the transfer of predetermined income or rights of property. In the following, I examine not the history of dynastic marriages in the Angevin era but the political, legal, and economic factors that played a role in the establishment of dynastic relations, which became compulsory elements and institutions of the engagements and marriages between the Angevins and neighboring dynasties.

Contracted for Marriage

In May 1318, Charles I, the first Angevin ruler of Hungary, who was seeking to consolidate his power and reunify the country, sent a three-man delegation to the court of the Luxembourg dynasty in Prague, hoping and planning to ally with the Czech king. Charles I wished to strengthen this collaboration by marrying one of King John’s sisters. On hearing the offer, the Czech monarch did not hesitate to take his sisters from Luxembourg to Königsaal, where the Hungarian king’s envoys, Thomas of Szécsényi, his cousin Simon of the Kacsics kindred and an interpreter named Stephen, were given the task of choosing Charles’ second wife, the next queen of the Kingdom of Hungary. Abbot Peter of Königsaal was also present to inspect the girls, and from him we learn that Beatrix of Luxembourg and her sister Mary were not yet 14 years old. The monk was candid about the main aspects of the inspection, as it turns out that the Hungarian ambassadors looked at the facial features, bodies, and gaits of the two countesses and decided in favor of the younger one. Beatrix was then betrothed (desponsatur) to the envoy of the departing Hungarian king, before the altar of the Blessed Virgin, amidst the tolling of bells.1 During the negotiations in Bohemia, the ambassadors probably also signed a marriage contract, which usually touched on the question of the transfer of the bride and detailed the dowry and the amount of the morning gift she was due. However, in the case of Beatrix, the sources reveal nothing about these issues. We do, however, have an account of the inspection, which was indispensable before the dynastic marriage, during which the physical aptitude and health of the future bride were examined, strictly with a view to the question of her suitability as a bride who would produce offspring. The health of the bride, as will be discussed later, was the responsibility of the parental court until the marriage, to the extent that if it could be shown to have suffered some impairment or cause for concern, the other party could be legally released from his oath of marriage. However, Beatrix’s physical health was not harmed, as revealed by the fact the transfer took place very soon after the contract was signed, at the Moravian-Hungarian border, according to the sources.2

The marriage of Charles I and Beatrix was expected to take place in November of that year.3 Their marriage could not be said to have been long-lived, as the queen died in November 1319, and Charles did not hesitate to look for another wife, at least according to an entry in the account book of the Counts of Tyrol, which states that in 1319, an envoy from Hungary was welcomed at the court of the prince of Carinthia to arrange a marriage. Considering the overwhelming burdens of succession, Charles probably did not choose one of the daughters (one born in 1317, the other in 1318) of Henry VI, prince of Carinthia and count of Tyrol, who, for a short period (in 1306 and 1307–1310) ruled as king of Bohemia. Rather, Charles sought a much more mature princess as his bride, according to the source, Elizabeth, princess of Carinthia,4 who was probably Henry’s niece.

In the end, Princess Elizabeth of Carinthia gave heirs to King Peter of Sicily instead of Charles after 1322, but the King of Hungary did not go without a male heir. His third wife, also named Elizabeth and daughter of the Polish king Vladislas I, gave birth to his first son, Ladislas, in 1324. The boy was barely three years old when he became involved in his father’s foreign policy plans. Charles, seeing the growing rapprochement between the Habsburg and Bavarian Wittelsbach dukes between 1325 and 1326, took the necessary precautions to forge closer alliances with his northern neighbor. On February 13, 1327, fearing a Habsburg attack, he entered into a defensive alliance with the aforementioned Czech king John of Luxembourg at Nagyszombat (today Trnava, Slovakia). The two rulers mutually agreed that if one of them were to be attacked by the Habsburgs, they could count on the support of the other, but that if one of them attacked the Austrian provinces, the other would remain neutral.5 This bilateral commitment was reinforced by a contract for the future marriage of Ladislas and King John’s eight-year-old daughter Anna, the details of which are no doubt explained more prominently in the contract than the elements of political cooperation. This contract stipulated that both parties would send envoys to Avignon as soon as possible to obtain the necessary permission from the Holy See for the marriage, which was necessary because both children were the great grandchildren of Rudolf I of Germany.6 The plan was that, within six months of having obtained papal permission, the two children would be formally married at a place of their choosing. The parties also expected that the decision of the Holy See would be delayed and that Pope John XXII would not grant the permission immediately, so the two kings postponed the marriage for three weeks but vowed to continue to apply to the Holy See for permission. After having successfully obtained permission, they would wait until Anna reached the age of twelve, the legal age of consent in that time, before handing her over,7 and then King John would send his daughter to the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary for her husband, Duke Ladislas. The letter contains no details concerning the actual transfer of the bride to the Hungarian side, but the example of Beatrix of Luxembourg shows that it may have taken place on the border of the two countries.

As was stipulated in the contract signed in Nagyszombat, Charles sent his envoy George, a citizen of Buda,8 to Avignon with a letter requesting exemption from the obstacle of consanguinity. In December of that year, Pope John XXII assured the king of Hungary that permission would be granted.9 Presumably, the Czech king did exactly what King Charles had done, and the decree of permission was issued on September 8, 1328, more than a year and a half after the agreement at Nagyszombat,10 which, in its content, offers convincing evidence that the role of the Holy See in such petitions was not a mere formality in those days. The decree suggests, rather, that the Holy See had significant influence in the European diplomacy. In addition to expressing his joy at the alliance between the Czech and Hungarian monarchs, the pope also supported the marriage of the two children because the marriage of Anna and Ladislas offered the prospect of reconciliation between the Czech and Polish kings, since Ladislas, as mentioned above, was the grandchild of the Polish king Vladislas I on his mother’s side.

The marriage contract of 1327 at Nagyszombat also contained other provisions concerning the dowry and morning gift, which are not mentioned in the marriage contract between Beatrix and Charles. The former refers to the assets and possessions of the daughter received from her father to cover the expenses of married life, which during the marriage were taken out of the hands of the bride’s ascendants and relatives. The latter was the property and assets pledged by the husband to his wife at the time of the marriage to strengthen her financial position and to support and secure her in the event of his death.11 In the agreement between the Czech and Hungarian kings at Nagyszombat, it was stated that after the handover of Anna her father had one year to transfer 10,000 marks in Czech groschen (calculated at 56 groschen per mark) at Magyarbród (today Uherský Brod, Czechia) in Moravia in the form of a dowry.12 In view of the amount involved, the marriage contract was also very careful to emphasize that, after the Hungarian party had received the sum, the Czech king would still have to guarantee the safe transport of the persons carrying the money to the castle of Trencsén (today Trenčín, Slovakia). In return, Charles also secured 15,000 marks of silver for his son’s morning gift.13 These 25,000 marks were intended to ensure the financial security of Anna in the marriage. It was clear from the fact that, in return for the sum of 25,000 marks, the Hungarian king had pledged estates in areas which had been in the hands of the queens in the Kingdom of Hungary since the previous century, which probably means that they were in the possession of Queen Elizabeth Piast of Hungary at the time of the contract of Nagyszombat. The 10,000 marks brought by Anna were, according to the wording of the charter, spent in the towns and villages of the queen.

The list of settlements includes a large number of market towns and villages that were part of the queen’s estate, mainly belonging to the Segesd comitatus14 in Somogy County: Segesd, Lábod, (Kálmán) Tschechi, (Alsó) Aranyos, Szabás, Nagyatád and Kisatád, Bolhás, Ötvös, Darány, (Erdő) Csokonya, Újlak and finally Verőce (today Virovitica, Croatia), and Szentambrus in Verőce County. For 15,000 marks, the entire county of Pozsega was secured for Anna, with all its castles, towns, villages, and market towns,15 which in the thirteenth century were also part of the queen’s royal estates. Given the dynastic interests of the time, a successful marriage was considered one that proved fruitful from the perspective of offspring and, hopefully, produced male heirs. These considerations were addressed in the Nagyszombat contract, which stipulated that in the event of the death of Ladislas, if he had one or more male heirs, they would inherit the Kingdom of Hungary and the lands reserved for Anna would also become their property. If they had only daughters, these daughters would inherit according to the customs of the Kingdom of Hungary. If, however, the marriage proved unsuccessful in the medieval sense (i.e., if there were no offspring), the widow Anna would enjoy the estates in the counties of Somogy, Verőce, and Pozsega for the rest of her life, and when she died, they would have to return the 10,000 marks she had brought to her father or to his heirs at that time. Until such time as this repayment was made, the estates in Somogy and Verőce, which were secured with that 10,000 marks, would be used by King John and his successors. The marriage contract also stipulated that the Hungarian king had to repay the sum in question in Trencsén in case of the events, guaranteeing its safe transport to the Moravian border. The charter makes no specific mention of this, but according to the medieval property laws and the medieval matrimonial property laws, it was also granted that, in the case of Anna’s death, the morning gift would be returned to the husband or her husband’s family so that whoever was ruling as queen at the time could take possession of it. In the event of the failure of a dynastic marriage, both families would thus get back what they had invested in the marriage when it was contracted. This phenomenon, together with the obligation to give the wife property in exchange for the marriage morning gift, was a common practice, and not only among the ruling families of the period.

However, the wedding, the details of which had been so carefully regulated by the contract in Nagyszombat in February 1327, could not be held within the time stipulated in the agreement, i.e. within six months after the granting of permission by the pope, and neither could Anna be handed over to the Hungarian court in her twelfth year, since Ladislas, who was barely four years old, died in February 1329. The marriage treaties of the period also dealt with such cases. King John and King Charles both stated that the possible failure of the plan for a marriage between their children should not cause discord between the dynasties, nor should it undermine the intention to further political cooperation. Moreover, they took the precaution of putting it in writing in their contract that, should one of the kings pass away, the children of the king that had passed away, including their rights and property, would be protected by the other king. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that, following the failed marriage of Anna and Ladislas, on March 1, 1338, the Luxembourg dynasty and the Hungarian Angevins made a further attempt to strengthen their alliance,16 which had existed since November 1332. Charles I and his wife and King John and his son Charles, Margrave of Moravia, again acted with the same caution as before. They betrothed the then twelve-year-old heir to the Hungarian throne, Louis, and the margrave’s only child at the time, Margaret. Under the terms of the agreement concluded at Visegrád, the Czech party undertook to hand over the daughter, who was not even considered of legal age in 1342, to the Hungarian envoys in Brno on September 29, 1339, provided that she had not suffered any bodily injury during the year and a half that would have elapsed in the meantime.

The issue of dowry and morning gift was also emphasized in 1338, when the margrave, who also appeared at the Brno transfer, presented the Hungarian commissioners with a document promising 10,000 marks in Prague groschen, this time at 64 groschen per mark, with his daughter.17 For this amount, he either had to give appropriate pledges or provide guarantors, and he had one year from the date of delivery to pay them, and if he paid only half of the amount within the time stipulated, he was obliged to continue to pledge the other half. The Moravian Margrave’s daughter thus received a somewhat more substantial dowry than Anna in 1327, but the payment was not made immediately and not in one sum, and the difference can be explained in part by the drop in the value of the money. As had been the case in the treaty of Nagyszombat, the Hungarian side promised 15,000 marks as the morning gift of the Angevine prince,18 and, as we have already seen, in exchange for these 25,000 marks, they pledged the castles of Szeged and Hasznos, also known as Becse, with their various accessories.19 Although the document does not mention that the estates in question belonged to the queen, since the estates of Szeged and Becse can still be traced back to 1382 as the estates of the queen,20we can conclude that the Angevin court had pledged, as the morning gifts and dowry for the daughters marrying into the family, estates and revenues which otherwise belonged to the estates of the queen. It was also stipulated that Margaret would be entitled to the above properties in accordance with Czech marriage law, which could not have meant anything other than the legal order detailed in 1327 for Anna.

The points of the treaty of Visegrád were set out in a separate charter on March 22 by Margrave Charles I and his wife, who acknowledged that they were bound by them. We do not know exactly when the transfer of Margaret took place, but it certainly took place during the lifetime of Charles I, as is revealed by the charter issued in August 1342 by Louis, who by then was ruling as king of Hungary. In this document, he promised to marry Margaret, who had not yet reached the legal age, within the next four years, and he also promised to uphold the documents previously drawn up regarding the marriage. Among these documents, the king mentioned the one that was issued at the time when Margaret was taken to his parents’ court to learn Hungarian customs and the Hungarian language.21 While in 1327 the marriage was planned to take place before Anna had reached the legal age and the handover would have been delayed until she was twelve years old, in 1338, the handover of Margaret took place before the she had reached the legal age, and the marriage was planned to take place after she had turned twelve. The marriage of Louis and Margaret can be dated to February 1344,22 but the marriage did not last long, nor was it successful from the perspective of the expectations of the time. In September 1349, the queen died of plague without leaving any descendants, and her dowry probably reverted to her family. The marriage treaties of 1327 and 1338 cannot be considered isolated cases. Similar treaties were probably drawn up to regulate and specify the terms of all marital dynastic relationships. As can be seen, a very important element of these agreements was the need to settle the question of matrimonial property law, especially since there was no consistency in the designations of the legal title to the various dower rights in the Kingdom of Hungary, nor was there any uniformity to the legal systems of the countries and provinces concerned. Differences in interpretation of the less detailed agreements could, over time, give rise to disputes, as happened in the case of the salary of Princess Margaret of Bavaria.

The widowed King Louis, who for the time being was not considering remarrying, regarded it as it one of his duties, in agreement with his mother, to tend to the marriage of his younger brother, Prince Stephen.23 The youngest descendant of Charles I married Margaret, daughter of the late Louis IV of the Holy Roman Empire, around 1350.24 The plan for the marriage was conceived during the emperor’s lifetime, in 1345, as the Hungarian king hoped to gain the support of Louis IV in his quest for the throne of Naples. However, Pope Clement VI rejected the idea, as the alliance was also directed against the Holy See, and he himself did not recognize the emperor’s power.25 Winning the hand of Princess Margaret after her father’s death was undoubtedly not as politically advantageous as it would have been during the emperor’s lifetime, but it did strengthen the family ties and the hereditary ties with Bavaria. Margaret of Bavaria had given her husband two children, and after his death in 1354, she began to demand that the king of Hungary pay her dowry. In January 1356, she asked Prince Albert II of Austria, in agreement with the Hungarian king, to settle the dispute and help her determine the amount to be paid to Margaret.26 Prince Albert gave her until Easter of that year to present her documents relating to the case. In the meantime, Louis was to deposit 30,000 forints with the duke in Vienna, while he had to give Nagyszombat to Margaret, and if it should prove that the amount claimed was higher than 30,000 forints, the necessary difference was to be made up with payments of 3,000 forints a year from Nagyszombat. In April 1356, Margaret showed the documents showing that she was due 60,000 forints because of Nagyszombat.27 We know that she was correct, as revealed by a document issued in 1358 in which King Louis I acknowledged that he had promised Margaret 60,000 forints on behalf of Prince Stephen and this sum could be legally regarded as a morning gift,28 as was confirmed by the fact that the sum of 60,000 forints was in fact equal to the sum of 15,000 marks, which was given in the case of Stephen’s brothers (Ladislas and Louis).29

The king also mentioned Margaret’s dowry,30 which was 40,000 forints. It is not known exactly what estates were turned over to her in return for these sums, but it seems that Nagyszombat was one of them, which may be linked to the office of the thirtieth customs-duty, which had been in operation in the town since the beginning of the Angevin era. These revenues were considered royal revenues,31 so in this respect, following his father’s custom, Louis could have taken the benefits of the princess who was getting married at the expense of the queen’s income. As is known, Margaret had already appeared in 1358 at the side of her new husband, Gerlach von Hohenlohe,32 with whom the Hungarian monarch had agreed on the amount she was due. The document does not specify this amount, so we cannot be sure whether the 20,000 forints that Louis sent to Margaret and her second husband in 1359 through the Austrian princes as a morning gift of the late Prince Stephen33 covered the whole or only part of the amount. The reason behind our lack of knowledge is that, in the document issued about this payment, Margaret only assured the deliverer Archduke Rudolf IV of Austria that he had transferred the sum to them in full.

As clear from the discussion above, marriage contracts drawn up in the framework of political alliances were not always implemented, despite the best intentions of the parties. The preceding cases clearly show that much depended on the good will of the Holy See, but the premature death of one member of the betrothed couple was also a factor. Sometimes, however, it was the changing political and dynastic interests that prevented an engagement from becoming a marriage, like in case of King Louis I’s niece, Elizabeth.

The Destiny of the Bride

The daughter of Margaret of Bavaria and Prince Stephen of the Angevin dynasty, mentioned above, was engaged to four different European dynasties in the course of a decade, and a fifth was also mentioned. In order better to understand the role of Elizabeth of the Angevine dynasty, we must consider her uncle’s difficult case of succession. King Louis had no children by his first marriage to Margaret of Luxembourg, and his second wife, Elizabeth Kotromanić, did not provide the monarch with an heir for many decades. Therefore, after the death of his younger brother Prince Stephen in 1354, Louis chose Stephen’s son John as his successor. When the need arose, he gave John’s sister, Elizabeth, a role in making political alliances. The first sign of this could be seen in 1356, when Louis and his father-in-law, Charles IV, who by then had been crowned king of Germany and Bohemia and who had once held the title of Margrave of Moravia, betrothed Elizabeth to Jodok,34 also known as Jobst, the eldest son of John Henry, Margrave of Moravia, who was born in 1351, to strengthen their alliance, which had been established three years earlier.35 Jodok was the nephew of Charles IV, and his importance and role in this period can be explained by the fact that Charles IV’s only living child at the time, Catherine, had already been married to Rudolf IV, duke of Austria, in 1353.36 In 1356, therefore, Jodok and Elizabeth were not the primary heirs of the Luxembourg and Angevin dynasties.

By the autumn of 1360, however, the tables had turned, and with the death of Prince John, Elizabeth became King Louis’ sole heir to the Hungarian and possibly Polish thrones, and her status was apparently enhanced. On February 2, 1361, the earlier intention to marry was confirmed, with Louis promising that as soon as Elizabeth reached the age of twelve, she would be given to Jodok, who would receive a dowry of 10,000 marks. Louis had offered the same amount for his niece as had been offered for the Czech princesses in the earlier contracts of 1327 and 1338.37 It should be stressed that Charles IV still had no son on February 2, 1361, but 24 days later, the situation changed with the birth of Wenceslas at Nuremberg, which further strengthened the position of the emperor and the European prospects of the Luxembourg dynasty.38

The news of Wenceslas’ birth prompted Prince Rudolf IV of Austria, who had regarded himself essentially as his father-in-law’s successor as a German king,39 to urge those who were concerned about Charles IV’s growing power to unite. This led to an alliance between Rudolf and his brothers, together with Prince Meinhard of Upper Bavaria, count of Tyrol, King Louis I of Hungary, and King Casimir III of Poland in Pozsony (today Bratislava, Slovakia) on December 31, 1361.40 The agreement, which implicitly was against Charles IV, was followed by arming in 136241 over the Tyrolean inheritance.42 The events of the war in 1362 are documented in the scholarship of Hungarian historian Antal Pór,43 and the agreements between Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria, and King Louis I of Hungary, who had several meetings during the year, can be reconstructed on the basis of the surviving sources.44 There is not a single document among them which states that at one of these meetings Rudolf’s brother, Prince Albert III of Austria, was engaged to Louis’ niece Elizabeth. Only later sources report the engagement as a fact. The future marriage of Elizabeth and Albert was most probably decided in Vienna on January 7, 1362, when the Austrian princes entered into an alliance with King Louis I of Hungary against Charles IV and John Henry, Margrave of Moravia.45 The Hungarian king unilaterally broke the engagement agreement between Jodok and Elizabeth by marrying Elizabeth to someone else. The warlike atmosphere of 1362 was brought to an end on January 13, 1363 with the death of the Duke of Upper Bavaria and the transfer of Tyrol to Habsburg control,46 but a formal peace was not concluded until February 10, 1364.47

On the same day as the peace treaty was signed, the Luxembourg-Habsburg mutual succession treaty was concluded, which stipulated that, in the event of the death of Charles IV, his son, and brother without succession, their lands would be divided between Rudolf IV and his brothers Albert III and Leopold III. The treaty also declared that, were King Louis I of Hungary, his mother Queen Elizabeth, and Princess Elizabeth, the daughter of the late Prince Stephen, to die without heirs, their property would be given to the Luxembourgs.48 The Hungarian Angevins were probably included in the latter clause because of the 1362 betrothal between Elizabeth and Albert III. It should be remembered that, at the time of the treaty of succession of Brno, neither Rudolf IV nor his brothers had any heir, but Albert was the only one of them who even had a fiancé, Elizabeth of Anjou, the potential heiress of the Kingdom of Hungary, and therefore the inclusion of the Hungarian monarch and his family members in the treaty of Brno was not only justifiable but almost expected. This also meant that, in the event of the death of the Habsburg dukes without succession, the primary heirs of their territories would be the Angevins of Hungary, a possibility that was not at all desirable for the Luxembourgs. Thus, Charles IV’s main aim may have been to prevent the marriage between Elizabeth and Albert III by any means possible and then to rewrite the Brno treaty, now without the relevant rights of the Hungarian party.

The time was all the more pressing for the Luxembourgs, because in July 1365, Rudolf IV died without an heir, and he was succeeded by Albert III and Leopold III. The research by aforementioned Hungarian historian Pór details how the emperor appealed to Pope Urban V, accusing Albert of having become Elizabeth’s fiancé in 1362 by failing to break his earlier engagement to Charles’ niece Catherine.49 The accusation was probably true, since Louis had done the same with Elizabeth and Jodok. On February 24, the pope refused to authorize the marriage between Prince Albert III of Austria and the niece of King Louis I of Hungary, Elizabeth, and he even revoked the permission issued by his predecessors, Clement VI and Innocent VI, for cases in which the marriage had not yet taken place.50 King Louis, who was clearly concerned to maintain the agreement between the Habsburgs and the Hungarian Angevins, sent first Johann von Bredenscheid, a doctor of Roman Law, and then Simon, Magister General of the Dominican Order, as ambassadors to Avignon to try to persuade Pope Urban V to come to a more favorable conclusion. The pope’s relentlessness in the matter is illustrated by his letters issued on May 23 to Louis I and to Queen Elizabeth, in which further aspects of the Holy See’s role in dynastic marriages are also revealed. The pope pointed out that, although the Hungarian king had sworn an oath regarding the marriage of his niece and the Austrian prince, he could break, his oath because the Holy See had not given its permission for the marriage. If the Hungarian king insisted on the wedding without permission, he would face severe consequences, as those who knowingly entered into a marriage without permission would be excommunicated and their country would be subject to ecclesiastical interdict.51 During the summer, the pope sought to intervene even more forcefully in the dynastic policy of Hungary, and he took the initiative to marry Princess Elizabeth to the brother of the king of France, Prince Philip of Burgundy, recently released from the English captivity. According to the pope, with the interests of the Valois dynasty in his mind, there was no more fitting or honorable marriage for a girl who was already approaching the age of marriage.52

In the light of all this, it is clear that the Habsburg-Hungarian alliance of 1362 was difficult and constituted an obstacle to the dynastic plans of several European dynasties, and its dissolution would probably have occurred regardless of the death of Prince Rudolf IV of Austria. Rudolf’s passing and the emergence of the Duke of Burgundy, however, undoubtedly prompted Emperor Charles IV to make some moves. The Emperor was in Buda in November 1365, negotiating with the king of Hungary the betrothal of his only son, Wenceslas, to Elizabeth. On December 5, Louis had already abandoned his plans for a marriage with the Habsburgs,53 and on December 20, he authorized Prince Ladislas of Opole to conclude negotiations on the engagement of his niece to Wenceslas.54 Albert III was also not without a future wife, thanks to the emperor’s success in diplomacy. In February 1366, Pope Urban V, who had so strongly opposed the marriage of Elizabeth and Albert, gave permission for a marriage between Albert and Charles IV’s eight-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.55 For this, it was necessary for the king of Hungary to release the Austrian prince from all the oaths he had sworn to him, which he did on February 25,56 and two days later, together with his mother and the royal council, he confirmed that his late brother’s daughter should be married to Wenceslas.57 According to a papal charter from 1369, Elizabeth was then a minor, and the marriage was postponed until she was of legal age.58

In March 1366, Albert III and his brother Leopold III travelled to Prague, as did Prince Otto V of the Wittelsbach family of Upper Bavaria, who had succeeded his deceased brother Louis as the Archduke of Brandenburg since 1365. A double wedding took place in Prague, with the emperor marrying off two of his daughters. Otto married Catherine of Luxembourg, the widow of Rudolf IV, while Elizabeth of Luxembourg was married to Prince Albert III of Austria. By marrying off the daughters, their father sought to build up considerable and lasting political capital. Otto essentially resigned from the Duchy of Brandenburg for six years after the wedding and transferred the government to his father-in-law.59 The Habsburg dukes renewed the mutual succession treaty previously signed in Brno in 1364, whereby the participating parties would leave to each other all their estates, both existing and future, in the event of their death without succession. The Hungarian party, which was no longer bound to the Habsburgs by any betrothal, was excluded from the treaty, and it was therefore emphasized that the person to whom the king of Hungary would leave his kingdom as his heir would be accepted as the rightful heir of the Kingdom of Hungary.60 This clause in the renewed succession treaty is extremely important in two respects. First, if there had been a Habsburg-Hungarian succession treaty in 1362, it was certainly invalidated by this document. Second, the case illustrates the Hungarian monarch’s ability and authority to assert his interests, as he managed to get his country excluded from the text of the Habsburg-Luxembourg succession treaty, despite the fact that his only heir was about to marry the only male heir of the Luxembourg dynasty. Charles IV may well have regarded Louis’ caution as unnecessary pomposity, and the emperor could not have been concerned about who would inherit Louis’ estate, as his letter of May 11, 1366 to his Italian governors, the Gonzagas, attests. According to this letter, his son Wenceslas would marry the Hungarian king’s niece within four weeks of the date of the letter and would then consummate the marriage, and Hungary would pass to their successors.61

The presumptuous statement relied on another important element of dynastic marriages, the consummation of the marriage. How the five-year-old Wenceslas and Elizabeth (who was a few years older than he) could have married in this way can only be reconstructed on the basis of a later case. An example survives from 1452 from the court of Naples, which was retold by an eyewitness, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II. In March of that year, King Frederick III, a member of the Habsburg family, was crowned emperor, and before the event, the monarch met his future wife, Eleanora of Portugal, in Siena. They were coronated together in Rome. The young couple received an invitation from the uncle of Eleonora, King Alfonso of Aragon, to stay in Naples, and during the last days of their stay, rumors began to circulate that the young Habsburg, who had shown great restraint in the area of physical pleasure, had not yet wished to know his young wife intimately and that he wanted to wait until they returned to the empire before doing so. The court of the Neapolitan monarch and Eleanor’s entourage were united in their efforts to persuade him to comply with his duties. They were allegedly successful. Frederick ordered the bed to be made according to German custom, and when this was done, the still reluctant husband of thirty-seven years laid down completely dressed in the presence of the court and allowed his eighteen-year-old wife, who was also wearing her clothes, to be put in his arms. Then, in the presence of King Alfonso and a number of nobles, they were covered. Nothing more was done, but he kissed his wife, and they both rose immediately afterwards. Piccolomini added as an explanation that this was a German custom at least at the marriage of princes. The Spanish woman present were astonished by this custom, as they firmly believed that the act was being done in earnest. A great uproar allegedly arose among them as soon as they saw the cushion covering the imperial couple. Everyone looked at King Alfonso, waiting for him to intervene, but he acknowledged the foreign custom with a pleasant smile on his face. 62

Although this type of consummation, which was native to the German territories, provoked astonishment in the Mediterranean world, we can be sure that in 1366 Charles IV did not think of any other form of consummation for Wenceslas and Elizabeth. The marriage of the two children, announced by Charles IV for June 1366, was probably not consummated, although Pór comes to the conclusion that it definitely was.63 The following question arises, however: on the basis of what did the emperor make his statement on May 11 that the marriage would take place within four weeks. He may have based this statement on the fact that Elizabeth, who, as we have seen, was not of legal age at the time of her betrothal at the end of February 1366, had reached the age of twelve.64 On June 15, 1366, the emperor wrote a letter from Vienna to Augsburg informing the town that he was going to the city of Pozsony to negotiate with the Hungarian queen, but he made no mention of a marriage. At the end of June, King Louis was also in the city, so it cannot be ruled out that he also took part in the negotiations.65 We can speculate that Elizabeth, who had reached the legal age, was for the time being discouraged by the court of Hungary from marrying Wenceslas (perhaps because of the boy’s age), because the Hungarian side was seriously concerned about Charles’ power politics.

In opposition to the Upper Bavarian-Luxembourg-Habsburg alliance under the emperor’s influence, Louis moved closer to the other branches of the extended Wittelsbach family, who strongly opposed the transfer of the Duchy of Brandenburg to the Luxembourg dynasty. In October 1367, the Hungarian monarch entrusted his chancellor, Bishop William of Pécs, with the task of negotiating with the Bavarian princes.66 Then, on November 2, he entered into an alliance in Buda with the Wittelsbachs’ Landshut branch, namely Prince Stephen of Bavaria and his sons, Stephen, who became the first prince of the later Bavarian-Ingolstadt branch of the family, Frederick, the future heir of the Landshut branch, and Albert, representing the Straubing-Holland branch.67 At the same time, the Hungarian king also signed a treaty with the Wittelsbach branch, which held the electorate Palatinate of the Rhineland, and made a pact  with Rupert I and his nephew, the future Rupert II, and the latter’s son.68 The Hungarian king was joined in the coalition by his Italian great-uncles, Prince Philip II of Taranto, Emperor Emeritus of Constantinople, and Prince Charles II of Durazzo. The alliance was aimed at the territories of the Austrian dukes, since the agreement was that in the event of joint military action, the provinces conquered from the Habsburg dukes would be divided between the Hungarian king and the Wittelsbachs along the Enns.69 Charles IV was hardly aware of the threat in 1368. He was distracted by other events. One of them was that he had to accompany his fourth wife to Rome to be crowned empress. At the end of August, the archbishop of Trier was informed from Modena that the emperor hoped that the relationship between him and the Hungarian king would lead to a mutual double bond. In addition to the betrothal of Wenceslas and Elizabeth, the emperor had also envisaged the formation of another family relationship, namely the marriage of the duke of Durazzo to a future, not yet born duchess of Luxembourg.70 However, there was not much chance of this happening, since a few months earlier, in February 1368, Empress Elizabeth of Pomerania had given birth to a son, named Sigismund in honor of the king of Burgundy, who had been martyred in the sixth century.71

However, Louis remained opposed to the emperor. In 1369, he met in Buda with King Casimir III of Poland, and they confirmed their alliance against Charles IV. Pope Urban V did not take a favorable view of the strained relations between Louis and Charles, and he sent envoys to try to reconcile them, but his initiative proved fruitless, because by the end of the year the Hungarian court had petitioned the Holy See for a dissolution of the engagement between Elizabeth and Wenceslas. The primary reason for this was the opposition of the people of the country to the engagement, which only the royal family and some of the ecclesiastical and secular nobles supported. Reference was also made to the princess’ reluctance to marry Wenceslas, since Elizabeth, who was already an adult, did not want the marriage and refused to enter into it.72 The above arguments give the impression that the kings who contracted the marriage, as well as the Holy See, paid special attention to the broad support of the subjects for the marriage to be contracted, a factor that should be examined with greater emphasis in future records. On the other hand, it seems that the independent will of a woman in her sixteenth year,73 that is to say, a woman who had reached adulthood, was considered an argument in favor of the person chosen for her, at least if it coincided with the will of the monarch, something which had hardly ever been the case before. Elizabeth’s coming of age and the fact that a marriage between ruling dynasties was by no means regarded as a purely family affair is well attested by the fact that the Angevin princess herself issued a charter in Buda in March 1370 releasing Charles and his son, Wenceslas, as well as all the ecclesiastical and secular princes, barons, and nobles of the Kingdom of Bohemia, from the oath they had sworn to Louis I and Queen Elizabeth in the matter of the marriage74

In the first third of 1370, events around Elizabeth accelerated. A month after Pope Urban V had granted a decree of annulment to the betrothal of Wenceslas and Elizabeth, he gave a permission on January 8, 1370 for Elizabeth to marry Prince Philip II of Taranto, then aged 41, one of Louis’ allies from 1367.75 After a decade of engagement, Elizabeth ended up with a prince who not only played a decisive role in European power politics but who also had only slim chances of succeeding to the throne of Naples. Thus, the marriage of the niece of the Hungarian king and the titular Emperor of Constantinople could be regarded as an event without any major dynastic stakes. This can only be explained by the fact that Elizabeth’s place in the succession order of the Kingdom of Hungary was shaken, as the hitherto childless marriage of the Hungarian monarch to Elizabeth of Kotromanić entered a new phase. By the summer of 1370, King Louis’ wife had given birth to a daughter,76 which meant that in December 1369, the Hungarian court initiated the annulment of the engagement of Elizabeth and Wenceslas at the Holy See, knowing that the queen was carrying a child.

Philip was one of the Angevin princes imprisoned by the Hungarian king in Visegrád between 1347 and 1352 because of the death of Andrew,77 and since his stay in Hungary preceded the birth of Elizabeth, it is likely that his first meeting with the Hungarian princess was in 1367, when he allied himself with the Bavarian dukes at Buda, on the side of Louis, as mentioned in the discussion above. Philip was a widower, having lost his first wife, Mary, sister of Queen Joan of Naples, in May 1366.78 There could have been no obstacle to the marriage of Philip and Elizabeth in 1370, which presumably took place in Zadar, where the duke of Taranto’s nephew Charles II was also holding court.79 Elizabeth’s misadventures in the political maze of engagement thus came to an end, but it is worth noting that there is no sign that she might have left the Angevin court to live at the court of her soon to be husband, nor have we seen any example of her chosen future husband moving to the court of Louis for either a longer or a shorter period of time. In this respect, however, there was a change in the marriage policy of the Hungarian Angevins in the case of King Louis’ daughters.

Your Place or Mine?

With the death of Casimir III in November 1370, the Wittelsbach-Hungarian alliance lost one of its supporters, but in April 1371, it gained a new member in the person of Archbishop Pilgrim of Salzburg.80 Military conflict became inevitable by July, and King Louis sent an army led by the Palatine Ladislas of Opole and Ban Peter Cudar of Slavonia to the Kingdom of Bohemia to fight against Emperor Charles IV, who had taken the Duchy of Brandenburg with his army.81 The war, which had lasted just over two months, ended with the armistice of October 16, 1373, which lasted until June 5, 1373.82 The emperor took advantage of the period to reestablish closer ties with the Hungarian king, who now also held the Polish throne, without renouncing Brandenburg. The fact that Louis had only daughters no doubt fueled Charles IV’s dynastic intentions. The second-born royal princess, Mary, had not even reached her first birthday when, in February 1372, her father, accepting the renewed rapprochement of the Luxembourg and sealing the truce of October 1371, trusted his palatine Ladislas and Archbishop Thomas Telegdi of Esztergom to conduct negotiations with the emperor over a marriage.83

During the negotiations in Buda in May of that year, a very vague plan was outlined. The king of Hungary promised the younger daughter to Charles’ second son, Sigismund,84 unless a male offspring was born in the future, in which case the first-born daughter or, in the event of her death, the second-born daughter would be given to Sigismund.85 There can be no doubt that the phrase “younger daughter” meant Mary, since at the time in question, she was considered the younger daughter of the king, alongside the slightly older Catherine. However, it is surprising to note the mention of a possible new offspring and a son in the confirmation of the king in 1372, who had been childless for many decades. This prompts one to suspect that the queen may have been pregnant at the time of the negotiations, perhaps with her third child, Hedwig.86 In any case, it is certain that one of the important cornerstones of the 1372 Hungarian Angevin-Luxembourg rapprochement was that King Louis and his wife had to take a special oath to maintain the marriage bond between their daughter and Sigismund. This also took place in May 1372, not in Buda, but in Visegrád, which means that the queen did not leave the Angevin seat87 and did not personally participate in the negotiations in Buda, which would also suggest that she may well have been pregnant.88

The instructions given to the Duke of Teschen, the emperor’s envoy to Buda, provide other details about the engagement. According to these instructions, Charles’ original idea was that the Hungarian king would take his daughter to his court in Bohemia and they would bring her up according to Charles’ will.89 In addition, the amount of the dowry to be given with the daughter was also discussed, which, according to Louis’ intention, would have been 200,000 gold florins,90 approximately five times the 10,000 marks promised to Jodok with Elizabeth.91 About a year after the meeting at Buda, in June 1373, the question of the marriage of the two children was important again at the end of the truce. By this time, the Hungarian king’s marriage plans had become clearer, which may also mean that his third daughter had been born in the meantime, which did not radically alter the situation in any way with respect to the original plans. According to a receipt issued by Louis on June 21, 1373, in which his daughter Mary is mentioned by name, the earlier commitment to the marriage contract had not changed in the months since.92 This was why, in August, Otto Wittelsbach of Brandenburg had waited in vain for military assistance from Louis I and, after Charles IV had occupied several castles and towns in the territory of the margraviate, had been forced to surrender himself. This in turn meant that the Wittelsbachs had finally relinquished the Margraviate of Brandenburg in favor of the Luxembourgs.93 At the end of 1374, the Hungarian king could take comfort in the fact that his daughters’ futures had been satisfactorily settled. Catherine was betrothed on August 10 to Louis, the second-born son of King Charles V of France.94 The Hungarian king promised the Duke of Valois the Kingdom of Sicily, which at the time was in the hands of Queen Joan of Naples, with the familiar clause according to which the territories would be inherited by the heirs of Catherine and Louis but if the princess died prematurely, childless, the dowry would revert to the Hungarian king. 95

In December 1374, as a further development in Mary’s case, Pope Gregory XI assured the Hungarian-Luxembourg alliance of his support, granted permission for the marriage of the children,96 who were the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of King Vladislas I of Poland on the maternal side.97 On April 15, 1375, Charles IV arranged for secular and ecclesiastical dignitaries from both kingdoms of Louis to swear an oath to the future marriage of Mary and Sigismund, who by then had risen to the rank of margrave of Brandenburg. In Brno, in the presence of the entire Luxembourg dynasty, Archbishop Thomas Telegdi of Esztergom, Bishop Demeter of Transylvania, Prince Ladislas of Opole, Voyvode Stephen Lackfi of Transylvania, Count James of Szepes, the royal judge of Hungary, and the captains of Poland and Kuyavia promised to support their marriage during the lifetime of the Hungarian king and beyond, that as soon as the king’s daughter had reached the legal age stipulated in the treaty she would be married to Sigismund. They also promised that they would urge Louis to have 80 other Polish and Hungarian prelates and barons take a similar vow by August15 and have it recorded in a document bearing their seal.98 These seven persons also declared that neither war nor any other comparable circumstances would prevent the marriage contract from being fulfilled, which suggests that by 1375, dynastic interests had prevailed over political considerations.

We do not know how a possible new war would have affected the above agreement, but events did not fully confirm Charles IV’s preliminary expectations. There is no evidence that the Hungarian and Polish elites were so strongly in favor of the case, but the need to express their agreement and support may remind us of what we observed earlier in the case of Wenceslas and Elizabeth, when the Czech orders certainly swore an oath in favor of the marriage. The vows of the Hungarian and Polish lords in Brno, mentioned above, similarly reinforce our assumption that the establishment of dynastic relations was not a personal matter but had to be based on wider social acceptance. As we have seen, the idea that the betrothed princess had to be brought up in his court had already been implied by the emperor in 1372, which may remind us of the example of King Louis’ first wife. There is no evidence that Mary moved to the royal court of Charles IV until 1378, the year in which the emperor died, and certainly not that she moved to the Czech court after that, since her sister Catherine also died in 1378, and Mary’s value became too great to allow her to leave the Kingdom of Hungary. The betrothed couple did, however, move in together in December 1379, when twelve-year-old Sigismund was sent to the court of King Louis to be brought up with his future wife, Mary.

1374 also proved to be a year of considerable importance in the life of King Louis’ other daughter, Hedvig. Like her sister Mary, she must have been about a year old when the first decision concerning her fate as a bride was made. The future husband of Hedvig was also decided around the truce of October 16, 1371, signed by King Louis with Charles IV, and the latter’s allies, the Austrian princes Albert III and Leopold III. Eight months before the expiry of the armistice agreement, on 16 October 1372, a peace was concluded with the Habsburg dukes.99 King Louis I’s haste was understandable, as the Hungarian king was looking for a partner to implement his plans on the Adriatic. The alliance against Venice was forged in Vienna on March 9, 1373. It was joined not only by the two Austrian princes and the Hungarian monarch but also by the governor of Padua, Francesco Carrara.100 Hedvig’s betrothal in 1374 can be seen as a confirmation of this partnership, since the engagement was made between Hedvig and the son of the Austrian Prince Leopold III in 1374. In the charter issued on August 18, 1374, Leopold promised the Habsburg duke’s first-born son, William, to marry King Louis’ younger daughter, Hedvig.101 The customary morning gift that was typical in the case of sons and brothers of Austrian princes was also offered, though the precise amount is not known. It is stated that, in the event of the death of Leo, Louis would protect William and the other heirs of Leopold, and in return for this, in the event of the death of Louis, Leo also promised protection to Hedvig and her sisters. The reply of the opposing side was not long in coming. In Buda on March 4, 1375, Louis also acknowledged that he promised his younger daughter Hedwig to William, and he too emphasized the details of mutual support and the morning gift. The latter is defined in a similar way as the dowry in Leopold’s charter. It would be made according to the customs for the daughters and sisters of Hungarian kings.102

According to these two documents, by the 1370s, there was an established custom regarding the amount of dowry and morning gift to be given, in the case of both the Habsburg princes and the Hungarian princesses, but this was apparently not the case for the children of the king’s siblings. With Catherine, the Hungarian king gave the inheritance of Naples, the value of which cannot be estimated.103 With Mary, the future husband received 200,000 gold florins and a document dated June 15, 1378 in Hainburg offered testimony to and details concerning the dowry of Hedvig, too. King Louis offered Leopold a discount, asking him to give the same amount as a morning gift as he had given as a dowry with his daughter, so instead of the 300,000 florins, he had to give 200,000 florins.104 We should not forget that the morning gift offered with the Angevin princes was also equal to 15,000 marks. So the 1374 charter seems to have been accurate in its statement according to which the daughters and sisters of the Angevin monarchs received the same dowry and also in its statement that the morning gift was the same for the sons and brothers of the Angevin monarchs, and the same custom can be observed in the Habsburg and Luxembourg dynasties in the period.

The charter issued in Hainburg is connected with another event as well, as we learn from King Louis’ account of 1380. In the town of Hainburg, Demeter, who at that time did not yet hold the dignity of cardinal but was only archbishop of Esztergom, married Hedvig and William in the local parish church with due solemnity, and they were laid in the same bed and united in the same night.105 The two children certainly underwent the institution of the German consummation custom described above. The event probably took place at the same time as the aforementioned reduction of the tribute, so in mid-June 1378.106 However, the royal narrative of 1380 also reveals something else, namely that the king had his daughter transferred to the court of the Austrian prince Leo, who was only called frater.107 According to the Austrian chronicle108 compiled in 1406 by the contemporary Matthäus, also known as Gregor Hagen, Hedvig was taken to Vienna, where she was educated for a few years.109 It may be a source of uncertainty about Hedvig’s years of upbringing in Vienna that we know that the treaty of Neuberg of September 25, 1379 transferred the seat of Prince Leopold to Styria, while Lower Austria remained the property of Albert III.110 However, Hedwig’s upbringing in the court of Leopold was well attested to by a charter issued in Graz on February 25, 1380, in which Prince Leopold canceled the debts of his daughter, the chief court mistress of the young Hungarian queen.111 The duties of court mistresses, chosen from the wives or widows of noblemen offices in the court, included the supervision and management of the persons in the service of their lady and the management of the court mistresses.112 Hedwig, who was about seven years old, was the mistress of the court of Elizabeth von Reutenberg, the widow of Leopold von Reutenberg, a native of Krajna, who had previously served in the same capacity for Prince Leopold’s wife, Viridis Visconti.113 William and Hedvig must have visited the Kingdom of Hungary during their years together, at least according to a letter from after June 1381, in which the people of Pozsony report that, at the king’s command, they were to share the expenses of the locals that occurred during the stay of the Austrian prince and the daughter of the Hungarian king in Óvár.114 It is also possible that the young couple stopped at Óvár on their way to King Louis’ court, since Hagen also recalls that when the king sensed the end was near, he summoned Hedvig, whom William had accompanied to Hungary.115

It is not known whether Prince Leopold himself, like Charles IV, had re­quested that a large number of prelates, barons, and other lords of the Kingdom of Hungary, in addition to the ruling family, should support the marriage of Hedwig and William. In any case, it is certain that on February 12, 1380, King Louis swore an oath in Zólyom, with the two archbishops and seven bishops present, as well as with 29 members of the secular elite, to support the agreement between himself and the Austrian prince in the name of themselves and their successors, and to promote and uphold the consummation of the marriage between the two children.116 A little over a year later, other subjects who had not previously had a part to play on such an occasion pledged themselves to the cause as well. On March 20, 1381, the judges and jurors of nine towns in Hungary appeared in Wiener Neustadt to issue a document in Latin and German to promise, in their and their successors’ names, the observance of all the terms and promises of the marriage contract.117 The charter, bearing the city seals of Buda, Visegrád, Fehérvár, Sopron, Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia), Trencsén, Zagreb, Nagyszombat, and Pozsony, was written in two languages and was composed in Styria, primarily with the Austrian party’s reassurance in mind.

In the study above, I examined the political, legal, and economic characteristics of fourteenth-century engagements and marriages in the dynastic treaties of the Angevin rulers of Hungary and the neighboring countries. There is no doubt that the marriage contracts presented here faithfully reflect the changes and turning points in the Kingdom of Hungary’s foreign policy relations and dynastic ambitions from time to time. These political factors may have changed the identity of the actual actors, but for the most part they did not affect the scenario of the engagements. Marriage as a pledge of alliance was based on written and unwritten rules, the former being the marriage contracts concluded between the parties, the latter being elements rooted in customary law, such as the inspection of the bride-to-be or the different ways of consummating the marriage. Several examples have shown that the marriage contracts that sealed the political cooperation were as careful as possible in regulating the duties, obligations, and legal institutions of the parties, whether they concerned the conditions for obtaining papal permission, the place and time of the transfer, the right to renounce the marriage, the time of the marriage, or the property aspects of a successful marriage. In the marriage contract, particular emphasis was placed on the fixing of the amount of the marriage dowry and morning gift, the method of transfer, and the list of the income and property to be pledged in exchange for it, and their fate in the event of a successful or unsuccessful marriage. My observations show that, in the fourteenth century, the Hungarian kings granted their sons and brothers the same sums as a morning gift and their daughters and sisters the same sums as dowries, similar to the monarchs of other neighboring countries. In return for their dowry and morning gift, the daughters who married into the queen’s household were apparently entitled to the estates and perquisites of the queen. By the end of the era, dynastic marriages had to be based on broader social support. While earlier the support of a narrow advisory body was sufficient for an agreement between the monarchs, by the second half of the century, members of the ecclesiastical and secular elite and then representatives of the cities took oaths and signed commitments to abide by the contracts.

Archival Sources

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv

Auswärtige Staaten

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian State Archives] (MNL OL)

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény (DF)

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Croatian-Dalmatian Roles in the Organization of the Wedding
of King Vladislaus II and Queen Anne*

Tomislav Matić

Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 1 (2025): 65-95 DOI 10.38145/2025.1.65

This paper examines three aspects of the possible participation of Croats and Dalmatians in the organization of the wedding of King Vladislaus II and Anne of Foix-Kendal, which took place in 1502. The first is the possible participation of Felix Petančić of Dubrovnik, who, according to older historiography, produced a portrait of Anne and her cousin Germaine for King Vladislaus. The second is the epithalamium of Matthew Andreis of Trogir, probably composed on the occasion of Anne’s passage through Italy. The third is the participation of Croatian nobles in Anne’s arrival in Croatian lands and her journey from Senj to Zagreb. The paper shows that there is no proof of Petančić’s involvement in the wedding. As for Andreis, he was apparently familiar even with the more obscure details of the organization. The third aspect demonstrates the remarkable cooperation among Croatian magnates in Anne’s passage, even those who were previously enemies of Vladislaus.

Keywords: Renaissance, Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, ceremonies, history of diplomacy, literary history, social history

Introduction

In 1502, a great wedding ceremony took place in the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia. King Vladislaus II Jagiellon (1490–1516), son of the Polish king Casimir IV (1447–1492) and ruler of the composite kingdom of Bohemia, Hungary, Croatia and their dependencies, then already a man well past his prime, took a young wife, a French lady distantly related to Louis XII, king of France (1498–1515). This lady was Anne, daughter of Gaston II of Foix-Kendal, a French count and (titular) English earl, known in French as the count of Candale.1 At the time of her wedding, Anne was about 18 years old and had until then been tutored by her cousin, Duchess Anne of Brittany, queen consort of France. This marriage was intended as a means to facilitate a large anti-Ottoman alliance in preparation for a multi-national crusade (which, however, never took place).2

Before examining the roles played by Croats and Dalmatians in the organization of this wedding, it is worth briefly considering the image of Anne of Foix-Kendal in the older Croatian historiography. As Croatia was one of the new queen’s realms, her marriage to King Vladislaus concerns Croatian history as well as its Hungarian and Bohemian counterparts. Unfortunately, no studies were devoted to Anne’s part in the history of Croatia. Croatian historians, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, took some interest in her marriage to Vladislaus, but none of them devoted more than cursory attention to the relevant sources. In short, they viewed this marriage extremely unfavorably. They thought it was frivolous, that it caused the king to ignore the business of ruling his kingdoms, especially their defense from the increasingly ominous threat of defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Empire (because he was allegedly “swimming in marital bliss,” as one Croatian historian put it), and that he drove the country into enormous debt so that he could shower his young bride with gifts.3

Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Croatian historians were not the only ones to have taken a dim view of Queen Anne and her influence on the king. Some of the royal couple’s contemporaries were even more unkind. Namely, one fifteenth–sixteenth-century chronicler, the controversial George of Syrmia, whom one nineteenth-century Croatian historian dubbed the “mad priest,”4 outright accused the queen of poisoning the children of the illegitimate son of the late king Mattthias Corvinus, John Corvinus, duke of Slavonia. According to George, the queen saw his children, Elizabeth and Christopher, as potential rivals to her own children for the throne of Hungary-Croatia.5 He described the queen’s alleged scheme in great detail and claimed that he had witnessed the events personally. His account is noticeably anachronistic, his Latin atrocious, and it is very likely that some of the more controversial claims in it are merely recorded gossip that was circulating when it was written. Despite its defects, it was too alluring for Croatian historians to disregard. This was because the victims of the queen’s alleged poisoning really did die at a very young age, but also because they were children of Beatrice Frankapan, wife of John Corvinus, and therefore descendants of the enormously wealthy and powerful Croatian Frankapan family. Their alleged murder was therefore seen primarily as a crime against Croatia by early Croatian historians, especially because they treated John Corvinus, by virtue of being duke of Slavonia and ban of Croatia and Dalmatia, as a champion of Croatian interests, and both he and Beatrice’s father Bernardine were seen as two of the most stalwart defenders of Croatia from Ottoman encroachments.6

Her alleged participation in this probably fictional murder cast Anne as a negative character in nineteenth-century Croatian historiography, as most historians kept George of Syrmia’s story about the poisoning of John Corvinus’ children in circulation, either by tersely dismissing it as a fabrication7 or by re­veling in its luridness.8 This circulation was helped by the fact that George of Syrmia’s text was one of the few published sources on late medieval Croatian history when these early Croatian historians’ were writing their works. It was printed in 1857 by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which made it readily available to contemporary researchers. George’s story about the alleged poisoning even filtered into Croatian historical fiction, such as the books by a locally very famous twentieth-century author Marija Jurić Zagorka. In her novel Gordana, Anne is depicted as a haughty and evil woman, and her list of crimes is expanded to (unsuccessfully) poisoning John Corvinus himself, together with his children.9 The fictional Anne in this novel gave birth to a disfigured son as punishment for the murders she committed.10

Such harsh treatment was undeserved by the young queen. Her real story was an unhappy one. If we consider her marriage to Vladislaus in the context of her life and the world in which she lived, it becomes apparent that there is no reason to blame her for her husband’s alleged failings. She was forced to marry Vladislaus, a man twice her age whom she had never previously met,11 despite already being in love with François d’Orléans, Count of Dunois.12 Without being given much choice in the matter, she was uprooted and forced to move to a country she did not know, where she died less than four years after her wedding.13 It is also groundless to assume that she was an enemy of the Croatian nobles, at least within the timeframe on which this paper focuses. The sources clearly reveal that she was well-received in Croatia during her wedding procession, and that several Croats and Dalmatians contributed to the spectacular event, primarily the aforementioned Frankapan family and Duke John Corvinus.

This paper presents the roles played by Croats and Dalmatians in the organization of Vladislaus II and Anne’s wedding. Several prominent Croatian and Dalmatian figures actively participated in the wedding and made substantial contributions to the grand event. The first chapter will focus on Felix Petančić from Dubrovnik, a painter and diplomat who perhaps painted Anne’s engagement portrait. The subject of the second chapter will be the literary work of Matthew Andronicus Andreis from Trogir, who composed a celebratory poem (an epithalamium) for the royal couple. Finally, the third chapter will study the roles of Bernardine Frankapan and his allies, who welcomed Anne to Croatia and escorted her and her entourage to the destination of her wedding and coronation.

Several caveats must be listed to clarify the scope and limits of this study.
Felix Petančić has long been a subject of research, although not widely publicized, both in Croatia and in Hungary. The possibility that he was the painter commissioned to make the portraits of Anne of Foix-Kendal and her cousin Germaine has long been a subject of conjecture, although much of the literature, predominantly older, treated it as a fact. Here, we will attempt to clarify this matter, as in some cases it is just as important to prove that something is not the case as it might have seemed to suggest that it is the case, especially when decades of repetition have allowed historiographical assumptions to harden into facts. The life and work of Matthew Andreis and, more narrowly, his epithalamium composed for the wedding of Vladislaus and Anne have been made the subject of study less frequently, yet this epithalamium offers insights into the ways in which contemporaries understood the processes behind the wedding. It is also a brilliant and sometimes puzzling piece of humanistic Latin poetry. Here, we consider not its artistic merits or influences, but only its relation to the wedding for which it was composed.

As for the last part of this paper, concerning Anne’s procession through Croatia and the participants in it, it will be limited to the roles of the Croatian participants in the ceremonies, primarily the counts of the Frankapan family. Many other Croatian figures took part, but they fall out of the scope of this study. The borders of late medieval Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia also will not be discussed,14 but I have decided not to include participants from medieval Slavonia, such as the Bishop of Zagreb. Lawrence of Ilok, who was neither a Slavonian nor a Croatian lord, is mentioned because the prominence of his role could not be disregarded, and John Corvinus is included because of his ties to the Frankapan family and the fact that he was ban of Croatia and Dalmatia at the time. The terms “Croatian” and “Dalmatian” are used in a purely territorial sense in this discussion, and not in an ethnic or national one. In other words, they indicate whether the given person originated from the Kingdom of Croatia or Dalmatia. It should also be noted that the persons studied in this paper will be considered only in the context of their roles in Vladislaus and Anne’s wedding, and only the relevant parts of their biographies will be mentioned.

Felix Petančić and the Royal Portrait

Of the Croats and Dalmatians who participated in the organization of the wedding of Vladislaus II and Anne of Foix, we first consider Felix Petančić, a native of Dubrovnik, the city also known as Ragusa. As we shall see, his role in this wedding is mostly a historiographical construct, built on assumptions based on other, older assumptions. Here, we consider the possibility that he painted the portrait of the future queen Anne, which allegedly induced King Vladislaus to choose her as his wife. Although there is virtually no evidence of this, this contention frequently appears in biographies of Petančić. As it concerns the subject of this paper, it behooves us to shed some light on the matter, particularly how this theory came to be and the sources on which it relied.

Petančić entered the public life of the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia in the 1490s. It was probably his godfather Christopher Stojković, Bishop of Modruš, who introduced him to the royal court in Buda. His life is still shrouded in mystery, and a modern comprehensive biography of Petančić has not yet been written, though it would clearly be of interest. As for his older biographies, it is possible that several persons were conflated into one by twentieth-century researchers. It is possible that Petančić was a skilled illuminator or that another person named Felix was. The only potential indication that Petančić was an artist depends on the interpretation of a passage from the book Hungaria by Nicholas Olah, archbishop of Esztergom. Olah wrote that at the time of his youth, a wise old illuminator named Felix Ragusinus (after Ragusa, the Latin name for Dubrovnik), who knew several languages, including Arabic, worked at the royal scriptorium in Buda.15 Other than this (and one could hardly call this evidence), there is no confirmation that Petančić ever painted anything. It is also difficult to determine precisely when Olah’s “youth” was, and we have no way of knowing how old Petančić would have been at the time. Nevertheless, this paragraph mentioning Felix Ragusinus was the cornerstone of the theories according to which Petančić was a painter.

This does not mean that there are no other, more reliable sources regarding Petančić. We know that he had other skills and that he used these skills to serve King Vladislaus II. Namely, he was an administrator and a diplomat in the service of the king, and a writer as well. Vladislaus II appointed him chancellor of the royal city of Senj in 1496 and entrusted him with several important diplomatic missions in the early 1500s.16 While he was in royal service, Petančić presented to King Vladislaus a treatise usually called the Genealogy of the Turkish Emperors (Genealogia Turcorum Imperatorum), and possibly some other writings as well.17

This closeness to Vladislaus, the diplomatic missions entrusted to him, and his putative artistic skills led to an intriguing theory about Petančić’s role in the wedding of Vladislaus II. Namely, the king was not certain whether he should marry Anne of Foix-Kendal or her cousin, Germaine of Foix-Navarra (granddaughter of Gaston IV of Foix-Béarn). As he had never seen either of the women, in order to decide which one to marry, he would have needed to dispatch an artist capable of painting their portraits. Some historians have argued that the artist he chose to send was none other than Felix Petančić.18

This theory depends exclusively on the assumption that Petančić was a painter as well as a diplomat. Although there is no conclusive evidence in support of this notion, earlier researchers examined the manuscripts containing the texts he wrote and assumed that Petančić must have illuminated them himself. This led them to the conclusion that he was skilled in painting miniature portraits, and consequently some of the most magnificent products of the Buda court scriptorium were ascribed to him. Further conclusions regarding Petančić’s supposed artistic achievements were based on similarities among illuminations in manuscripts originating from the royal court in Buda.19 This opened the way to further assumptions, such as the notion Petančić was the best portraitist at the disposal of the Hungarian king. This assumption could easily have been tethered to the fact that Vladislaus II sent Petančić on several diplomatic missions, culminating with the mission to Constantinople in 1513, which then prompted the very questionable conclusion that he was also tasked with painting the portraits of King Vladislaus’ prospective brides.

It is worth noting that Petančić’s supposed mission to the king of France is not explicitly mentioned in any of the contemporary sources, or, rather, that he is not mentioned by any of the sources dealing with the embassies tasked with arranging Vladislaus II’s marriage. The earliest work usually cited by modern studies that mention Petančić in this context is the Annales regum Hungariae by George Pray.20 To get to the root of the matter, we must therefore study Pray’s sources. According to him, Petančić’s supposed mission to France took place immediately after his mission to the Knights Hospitaller on Rhodes and before he presented the work Quibus itineribus Turci sint aggrediendi to Vladislaus II. Pray was familiar with this work and quoted extensively from it.21 However, he did not name any of his sources on which his contentions concerning Petančić’s French mission are based, and the only source he did name in that place was Regni Hungarici historia by Nicholas Istvánffi, but only in the context of Queen Anne’s heritage. Istvánffy himself did not mention Petančić at all.22

Fortunately, Petar Matković studied the older literature on Petančić in the nineteenth century and made it much easier to trace the transmission of statements.23 His work leads us to one of Pray’s contemporaries, Stephen Katona, who shed more light on the matter. He was more conscientious than Pray about stating his sources, and in his Historia critica regum Hungariae, he cited Pray when recounting Petančić’s mission to France, but he also cited and quoted Pray’s source. He did not accept this source as reliable in its entirety, as he thought it unlikely that the mission to France had taken place immediately after the mission to Rhodes, because it would not fit in the timeline of events.24 The source in question was Epitome chronologica rerum Hungaricarum et Transilvanicarum by Samuel Timon. In the relevant passage, Timon stated that he thought it likely that after the mission to Rhodes Petančić proceeded to France to select a wife for King Vladislaus II (Credibile est Petancium Cancellarium Segniensem, in Gallias usque profectum fuisse, ad deligendam sponsam Vladislao Regi).25

This sentence by Timon is the foundation on which centuries of histo­rio­graphical constructs rest. It is also the beginning of the thread we have been tracing in reverse. Timon did not list any source for his statement because he did not have any. He was simply stating an opinion. Indeed, if we look at the contemporary sources, there are none that would place Petančić in any of Vladislaus II’s embassies to France. The closest thing to evidence of his participation in such a mission which later (largely unwitting) proponents of Timon’s theory had to offer is a note made by the contemporary Venetian chronicler, Marino Sanudo. Sanudo wrote on August 14, 1500 that the Hungarian king had sent to France a painter, some Italian, to portray the women that the king was considering marrying. Sanudo himself, together with Antonio Venier, made an official visit with this painter while he was in transit in Venice, but he did not record the name of this painter in his diary.26 Historians later concluded that this painter might have been Petančić.27 This required a corollary assumption, namely that Sanudo mistook the Ragusan Petančić for an Italian, which is dubious, considering that he met him in person and conversed with him.

Due to scholarship that had piled up over the course of the centuries after Timon and Pray, the task of disproving the theory according to which Petančić was Vladislaus II’s envoy to France, and an envoy sent as a painter to boot, is not a simple matter. We will therefore list both its flaws and possible advantages. The main flaw is that the line of thinking which resulted in its formulation is not particularly convincing. First and foremost, the lack of written evidence is glaring. There is no evidence of Petančić’s involvement in any of the activities surrounding Vladislaus’ wedding. As for the portraits of Anne and Germaine, the sources confirm that they really did exist and were painted for the purpose identified above, but Petančić’s involvement with them is purely conjectural. This becomes apparent if we consider the sources that mention these portraits. One of them is the contemporary French chronicler Jean d’Auton, who stated that he had heard that King Vladislaus had dispatched an envoy, one George de Versepel (in Czech, Jiří z Běšin), a subject of the Kingdom of Bohemia, to negotiate his prospective wedding with the king of France. He was also supposed to inspect the potential brides in person and to have their portraits made from life. Said portraits were then made, and Vladislaus was, at least according to d’Auton, very satisfied with them.28 What d’Auton does not mention is any involvement on Petančić’s part. As we have seen, the only envoy he mentioned was George of Běšin. To salvage the theory according to which the portraits were painted by Petančić, we would be forced to assume either that he was dispatched separately from this envoy or that Jean d’Auton did not deem it necessary to mention him, possibly because Petančić, as a mere artisan, was not important enough to be recorded.

The other source which will be considered here, the diary of Marino Sanudo, affirms the flaws of the aforementioned theory, but it also complicates the matter. Namely, it should be admitted that it contains conflicting reports regarding King Vladislaus’ embassy to France.29 Sanudo had recorded, as mentioned in the discussion above, that King Vladislaus’ envoy tasked with seeing the Foix cousins was in Venice, alone, on August 14, 1500. However, this is not the only piece of information he gives regarding the king’s embassy to France. A few months later, he recorded that a dispatch from the Venetian envoy to King Louis XII, dated September 29, 1500, said that the ambassador of the king of Hungary, with the task identical to the one Sanudo earlier ascribed to the Italian painter, arrived at the French king’s court in Blois together with the French ambassadors who had returned from Hungary.30 This might mean that Vladislaus really had sent two envoys, one traveling with the returning French ambassadors and the other traveling separately.

Also, contrary to Jean d’Auton, the Venetian ambassador in the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, Sebastiano Giustiniani, reported to his government in Venice that King Vladislaus’ envoy has returned from France on December 10, but that he had not seen the Foix cousins at all, because they were both, as he was told, in distant lands (which probably meant Brittany).31 This report was probably dispatched before Giustiniani found out everything he could about the embassy, as one of his later reports contained more information on it. About a month after dispatching the first report, he sent another one, saying that the king’s envoy, George of Běšin the Bohemian, had brought portraits of the two women with him, but that the king had not liked either of them.32 This also differs from d’Auton’s version, but let us examine how it relates to the theory with which we are dealing. If George had not seen the women but had brought back portraits of them, it is possible that another envoy had seen them, had made their portraits, and had given them to George, who subsequently presented them to the king. It is also possible that this hypothetical second envoy returned separately from George, as the Venetian ambassador reported on the portraits only several weeks after George’s return.

Another of Sanudo’s records makes this issue even more difficult to understand. On November 28, he wrote that he received news that an envoy of King Vladislaus returned to Hungary with the portraits of the two women.33 Considering this, it seems strange that the Venetian ambassador reported that the envoy returned on December 10, when he should have already been there for two weeks, and that he learned of the portraits even later, despite the said envoy allegedly having brought them with him. Due to this, we may consider the possibility that there really were two envoys traveling separately. This might mean that the second envoy might have been Petančić, and he may very well have made the portraits. However, this only provides the space for an assumption that there was a second envoy dispatched to France by King Vladislaus, and it would take many more assumptions, all of them unsubstantiated, to link Petančić to the portraits of Anne of Foix and her cousin Germaine. It is therefore clear that the sources offer no solid foundation for the theory according to which he made those portraits, although it cannot be rejected entirely.

Matthew Andreis and the Wedding Poem

As we have seen, Felix Petančić’s involvement in the making of the portrait of Anne of Foix cannot be proven. However, that does not mean that the Croats and the Dalmatians made no contributions to the artistic production prompted by her wedding to Vladislaus II. This production took many forms, both within and beyond the borders of Anne’s future kingdoms. For example, the future queen’s passage through Italy spawned a series of theatrical welcoming ceremonies, marked by allegorical displays and references to Classical mythology.34 This, in turn, sparked literary production, such as Angelo Gabriel’s description of Anne’s welcoming ceremony in Venice.35 In this atmosphere of spectacle, Matthew Andronicus Andreis composed an epithalamium in the honor of the forthcoming wedding36 titled Epithalamium in nuptias Vladislai Pannoniarum ac Boemiae regis et Annae Candaliae reginae. He published it in Venice on the occasion of the future queen’s arrival. This poem and its author, therefore, deserve to be considered in this paper. This chapter offers a brief description of Andreis’ background and then focuses on the context in which his epithalamium was composed, with a particular focus on Andreis’ knowledge of the events that preceded the royal wedding.

Matthew Andreis was a member of a very distinguished and noble family of the coastal city of Trogir in Dalmatia, which was ruled at the time by the Republic of Venice. The Andreis family’s lineage can be traced to the early thirteenth century. Its members were heavily involved in the turbulent history of Trogir, occasionally suffering penalties such as exile.37 They owned several houses and a palace in the city and perhaps even a tower by the city walls. Remains of their palace can still be seen today.38 The family name was old and venerable, but some of its bearers (those more inclined towards contemporary humanistic trends) started using the fashionably all’antica appellation “Andronicus” during the Renaissance, even as late as the seventeenth century.39 Matthew was apparently one of them.

Matthew Andronicus Andreis was born around 1480 and studied in Padua. Judging by his literary production, he received a good humanistic education, but the epithalamium we mentioned earlier is his only piece of poetry known to us. 40 It was not an obscure work in the period immediately after it was written, considering that it was known to and read by contemporary Dalmatian humanistic authors, such as Marko Marulić, and it even influenced them to some degree.41 Andreis combined motives taken from the works of various Roman poets, such as Statius and Claudian, displaying the breadth of his education and his mastery of Classical Latin.

Andreis was obviously well-read and took every opportunity to inform the reader of his vast knowledge of Classical mythology and literature. However, he compared the events surrounding the wedding not only with Classical mythology, as was customary for Renaissance epithalamia, but also with episodes from ancient history.42 He also hints towards contemporary history through the clever use of references to Antiquity. For example, he gives a subtle reference to the Italian Wars, mentioning how the Gauls under Brennus pillaged Rome,43 similarly to how the French (who are also called Gauls in his text) brought destruction to Italy. To counterbalance that, he describes the joy that followed Anne during her journey through the same country, caused by the fact that she had brought peace, not war.44 Some of Andreis’ references to contemporary politics are more convoluted and require careful reading, and one must always bear in mind that none of his parallels are coincidental. For example, his decision to draw a parallel between Vladislaus II and Peleus, the father of Achilles, who brought doom to Troy, the empire of the east, could be interpreted as a prophetic suggestion by Andreis that Vladislaus or his progeny would defeat the empire of the East of his day, the Ottoman Empire.45

Given some of the details of the poem, it is possible that Andreis was present in Padua, on the territory belonging to the Republic of Venice, for the meeting of the future queen with the honor guard sent by King Vladislaus. This was not merely a military detachment, but also a splendid selection of men from among the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia’s potentates, led by Lawrence of Ilok and tasked with escorting Anne and her entourage to Hungary.46 The fact that the wedding song in Andreis’ epithalamium is sung by soldiers might be the result of an adaptation of the setting in the epithalamium composed by the late Antique poet Claudian, but it also might have been a conscious choice prompted by Andreis’ first-hand experience of the encounter.47 As noted earlier, all of the details in the poem were carefully selected and arranged, so it is not likely that Claudian’s setting was used simply as an imitation.

Another detail which gives us reason to think that Andreis was present at the meeting of the future queen and her honor guard is that in a passage earlier in the poem he gave a detailed description of King Vladislaus’ troops and their equipment.48 This is a very long description, and it goes into great detail about the types of armor worn by the troops, their weapons and mounts, and even the color of their hair. Perhaps we might assume that he did not invent this description out of whole cloth but instead drew on his memories of the splendid attires and parade armors worn by Hungarian dignitaries and their escort for the occasion of meeting the queen’s procession in Padua. That would mean that he, like his contemporary Gabriel, was impressed by the spectacles accompanying Anne’s passage, which prompted him to write a fanciful but inspired account of what he had witnessed.

It is also surprising that Andreis was apparently relatively familiar with the queen’s lineage, or at least wanted to appear as if he were. He placed the origin of Anne’s family name in Britain and praised her Celtic ancestry.49 In another passage, he places the ancestors of the “Candalii,” Anne’s family, among the ancient and honorable “Gallic” dignitaries.50 This could mean that he knew of the ties Anne’s forefathers had to England and perhaps even that her family name, Candale, came from the French rendition of the name of the earldom of Kendal. Unfortunately, we do not know where he would have acquired that knowledge, but he certainly did succeed in appearing to be very well informed. Perhaps the person to whom Andreis dedicated the poem, Nicholas Csáky, bishop of Cenad, provided some of the information, as the dedication indicates that Andreis was familiar with the bishop’s doings. Namely, he mentions, as part of his praise for the addressee’s achievements, that the bishop negotiated the future queen’s passage with the Venetian Senate.51 It is possible that Andreis conversed with him on that occasion.

In addition to drawing parallels with current politics, Andreis also borrowed from fully classical tales. For example, he described how Venus had ordered Cupid to fly to Pannonia and make the king, who had until then thought little of the matters of the heart, fall in love.52 However, even there he did not digress dramatically from the events that really took place. This required some, to put it mildly, creative writing, as obviously neither Vladislaus nor Anne were pagans and thus could not acknowledge Venus’ assistance or even her existence. This makes the way in which he mixed the ancient and the medieval in his verses all the more interesting. For example, when describing how the king dispatched a bishop to France to negotiate the marriage, he describes the envoy as more eloquent than Nestor and Ulysses and decorated with episcopal honors for his virtues.53 This pleases Venus, who flies to France to facilitate the wooing secretly.

It was apparently not contradictory for Andreis that a pagan goddess should help a Christian bishop (or that the two could coexist), but his decision to place the pagan deities in the background of events enabled him to stay as true to reality as possible, as King Vladislaus II indeed did send a bishop to finalize the wedding agreement. We do not know whether this was the bishop Andreis had in his mind, but Nicholas Bacskai, Bishop of Nitra, was an ambassador sent to France with this task. In reality, he was only one member of a larger embassy, which visited England as well as France.54

Andreis’ epithalamium was, unlike Petančić’s supposed portrait, a real ad­dition to Vladislaus and Anne’s wedding. Its author was inventive, well-informed, and capable of mixing current politics of his day, Classical mythology, and his own literary preferences. It also demonstrates that contemporary educated Dalmatians were familiar with what was fashionable at the time and capable of producing suitable literary pieces when the occasion for them presented itself. As a digression, it is worth noting that this epithalamium was not a unique phenomenon, as it was not the only such piece of poetry produced by a Dalmatian author in the early sixteenth century. Another such work was composed by Michael Vrančić a few decades later, in 1539, for the wedding of another Hungarian king, John of Zapolje.55

Great Lords and Enemies of Old

So far, we have only considered artistic contributions, real or alleged, to the organization of Vladislaus and Anne’s wedding. However, Croats and Dalmatians provided more than just services of this kind. Some of them provided genuine political and military support, which was both crucial for the successful execution of the ceremony and a demonstration of King Vladislaus’ ability to secure their support. In the discussion below, we consider the role of the magnates who enabled Anne’s passage through Croatia on the way to Székesfehérvár in Hungary proper, where her wedding took place.

It is fortunate that we have a first-hand account of Anne’s arrival to and passage through Croatia. For this, we have Anne of Brittany to thank. It so happened that the French queen and Breton duchess liked her cousin and protégé, not least because Anne of Foix-Kendal had no claim to her own titles and therefore presented no danger to her.56 In any case, Anne of Brittany did not let her travel to distant lands unattended. She sent, among others, her own herald, Pierre Choque, to accompany her, with the express order that he write a report on everything that transpired.57 To fulfill this order, he made sure to write a thorough record of the journey and the subsequent ceremonies.58

Choque’s report was preserved in manuscript form, in two redactions, of which the most complete is the one preserved in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 90). Another one, truncated, is preserved in London (British Library, MS Stowe 584). A transcript of the latter redaction exists in Paris (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. fr. 22330).59 This means that it was sought after and transcribed and that it circulated among the Western European nobility.

This report was written, naturally, from the perspective of one of Anne’s attendants, and it therefore focuses on her and her interactions with the persons she encountered. It, therefore, does not delve into the background politics that precipitated her arrival to Croatia. Nevertheless, it lists enough examples to enable us to surmise that Count Bernardine Frankapan, at that time arguably the greatest Croatian lord, was essential for securing the future queen’s passage through Croatian lands.

The Frankapans, Count Bernardine’s family, were by the beginning of the sixteenth century a thoroughly westernized family. They were originally lords of the island of Krk, but by then, their domain had shifted to the Northeastern Adriatic coast and further inland. Each branch of the family, and there were quite a few, controlled its share of the vast family holdings, and Count Bernardine’s share was centered on Modruš, a great castle and town in the mountainous area at the border of medieval Croatia and Slavonia.60 Over the course of the late Middle Ages, the Frankapans developed a network of dynastic marriages with Italy and the Holy Roman Empire,61 and they often served as liaisons between the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia and Italy.62 Bernardine himself was half Italian, as his mother was Isolde, the illegitimate daughter of Niccolò III d’Este, margrave of Ferrara.63 He went on to marry Louise Marzano, a niece of the Neapolitan king Ferdinand I.64 One of their children was Beatrice, wife of John Corvinus, who was mentioned in the discussion above.65

Count Bernardine’s relations with King Vladislaus II had not always been cordial. He had rebelled against him as recently as 1493. It seems that the whole Frankapan family acted in concert, and that its goal was to regain the then royal city of Senj, which had belonged to the Frankapans. That was when Bernardine’s cousin, Count John Angel Frankapan of Brinje (in Croatian historiography known as Anž), allied with the Ottomans and unsuccessfully besieged Senj.66 Bernardine also had his reasons for not being friendly towards Louis XII of France. The latter had deposed Bernardine’s relative-in-law, King Frederick of Naples (1496–1501). The Croatian count had not forgotten his marriage alliance with the Neapolitan dynasty. Indeed, his troops participated in the Italian Wars and fought against the French, as Bernardine sent several hundred cavalrymen to aid Naples when it was invaded by King Charles VIII.67

Despite all this, it seems that neither Count Bernardine nor his family tried to impede the royal marriage. The fact that King Vladislaus secured the cooperation of the Frankapans was a significant feat, but it was not his only political success connected with his wedding. In fact, another of the Hungarian king’s former enemies, Lord Lawrence of Ilok, played a prominent role in the queen’s wedding procession, being at the head of the honor guard that greeted her in Padua and escorted her to Vladislaus’ territory. Seven years earlier, Lawrence had been a bitter enemy of the king, who had openly mocked royal authority. He had apparently enjoyed comparing Vladislaus to an ox. The campaign against Lawrence was one of the only times the king personally took to the field. The royal army utterly defeated the insolent lord and conquered his ancestral see of Ilok after a brutal siege.68

Given the key roles these persons had in Anne of Foix-Kendal’s arrival to the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, it almost seems as if King Vladislaus purposely imposed services related with his wedding on the enemies he had defeated, perhaps both as an honor and as a test of faith. Even John Corvinus, Duke of Slavonia and ban of Croatia and Dalmatia, had once been his enemy, perhaps the most dangerous of them, as he had been Vladislaus’ competitor for the throne of Hungary-Croatia. Corvinus was a serious contender for the throne after his father’s death in 1490, and he renounced his claim only after a compromise with Vladislaus.69 Nevertheless, it was never forgotten that he was the son of King Matthias, and there were apparently those who were willing to offer him their support well into Vladislaus’ reign. As recently as 1496, there were reports of John Corvinus gathering malcontents and preparing an uprising against the king.70 It seems that he did not fully reconcile with Vladislaus until 1498, and even then, he was still bitter about the mistreatment to which he had been subjected and the promises the king had broken.71

The wedding ceremonies and processions of 1502 show nothing of these previous disagreements. If the participants harbored any ill will toward the king, they did not show it. In his report of Anne’s journey, Pierre Choque recorded that Count Bernardine was among those who greeted Anne upon her arrival in Senj and that his son-in-law, Duke John Corvinus of Slavonia, led an enormous escort for the future queen’s journey from Senj to Zagreb.72 This journey is a remarkable testimony to the cooperation between the previously recalcitrant Frankapans and King Vladislaus. The very first stop, the city of Senj (which impressed Choque with the size of its port), had recently been a point of contention between them. In 1502, it was a royal possession, but it had previously been violently taken from the Frankapan family in 1469 by Vladislaus’ predecessor and Duke John’s father, King Matthias Corvinus.73 The Frankapans had not forgotten that, and they had tried to regain the city (as noted in the discussion above) as recently as 1493.

According to Choque’s report, the future queen had taken the fastest route, by ship from Venice to Senj, while her train (including Choque himself), had taken the longer, overland route through the territory of the Holy Roman Empire.74 This is probably why King Vladislaus had arranged safe conduct with Emperor Maximilian I.75 Among the stops Anne and her escort made on the route between Senj and Zagreb, Choque mentioned only Modruš, Count Bernardine’s family seat.76 However, as the route was difficult and led through mountainous terrain, there must have been more stops. We can assume that Anne had taken the same route as King Louis XII’s emissaries on a journey just two years previously, in 1500, which is described in detail by Jean d’Auton.77 This route led from Senj to Brinje, the seat of Count John Angel Frankapan (Comte Angèle in d’Auton’s telling). From there, it went to Modruš, then to Zagreb, and then to Rakovac, Križevci, Koprivnica and over the Drava River into Hungary proper.78 The stop between Modruš and Zagreb named by d’Auton as “Lyre en Esclavonie” is probably Lipa on the River Dobra, which was a prosperous town at the beginning of the sixteenth century and also connected to the Frankapan family.79

One should notice that before the entourage arrived in Zagreb, two Frankapan castles were most likely used as stops, Modruš certainly and Brinje probably. Of these, Brinje and its master did not have a history of being well-disposed towards royal authorities. The castle had been temporarily occupied by the troops of King Matthias Corvinus some twenty years before Anne’s visit, when its owner, Count John Angel, ever a troublemaker, had been declared a rebel and an outlaw.80 In 1493, John Angel went as far as allying with the Ottomans against Vladislaus II (as was previously mentioned), and a royal army had been sent to subdue him. The Frankapans could not resist this army, and it besieged Brinje’s castle. Only the accidental arrival of a large Ottoman army prevented its fall.81

Of the rest of the stops on the way to the Drava River, Rakovec was a possession of Duke John Corvinus, but his ownership of it was heavily contested and had a troublesome past. It was one of the castles that had been given to him by his father, King Matthias. After his death and John’s unsuccessful bid for the crown, he was allowed to retain it, but he was burdened with a court case involving its previous owners, who continuously asserted their claims.82

As we have seen, not only had the persons who enabled Anne’s passage through Croatia been enemies of King Vladislaus until very recently, but the very places at which Anne stayed were former battlefields on which their forces had clashed. Nothing of this is mentioned in Choque’s report. In it, the people in question are presented as loyal subjects of the king and friendly hosts of his future bride. This was probably beneficial for the international standing of everyone involved. While describing Anne’s journey, Choque introduced Croatia and some of its aristocracy to the Western audience, primarily to Anne of Brittany, to whom he had dedicated his account. His report probably increased the Frankapans’ prestige, as it presented them as great and magnanimous lords. Choque reported that the future queen was received well in the great castle of Modruš. Also, as an aside, he noted that in that area the liturgy was performed in the Slavonic language. 83 This could mean that he, and presumably Anne herself, attended Glagolitic masses.84 This is not surprising, considering that the Frankapans were great patrons of the Slavonic liturgy. The area of Senj and Modruš was strongly Glagolitic, and at the time of Choque’s writing, there was an active printing house in Senj that produced religious books in the Glagolitic script.85

Although details such as this one sound interesting and exotic, Choque mentions only a few of them and only in passing. The most prominent part of his description of Croatia is the devastation wrought by the Ottoman armies.86 He noted that Anne’s train was safe from the Ottomans only after crossing the Drava River, and that the enormous escort, led by John Corvinus, was necessary for their protection.87 Although Choque mentions Modruš only in the context of the future queen’s reception, it should be noted that this once prosperous city had been sacked and put to the torch by the Ottomans less than ten years earlier, in 1493, with only the castle left intact. The Croatian countryside was regularly ravaged by Ottoman raids, which left many of the villages belonging to Count Bernardine completely abandoned. A census from 1486 lists more than a quarter of the villages belonging to the lordship of Modruš as deserted. Only a decade after Choque’s visit, the city itself lay abandoned.88 The count held a famous speech at the Reichstag in Nuremberg in 1522, begging for help in the fight against the Ottomans.89 From this viewpoint, Choque’s report was also beneficial for the persons included in it, as it presented them as victims of Ottoman depredations and also as valiant warriors. Choque stated that Hungary and its adjoined countries were the nation the Ottomans feared the most, for its men were hardy, experienced in warfare, and accustomed to hardships.90

As he was himself a herald, it is understandable that Choque expressed interest in local coats of arms. Upon crossing the Drava River, Anne was given a carriage to take her to Székesfehérvár, and Choque described the multifaceted coat of arms of King Vladislaus II that was blazoned on it. His description is unique in two ways. First, he described one of the Hungarian coats of arms, the one bearing the two-barred cross, as belonging to Dalmatia, and second, he ascribed the coat of arms bearing three crowned leopards’ heads or on a field azure to Croatia.91 In reality, even though both the Kingdom of Croatia and the Kingdom of Dalmatia were listed separately in the Hungarian-Croatian kings’ list of titles, a distinct coat of arms of the Kingdom of Croatia came into use only at the end of the fifteenth century.92 Until then, the two kingdoms had been jointly represented by a single coat of arms, the one with the three leopards’ heads.93 Hungary, on the other hand, was represented by two coats of arms, one of which was the two-barred cross, so Choque’s mistake is understandable.94 Nevertheless, it is strange that no one corrected this misconception, particularly as Choque apparently conversed with local nobles about coats of arms.

While conversing with the local nobles in Hungary, Choque was in a position not only to receive information but also to provide it. During Anne’s wedding and coronation, coats of arms of both France and England were carried before her, which surprised some of the magnates assembled. It was then explained to them that the earldom of Kendal was in England, and that Anne was therefore connected to both countries.95

We have followed Choque’s report of the future queen’s journey through Croatian lands and provided the context for his statements regarding this journey. While doing so, we tried to present his understanding of the lands he passed through, including their immediate past and their customs. It seems that the impression they made on him was overall favorable, or at least that is how he tried to present it. It is an impression of harmony between the king and his subjects, of a well-organized reception for the king’s bride, and of a nation persevering heroically against hardships. This image may have not reflected reality, but the fact that it was possible to create it offers testimony to King Vladislaus’ ability as a ruler.

Conclusion

The inquiry into the subject of the participation of Croats and Dalmatians in the wedding of King Vladislaus II and Anne of Kendal produced mixed results. When examining the role Felix Petančić might have played in it, the analysis of the sources and the secondary literature on the subject indicated that there is no evidence of Petančić’s involvement in the matter. However, it must be admitted that the reports on King Vladislaus’ embassy to France tasked with seeing and producing portraits of Anne and her cousin Germaine are unclear as to whether there was one or two envoys, and they are similarly unclear as to who produced said portraits. According to Marino Sanudo’s account, an Italian painter was sent, but other sources name only George of Běšin as the king’s ambassador. Despite this, the theory that this painter was Petančić depends on too many assumptions to be accepted without reservations, and even the assumption that he was a painter at all remains just that, an assumption. This theory should therefore be discarded unless evidence supporting it is discovered.

The epithalamium written by Matthew Andreis is, unlike Petančić’s portrait of Anne and Germaine, an existing work of art produced in relation to King Vladislaus’ and Anne’s wedding. An analysis of this epithalamium shows that Andreis was aware of many of the happenings connected with the wedding and of its background. Namely, he likely knew of Anne’s connection to England, as he places the origin of Anne’s family name (Candale) in Britain. This is more than many of the contemporaries in Hungary knew, at least according to Pierre Choque’s report. Also, Andreis knew that a bishop was sent to conclude a wedding contract with the king of France, and there are indications that he personally witnessed the meeting of Anne and her entourage with Lawrence of Ilok and the rest of the Hungarian guard of honor sent to escort the future queen to Hungary. In his text, he frequently mixes Christian images with images from Classical mythology, which sometimes produces bizarre results, such as Venus assisting a Christian bishop in his task of wooing Anne.

The future queen’s journey through Croatia and the Croatian participants in the ceremonies attached to it are described primarily based on the report written by Pierre Choque, a Breton herald in Anne’s retinue. When put into context, his report shows that Count Bernardine Frankapan played a prominent role in Anne’s passage through Croatia, as did his son-in-law, Duke John Corvinus. Choque explicitly mentions Anne’s stay at Count Bernardine’s family see, Modruš. However, other Frankapan lords probably participated in the ceremonies as well. If we look at the itinerary of French ambassadors sent to Hungary two years earlier, which is provided by Jean d’Auton, it may be assumed that Anne stopped in Brinje as well, which was a castle belonging to John Angel Frankapan. As this family was arguably the most powerful Croatian noble family at the time of the wedding, their role in the ceremony and the accompanying events seems logical, even more so considering their extensive ties with Italian noble houses. However, it is also notable that almost all of the Croatian lords mentioned had been enemies of King Vladislaus not long before his wedding, and their contribution to it was a remarkable show of cooperation on their part. Choque’s report also contains interesting observations about Croatia, such as its status as a border country adjacent to the Ottoman Empire.

In the end, we can conclude that the wedding of Anne of Foix and King Vladislaus brought together French and Croatian cultures and introduced the Croatian nobility and landscape to the French audience, while a Dalmatian humanist added a humanistic air to the accompanying ceremonies. Also, it is precisely this wedding that provided an opportunity for French observers to experience Croatia directly, making it less, or perhaps more exotic to the Western audience.

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The Administrative Elite of King Louis I in Croatia-Dalmatia  

Judit Gál

HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute of History

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 1 (2025): 30-64 DOI 10.38145/2025.1.30 

This study examines the administrative elite that governed Croatia-Dalmatia under King Louis I of Hungary (1342–1382), focusing on the royal officials, urban leadership, and the mechanisms through which the king exercised authority in the region. Follow­ing the war between Hungary and Venice (1356–1358), King Louis I asserted control over Dalmatian cities, significantly altering governance structures by reducing urban autonomy and introducing new royal institutions. The study explores the composition of his administrative network, including the bans of Croatia-Dalmatia, royal admirals, municipal leaders, and royal knights drawn from local noble and patrician families. It also considers the fluidity of officeholding, the interplay between local and foreign administrators, and the integration of Italian and Hungarian officials into the region’s political framework. This paper provides insights into the strategies employed by King Louis I to consolidate power, the socio-political mobility within his realm, and the broader implications of Angevin rule in Dalmatia. The findings contribute to our understanding of medieval governance and territorial administration in Central and Southeastern Europe.

Keywords: medieval administration, King Louis I, Croatia-Dalmatia, Kingdom of Hungary, urban governance

During the reign of King Louis I (1342–1382), Hungary was in many respects in its golden era, having expanded its territories to an unprecedented extent. The king of Hungary, also referred to as the knight-king, led almost annual military campaigns, one of the most significant of which was the Hungarian-Venetian war of 1356–1358, which was fought for control of the Adriatic Sea and the possession of Dalmatia. Reclaiming the territories that had fallen into Hungarian hands in the early twelfth century and then had come under the rule of Venice in the first third of the fourteenth century had been one of Louis’ main objectives from the beginning of his reign, but his intrigues and campaigns for the throne in Naples prevented him from being able to take serious action in the 1340s. Between 1356 and 1358, the cities that had been in Hungarian hands in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, during the Árpád era, again were brought under the Hungarian king’s control.1 When King Louis I of Hungary defeated Venice in 1358 and the peace treaty was concluded in Zadar on February 18 of that year, the Kingdom of Hungary not only regained control of the Dalmatian territories previously under Hungarian control, but was also able to expand its territory (compared to the territories held in the Árpád era) to southern Dalmatia.

In the territories occupied by the king of Hungary, the settlement of the relationship between the royal power and the cities, which was sometimes not without conflict, began after the end of the war.2 The main source of tension in the settlement of power relations was the fact that, while in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Hungarian royal presence in the region was less noticeable and the cities enjoyed a high degree of autonomy, during the reign of Louis I, the Hungarian king intervened directly in the life and governance of local com­munities, significantly reducing urban autonomy.3 Louis introduced new royal institutions, hitherto known only in the narrowly defined Hungarian territories, and the presence of the royal power became much more visible, due in part to the officers delegated by the king, including the local, municipal leadership, which he appointed. Whereas in the Árpád era royal power had been represented in the region by practically a single royal official, the ban of Slavonia, and the archbishop of Split and the local prelates had been the most influential representatives of the monarch,4 in the second half of the fourteenth century a new stratum of leadership was formed, which ensured direct control of the region. After 1358, the newly established Hungarian financial administration, the leaders of the Hungarian naval fleet, and the municipal leaders appointed by the Hungarian king were added to the ban in the leadership structure, which ensured the sovereign’s power. Moreover, in the prime of the era of knightly culture, King Louis conferred knighthoods on a number of persons from Croatia and Dalmatia, making them directly part of the his household, the closest circle of the monarch. This paper will examine who constituted this layer of officials, or royal knights, through whom the king governed Croatia-Dalmatia and secured his power. It will focus on the urban communities and consider the overlaps among the various offices and the various forms of mobility between this region and the other territories ruled by the king of Hungary.

Composition of the Croatian-Dalmatian Administrative Leadership of King Louis I

The most important member of king Louis’ Croatian-Dalmatian administrative leadership was the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia, who traditionally governed the territory on behalf of the kings of Hungary from the beginning of their rule in in the region.5 Until the last third of the twelfth century, the power of the bans extended only to the territory of Croatia and Dalmatia, but by the end of the century, almost all of Slavonia was included in the Banate,6 so essentially with a few exceptions the territories beyond the Drava River under the rule of the kings of Hungary belonged to the governance of the bans. While the territory of the bans of Slavonia covered the area beyond the Drava River, for practical reasons, they occasionally appointed deputies who were solely responsible for Croatia-Dalmatia. These deputies were the bans of the Maritime Region.7 The ban’s power had already been divided between Slavonia and Croatia-Dalmatia during the Árpád era,8 and in the mid-fourteenth century, the Trans-Dravanian territory was divided into two banates (Slavonia, Croatia-Dalmatia).9 The bans of Croatia-Dalmatia governed the province in the name of the king, they were in charge of jurisdiction, financial administration, judiciary, military affairs, and they could appoint the local, royal officials. . The title of ban of Croatia-Dalmatia was one of the most important offices in the Kingdom of Hungary, and its holders were mostly Hungarian barons.10 In the period under study, the bans were John Csúz (1357–1358), Nicholas Szécsi, who held the office three times after 1358 (1358–66, 1374–1375, 1376–1380), and Charles of Durazzo, Duke of Slavonia, who also held the office of the ban twice (1372–74, 1376). Kónya Szécsényi (1366–67), Emeric Lackfi (1368), Simon Meggyesi (1369–71), Stephen Lackfi (1371), and Emeric Bebek (1380–83) also held the office at one time during this period.11 The bans of Croatia-Dalmatia, as will be shown in the following analysis, not only held national office in the period under study but also governed certain cities.

Alongside the bans, new royal officers also appeared in the region due to the establishment of royal institutions after 1358. Immediately after the end of the Hungarian-Venetian war, the Hungarian king assumed the monopoly of the salt trade and introduced a new tax, the tricesima or thirtieth, in Croatia and Dalmatia. The Treaty of Zadar also brought about the establishment of the Dalmatian-Croatian Salt and Thirtieth Tax Chamber. The exact timing of this occurrence remains uncertain due to the lack of sources, but it must have taken place shortly after Hungary took control of the region, since a charter from Trogir dated August 5, 1359 makes clear reference to the payment of the thirtieth and the ways in which salt was traded. The chamber continued to function until the beginning of the fifteenth century, ceasing to operate only with the capture of the city of Zadar by Venice in 1409. It is likely that the chief administrator of the Zadar Chamber was also the chief administrator of the entire Dalmatian-Croatian Salt and Thirtieth Chamber.12 Unfortunately, due to a lack of sources, very little information has survived on its functioning. The royal officials who were the heads of the chambers in the Dalmatian towns often leased out the chambers. The first known chief administrator (exactor) of the chamber was Baldasar de Sorba,13 who held the title in 1366, while also holding another royal office, that of admiral, also created in 1358.14 He was followed by Frison de Protto, the vicar of Senj, in 1367 who served until 1369 when Archdeacon Stephen of

Krk followed him. By 1372, the chamber was headed by George de Zadulino, a patrician from Zadar. However, by the mid-1370s, control of the chambers, particularly the chamber of Zadar had shifted to Florentine merchants,15 who, gradually overtook the positions of the Zadar merchants. They were heavily involved in trade in Dalmatia, particularly in the trade of salt.16

During the war against Venice between 1356 and 1358, the king of Hungary had probably already organized his naval fleet in 1357, and on February 10, 1358, the title of admiral was used for the first time to describe the leader of the king’s naval fleet. The first admiral was Jacob Cesamis, who held the title from 1358 until his death, and he was followed during the reign of Louis by Baldasar de Sorba (1366–1370). Baldasar served King Louis until around 1370, when probably he left the royal court to join King Louis’ ally, Prince Philip II of Taranto17 to serve as his bailli of the Principality of Achaea.18 While he returned to Croatia-Dalmatia after the death of Philip in 1373, but he didn’t become admiral again. In the admiral office, a fellow Genoese, Simon Doria (1373–1384) and Nicolaus Petracha (1373), who was from Split followed him.19 The admirals of the navy also held the title of comes of two islands, Hvar and Brač, from the beginning of the institution, and only later was the title of comes of the island of Korčula added to the offices that went with the title of admiral, presumably because Louis only occupied that island later, during the Hungarian-Venetian War.20

In addition to the aforementioned officers, there was also a completely new layer of high-ranking royal officials compared to the Árpád era through whom King Louis governed the region. After 1358, the heads of the Dalmatian cities, the comes, were formally elected by the cities, but in practice, the king decided the fate of the titles, except in the case of the city of Dubrovnik.21 How did this situation arise in regard to the autonomy of the cities? In the Árpád era, the autonomy of Hungarian cities was guaranteed by royal privileges. In Dalmatia, the Hungarian royal privileges of Trogir and Split were the basis for urban privileges and liberties for the cities in the region. These privileges guaranteed the cities the free election of a secular leader, who was the comes, and, if there was one, of an archbishop or bishop of the city.22 Except for a brief period during the reign of King Béla IV, there is no evidence of any direct interference by kings in the decisions of the cities.23 How did this landscape change during the reign of Louis I? In the course of the Hungarian-Venetian War between 1356 and 1358, the king recaptured a number of Dalmatian cities and cities which had previously been under Hungarian rule and confirmed their privileges at the request of the local cities and cities during the war. In August 1357, after Trogir and Split had come under Hungarian rule, Louis confirmed the former privileges of both cities. In the case of both cities, the confirmation of the privileges was done in a similar way: the representatives of the two cities presented their existing privileges, which the king confirmed without any changes. The privilege of Split was a charter issued on August 8, 1357, requested by a delegation from Split upon the formal submission of the city to the Hungarian king.24 The privilege of Trogir, dated August 30, 1357, can be described in a similar way to the charter of Split.25 The two charters were both clearly issued during the war. It was in the interests of the cities to confirm their privileges, and they sent envoys to King Louis, whose primary aim was to subjugate the cities, and he confirmed their charters without any reservations or qualifications. In 1357, king confirmed the privileges of Šibenik, which differed slightly from those of the two cities mentioned above.26 First, the charter, which was dated December 14, 1357, was issued to the city not by the king but on his behalf by the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia, John Csúz, after an envoy had been sent to the official in Nin. The privilege included confirmation of the privileges already enjoyed by the city, as well as details not seen in the previous Hungarian privileges of Šibenik, which reflected the contemporary needs of the city and included new obligations towards the monarch, such as the obligation to provide accommodation for the king. As the war drew to a close, a royal privilege was granted to Zadar by King Louis I of Hungary on February 10, 1358 guaranteeing, among other things, the preservation of the privileges of the city.27

Although the abovementioned privileges included the right of the cities to freely elect their authorities, in practice, the fate of the comes of the cities, who were the secular leaders of the urban communities, depended on the decisions made by the king, as his approval was required for the elected persons to take office.28 Approval meant that the king had his own candidate for the office, and he refused to support candidates proposed by anyone else. An example of this is the case of Split, where in 1367 the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia was to be elected comes, but the king refused to accept this and instructed the city to make the knight of the court, John de Grisogonis of Zadar, the comes.29 The heads of the cities can therefore be considered local officials of the monarch and can be included in the king’s local leadership layer.

In addition to the royal officers and the leaders of the cities appointed by the king, a special group of Croatian nobles and selected citizens of the cities were formed, who had been granted knighthoods by Louis in the second half of the fourteenth century. The number of knights increased dramatically during Louis’ reign in Hungary, and this was particularly true in Croatia and Dalmatia, where a remarkably large number of Zadar citizens were awarded this distinction.30 The knights were part of the king’s inner circle, and they often accompanied him on military campaigns, having been assigned military or diplomatic duties or serving as ambassadors and liaisons between the Croatian-Dalmatian territories and the royal court. Many of them were citizens of Zadar who, in addition to their ad hoc duties, also held leadership positions in certain Dalmatian cities or other royal offices.

Royal Officials in Charge of Local Administration

The most significant change from the previous Hungarian royal policy, apart from the introduction of new institutions, was the acquisition of direct control over the cities during the reign of Louis I. The king’s influence and will was directly exercised through his officials in the cities of Dalmatia. In Croatia, the Hungarian system of counties had not been established, so the discussion of local administration will focus on the management of the royal castles. In the case of the cities, the analysis will focus on those settlements where adequate sources are available to identify the holders of the title of comes in the period. Those settlements are Zadar, Nin, Šibenik, Trogir, Split, Omiš, Hvar, Brač and Korčula, Rab, and the castles for which we have some information from the period and which were owned by the king.31 Excluded from the study are cities or islands that belonged to another landlord, such as settlements in the hands of the Counts of Krk, such as Senj,32 and the islands of Krk or Pag, which belonged to the city of Zadar, as well as Lastovo, where the election of the comes was the right of Dubrovnik, according to the decision of Louis I. Likewise, I have not considered the settlements, administrative units, or royal castles for which we do not have adequate data from the period. Of the castles, I have examined the royal castles and castles that were under the jurisdiction of the bans for which we have considerable data from the period. These included Klis, Knin, Novigrad, Obrovac, Omiš, two castles in the Croatian-Dalmatian area similarly called Ostrovica, Počitelj, Rmanj, Skradin, Sokol, Srb, Stog, Unac, and Zvonigrad.33

Among the cities, Zadar was the political center of the Dalmatian territories under Hungarian control during the reign of Louis, and already in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the territory was under Hungarian rule, the royal court considered this city its primary center.34 During the reign of Louis, Zadar became the economic and commercial center of the Kingdom of Hungary in Dalmatia. After 1358, Zadar became the center of the Dalmatian-Croatian Royal Salt and Thirtieth Tax Chamber, the Hungarian economic institution that was established in Croatia-Dalmatia that was mentioned earlier in this study.35 Then, Louis sought to boost trade between the Dalmatian territories and Hungary by offering privileges and concessions, such as exemptions from customs duties to merchants from Pozsony (Bratislava, Slovakia), Buda, Szeben (Sibiu, Romania), and Brassó (Brasov, Romania) to participate in Dalmatian trade based in Zadar.36 The political centrality of Zadar is attested to not only by the ties between the Hungarian administration and the local administrations but also by the fact that when Charles of Durazzo was granted the title of Duke of Slavonia in 1371, he held his court in Zadar, where his son was born, the future claimant to the Hungarian throne, Ladislas. During the Árpád era, when the city was briefly in Hungarian hands, the local comeses occasionally received the title of ban of the Maritime Region37 and, with it, command of the Hungarian army. After King Louis I took the city, this situation was reversed, and the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia acquired the title of comes of Zadar. As a look at the names of the comes of the period at the beginning make clear, the ban of the given year was at the head of the city. The list of the comeses of Zadar under King Louis begins at the end of November 135838 with Ban Nicholas Szécsi,39 who presumably received both offices at the same time. He was last mentioned as ban of Croatia-Dalmatia on August 9, 1366,40 but he was still listed as comes in the notarial records of Zadar at the end of November 1366.41

He was followed by Kónya Szécsényi, who was first mentioned in the sources as a ban on November 20, 1366,42 and one sources suggests that in December, 1366 he was the comes of Zadar.43 The last time his name appears in the sources in the office of the ban was on November 4, 1367,44 and the last time he appears as a comes of Zadar was in April 1368.45 While Emeric Lackfi was mentioned in the documents as a ban as early as January 30, 1368,46 the first mention of him as a comes of the city occurred only at the beginning of April 1368.47 He held the title of comes until the end of February 1369,48 but he probably left his office as ban of Croatia-Dalmatia at the end of October 1368.49 He was succeeded in both offices by Simon Meggyesi,50 who held the office of ban until around March 1371, when he was probably succeeded by Stephen Lackfi.51 However, Ban Simon was not succeeded as comes of Zadar by Lackfi but rather by Pietro Bellante in April 1371,52 who from 1367 was lord of two royal castles in Croatia, Ostrovica, Počitelj, and later was the lord of Obrovac.53 He became the first comes in Zadar after 1358 not to hold the title of ban. It cannot be ruled out that Stephen Lackfi’s and Pietro Bellante’s connections may have contributed to the granting of the office, since according to the contemporary chronicle of Domenico da Gravina, in the Neapolitan Wars54 Pietro was among the advisers of the commander of the Hungarian army, Voivode Stephen Lackfi of Transylvania, and he probably received the title of comes of Zadar around the same time of Lackfi’s tenure of office as ban of Croatia-Dalmatia in 1371.55

The year of 1371 can be considered a landmark in the history of the territories beyond the Drava River in the era of Louis, as it was then that Charles of Durazzo received the title of Duke of Slavonia (Croatia-Dalmatia) from the Hungarian king, what he held until 1376, and he established his own court in Zadar.56 From that moment on, the intertwining of the office of comes of Zadar and the office of the ban was loosened. During the dukedom of Charles, he himself bore the title of the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia on two occasions as well, and he was the first known ban of the region after the end of Stephen Lackfi’s tenure in 1371. For the first occasion, he was mentioned as the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia between October 1, 1372 and December 21, 1373,57 and he held the title of ban for the second time around between January and May 1376.58 Duke Charles did not hold the office of comes of Zadar during this period, nor was the connection between the office of ban and the title of comes evident in the case of other bans during his dukedom until the end of Louis’ reign. Pietro Bellante, who held the office of comes of Zadar in 1371, was mentioned in the sources as comes until March 1372, and he was not replaced by the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia after the end of his tenure.59

In addition to Charles of Durazzo, who did not hold the title of comes of Zadar during any of his terms of office until the end of his dukedom in Croatia-Dalmatia in 1376, there was one more known ban appointed in the period of his dukedom. Between November 1374 and February 1375, Nicholas Szécsi was mentioned as ban of Croatia-Dalmatia again, when he held the title for the second time, and later between May 1376 and December 1380, he was known to served once again as ban of Croatia-Dalmatia, for the third time (after 1358).60 He was followed by Emeric Bebek, who concluded the list of bans of Croatia-Dalmatia under the reign of Louis I.61 Bebek held the title after the death of the king until June 1383. Of the two, only Bebek held the office of the comes of Zadar during his entire tenure as ban,62 while Nicholas Szécsi was only mentioned as the comes of Zadar after the end of the dukedom of Charles of Durazzo between June 1378 and December 1380.63

After the end of Pietro Bellante’s tenure in office, which came to a close in 1372, for at least six years the bans were not elected as the comes of Zadar. After Bellante, it was not Charles of Durazzo or Nicholas Szécsi who took over the administration of the city but two brothers from Piacenza, Bishop John de Surdis of Vác (1372)64 and Rafael de Surdis (1372–1378).65 With their arrival in Croatia-Dalmatia from Hungary in 1372, a special legal situation arose for a short time in the region, as Charles of Durazzo was the duke Slavonia and the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia, and from 1372 to 1373, there was also a vicarius generalis (governor) authority in Croatia-Dalmatia, due to a mandate issued by the two de Surdis brothers. Shortly after Charles was given the title of Duke of Slavonia, in 1372, Bishop John de Surdis of Vác became vicarius generalis to the duke in the territories beyond the Drava River.66 In the spring of 1373, he was succeeded in this office by his brother Raphael,67 who is listed in the sources in this role until May 7, 1373.68 The vicarius generalis acted as governor of the province, as the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia had before. In the 1350s and 1360s, in (the Banate of) Slavonia, the vicarius generalis sometimes governed the province, but in these periods, there was no bans of Slavonia.69 The situation was different in Dalmatia and Croatia, where after 1372 there was a ban who served alongside the vicarius generalis, but this ban was none other than Charles of Durazzo, so the apparent contradiction between the coexistence of the two governing offices can be resolved, as the vicarious generalis was the deputy of Charles. This could also explain why the de Surdis brothers held the title of the comes of Zadar during their time in office as vicarius generalis. Since the title of comes of Zadar had previously been held by the ban, as primary deputy of the king, during the dukedom of Charles, the office of comes was held by the vicarius generalis, as primary deputy of the duke who governed the region. However, the presence of the office of vicarius generalis ended in the spring of 1373, and from 1374 until 1378, with a short term interruption when Duke Charles held the office of ban in 1376, there was again a ban of Croatia-Dalmatia at the head of the region. Despite the changes, the titleholder of comes of Zadar did not change in 1373, and the office was continuously held by Raphael de Surdis until 1378,70 probably by royal decree.

The city of Nin is located just 15 kilometers to the north of Zadar, and after Louis I took power in 1358, the first comes of the city was a royal knight from Zadar, John de Grisogonis, who held the post between 1359 and 1369.71 After 1369, the Croatian nobleman and royal knight Novak Disislavić of the Mogorović clan, who served the king in several campaigns and gained offices in Croatia, Dalmatia, and Hungary,72 had been given the title of comes of Nin three times by 1382 (1370–1371, 1373, 1381).73 In addition to Novak, John Rosetti (1373),74 John de Surdis (1373),75 and Rafael de Surdis (1375)76 were at the helm of Nin during the reign of Louis I, of whom the latter two both served as comes of Zadar during their tenure in office.

Moving southwards, in the city of Šibenik, like Zadar, the bans of Croatia-Dalmatia also held the title of comes, parallel to their country office after King Louis took over the territory. In the months following the Treaty of Zadar in February 1358, until the first half of 1359, no comes were elected in the city. The sources reveal only the names of the rectors, who were elected from among the local population and rotated on a monthly basis. The first comes during the reign of King Louis was Ban Nicholas Szécsi, who appeared in the sources as the comes of Šibenik between 1359 and 1362.77 He may have held this title throughout his entire term in office, but due to the lack of sources, we cannot confirm this. We have scattered data on other officials of the period, but it is certain that Kónya Szécsényi held the title in 136778 and Simon Meggyesi in 1370,79 both during their tenures in office as bans. Although we do not have such a richly detailed data set as in the case of Zadar, in my opinion, the developments in the case of Šibenik suggest that before 1371 the office of comes in this city also “belonged” to the holder of the office of the ban, as was true in the case of the title of comes in Zadar. This system also disappeared when Charles of Durazzo assumed the position as duke. The first known comes of the city from this period was Galeaz de Surdis from 1375,80 a relative of Raphael de Surdis and John de Surdis, who arrived to Dalmatia with John and Raphael, and was also the judge of the royal court of appeal in the Dalmatian cities in 1373.81 After him, no other is mentioned in the sources on the city until the death of Louis I.

In Trogir, the situation was quite different. After 1358, there was no presence of the bans of Croatia-Dalmatia among the leaders of the city. An almost unprecedented length of tenure in the Dalmatian cities was granted to the citizen and royal knight Francis de Georgiis of Zadar.82 The knight from Zadar was first mentioned in November 1358 as holding the latter office, which he held (with the exception of a one-year hiatus) until his death in 1377.83 When he had to leave office for a short period between 1373 and 1374, the title of comes remained in the family. King Louis had ordered Francis to Zadar because of the war with Venice,84 and in his place, the king appointed Francis’ son Paul, who was also a royal knight.85 After the death of Francis, the office of comes was given to another citizen of Zadar, Jacob de Raduchis, who was close to the royal court and had obtained a doctorate in law in Padua.86 He distinguished himself before the king in the 1370s and was, among other things, Louis I’s envoy at the negotiations concerning the Treaty of Turin in 1381.87 Between 1379 and 1382, the title was held by Baldasar de Sorba of Genoa, who was former admiral of the Hungarian fleet.88

Split was perhaps the most varied in terms of choice of comes compared to the previous cities. After February 1358, there was a transitional period following the Hungarian takeover. A podesta was appointed head of the city first, then from 1359 until 1363, as in Zadar and Šibenik, the office of comes was given to Nicholas Szécsi, the ban of Croatia-Dalmatia,89 who was succeeded by a royal knight from Zadar, John de Grisogonis, who was at the head of Split until from 1363 until 1369.90 He was succeeded in the city office by Raphael de Sorba, a royal knight, citizen of Zadar and son of the former admiral Baldasar. Raphael de Sorba held this position until 1372.91 After the Genoese comes, the title was held for two years by Giberto Cornuto, who is believed to have been related to the priors Peter and Bandon Cornuto of Vrana. 92 In 1374, another royal knight of Zadar, Maffeus Matafaris, became the head of the city,93 followed in 1379 by the then Croatian-Dalmatian ban Nicholas Szécsi for a short period,94 who probably received this title in connection with the war with Venice. In 1382, he was followed in the office by Jacob Szerecsen (Saracenus),95 who was sent as a royal visitor to Dalmatia and Croatia in 1370 and a year later received the islands of Cres and Osor as a royal gift.96

For Rab, we do not as many or as detailed sources from the period after 1358 as we do for the larger cities above.97 The first comes we know of from the reign of Louis is Gregory Banich, who is first mentioned as a comes of Rab in 1363,98 but presumably he could have been given this title as early as 1358.99 Gregory was the youngest son of the former Ban of Croatia, Paul Šubić,100 and he probably held the title until his death in 1374.101 After his death in 1374, Gregory was succeeded by Ban Nicholas Szécsi102 and then, around 1376, by the royal knight John Besenyő of Nezde,103 who from the 1370s onwards was shown to have been given more and more offices in Croatia and Dalmatia.104 He was succeeded that same year by Paul de Georgiis, who held the position until 1378.105 In 1381 and 1382, Count Stephen of Krk held the office.106

The fates of the leadership of the islands of Brač, Hvar, and Korčula were closely linked during the reign of King Louis. It is assumed that at the time of the establishment of the office of admiral or after the two islands had fallen into Hungarian hands the title of comes of Hvar and Brač was attached to the office of the head of the Hungarian fleet. During the reign of Louis, the admirals were systematically at the head of the two islands.107 The destiny of Korčula in the period under study was quite similar to that of the two islands above, with a few differences. After the island fell into Hungarian hands, the title of comes did not immediately pass to the admirals but was held by the royal knight Stephen de Nosdrogna at least in 1358.108 From 1361, the title was held by Jacob Cesamis, royal knight and admiral, recorded until 1364, probably until his death.109 He was succeeded in office by Admiral Baldasar de Sorba from 1366, who held the title until his retirement as admiral in 1370.110 He was briefly succeeded in 1372 by John de Surdis, vicarius generalis,111 and then by Admiral Nicolo de Petracha of Split (1373)112 and, after him, by Admiral Simon Doria of Genoa, who was comes of Korčula until 1384, when he was succeeded in his office as admiral and comes by Matheus de Petracha of Split.113

Less information is available about the leaders of Omiš. Only three comes are known from the reign of Louis I. In 1358, a royal knight from Zadar, Stephen de Nosdrogna,114 became the first to hold this position, followed by two royal admirals, Nicola de Petrache of Split (1373)115 and Baldasar de Sorba from Genoa (1369–1370), who held the office of comes, in addition to similar titles in Korčula, Hvar, and Brač.116 After them, no records of a comes of Omiš are known until the early fifteenth century. In the absence of sources, we can only speculate, but it is striking that two admirals were also comes of Omiš during their tenure, and we cannot rule out the possibility that this was also the case for the other admirals. The assumption of a connection between the office of admiral and the title of comes of Omiš is strengthened by the fact that, as in the case of Korčula, which later became the admirals’ estate, the first known comes of Omiš during the period of Louis’ reign was the royal knight Stephen de Nosdrogna (1358-1360). The connection of the office of admiral with the islands of Korčula, Hvar, and Brač and the city of Omiš is mainly due to the strategic location of this region for transport and trade on the Adriatic Sea, and it is no coincidence that it was the center of piracy on the Adriatic Sea for many centuries. As the area was crucial for safe navigation in the Adriatic, the evidence suggests that the granting of the titles of comes to admirals was a means of ensuring control of the sea.

After the analysis of the cities, we should briefly touch upon the question of the royal estates in Croatia, examining who were the heads of the royal castles. In Croatia, during the reign of Louis I, the royal castles were Knin, Klis, Unac, Srb and Počitelj, Ostrovica (Luka), Ostravica (Bužan), Omiš Castle, and Skradin Castle, Novigrad (after 1358), Zvonigrad (between 1363 and 1377), Amanj, Sokol, Peć (after 1368), and Obrovac (after 1379).117 These castles be­longed to the honor of the bans of Croatia-Dalmatia and were therefore mostly headed by the ban’s men and familiars, making this layer less relevant for the study of the local elite of the ruler, since their relationship with the monarch was indirect. However, some names are worth highlighting, namely two individuals who established a strong foothold in Croatia-Dalmatia: Pietro Bellante and John Besenyő of Nezde. Both Bellante and Nezde had impressive careers in the region independent of the bans. They held leading offices in the cities as well as on the royal estates. John Besenyő, who was a royal knight, had an impressive career, though he did not gain influence beyond the Drava River until the late 1360s, after which he held important posts in the Dalmatian cities and Croatian territories. In 1374, for the preparation for Charles of Durazzo’s travel, the king sent Besenyő to Zadar.118 He was castellan of Obrovac in 1379 and comes of Bužan in 1380, but he may have held offices in the region earlier, as he is recorded as comes of Rab already in 1376, but given the lack of sources, we cannot arrive at a more complete picture of his career in Croatia-Dalmatia.119 John Besenyő of Nezde found his place in the region very well, as is indicated by the fact that later, after the death of Louis I, Queen Elizabeth sent him to Zadar and the Dalmatian cities to calm the troubled local society.120 Pietro Bellante was decorated in King Louis’ Neapolitan wars and in other conflicts in which he took part on the side of the king.121 As noted in the discussion above, the first records of Bellante’s presence in Croatia and Dalmatia date from the late 1360s, when he was counts of Bužan and Počitelj between 1367 and 1371, before becoming comes of Zadar. He had a flourishing career in Croatia-Dalmatia and in other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary.

The situation for the deputy heads of cities was similar to that for the heads of royal castles regarding their relevance to the royal administrative elite in Croatia-Dalmatia. The relationship between these deputies and the ruler was most of the time indirect with a few exceptions, since they were not appointed by the king or the duke of Slavonia, and their appointment and the office they held were usually determined by the comes, local political conditions, and practical considerations, and sometimes the comes even leased the office they held.122 Instead of a more detailed examination, it is worth noting a few trends that can be observed in the period between 1358 and 1382 in relation to the deputies regarding how the families of the royal officials were involved in the royal administration on a lower level. In the case of Zadar, the first deputy we know was Nicholas Debrői, a familiar of the Croatian-Dalmatian ban Nicholas Szécsi, whose name is mentioned in the sources in 1359.123 After the beginning of the dukedom of Charles of Durazzo, the records multiplied, and among the vicars, we find Nicolo Aldemarisco,124 who probably came from Naples with Duke Charles in 1371, and Galeazzo de Surdis, a relative of the then comes of Zadar, Raphael de Surdis,125 who took office in 1373, who had settled in Zadar and held other offices in Dalmatia, and Raymundus de Confalonieri, also of Rafael’s circle, who was of Piacenza origin and who was deputy between 1373 and 1375.126 In Split, we also find examples of the deputy role of the relatives of the comes, as Andrew de Grisogonis held this position between 1366 and 1367,127 when John de Grisogonis was the comes of the city. The phenomenon of deputies from among the relatives of the comeses can be traced in almost all the cities. For several years, Francis de Georgiis, who held the office of comes in Trogir for nearly two decades, had his son Paul,128 who himself briefly became the head of the city in 1373, as his deputy. We find examples of similar situations in the case of the royal admirals, with two of Baldasar de Sorba’s relatives replacing him as deputy in the office of the comes of Hvar and Brač, which was administered by the admiral: Raphael Rouere (de Sorba)129 in 1366130 and Nicolo de Sorba in 1367.131 Admiral Simon Doria’s deputy was Thomas Doria on the island of Korčula in 1375–1376,132 and Augustinus Doria was his deputy on Hvar in 1374133 and 1375,134 and the latter held the deputy post on Brač in 1381.135

Royal Knights from Dalmatia and Croatia as Officials of the King

During the reign of Louis, the king’s circle of local leadership was reinforced by a particular group, a narrow circle of people. They were the citizens and nobles from Croatia and Dalmatia who had been knighted by Louis during his reign. The reign of Louis was the heyday of chivalric culture in Hungary,136 and the number of royal knights increased dramatically, even more spectacularly than the national increase in Croatia and especially in Dalmatia, due to the large number of citizens mostly from Zadar who received this honorable title.137 Two members of the de Georgiis family from the city of Zadar were among the knights of the court. The name Francis is mentioned in sources from 1345 as a member of the Zadar delegation that sought military assistance against Venice,138 and his son Paul is first referred to by this title in the sources from 1377.139 Jacob Cesamis’ family was among the first to be given this title by Louis I. He was first mentioned in the sources as a knight of the court in 1358, before the Peace of Zadar, when, together with Daniel de Varicasso and George de Georgio, he came before Louis I as a delegate from Zadar to ask the king to confirm the old privileges the city had enjoyed. 140 Stephen de Nosdrogna is mentioned as royal knight in a source from 1358.141 John de Grisogono was a member of the Zadar delegation that sought out King Louis in 1357 and asked him to put the city under his protection.142 One can plausibly assume that he was granted the title in connection with the role he played as part of this delegation. Paul de Grubogna first appeared before the king as a figure of some influence in 1345, when, together with Francis de Georgio, he too went as part of the aforementioned delegation to the Hungarian king’s court. Unlike his predecessors, Mafej de Matafaris did not catch the attention of the king in the 1340s and 1350s, as he was too young to have done so. He was first mentioned in the sources as a knight in 1376.143 Jacob de Varicasso is first mentioned in the sources from 1357, when he appeared before the king as a member of the aforementioned delegation from Zadar, and presumably, like John de Grisogono, he was knighted at the time, though in the sources, he was only referred to by this title in 1363.144

In addition to the citizens of Zadar, other royal knights from the region are also known. Among them, one of the major players among the royal officials was Novak from Lika, a member of the Mogorović clan.145 While his fellow knights of Zadar served mainly locally, Novak’s name is also found in Hungary in the king’s entourage. He took part in the royal hunt at Zólyom (present day Zvolen) in 1353, where, according to the chronicle of the Anonymus Minorite, his intrigues prevented John Besenyő, who had actually rescued the king, from receiving a reward.146 He is also known for his literary activities. He received titles both in Hungary, as castellan of Salgó,147 and in Croatia-Dalmatia, including the count of Nin multiple times. Novak was rewarded by the Emperor with the title of Royal Knight by 1351 at the latest, and in 1352, he and his two brothers, John and Gregory, were granted land near Počitelj.148 The charter mentioned that his father had fought and fallen on the king’s side against the Venetians, probably in the siege of Zadar in 1345, where Novak himself was seriously wounded, but he was also wounded in the king’s campaign in Naples, and he even marched on the king’s side against the Lithuanians to take the castle of Belz, which was probably the direct reason for the grant.149

To be awarded a knighthood, those who received this honor had to distinguish themselves personally before the king. Most of their achievements were either diplomatic missions or military deeds, therefore it can be assumed that most of the citizens of Zadar were awarded the title for their actions during the siege of Zadar in 1345–1346 and the Hungarian-Venetian war from 1356 to 1358. In 1345, Francis de Georgiis and Paulus Grubogna were members of the Zadar envoy delegation that asked King Louis for help against Venice. Jacob Varicassis and John de Grisogonis were also ambassadors to the royal court in 1357. Jacob Cesamis commanded ships against Venice during the siege of Zadar, and was later imprisoned for a long time. The royal knights, who were drawn from the local burghers and nobles, were also supported the monarch in the management of the local administration and served as a link between the region and the court. In addition to his offices in Hungary, Novak served as comes of Nin three times, John de Grisogonis was comes of Nin (1359–1369) and Split (1363–1369), the latter city being also governed by Mafej de Matafaris (1374–1379), Stephen de Nosdrogna was in charge of Omiš (1358) and Korčula (1358), Francis de Georgiis family was in charge of Trogir (1358–1373, 1374–1377), his son Paul was also comes of Rab (1376–1378) and Trogir (1373), and, as can be seen, their family members and relatives were deputies in the administration of the Dalmatian cities alongside them or alongside other comeses. Examples of this are the cases of Andrew de Grisogonis in Split (1366–1369) and Paul de Georgiis in Trogir (1363–1370). Royal knights were often found as envoys of the king, in times of war and peace. In 1359–1360, Jacob Cesamis and John de Grisogonis acted as ambassadors alongside Nicholas Szécsi in negotiations with Venice.150 In 1368, Stephanus de Nosdrogna was ambassador to Pope Orban V on behalf of the king,151 and Mafej Matafaris and Paulus de Georgio were involved in the conclusion of the war with Venice and the peace of Turin in 1381, as was Jacob Raduchis, who did not hold the title of knight but enjoyed the king’s favor.152 The knights played a liaison role between the region and the court, as exemplified by the request of the rector, councilors, and magistrates of Dubrovnik to Francis de Georgiis to inform the city through their envoys of the details of the king’s visit to Dalmatia and to signal the city when the monarch was on his way to Zadar.153

Mobility between Various Parts of the Country

During the reign of Louis I, the Dalmatian-Croatian the king’s local, adminis­t­­rative leadership consisted basically of two groups: local Croatian nobles and Dalmatian burghers, who were chosen by the king, and others from Hungary and Italy who came from outside Croatia-Dalmatia. The question is the degree of mobility between Croatia-Dalmatia and the rest of the Kingdom of Hungary. In the case of the burghers who belonged to the elite of Louis, the main characteristic we have seen in their careers is that they often played leading roles in the local administration and they were involved in political affairs affecting the region, provided a link between Croatia-Dalmatia and the royal court, but they did not participate in national politics and did not hold country-level offices. There are a number of explanations for this. First, the ruler needed a certain stratum of people who were familiar with local and regional social and political circumstances to govern the newly acquired territories. The nucleus of the king’s local, administrative elite was formed in the 1340s and 1350s, during the siege of Zadar and the Hungarian-Venetian war.154 It consisted of the royal knights of Zadar who, either through their military actions or otherwise, had distinguished themselves personally before the king. Louis’s Croatian-Dalmatian administration was based on the use of reliable, small numbers of local royal knights in the management of the region. The members of this local elite were completed by royal officials coming from Hungary or Italian towns with similar roles compared to the local knights, thus forming the king’s local administrative leadership, among whom were also several royal knights, such as Baldasar and Raphael de Sorba of Genoa, or John Besenyő of Nezde.

This system was not unprecedented. In the Kingdom of Naples in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, almost exclusively knights were employed as district judges (giustiziariato), often sent to the peripheries of the kingdom. The choice of these officers who governed these border areas was made deliberately and combined local members with those from other parts of the country, particularly Provence. These individuals were responsible for representing the king’s interests in the territory and for keeping the peace, and they were also given military, judicial or even financial tasks. The people chosen to govern these areas were expected to be loyal rather than to have special knowledge, and could hold a variety of offices during their term of duty. The royal officers sent to the peripheries were also assigned to various types of duties beyond the country’s borders, mainly military or diplomatic.155 A fundamentally similar phenomenon can be observed during the Angevin rule of the England in the thirteenth century, where royal local royal were trusted with judicial role.156

The officers of local origin of King Louis, whether they were royal knights or other patricians who had not received such recognition, do not appear to have been involved in affairs in other parts of the Kingdom of Hungary, but only in foreign policy matters affecting the region. Only those royal knights who belonged to the local nobility and who were able to support the royal campaigns with soldiers were able to achieve national recognition and were rewarded with offices. Novak was a member of the king’s retinue, and he took part in his wars and campaigns, thereby acquiring his own privileges in Hungary. During the reign of Louis I, there was probably no royal will to bestow offices and privileges on the urban knights in Hungary, and only the period of political turmoil and throne struggles in the later decades gave the opportunity for descendants of former royal knights from Dalmatian cities (and some members of their families) to gain a foothold in Hungary. Among the royal knights of Zadar who had won this title during the reign of Louis, one family managed to gain a foothold among the Hungarian nobility later. The Zubor family of Földvár and Pataj were descendants of the Nassis and Cesamis families from Zadar.157 Jacob Cesamis was the grandson of Admiral Jacob Cesamis and son of the royal knight and admiral Matthew Cesamis. He used the name Jacob Zubor Pataji instead of Cesamis, presumably because of the estate of Pataj (now Dunapataj), which he received as a royal grant.158 Zoilo and John Nassis, who were related to Jacob Zubor of Pataj on their mother’s side, had even more spectacular careers. They established themselves among the Hungarian national elite, but much later, during the reign of King Sigismund.

From Hungary and other provinces of Louis’s kingdom the entrance to Dalmatia and Croatia was open. There were two main groups of people who arrived in the region, those coming directly from Italy and those coming from Hungary. The latter included persons of Hungarian and Italian origin the vast majority of whom belonged to the Italian group, who could easily integrate into an environment, economic structures, and society that was not unfamiliar to them. Among those from Hungary, the Croatian-Dalmatian bans, vicarius generalis, and their familiars were temporary “guests” in the region, since their role in local institutions and their offices lasted as long as they held the high office of the kingdom, but once they had lost it, they did not retain any other offices in Dalmatia. An exception to this was Raphael de Surdis, who was vicarius generalis and also comes of Zadar in the spring of 1373 but who remained in Dalmatia after his mandate as governor had ended and was referred to in the sources as the comes of Zadar and the comes of Nin until 1378. Among the officials of the Hungarian monarch, the admirals of the fleet were in a very different position compared to the bans. They were not from the Hungarian nobility. They were either local men skilled in naval warfare, such as the royal knight Jacob Cesamis or Nicholas de Petracha of Split, or experienced Genoese sailors, such as Baldasar de Sorba and Simon Doria, who settled comfortably in the region.

Among those who arrived from outside of Croatia and Dalmatia, there was a strikingly large number who had come directly from Italy or were of Italian origin but had already had impressive careers in Hungary. Many of them had put down roots in the region, and they were involved in local trade and economic life, in addition to the roles they played in their offices. These people were sometimes the link between the Kingdom of Hungary and the cities of Italy. An excellent example of this is the case of Florence, when in 1365 the city asked Baldasar de Sorba, the officer of the king in Dalmatia, to recommend the Florentines to the favour of the king.159 This tendency could be observed in the management of the Hungarian salt and thirtieth tax chamber offices in Dalmatia, where Florentine merchants and financiers took over the administrative leadership from the 1370s.

Among the leaders of the administration of the Hungarian king in Dalmatia and Croatia of Italian origin, the de Surdis of Piacenza brothers occupied a prominent place, due to the fact that these two men held the office of vicarius generalis successively.160 In addition to John and Raphael de Surdis, who were in charge of the administration of the region, other relatives and presumably also members of their circle from Piacenza arrived with them, such as Galeaz de Surdis and Raymond Confalonieri. We do not know why Louis I entrusted the office of vicarius generalis and other offices in Croatia-Dalmatia to the de Surdis family. John de Surdis, who himself had had a close relationship with the Hungarian king through another bishop from Piacenza, Jacob of Zagreb, was the king’s envoy to the papal court in Avignon on several occasions in the 1360s, so it is clear that he was one of the king’s confidants. To all this we might add that they were not the first members of the de Surdis family to play a significant role in the region. Francis de Surdis, the son of Manfred, had been notary in Zadar from 1349 to 1350161 and then in Split (1356–1358)162 and finally in Dubrovnik in 1360.163 This may not have had any influence on John’s or Raphael’s appointment as vicarius generalis, but it is possible that they were better acquainted with local affairs through their kinship. Although the family had initially settled in Zadar, they eventually won Lipovec as a donation from Louis I, and the donation included his brothers and the son of an unnamed brother. The family’s history was then mainly connected with the county of Zagreb and their estate.164

From among the arrivals from outside of Croatia-Dalmatia, the members of the de Sorba and Doria families of Genoa settled in Dalmatia as well. Baldasar de Sorba and Simon Doria were in command of Louis I’s fleet. The former was also involved in the chamber of salt and thirtieth tax in Dalmatia and Croatia, and both families were active in trade and finance. The emergence of the two Genoese admirals was due to the close alliance between the Hungarian king and Genoa, from where experienced leaders came to head the Hungarian fleet. Baldasar de Sorba may have arrived in Dalmatia in the early 1360s, settling in Zadar, and then becoming a royal shipbuilder, head of the Dalmatian-Croatian salt and thirtieth chamber, and royal admiral from 1366. He left this post around 1370 and was Philip II of Taranto’s governor in the Principality of Achaea during his dukedom until 1373. Baldasar and the de Sorbas were not disconnected from Zadar, as he is believed to have returned to Dalmatia after 1373 and was appointed by the king as comes of Trogir between 1379 and 1381. The de Sorbas became part of the Zadar citizenry, Baldasar was joined in the region in the 1360s by his brother Nicolo, who was Baldasar’s deputy in 1367 on the island of Hvar. Also related to Baldasar was Raphael Rouere (de Sorba), who was the admiral’s deputy on the islands of Hvar and Brač in 1366. Baldasar’s greatest aid and companion in the region was his own son Raphael, who also served as comes of Split during the period, and after the death of Louis he also held the office of comes of Šibenik (1384) and was given offices in Zadar, including being elected rector and judge on several occasions.165

The members of the Genoese families were easily integrated into Dalmatian urban society and local trade, as evidenced by the numerous records of their activities.166 Among the members of the Doria family, in addition to Simon, his brothers Bartol and Hugolin were engaged in trade, and Augustinus Doria is found as the deputy of the admiral in Hvar. The later admiral of the naval fleet of King Sigismund was Hugolin Doria, but he no longer lived in Zadar, as the city was in Venetian hands, and he established his headquarters in Trogir.167 In addition to the royal officers, the Genoese presence in the region was significant during the reign of Louis I. This was due not only to the fact that royal officials from Genoa were present, but also to the fact that Genoese merchants enjoyed trade privileges in Hungary that the Florentines could only have wished for in the 1370s.168 Beside the de Sorbas and Dorias, the Spinola family, which was one of the most important in Genoa at the time,169 was represented in the region thanks to their commercial activities.170

Apart from those from Piacenza and Genoa, the presence of the Neapolitans among Louis I’s Dalmatian-Croatian leaders is most notable. Pietro Bellante, who distinguished himself as an adviser to the Hungarian king in his campaign in Naples in 1349 and acquired a patrimony in Transylvania in the 1360s, then acquired positions of leadership in Počitelj, Bužan, and Obrovac as well as the office of Zadar. Although Nicolo Aldemarisco was not a comes of any Dalmatian city, he was deputy comes of Zadar after 1371, probably due to Charles of Durazzo. His relative Luigi Aldemarisco later became admiral to Charles’ son, Charles of Naples, who was fighting for the Hungarian throne. From among those who came from the Hungarian territories, two are worth mentioning: John Besenyő of Nezde and Jacob Szerecsen of Padova, who were appointed to the leader­ship of Dalmatian cities without holding a national office in Croatia-Dalmatia. The royal knight Besenyő and Szerecsen, who played the most prominent roles in the management of the Hungarian financial administration in the 1370s, had not only a distinguished career in Hungary in the narrow sense of the word (i.e. not only in the territories of what at the time would have been considered Hungary proper) but also in Croatia-Dalmatia. Besenyő was the only Hungarian nobleman who was comfortably and securely settled in Croatia-Dalmatia, but his example illustrates that there was a door for mobility.

Archival Sources

Nadbiskupski Arhiv u Splitu [Archbishopric Archive in Split] (NAS)

Rukopisna građa Ivana Lučića MS 528, 531–542

Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Országos Levéltára [Hungarian State Archives] (MNL OL)

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény [Diplomatic photo collection] (DF)

Diplomatikai Levéltár [Diplomatic archive] (DL)

Državni arhiv u Zadru [State archive in Zadar] (DAZd)

Curia maior ciuilium (CMC)

Korčula (KA)

Spisi zadarskih bilježnika [Documents of Zadar Notaries] (SZB)

Petrus Perençanus (PP)

Vannes condam Bernardi de Firmo (VBF)

Nacionalna i sveučilišna knjižnica, Zagreb [National and University Library, Zagreb] (NSK)

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Emotional Responses to the Beginning and End of the Rule of Louis I
in Dalmatia

Valentina Šoštarić and Krešimir Baljkas

University of Zadar

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Hungarian Historical Review Volume 14 Issue 1 (2025): 3-29 DOI 10.38145/2025.1.3 

This paper presents a brief historical background of the rule of Louis I of Hungary in Dalmatia, followed by an analysis of the emotional reactions of the ruling circles in Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik to two crucial events in 1358 and 1382, which marked the establishment and subsequent weakening of Angevin rule. Although the sociopolitical context of Louis’ rule is well established, the role of emotions during these critical moments has not received sufficient scholarly attention. This innovative problem-centered approach requires methodological clarification of the applications of the concept of emotions in historiography, as well as the possibilities and limitations arising from the nature of archival sources. The emotions expressed in these sources will be considered as a powerful tool with which to provoke tangible changes in the real world, specifically to motivate historical actors to take concrete actions. These rhetorical devices and narrative structures, understood here as expressions of emotion, will be scrutinized within the wider framework of sociopolitical, cultural, and religious interconnections. Through an analysis of primary sources, this study aims to offer insights concerning a possible range of emotions experienced by historical actors during the tumultuous political events surrounding the establishment of Angevin rule and the dissolution of the same after Louis’ death. Specifically, the paper interprets elements of the texts as expressions of emotions such as fear, insecurity, anxiety, envy, disappointment, dissatisfaction, happiness, love, and hatred in order to provide a deeper understanding of how these decisive moments were understood and presented by the authors at the time. This study aims to enrich our current understanding by emphasizing the significance of appeals to and expressions of emotional responses as a lens through which to examine political and social change.

Keywords: Dalmatia, Croatian history, Angevin dynasty, King Louis I, history of emotions

Research Topic: Issues and Possibilities

The establishment of Angevin rule in Dalmatian cities marked a significant turning point in the course of historical events along the eastern Adriatic coast. Having successfully concluded the conflict with Venice and adeptly pacified the influential nobility in the immediate hinterland, Louis the Great paved the way for the reintegration of coastal communities with their natural hinterlands. This harmonization unfolded within the new, strengthened political framework of the Hungarian and Croatian Kingdom. The triumphant culmination of decades-­long efforts by the new dynasty, formally crowned with the signing of the Zadar Peace Treaty in 1358, created the conditions for the social and economic development of the eastern Adriatic coastal region.1 Furthermore, the reaffirmation of royal authority in the immediate hinterland established the patterns of the structures upon which the social and political life of the Croatian nobility would now rest, and which would last until finally disintegrating under the Ottoman conquests.2 While extensive scholarly attention has been devoted to almost every facet of Louis’s ascension to power, including its repercussions for preexisting sociopolitical3 and economic dynamics,4 artistic evolution,5 and legal codification,6 scant scholarly interest has been given to the emotional responses of the ruling circles of Dalmatian cities, as expressed in the textual sources, following Louis’ triumph over the Venetians and during the years characterized by uncertainty in the aftermath of his demise.

Historians have typically confined the study of emotions to the field of psychology, and in the contemporary scholarship, neuroscience has come to the forefront.7 Emotions, long overlooked in historiography, started to gain attention in the mid-twentieth century8 and were made a central research topic within the social sciences and humanities by the end of the century.9 Within historiographical research, the “field of emotions”10 is frequently marked by conflicting theories, methodologies, and diverse perspectives on complex issues, and this has fostered its rapid development as a subject of study.11 The diversity of concepts, methodological approaches, and research questions posed has led to such an abundance of studies that contemporary researchers now refer to as a paradigm shift, often termed the “emotional/affective turn.”12

Considering the multitude of potential definitions of the term “emotions,”13 it is important to emphasize that, in this paper, they will be approached as sociocultural, situational, and relational constructs.14 Emotions play a significant role in shaping social interactions15 and decision-making processes, particularly within the sphere of high politics.16 Against this backdrop, this article aims to discern textual expressions of emotions in relation to the medieval system of dependency and power relations, the prevailing culture, and the influence of specific emotional responses on the course of historical events.

In part as an attempt to address the existing lacuna in the secondary literature, the interpretation focuses on the expression of specific emotions in the narrative and administrative records of the councils of Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik in the context of the two aforementioned historical changes. This will be attempted primarily by referring to elements in the surviving sources on the basis of which hypotheses can be ventured concerning the collective emotions of the ruling elite of the eastern Adriatic urban centers. Since the councilors were not a homogeneous “emotional community”17 and they did not share the same political worldviews during the transitional moments analyzed in this paper, it is important to consider which individuals within these communities might have experienced certain emotions, and whether these emotions were genuinely felt or were they a part of a specific manipulative rhetorical strategy. While administrative sources are the product of meticulous consideration and extensive discussions, the complete suppression of any expression of emotions within these text seems to have been challenging. The places where these expressions of emotion appear are symptomatic and warrant scientific attention and interpretation. Some of these expressions of emotion can be recognized as recurring themes, while others seem to have been the result of sudden changes in the realm of high politics. On the other hand, chronicles were used to a lesser extent, and when evaluating them, it is important to consider authorship and the historical-temporal context of their creation.

To a certain extent, these examples reveal the existence of stereotypical emotions. There are several different models that explain how emotions arise and the possibilities for their use. For the purposes of the inquiry here, the most applicable model is a combination of cognitive and social constructivism. While the first theoretical approach argues that the choice of which emotions to express depends on whether these emotions would be perceived as useful or harmful,18 the second approach holds that expressions of emotions depend on language, expectations, values, cultural practices, moral beliefs, and rules according to which these expressions of emotion can be correctly decoded.19 In this sense, expressions of emotion can be consciously employed and manipulated in a specific context to provoke a desired effect.20 Although it is impossible for us today to answer the question of whether a specific emotional expression was truly felt or was simply a matter of textual, rhetorical performance and strategy, this is ultimately not important. What matters is that a given expression of emotion would have been recognized and accurately interpreted (interpreted as the author presumably wanted it to be) by its intended readership. Finally, it is crucial to detect how expressions of emotions are managed, considering the personal power and reputation of individuals or groups, as well as their status, origins, and the relationships among the interlocutors. In other words, it is of paramount interest to observe who gives expression to particular emotions, when and where they do so, and who they are addressing, much as it is also of interest to consider their possible reasons for giving expression to these emotions and how these emotions may have influenced the relationships among political actors and shaped their specific actions.

Establishment of Angevin Rule

The authorities in Dubrovnik21 were well aware of the establishment of Louis’ rule in Dalmatian cities. While some councilors expressed enthusiasm and excitement about Louis’ successes and the prospect of rejecting Venetian rule, others viewed these changes with concern and expressed fear and anxiety.22 The division within the ruling elite concerning loyalty to Venetian rule or the integration of their homeland into the community of the lands annexed to the Crown of St. Stephen led to the formation of two factions, one pro-Venice and the other pro-Hungarian.23 Even among the noblemen who favored claiming Louis as their new sovereign there was no consensus regarding the position of Dubrovnik in the new community. Nenad Vekarić, in his research, has demonstrated that in 1358 the Gundulić clan was dominant, with its two factions, the Gundulić faction and the Gučetić faction.24 Both factions were characterized by a pro-Hungarian orientation, but the Gundulić clan sought greater Ragusan autonomy, while the Gučetić faction supported less autonomy for the small maritime republic. A conflict arose between Marin Klementov de Gozze, the king’s confidant and a supporter of the Gučetić clan, and Marin Lukarov de Bona and Marin Junijev de Mençe, members of the Gundulić clan. This conflict led to Marin filing charges against the two aforementioned noblemen before the court of the Ban of Dalmatia and Croatia in 1361. Marin’s actions were prompted by previous accusations made by his opponents, who had cast doubt on Marin’s loyal service to the city in front of the Ragusan government.25

Nevertheless, the councilors promptly prevented the factional split of the nobility, as well as uprisings by the commoners, which were common in other Dalmatian cities during these turbulent years.26 The rigidity of the Ragusan ruling structures aimed at preserving, even nominally, internal harmony and consistency in foreign affairs. This is particularly evident if one compares the same mechanisms of internal control with other Dalmatian cities where they failed. Split, Trogir, and Šibenik were, one after another, shaken by the escalation of factional struggles among the city nobility at the time and immediately after the significant political changes. In contrast with Ragusa, in these cities, the final resolution of the internal divisions had to come “from outside,” or in other words, it had to be imposed by the intervention of royal representatives.27

The Ragusan councilors ultimately agreed to send their representatives promptly to Louis I in Visegrád to negotiate the most favorable terms for the city’s integration into the Archiregnum Hungaricum. Emotions tied to the aura surrounding the ambassadors sent to Hungary awoke suspicions among the authorities and prompted them to show caution, as they feared potential betrayal.28 These ambassadors, as privileged individuals enjoyed significant personal power, and some of them possessed inherited emotional capital from previous encounters with the king.29 In this context, it is noteworthy to mention the case of the king’s close confidant, Marin Klementov de Gozze, who faced an investigation in his hometown for surpassing entrusted authority and having made arbitrary decisions. Marin was ultimately released due to the king’s direct intervention in his favor.30 However, the authorities in Dubrovnik did not hesitate to protest, and they beseeched Louis to refrain from intervening in such a manner on Marin’s behalf or on the behalf of any other Ragusan noblemen.31 Dubrovnik was in something of a unique position after having become part of the Crown of St. Stephen. Apart from Zadar, it was the only city in Dalmatia with a notable number of noblemen among its denizens who had successfully established individual relationships with the ruler. Still, predominant position in the new regime belonged to the members of the Zadar’s nobility. Royal knights from the ranks of Zadar’s nobility, thanks to this accumulated symbolic and direct political capital, played a significant role in the political and social infrastructure of Angevin rule in Dalmatia, holding important positions in other Dalmatian cities.32

The Ragusans used sophisticated emotional strategies concerning the establishment of Louis’ rule in Dalmatia. Chronicler Junije Resti cautioned the Ragusan councilors to be wise in navigating between two equally dangerous forces. He warned them not to arouse Venetian jealousy toward Louis due to the loss of Dalmatia. Resti concluded his reflections by praising the emotional intelligence of the city’s authorities, contrasting it with the ruling elites of Zadar, who, lacking it, continually faced the consequences of Venetian military interventions.33

During the years it spent under the protection of a powerful yet distant sovereign, Dubrovnik enjoyed a security that allowed it to develop autonomously, ushering in its golden era.34 In the period following the recognition of Angevin rule, many Dalmatian cities expressed great disappointment with the royal house and its blatant violations of agreements it had reached with them. These frustrations led to conspiracies and rebellions. Dubrovnik, in contrast, was satisfied, in general, with the conditions according to which it had recognized Louis as its sovereign. It is thus not surprising that the authorities frequently emphasized their loyalty to the crown and king, often motivated by the privileges and various benefits he had granted them, such as the right freely to elect the city rector35 and also trade privileges with Serbia and Venice, even in the case of war between the Croatian-Hungarian king and one of these countries.36 Hence, it is unsurprising that the Ragusan authorities often expressed their “love” and “affection” for the crown and king.

While discussions among the Ragusan elite were primarily concentrated on the rights and obligations arising from having become part of the Angevin Archiregnum, events and circumstances in other Dalmatian communities were characterized by various expressions of a much greater range of emotions due to the distinctive political and geographical backdrops in each of these communities.37 With the systematic suppression of all forms of local autonomy by Venice and the introduction of a new administrative structure that excluded the local nobility, the perspectives and emotions of the Zadar elite became more challenging to discern.38 In other words, following the Venetian suppression of the rebellion in 1346, many members of the Zadar elite were physically removed from the city through forced internment in Venice, and many of them then escaped and fled to areas beyond the reach of the Venetian authorities. Nevertheless, despite the removal and the flight of the most prominent members of the Zadar elite, Venice, by all indications, was unable to pacify the rebellious city completely. During the war, specifically in 1357, lingering dissatisfaction with Venetian rule persisted. A conspiracy was hatched in the city, but it was discovered and thwarted.39 The continued presence of dissidents and “internal enemies” in Zadar, at least from the perspective of Venice, was confirmed by the turmoil, namely the looting and destruction of property, at the moment of the entry of the royal army.40

The political arena of the city of Split during the turbulent period of the establishment of Angevin rule and the immediate aftermath provides a dynamic and significantly more fruitful field for the study of the emotional states of factions within the city elite. After the upheaval had ended,41 the rebellion against Venetian rule had emerged triumphant, and the Angevin banner had been raised over the city.42 Nonetheless, the continued war and the advance of royal forces in Dalmatia were closely monitored by the leading circles of the Split commune. The news of the entry of the royal army into Zadar, announced to the Split Grand Council by the ambassador from Šibenik, was met with joy by the city nobility. Prompted by this news and “as a sign of joy and in honor of the royal highness and the commune of Split,” the Grand Council decided to present the envoy with new clothes.43 The broader context suggests that this act was not merely a matter of a pro forma gift but was in fact a sincere expression of the emotional state of the decision-making members of the Grand Council. Apart from the continuously empty city treasury,44 the Šibenik commune had, in the immediate aftermath of the upheaval in Split, participated in the Venetian punitive expedition against the Split held island of Šolta.45 The messenger from Šibenik was now, just a few short months later, generously rewarded at the municipal expense by the decree of the Split Grand Council. The generosity towards former enemies, especially emphasized by the unfavorable financial circumstances of the Split commune, can further be interpreted through those emotional states whose existence we can only glimpse indirectly. Besides, almost certainly, giving impetus to thoughts of the imminent end of the war,46 the news of the entry of royal forces into Zadar likely instilled a sense of relief among the members of the Split elite. Their choice during the recent coup, siding with the Angevin sovereign, had seemingly been vindicated.47 However, when shortly afterward the official news about the success of the royal arms at Zadar arrived in Split, this time conveyed by the envoy of the Ban John Csúz, knight Kónya, it is hard to escape the impression that the initial euphoria within the ranks of the Split elite has somewhat dampened. The invitation of the city podestà Gentilis for the Great Council of Split to act in accordance with the ban’s wishes and to appropriately reward his messenger is met with nominal approval, but this time without the overt expressions of joy. Furthermore, the decision was accompanied with a somewhat measured clause stating that the final value of the gift should not exceed, still not insignificant, sum of 40 ducats.48

A less easily traceable but undoubtedly more significant case of the cor­relation between the emotions and the concrete steps taken by political actors occurred in the middle of 1359. At the session of the Grand Council in July of that year, the main point of discussion was the question of how to proceed with the unnamed conspirators against the honor of “our lord the King.”49 While neither the names nor the social statuses of the conspirators (not to mention the ultimate goal of the conspiracy) are clear to us today, we can say much more about the disagreements and tensions between the Split commune and the royal authorities that preceded the conspiracy and therefore probably had a significant impact on its formation.

The period following the conclusion of the Peace Treaty of Zadar bore witness to the rapid shaping of a new administrative infrastructure through which the Angevin king intended to rule.50 While the position of Zadar was seemingly vindicated,51 it became increasingly apparent that the new power configuration was diametrically opposed to the desired, idealized vision of the postwar order inherited by the leading strata of the Split elite. Angevin control over the leading administrative functions in the city, demonstrated by the abolition of the position of the city podestà and the reaffirmation of the role of the city count,52 along with interference in the judicial autonomy of the com­mune,53 likely resulted in a growing sense of dissatisfaction among some of the city nobility.54 The existence of a certain level of dissatisfaction in the new periphery was apparently acknowledged even in the center of the kingdom. The charter granted by the royal commission to the neighboring city of Trogir in August 1359 explicitly states that economic benefits were provided with the aim of resolving issues or complaints.55 Taking into account the aforementioned actions of the political center, as illustrated by the example of Split, it is not unreasonable to assume that the charter issued by the royal commission was intended to achieve several different goals. Apart from alleviating the economic difficulties peculiar to Trogir,56 the charter likely represented a step towards mitigating the (presumably significantly broader) wave of complaints. Said complaints, which were apparently also being made in other Dalmatian cities, were evidently caused by both the administrative and the new economic policies implemented by the Angevin dynasty in Dalmatia.57

Did the dissidents in the region, who we can presume were there and were active on the basis of the Trogir charter, hide the unnamed participants in the failed conspiracy that was discussed in the Split Great Council in July 1359? Unfortunately, we cannot give a reliable answer to this question.58 Similarly unclear is whether, due to royal pressure on municipal autonomy, there had been a resurgence of the pro-Venice party.59 Alternatively, was the failed conspiracy an internally generated attempt to revise the existing political stratification of the Split commune at the moment of or, more precisely, immediately after a radical political change, similar to earlier examples in Trogir and Šibenik?60 Could we identify, as a factor in the final galvanization of accumulated dissatisfaction, the growing apprehension of the urban elite concerning its gradual loss of control over the local levers of power? Apprehension that was seemingly made manifest in the royal imposition of the Ban of Dalmatia and Croatia on the office of the city count? The sources do not permit us to offer clear answers to these questions.61 We can reasonably assume, however, that during the period that began with the establishment of royal authority over Split through the years following the end of the war, members of Split’s political and social elite gave expression to a relatively wide range of emotions. The victories of the royal forces in Dalmatia may very well have been met with shows of joy, enthusiasm, and relief. The consolidation of Angevin authority and especially the implementation of a new political and social order in the province, however, have led to a radical shift in the emotional state of the urban nobility. In stark contrast to the initial positive emotional responses to the establishment of Angevin rule, the consolidation of Louis’ reign nurtured feelings of dissatisfaction and disappointment among the Split nobility with the actions of the new ruler. These accumulated resentments would eventually find form in the ultimate sin on the medieval political stage: a conspiracy against the sovereign in July 1359.

Turmoil after Louis’ Death

The death of Louis in the autumn of 1382 in Nagyszombat (today Trnava, Slovakia) marked the end of an era.62 At that moment, love for the king was confirmed through the expression of posthumous honors and the organization of a memorial service. However, in Dubrovnik and, indeed, in the whole of Dalmatia unrest and uncertainty had taken hold. The first measure was to organize defense under these extraordinary circumstances.63 This was confirmed by the decision, voted on by Dubrovnik’s Great Council on September 25, 1382, pro dando salvamentum nobis et nostre civitati et rebus nostris occasione obitus domini nostri naturalis domini regis Ungarie.64 The commune of Dubrovnik was particularly afraid of the Bosnian ban Tvrtko, who planned to establish a competing salt market in Novi.65 The prevailing uncertainty in years that followed Loius’ death nurtured fears among the people of Dubrovnik, who sought to mitigate the turmoil caused by dynastic conflicts by forming an alliance with the people of Zadar against Venice. It is interesting to point out that the people of Zadar took the initiative to establish communication and cooperation among the Dalmatian cities against the expansionist ambitions of the Serenissima.66 On numerous occasions during that period, initiatives for the creation of an alliance of Dalmatian cities were put forward.67 Thus, fear seems to have functioned as a driving emotion in those uncertain times and resulted in collaboration and joint action among the Dalmatian cities.

Although the carefully maintained Angevin infrastructure on the periphery of the kingdom did not begin immediately begin to splinter after Louis’ death, it was not long before the first cracks started to appear in the rest of Dalmatia as well. Concern about the uncertain future on the threshold of a new era can be indirectly discerned from the previously mentioned hectic diplomatic activity of the commune of Zadar. One month after Louis’ death, in October 1382, the people of Zadar established “a bond of unity, brotherhood, and eternal friendship” with Count Butko Kurjaković, all the while pledging their “loyalty to our queens and to the Holy Crown of Hungary.”68 Although at first glance this information may seem insubstantial, the diplomatic move by the Zadar commune suggests a prevailing sense of insecurity that took hold in the immediate aftermath of the king’s death. This line of reasoning, or more precisely, the interpretation according to which one can see, in this diplomatic act, Zadar’s desire to acquire at least some semblance of security, even if it be only in the immediate hinterland, can be further underlined by the fact that previous attempts to connect political factors inside the territory of Angevin Dalmatia during Louis’ lifetime were stopped by the royal authorities.69 Judging by this diplomatic activity and from the presumed perspective of the city’s nobility, the task of preserving the city’s security, which before had been firmly placed in the hands of the Angevin ruler for a period of decades, had once again become the duty of the local elite. This would suggest that the recent developments had given rise to a sense of unease. The nobility of Zadar, previously firmly integrated into the Angevin administrative structure, felt the need to act independently under these new circumstances and to take care of the city’s security with their own resources.

Uncertainty about the development of events in Dalmatia and possibly also a certain degree of mistrust in the loyalty of the local political factors likely existed in the center of the kingdom as well. Queen Elizabeth therefore attempted to strengthen the loyalty of the urban centers on the east Adriatic coast, first indirectly by means of letters and envoys and then through a personal visit.70 The course of events that took place in Zadar provides us with a revealing, albeit borderline, indicator of broader sentiment in Dalmatia.71 Namely, the previously mentioned mistrust of the royal government with regards to the local authorities seemed to prove justified. In the middle of 1384, the city authorities in Zadar were forced to deal brutally with several conspirators against Angevin rule. In the immediate aftermath of the executions, local authorities were compelled to carry out once again the social ritual of swearing fealty in front of representatives of the crown.

Although the scant number of conspirators who were executed does not suggest that the plot had broader backing within the ranks of the city elite, the number of councilors listed at the ceremony in 1384 is revealing. The fact that only 23 councilors took the new oath of fealty, in contrast with the 75 councilors who had been present for the same ceremony in 1383, indirectly leads to the conclusion that there had been a discernible and clearly notable stratification among the ranks of the city nobility in terms of loyalty to the crown.72 In contrast to previous and somewhat united efforts to resist Venetian rule, the noble class of Zadar was by then presumably fractured with significantly more pronounced divisions than had been the case in previous times. Although we can determine neither the causes of the dissatisfaction that prompted the aforementioned conspiracy nor the actions that immediately preceded its open culmination, it is particularly significant to note that the betrayal occured in Zadar, a city that represented a stronghold of Angevin authority in Dalmatia.73 Given the particularities of the city and its elite within the Angevin administration, the events in Zadar still offer a valuable indicator of the possible sentiment present in other Dalmatian communes. In any case, the events in Zadar gradually began to match the pace of the unrest in the broader Croatian territory, thus offering an ominous prelude to future events.

Conclusion

A comparison of emotional reactions regarding the establishment of Louis’ rule in Dalmatia reveals noticeable sentiments of excitement and uncertainty, accompanied by divisions within the noble class. Recognition of Louis as their sovereign allowed the people of Dubrovnik to experience autonomous development under his protection. Provided with security and prosperity, Dubrovnik expressed a strong sense of loyalty towards the Crown. With the notable exception of Zadar, which would now come to enjoy a privileged position, with its nobility playing a significant role in the new regime, other cities in Dalmatia were added to the Crown of St. Stephen under less favorable conditions. These conditions were sometimes grossly violated, leading to expressions of dissatisfaction with and bitterness towards the authority of the individuals who worked in the king’s service. During Louis’ rule, the people of Split initially experienced joy and expressed enthusiasm for the new sovereign. However, as time went on, they began to express increasing disappointment and eventually open dissatisfaction, as their expectations regarding the strengthening of municipal self-governance remained unfulfilled. The imposition of a royal confidante who served in the role of the city count was a particularly great blow, as this figure was a foreign magnate who violated the old rights and customs of the city. Dissatisfaction with the actions of the new authorities eventually found expression in the unsuccessful rebellion against royal rule.

After Louis’ death, a sense of fear and uncertainty was felt in all Dalmatian cities, further amplified by Tvrtko’s and Venetian expansionist aspirations. The crisis, uncertainty, and vulnerability, along with the feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and fear that they fueled, could have either strengthened the internal cohesion of the ruling elites or ignited divisions among them. The tumult following Louis’ death caused internal dissension and disagreements among the nobility in Zadar. Meanwhile, the real and perceived threats united the ruling elite of Dubrovnik and made them act in unison. Divisions among the nobility of Zadar regarding the succession and the question of loyalty to the new queens resulted in an attempted rebellion, foretelling the significant turmoil that would affect the city in the coming years.

Another important consequence of the crisis was the creation of an alliance of Dalmatian cities, driven by the people of Zadar, which was a novelty compared to previous periods, when integration and cooperation among the cities on the eastern Adriatic coast were mostly absent. Similar efforts in the past, when attempted under the unifying banner of the royal crown, were halted in their infancy. The fact that then, after almost half a century of Angevin rule, there was a renewed need for and independent initiative aimed at collective protection reflects the atmosphere of uncertainty that prevailed on the kingdom’s periphery following Louis’ death.

Ultimately, it is evident that the various emotions expressed, whether enthusiasm, fear, satisfaction, disappointment, excitement, anxiety, love, or resent­ment, both originated in and actively influenced the relationship that a particular city had with its sovereign and communication between this city and the ruler. Only if we consider these emotions, as well as the causes behind them and the potential outcomes associated with them, from analyzing the significant historical changes which came with the establishment and end of Louis’ rule, are we in a position to provide a more comprehensive understanding and draw more complete conclusions about these, in many respects pivotal, events.

Archival Sources

Državni Arhiv u Dubrovniku [State Archive in Dubrovnik] (SAD)

Reformationes, ser. 2, vol. 18.

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