Volume 8 Issue 4 CONTENTS

Dávid Rozsnyai’s “Orphans”: A Stepfamily through Divorce in Seventeenth-Century Transylvania1

Kinga Papp
Research Institute of the Transylvanian Museum Society
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My paper examines the documents pertaining to the life of a stepfamily made through divorce in seventeenth-century Transylvania. The focus is on the interfamilial relationships before and after the divorce. I examine the ways in which the attitude of the father, Dávid Rozsnyai, toward his first wife and children changed during the divorce and after formation of a new family. I also consider how the appearance of the new family members (second wife, half-siblings) affected the equilibrium within the family. My analysis shows that in Early Modern Transylvania there were social and personal customs involving the assignment of social positions to both adult and child members of a family broken by divorce, which facilitated the integration of these families into the community. The scattered family documents and witness hearings show that the divorced father ensured, through his testament and other documents, that the two sons from the two different marriages would share inherited wealth equally. In their turn, the stepbrothers worked together to pay off their father’s debts.

Keywords: stepfamily, divorce, Transylvania, children, remarriage, inheritance, stepsiblings, half-siblings, orphans

Introduction

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among historians in the lives of Early Modern stepfamilies.2 This has involved a shift from the study of patterns of remarriage to relations within the new family unit formed by remarriage, such as the relationship between stepparents and stepchildren,3 stepsiblings living in the same household,4 and illegitimate children living within the family.5 This new perspective has led many scholars to argue that in pre-Modern Europe, the nuclear family was more of an exception than the norm. Due to high mortality rates, men and women were very often widowed, and they often remarried. Consequently, children born in consecutive marriages often lived within a blended family, developing bonds which crossed over blood ties, both within the stepfamily group and among friends, the neighborhood, and the community.6

A big part of today’s societies also lives within blended families, often established though divorce,7 but studies have shown that, in earlier generations, stepfamilies were mostly composed of widows or widowers and considerably less often of divorced or abandoned spouses.8

The Early Modern stepfamily on which I focus in this article is the Rozsnyai family, which is a distinctive case, as it wasn’t created in the “usual way” presented above (through the death of a spouse), but rather through divorce. Family egodocuments, plaints, petitions, and witness hearings which have survived9 offer glimpses into an Early Modern protestant family’s transformation from a nuclear family, broken by divorce, into a stepfamily with the arrival of a new spouse and more children. The documentary evidence provides insights into the relationship between the half-siblings after their father’s death. The problems which emerged among the members of this stepfamily before and after the father’s death confirmed that the grant of a divorce in the protestant Churches not only annulled the bond between the spouses, but also had emotional and economic consequences.10

Families which underwent changes as a result of divorce and remarriage constitute the least documented and least investigated slice of Early Modern stepfamilies. The lack of scholarly interest and the dearth of secondary literature can be explained through the sparsity of the documentary sources and the isolated nature of the cases, encountered in a relatively small geographical area of the larger pool of Early Modern Europe’s protestant communities.

Sociological research distinguishes multiple forms of stepfamilies formed through divorce based on the dynamic of the divorcee’s remarriage and decisions reached concerning child custody.11 It could be argued that a stepfamily has been created only when the parent who has custody of the child or children remarries. As the Early Modern family was built only through the cohabitation of husband and wife, but also through a network of kinship bonds which transcended the household environment, when children who were not living with their remarried parent were parts of this kinship connection, they can also be considered members of the stepfamily.

Dávid Rozsnyai and His Families

The main character of this story is Dávid Rozsnyai, known as the last Turkish scribe.12 He was born in Marosvásárhely (today Târgu Mureş, Romania) in 1641 to a family of the Transylvanian petty nobility.13 He was 34 when he married for the first time to Anna Nagy Nyerges. This comparatively late marriage may have been the consequence in part of the fact that he frequently traveled and spend time abroad. He may also have waited until he had acquired a position and accumulated wealth to start a family.14 The wedding was held at the princely court of Radnót (Iernut) in September 1675, under the auspices of the prince.15 From their marriage, three children reached the age of adulthood: a boy named András and two girls, Rebeka and Zsuzsanna.

Dávid Rozsnyai professional work and career as an interpreter and an envoy to the Ottoman Empire and his service to Prince Mihály Apafi’s court are well-known from his ego-documents. There are a number of biographies focused on his diplomatic career. Fragments of his journal (1660–1670, 1705) have survived, as have fragments of his autobiography (1663, 1669–1673), the list of his services to the Prince written in November 1667, and a number of diaries (1663, 1665–1674). But these ego-documents are from his highly dynamic earlier life and his work in the service of the state prior to his marriage in 1675, so they provide no information about his private and family life.16 Among his writings there are also 13 annotated pocket calendars which contain Rozsnyai’s notes from the years 1668, 1680, 1681, 1684, 1702, 1708, 1709, 1710, 1711, 1712, 1715, 1716, and 1717.17 If we compare these yearly calendars with the dates of the other ego-documents, there is only one year that overlaps, 1668. We do not know whether, for the missing years, there were also journals or parts of his autobiography that did not survive, but from the numbering of the calendars, we can assume that some volumes are missing.18

The first insight we have into the life of the Rozsnyai family is provided by the documents that were created when the paterfamilias was imprisoned. In 1678, upon returning from another delegation to the Sublime Porte, Rozsnyai was accused of supporting Pál Béldi’s conspiracy19 against the prince and was consequently imprisoned. He was held captive in Görgény (today Gurghiu, Romania) and Szamosújvár (today Gherla, Romania) until 1682. During his captivity, he sent letters and instructions to his wife which offer some indication of the relationship between them at the time, while some fragments also show how Rozsnyai represented himself as a father and what his attitude was towards his children. We do not know the exact birthdates of the children from his first marriage, but at the time of his captivity, their son András and at least one of their daughters had already been born.

Their marriage lasted only 12 years. In 1687, at Rozsnyai’s request, they divorced. Their statements during the divorce proceedings show not only the deterioration of the relationship between them, but also the way in which Early Modern spouses tried to get rid of each other.20

In the first year after the divorce, Rozsnyai was permitted to remarry, and in 1688, at the age of 47, he married Rebeka Fogarasi.

From Rozsnyai’s second marriage, three children were born who survived into adulthood: a boy, Sámuel, born in 1698, and two girls, Anna and Klára. The calendars of the elderly Rozsnyai contain details about more family members. He had at least three more children from this second marriage who died at a young age, and he recorded the dates of their deaths. In 1698, he wrote about the death of a daughter named Ráchel. We do not know how old she was, but she was not a newborn, as Sámuel was also born that year. In 1709, Rozsnyai made a record of the death of his 18-year-old daughter, Sára. Her death and funeral were commemorated in his later calendars, too. She was probably his first child from the second marriage. In 1712, he recorded the death of a second child named Ráchel, a newborn, who was buried near her sisters. The two other girls are totally absent in the family ego-documents, and their existence was confirmed by the aforementioned József Koncz, who made a detailed family tree.

Rozsnyai and his new family moved from Marosvásárhely to Fogaras (today Făgăraş, Romania), as he probably wanted to keep his ties to the princely court. But the family became poorer and poor, as Rozsnyai did not receive the wages due for his services to the Court. He pawned more and more of his belongings, and had debts to several noble families. His oldest son, András, helped him deal with these financial problems. He died at Fogaras in 1718 at the age of 77.

After the divorce, the children from his first marriage remained with their mother, but Rozsnyai promised to support them financially at the divorce hearing and in his letter to his ex-wife.

The divorced parents were obliged by law to feed and educate their children and to ensure and provide for their future. The children remained legal heirs to their parents after the divorce, too, as they kept all their innate rights and their positions. 21 The children from different wives of a divorced father inherited their father’s wealth and belongings together,22 as the mother’s wealth and belongings were inherited only by her children.23 In terms of inheritance, there was a difference between male and female heirs. Only sons born within marriage inherited the their father’s accumulated wealth. Female heirs, in accordance with the so-called Tripartitum (a manual of customary law which had been in use in Hungary to varying extents since it was published in 1517), had no claim to their father’s estates. They received the so-called filial quarter, which was usually money, equally shared between the daughters, thus preventing the alienation of the families’ estates. The family archive was kept by the eldest son, even if he had older sisters or if they concerned the girls’ inheritance.24 The paternal house was usually inherited by the youngest son.25

The goods in the Rozsnyai family were mostly divided according to the Tripartitum, too. András inherited the family archive, while the house in Fogaras remained in Sámuel’s possession, and the father stipulated in his will that his sons would equally share his other belongings, but he omitted his daughters from his testament.

Rozsnyai’s First Marriage

The sources which have survived concerning his relationship with his first wife were created at moments in their marriage which may well have been among the most trying for both of them. In the fourth year of their marriage Rozsnyai was imprisoned. From the letters and instructions which he sent from prison to his wife we know that she visited him several times during his captivity and provided things he needed. In his letters, he gave strict instructions concerning the administration of the household: to control the expenditures and the servants. We also have detailed lists of instructions concerning the items he wanted while he was being held, both in Görgény and in Szamosújvár: clothing (with precise indications of material and color), buttons, sewing utensils, cookware, spices, food, drink, medicines, books, writing materials, etc. He gave specific instructions regarding the date and the route his spouse should take when visiting him: “Do not come yourself until you have sent somebody (to me first), and I will send a message through that person when you are to depart.”26 Moreover, he tells her how to ensure that the household is taken care of while she is absent: “Find the optimal time for making the journey, do not saddle the poor cattle and horses in bad weather, the day the wagon departs you should also get going, but leave the things at home in good care; in order to avoid damages, secure the barn with a padlock, [making sure] that nobody wastes the cereals [...] order [the servants] not to have big fires in the fireplaces, and, especially at night, to put them out and not to let them burn, and keep the dried fruits under lock and key to ensure that they are not eaten by servants as they please, as they need to be rationed.”27 He writes in a tone which suggests he saw himself (or sought to present himself) as a husband who ruled his household and all its members with an iron fist and who, even if not present, had to be informed and decide on all family issues.

The opening and closing formulas of his letters,28 however, are expressive of a balanced or even loving relationship. He opens his letter from November 1679 with the formula: “God bless you my sweet wife” and closes with “Your sad-hearted imprisoned husband.” In his other letter from 1679, the phrase “my sweet wife” is changed to “my relative” or “my kin” (“atyámfia” in Hungarian), as in, for instance, “God bless you with a lot of goods my good relative,” but the letter in question still closes with “Your Orphan imprisoned half.” In the letter from October 1781 he used both invocations: “Bring all the written things with you, forget any of them, my good relative, God help you, sweet half.” In this letter, he still emphasizes the closeness between them as husband and wife, a bond which should not be weakened by his imprisonment.

Rozsnyai instructed his wife to provide a written account of all activities taking place in his household: “Don’t let yourself be misled when selling the cattle and horses, and afterwards take care to have everything that you sell written down [...] don’t forget, as I ordered, to note which fields have been sown, and note their type and place.”29 Their relationship was based on the wife’s subordination, even when, during his captivity, Rozsnyai was entirely dependent on her support. Rozsnyai entrusted his spouse not only with household administration, but also with more special tasks. When he was moved from Görgény to Szamosújvár, he sent presents to János Toldalagi (his supervisor) and Toldalagi’s wife through her. He also instructed her to send a letter to the same Toldalagi, probably composed by Rozsnyai himself: “Have this supplication nicely written, my sweet relative, and take it with you, give it to the lord, beg his wife, too, in order to obtain a good answer.”30 In the same letter, he asks permission to attend church service, to receive visits from his uncle from the nearby city of Kolozsvár (Cluj Napoca), to read, to practice writing in Turkish, and to translate.31

Rozsnyai uses several rhetorical instruments to maintain a tight grip on his wife and household. One finds expressions of concern and care, but also complaints and threats in his letters: “If you have a soul in God don’t complain about having to feed me or cloth me from what is mine, to ease my misery until I have some things, and to send presents where I tell you to. These things are not more precious than me, God commiserates with me and gives us other things in return, my sweet wife.”32

In his letters, Rozsnyai frequently complains that his wife does not tend to his wishes, for instance that she does not send enough food, drink, or clothes, and he reminds her many times that what she must purchase she buys from his earnings, and she should spare no expense.

During his captivity, the burdens of tending to the family’s affairs fell on his wife’s shoulders, including administering the household, securing the financial means for everyday expenses including food, finding supporters for her husband’s cause, and, on top of that, providing childcare. The letters written in 1681 suggest that she found it increasingly difficult to make ends meet, at least judging by the reproaches Rozsnyai makes. “It seems, my kin, that you haven’t given too much care to my drinks in the past two and half years, and in my present condition I had to drink less and less, even if I always mix it [the wine] with water, now I can drink only once every two weeks, because I don’t have more, and I don’t have money to buy any more. I can see that if I am silent about this, you are happy to be silent, too; you can’t convince me that you have no money, because I gave you before instructions concerning how to make money, even if you are not able to sell [the grain], I even freed you to sell it below price, but do not force me to beg.”33

The children are mentioned in this letters too, as Rozsnyai asked his wife to bring András to see him in 1679, but he also showed his paternal rigor by asking his wife to take care of their education: “The children should learn, they should not spend their time in vain pursuits, and they should be looked after diligently.”34 He put a particular emphasis on András’ education: “The child should go to school daily, don’t let him near wells or horses.”35

Unfortunately, we have no sources on the family from Rozsnyai’s release in 1682 until the divorce in 1687. Their marriage lasted 12 years, three of which Rozsnyai spent in prison (leaving his wife with three children to care for). During the five years after his release (for which we have no sources), the marriage, which had undergone the stresses of Rozsnyai’s imprisonment, may well have deteriorated further. His wife’s perspective and the details of their private life can only be observed through the documents of the divorce trial from the Partial Synod.

The Divorce

In 1687, Rozsnyai accused his wife in front of the Partial Synod36 of the Maros Dioece of having left their family house which was in her care in Herepe (Oláhherepe, Hăpria) and traveled in the night to Marosvásárhely for an unknown reason. He also alleged that his wife did not spend the night in the house the family had in Marosvásárhely and that her whereabouts were unknown.

Abandonment was the mildest justification for divorce that was accepted, but Rozsnyai’s contention that his wife had spent the night in an unknown place was in fact an accusation of infidelity. The accepted grounds for a divorce in Transylvania were similar to those in other Calvinist or Lutheran communities, but in some cases, local customs also influenced the decisions. The most accepted justification for a petition of divorce was adultery, but the sources contain mention of numerous other explanations, such as adulterous abandonment, impotence, sexually transmitted disease, marriage with a person below one’s social rank without the consent of one’s parents, life-threatening domestic disputes, or forced marriages.37

Anna Nagy defended herself by saying that her husband had left her alone with their “orphaned” children and they had had to flee together with others in the village as enemies approached (probably a Habsburg army). She claimed that, upon reaching the house in Marosvásárhely, she had been unable to enter it, as it was locked. She and the children had had to find shelter, and they had gone to a relative’s house in the city. She also insisted that her husband produce evidence in support of his accusations. As Rozsnyai did not attend the meeting, the court notified him through his representative that, until the next hearing, he should make provisions for the financial support of his children and wife and even pay for her defending representative.38

At the second hearing, which took place on September 10, although his representative objected, Rozsnyai was ordered to pay his wife’s trial costs too, as this was the custom both in their diocese and in the others nearby. During the hearing, it emerged that the disagreement between the spouses had worsened with time, and that Rozsnyai “did not support, feed, or clothes his wife or children, but he did provide money, food, and clothing for others, and, to further upset his spouse, he had given her clothes to another women, saying in front of his wife, “How well they fit you, darling, wear them in good health!”39 His alleged failure to provide financial and emotional support was seen by his wife as the clear consequences of his loss of love for.

These allegations illustrate not only the particular situation of this family, but also the obligations husbands had in a family in general and the various forms of recourse a wife had if her husband failed to meet his responsibilities.

Rozsnyai’s wife alleged to the court that her husband had had an affair with a woman named Sára Szőcs, together with whom he had been seen sleeping on different occasions by several witnesses. His mistress, it seems, was pregnant, and Rozsnyai had even prepared a concoction intended to cause her to abort.

In a protestant family, in which the ideal of a pure, virtuous life was enforced through strict moral norms and the regulation of sexuality,40 an allegation of infidelity against a husband was deemed very serious, and if a person were found guilty of having been naked with someone other than his or her spouse, this was a capital offence: “There are other things which indicate his greater loyalty to and love for Sára Szőcs and her mother than his love for his wife, because he bathed in the same tub with Sára, and both bathed naked.”41

On the basis of these testimonies, the Partial Synod pronounced the divorce, excommunicated the adulterous husband, forbade his remarriage, and forwarded the case to the secular authorities. These were the most severe punishments the religious courts could decree.42

Rozsnyai’s wife requested that her testimony not be made public. We can assume that this was either to prevent retaliation from her influential ex-husband or to avoid public disgrace.43

The divorce is mentioned briefly in Rozsnyai’s ego-documents. A note in one of the calendars for September 1687 reads: “11 dies divorcio occidens 1687.”

As is clear, Rozsnyai probably tried to get rid of his wife by accusing her of deserting her home, which was, with the exception of adultery, the most frequent cause for divorce. Presumably, he was not able to come up with a more plausible accusation that still would have carried adequate weight in the eyes of the authorities. His wife did not accept the social stigma and, by summoning witnesses, she convinced the court of her innocence.

Wives could also petition for divorce, but they rarely attempting to seek a legal way out of the marriage.44 Women tended to request intervention by the court when the marriage promise was not kept or when they wanted to break or enforce the marriage after having been abandoned by their husband.45 In all likelihood, Rozsnyai’s wife would not have initiated the separation from her adulterous husband if it hadn’t been for his appeal to the court. Financially, the Holy See ordered that the cost of litigation be paid exclusively by the husband and that he also provide for the family for the duration of the trial. But after the divorce, the actual arrangements regarding his former wife were not specified, as this fell under the jurisdiction of the secular authorities.46

In Early Modern Europe, most divorce requests were initiated by husbands.47 In most cases, an accused wife found herself in a difficult position, even if the divorce wasn’t her fault. After the divorce or separation, alimony was not a secure income, as it was difficult to enforce payment. As a loosely regulated amount, alimony varied based on the wealth of the former husband, on the former wife’s capacity to work, and on the number and age of the children.48 In Transylvania, child support began to be mentioned in the synodical divorce decisions in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Partial Synod usually entrusted the innocent spouse with custody of the children, but it did not specify an amount the other party had to pay. The sum was based on a mutual agreement between the parties.49 Compared to Lindau for example, where all the family’s possessions were given to the innocent spouse,50 the consequences of adultery in Transylvania were relatively mild.

In the case of the Rozsnyai family, the Partial Synod held on April 2, 1688 (seven months after the divorce) ruled that Rozsnyai make public penance in Szentbenedek (today Mănăstirea, Romania) and, taking into account his services to the principality, the Synod lifted the interdiction on his remarriage. Rozsnyai reached his goals. He legally escaped his first wife and got off relatively lightly with a mild punishment for adultery. Because of his influence and good relations, he was permitted to marry for a second time, even if he was the guilty party. He was not forced to wait until his former spouse remarried, nor was he forced to marry his mistress.51

Forging New Relations Within the Stepfamily

The surviving sources contain no information concerning Anna Nagy’s life after the divorce except for the fact that the financial support provided by her husband was inconsistent. This was not an isolated case. Protestant confessions may have allowed for divorce, but the position of the women was still primarily defined through their relationship with the men in their lives: they were daughters, sisters, or wives. Divorced women were still seen by protestant society as an anomaly, as were single women.52 Widows were exceptions, but even they were pressured to remarry,53 and poorer widows in particular tended to, as they were afraid they might become a burden to their family and have to seek the help of their relatives.54 However, many widows who belonged to the aristocracy decided not to remarry, regardless of their marital experiences, good or bad, as they had begun to enjoy their freedom and the advantages this position provided.55 The uncertain and vulnerable position of women coming out of a divorce is visible through The formula of addressed used by Rozsnyai in a letter to his former wife and children offers a clear illustration of the uncertain and vulnerable position of a divorced woman: “To orphan Anna Nagy and her orphan children.”56 Through this form of address, Rozsnyai assigned his ex-wife a conventional position within the social norms, as “orphan” in this case does not mean parentless, but “honorably abandoned,” which also meant vulnerable and defenseless. The Hungarian secondary literature first noted, in the case of Kata Bethlen, that the community assigned the divorced women the status of “orphan,” and the letters, prayer books, testaments, and autobiographies left behind by divorced women who belonged to the aristocracy (like Kata Bethlen) indicate that they accepted this designation in their textual representations of their identities. Presumably, they assumed this designation in order to align themselves with the expectations, roles, and cultural patterns of the society in which they lived. This designation or identity (“the orphan”) was formed around the image of the widow but also based on biblical references.57 The overlap between the widow and the divorcee is not unique. In his analysis of family and household history, Peter Laslett suggested that in the census-type documents divorced wives were not distinguished from widows.58 This explains the seemingly odd form of address used by Rozsnyai in his letter.

Gergely Fazakas offers more examples of people, both men and women, using the term “helpless orphan” for self-representation, even in cases when they were not widows, in other words they either had been abandoned or their spouses had been imprisoned, exiled, or sent away on military duties. In other words, the term was used to designate people whose social or financial security was endangered.59 Another example of this is Rozsnyai himself, who signed his letter from October 31 with the formula “Your orphan imprisoned half.”60

The children were referred to as “orphans” many times, both by Rozsnyai and his wife during his imprisonment and during and after the divorce due to their unfortunate and abandoned state.61 They were deprived of the presence of their father well before the divorce because of Rozsnyai’s frequent travels and his later imprisonment, so the balance in the family had already shifted, even if the children did not have to go through the loss of a parent or life with a stepparent.

After the divorce, Rozsnyai was bound by law to support his children, at least financially. His letter from June 1688 to his divorced wife reveals an ongoing conflict, as he apparently failed to meet his financial obligations to his children. He asks forgiveness for not having visited and he promises his ex-wife that he will take care of the children, but he argues that his financial situation is dire, and he begs their patience: “I certainly wanted personally to greet my poor children, but I, too, was in a hurry, and as you were also not at home, the occasion passed. In my promises to provide for my children I don’t want to be a liar or an infidel, but we are not to be blamed if our endeavors are postponed because of helplessness, God gives where there is shortage.” 62 His letter indicates that right after the divorce, even if he were not present in the everyday life of the family, he still sought to craft a textual image of himself as the paternal authority and the person on whom the family relied for financial support. In the following passage from this letter, for instance, he begs forgiveness while at the same time making further promises and also reproaches: “Blame me for not fulfilling my promises and doing even more if I ever get the money I have been promised. Until then, if God allows, I will help you with wine and wheat, even though I also often drink water. Before God brings in the cold, perhaps I will be able to send some fabric for children’s over-clothes, but you should not always think about what you need and how much, but about what you can do with what I provide.” 63

In this letter, sent barely five months after he was allowed to remarry, Rozsnyai referred to his new spouse as “my present wife.” The new spouse, Rebeka Fogarasi, sent presents through Rozsnyai to his children from his first marraige: a belt for András, ribbons and wool cloth for the girls, and a lace garland for Rebeka (the eldest daughter, as she was probably due to be married): “my wife sent a cord belt for András, light pink wool cloth for coats and some ribbon for both the girls. A golden lace garland for Rebeka. Henceforward, if God allows, she will try to do more.”64 Rozsnyai also wrote in the letter that his new wife pledged to offer more help in the future. His new wife may have sought to gain the good will of the children and their mother, though again, the claims may have been Rozsnyai’s invention, as he may have sought, simply, to try to minimize conflicts and tensions by presenting his new wife in a favorable light. The appearance and subsequent acceptance of a new wife is always a challenge for the husband’s first family. A new spouse could influence the husband’s decisions in the partition of the patrimony,65 shift his relationships with his children from his first marriage, and produce more children who would also have claims to the family inheritance. Stepmothers had a stronger influence on their husbands than stepfathers did on their wives, as, in theory, the latter could not interfere with the possessions the women brought from their previous marriage,66 but there were also counterexamples, when a stepfather became the orphans’ guardian.

The surviving sources offer no indication of the previous family status of Rebeka Fogarasi, Rozsnyai’s second wife, but from the number of children to whom she gave birth in the marriage we may deduce that she was much younger than her husband. Rozsnyai’s decision to marry a younger bride makes his case typical, since men preferred, when they were remarrying, to marry women with no children from previous marriages.67 Anna Nagy’s demand to have the clothes she left in the former husband’s home returned can be interpreted as a sign of hostility towards the new wife. Rozsnyai replies that he could send back only some of the garments she demanded, as the others no longer existed: “With regard to your writing about some of your belongings, God knows we don’t have anything else besides the gloves, your lace for collar, your golden apron, and the Turkish pelisse; where they disappeared in all this I don’t know. None of them is with us, as even greater men than I don’t have things like these with them nowadays, but keep them some place safe. I sent you all of the above but the pelisse, I will bring instead cloth for the mantle. Don’t be afraid regarding the other things, because my present wife won’t use them even if you leave them here forever.”68

This reply sheds a little light on the relationship between the two women, as Rozsnyai assures his ex-wife that his new wife will never wear any of the clothes she left behind, even though we know from the divorce documents that he had clothed his mistresses in his wife’s clothes. A widower’s new wife could sometimes inherit the clothes of the former wife, which was a symbolic expression of her appropriation of the family role. In this case, it is possible that, by refusing to wear the former wife’s clothes, Rebeka Fogarasi did not want to perform this role-switching.

Rozsnyai, as a father, considered the intellectual and spiritual development of his children of the utmost importance. He knew from his own experience that, through learning and knowledge, one could climb the social ladder and obtain important positions. But the change in the structure of the family influenced the level of his involvement in his children’s education. During the first marriage, he tracked his children’s progress from afar, insisting, in his letters sent to his first wife from captivity, that she had the children study and not waste their time and also emphasizing that András should be sent to school every day.69 After the divorce, he asked Anna Nagy to make sure the children did not abandon the church or the school, and he promised to send more money for their education: “After I finish my work here, I will go again to Jára [today Iara, Romania], if God lets me […] then I will take care of paying the school and the master, as all I have now I need to spend on curing [the hay]. For God’s sake, I warn you and ask you, the children should not to drop out of school and church, for those I am willing to give the shirt off my back.”70

But the children’ later writings reveal that, later, they did not receive the promised paternal support. Probably their relationship with their father was interrupted after Rozsnyai moved to Fogaras and had children from the second marriage. This is proven by the petition sent to János Haller, the Governor of Transylvania, by Zsuzsanna (one of Rozsnyai’s daughters from his first marriage) in 1748, in which she asked for her share of her father’s retrieved salaries from András and András’s son, József. Rebeka, the other daughter, also asked her nephew (József) in 1748 to give her a share of the recuperated salaries.

In her written complaint against her brother from 1748, Zsuzsanna suggested that she had not been given adequate care by her father: “I grew up outside my father’s house with the bread of the orphans, I dressed myself of my own labor, I was married-off from a stranger’s home, and, until now, I got nothing from my father’s hereditament.” 71

András sent the Governor a reply to her sister’s complaint in which he also made some remarks on concerning his youth and his education: “When she writes that she didn’t receive anything of our father’s belongings, that she was raised in a foreign house, I offer the following answer: regarding my education [...] I was raised by count Mihály Teleki together with Pál Teleki. I wore his clothes, as he [my father] never in my whole life spent more than one thaler on me, and even that money was given to my magister. This family [Teleki] was my father, and, after we accompanied Mihály Teleki’s corpse to Görgény,72 I went to the court of Prince Apafi [the younger],73 where my father took me back in his good graces, and I was in his service there until he left [Mihály Apafi].74 Afterwards, I left together with Márton Sárpataki and Sigmond Toroczkai to Sámuel Bethlen’s [company], then after the latter’s death, I went together with Balássi to count Mikes’s domicile. Why are we reproaching each other over the education we both received?”75

In the same letter, András explained that, after the divorce, his father had paid an amount (the text is unclear on the actual sum or what was it for) to their mother, but that from that moment on, he had stopped being involved in their life. Later, when the boy went to the Princely Court, Rozsnyai took his son back under his wing: “When my father divorced my mother, he paid her what was due, I know this well, but I can also prove it under the letter M76 (because it can be observed that they had gathered lot of debts while he was married with my mother) but, after this [the divorce], he almost never cared about me or his daughters, but I later enjoyed his paternal love while I was at the Princely Court.”

He explained that the services he did for his father were the reason why he got back in his good graces: “I also gave a motive for that, because I troubled myself in helping him change his misfortune before the Princes, I also helped him in his needs [...] I served him in these matters in front of Count István Haller and General Rabutin, [intervening] through several noblemen, for which he thanked me almost crying. These are the things he took into consideration in his testament, in which he wrote that I served him and I helped him.”

It was not by chance that András was raised in the court of Chancellor Mihály Teleki, where they had probably a patronage relationship,77 because earlier Teleki had been one of Rozsnyai’s protectors, who often mediated his requests to the Prince and even was his guarantor when he needed loans.78

After Mihály Teleki’s death in 1690, András went to serve the young Mihály Apafi, and then his father reconnected with him. This renewed relationship was beneficial for both father and son. András helped his father with his financial problems, and in return, the son was integrated into his father’s family and given a claim to his hereditament. There are two letters written by Rozsnyai to his son from 1713.79 These letters show that the boy’s education paid off and that they were working together to get rid of some of the father’s debts and to handle the other debts trials. Rozsnyai also gave him the deeds to his properties in Jára: “I have copied the acts of the domains from Jára and have them sent them to you. May God help you use them well.”80

András was secretary to Mihály Mikes at the time,81 whose support Rozsnyai wanted to obtain through his son in order to recover his past-due salaries and for regularize his debts to the Bethlen family. He wrote about this in both of his remaining letters. They seem to have had a good father-son relationship in this period. Rozsnyai expressed his regret for not talking to András personally, but he promised to meet him soon. One of his postscripts suggests that András was visiting him in his home: “You left 3 silver coins here, you will find them here when you return.” The forms of address and closing used in the letters also suggest an intimate family bond. Rozsnyai signed his letters as “Your father who wishes you all the good from God,” and on the envelope he wrote, “I wrote in a hurry to my dear sweet son, András Rozsnyai.”

Though Rozsnyai had another son from his second marriage, the first born, András, was the one who became the keeper of the family archive and also inherited half of his father’s possessions. To ensure this, in 1712, Rozsnyai compiled a list in front of witnesses of all the family archive’s property deeds, in case he was to die. At the end of this registry, he specified that the list was made to the benefit of the two sons. He further enforced this through a curse on the family if they were to fail to provide the register and all the later archive documents to his eldest son.82

Rozsnyai’s involvement in the life of his son from his second marriage, Sámuel, is more constant, as from 1694, Transylvania no longer needed a Turkish scribe, and we can assume Rozsnyai spent more time with his family. He was able to forge a deeper bond with his youngest son, and he supervised his education and even taught him Turkish. In his calendar notes, his son’s birthday on March 20, 1712, affectionately referring to him as “my dear Samuka.” The calendars they shared also suggest that they had a close relationship. Sámuel began writing annotations in his father’s calendars in 1708. In the first years, they both wrote notes in the calendars, but later on, Sámuel wrote his father’s notes, too. At this time, he also began writing his father’s letters and copying his works.83 This practice of sharing or continuing the composition of an ego-document was not unique in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Transylvania. There were several cases of a son continuing his father’s notes84 or wives continuing their husbands’ writings or an estate manager continuing a mistress’ writings.85 These texts were not written exclusively for the intended recipient. Rather, the authors expected their children and other family members to read them, which is why they are considered “family ego-documents.”

In Rozsnyai’s family from his second marriage, the father and son communicated with each other through their calendar notes, too. In January 1709, Sámuel wrote about how he had started to learn verb conjugations, and his father replied beneath, “May the Lord help you grow if this is in His liking.”86

After his father’s death, Sámuel also used Rozsnyai’s diaries to make some annotations at the end, drawing up an inventory of the property deeds before giving them over to his half-brother, the legal heir to the family archive.87

Both András and Sámuel followed in their father’s footsteps and became translators. Their translations appeared around the same time, which might indicate that they were in competition for their father’s recognition. Sámuel notes in the calendar from 1715 that he translated a Turkish work on healing horses.88 In 1716, András translated a collection of meditations entitled “Stimulus compuctionis” from Latin into Hungarian.89

Neither the second spouse nor the daughters from the second marriage received the same amount of attention as the younger son. With regard to his daughters, Rozsnyai only noted the deaths of three of them in his calendars. Their deaths appear both as events and as recurring commemorations. In the calendar for 1702, he marked April 19 as the fourth anniversary of the death of his daughter Ráchel (the first of his two daughters to whom he gave this name). In the calendar for 1709, he marked January 21 as the date of the death of his 18-year old daughter, Sára. He marked the day in February on which her coffin was sealed, and he marked the day in May on which her funeral was held, which was a common funeral, as her recently deceased 5-month-old sister, Ráchel II, was also buried. From this point onward, in each of the calendars which has survived (1710, 1711, and 1712) he marks the days on which the girls died, the days on which the funerals took place, and the location of their graves. He seems to have been deeply touched by the death of his 18-year old daughter, Sára, as with every anniversary of her passing, he added details regarding her sickness and her untimely death. These texts were written in a very neat, calligraphic handwriting, as if they were supposed to be a memorial in their honor, thus adding to the public character of the calendars.

The Half-siblings and Rozsnyai’s Testament

After Rozsnyai’s death, the relationship between the children from the two marriages ceased to be dependent on the authority of the father. The witnesses’ testimonies kept in the family archives show that, after Rozsnyai’s death in 1718, his widow sent the testament to their son, Sámuel, in Vienna, but it seems the letter got lost on the way, and the boys used a copy of their father’s testament to divide the inheritance.

At this time, Sámuel worked at the Transylvanian Chancellery in Vienna, probably as a referent. He died there in 1746 without any successors (presumably he never married). His father’s personal writings and books90 probably remained first in Sámuel’s possession in their home in Fogaras, but later, following Sámuel’s death, they were sent to András’s family, together with Sámuel’s personal archive.

The fight for the inheritance could have had a powerful impact on the relationship between the stepsiblings,91 but the correspondence between Sámuel and his stepbrother’s son József suggests that, even if there were tensions between them due to the inheritance, they worked together to pay off their father’s debts and tried to recover their father’s past due salaries.92

András authorized his son József to represent him because of his illness. In the 1740s, while András was ill and Sámuel was in Vienna, József was the one who finally succeeded in obtaining the long overdue salaries owed to his now deceased grandfather. Three letters give an impression of the relationship between uncle and nephew. Sámuel offered to recommend his nephew for his current post in the Chancellery if he himself were to be promoted. He also ordered a belt for Jozsef, and asked if József had gotten used to his work at the Gubernium. He also expressed gratitude for his work: “your big work deserves recognition, as for myself, I won’t be ungrateful.” The boy even helped Sámuel recover his own salary.

After receiving news of the recovery of his father’s overdue salary, Sámuel gave his nephew instructions concerning how to share it: “First, we have to pay the Bethlen family ... but we should ask for a good receipt from them, because if any of them have some other written promises made by our father, they should forfeit any other claims from us [...] then we should give the discernments you promised, but if possible, a little less than you promised everybody, invoking the fact that we have a lot of debts to our creditors. After this, I will take 200 forint for my mother’s debts […] and the rest we will divide in half, I will take half for myself, the other half [will be] for my brother.”93

These letters also offer an impression of the relationship between András and Sámuel. In addition to the fact that they corresponded with each other (though unfortunately they did not continue this correspondence), Sámuel offered his stepbrother advice through his son: “If God helps me to get well, I will write to my brother not to spend his share, but to buy properties, he can live from that, and his sons also after him, otherwise he will remain without money or property.”94 While recovering from an illness, he joked about his shaky handwriting: “Please greet my brother with my word and my sister-in-law, and the rest of the family. My brother should not learn my writing style, as I’m afraid he won’t gain anything with that change.”95 The other suggestive thing about their relationship is the way they referred to each other. Neither of them wrote about the other as his half-sibling, but as “my younger brother” or “my older brother.”

Rozsnyai seems to have excluded his daughters from the testament. But Rebeka and Zsuzsanna, his daughters from the first marriage, did not accept being left nothing by their father, and they attacked the procedure, arguing that the division of the property had been done on the basis of a copy and not the original testament. The succession trials dragged on to the next generation. A number of witnesses’ hearings were organized to investigate the fate of the testament and the documents on which the inheritance was divided. Their written proceedings were also kept in the family archive.96

In 1750, after his father and uncle had died, József composed a formidable argument, citing from the documents in the family archive in support of his contention that his aunts had no claim to any part of the inheritance. This argumentation shows that in 1712, when Rozsnyai listed the family documents for his eldest son, he also asked him letter, in which András committed not to withhold anything from his brother and also to share with Sámuel anything he would recover from Rozsnyai’s overdue salaries or other goods.97 This document also contains a fragment from Rozsnyai’s testament: “András lives in a good place, he should recommend his brother enter under count Mikes’s protection or in a position close the Gubernator, the president [of the Diet], or to the Chancellor, and they should use their services there until they are able to harvest my sweat [recover overdue salaries]. If my two sons receive the amount due, for which I have documents as proof, they have to divide it in two equal parts, and they should buy back my pawned properties, but they should also give 200 forints to my wife, Rebeka Fogarasi. My eldest son should not forget about Sámuel or my wife, and, under curse, he should not disobey any of my orders. I was being equitable when I left him out of my estates from Fogaras, and I disposed of everything freely. If both of my sons pass away without heirs, based on our law, properties these can go to my two girls or their heirs.”

The debts and pawns he left behind made the two stepbrothers work together to pay them off and secure the whole inheritance. If the curses he left in his testament and other writings to discourage them from hiding anything from each other did not worry them, the unclear situation of their inheritance brought the boys together. They were able, 27 years after his death, to recover their father’s overdue salaries and, up until then, they continued to manage their father’s financial obligations. Therefore, it is no surprise that they didn’t want to share anything with their sisters/half-sisters. As we can see, Rozsnyai used one more method to strengthen their relationship: he instructed András to help Sámuel to obtain a good position, so that they could both act for a common goal.

Conclusions

The lives of members of Early Modern stepfamilies which came into being because of divorce and the evidence of the relationships among the members of these families are rarely mentioned in the kinds of sources on which historians can draw in the study of the history of the institution of family. Nevertheless, it is important to consider these families, because they are good examples of how relationships are redefined after a divorce and how family members deal with the emotional burden of this separation. They also offer insights into how the arrival of new family members (stepparents and stepsiblings) influences the equilibrium inside the larger family.

In the case of the Rozsnyai family, the divorce disrupted the original structure of the family, but it did not cause it to disintegrate. The parent who left continued to be involved in the lives of the children, especially of his son, and as head of his second family, he ensured his firstborn’s position as heir. Even our scattered sources offer insights into the husband’s position towards his former wife. The appearance of the stepmother in the larger family was not a great challenge for the children, since they did not live in the same household. But interaction with her was inevitable, even if they didn’t share a complex relationship. Rozsnyai attempted to establish a connection between his second wife and his children from the first marriage and, through them, with their mother.

After the divorce, the father promised to ensure financial support for his children and take care of their education, but he was only able to establish a closer emotional bond with his son from his second marriage through his continuous presence and guidance. His oldest son was already a young adult when they reconnected and the estranged son helped his father manage his financial problems by taking advantage of assistance provided by his influential supporters.

Of the relationships among the halfsiblings, we have details only about the one established between Rozsnyai’s two sons, which developed in part due to the early introduction of the eldest son into his father’s financial matters and also due to the preparation of the younger son for the division of the inheritance. Through his testament, Rozsnyai also seems to have done his best to ensure that his two sons would have an amicable relationship, because he bequeathed them an equal share of his wealth.

Archival Sources

Arhivele Naţionale ale României, Serviciul Judeţean Mureş al Arhivelor Naţionale [Mureş County Branch of the Romanian National Archives], Târgu Mureş (SJAN-MS)

Colegiul Reformat din Târgu Mureş [The Reformed College from Tărgu Mureş], fond. nr. 96, inventory 1467: 992, 994, 998, 999, 1002, 1003, 1006, 1007, 1008, 1013, 1014, 1015, 1027, 1028, 1030, 1031, 1032, 1033, 1034, 1115, 1125, 1126, 1128.

Procese verbale ale tribunalului orăşenesc – audieri de martori, 1666–1698 [Protocols of the City Law Court], fond 263

Marosi Egyházmegye Levéltára [Archives of the Maros Diocese], Marosvásárhely

Protocolum I/1. Series causarum

Teleki Bolyai Könyvtár [Teleki-Bolyai Library], Marosvásárhely

Rozsnyai Dávid kalendáriumai [Calendars of Dávid Rozsnyai]: 22488, 22534, 22539, 22544, 22567, 22613, 22616, 22618, 22619, 22620, 22621, 0-34298, 22622

Biblioteca Centrală Universitară “Lucian Blaga” Cluj-Napoca, Colecţii speciale [“Lucian Blaga” Central University Library of Cluj-Napoca, Special Collections] (BCU Cluj)

Rozsnyai Dávid naplója [Dávid Rozsnyai’s Journal] Ms. 159

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Perrier, Silvye. “The Blended Family in Ancien Régime France: A Dynamic Family Form.” The Historry of the Family 3, no. 4 (1998): 459–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1081-602X(99)80258-9.

Pill, Cynthia J. “Stepfamilies: Redefining the Family.” Family Relations 39, no. 2 (April 1990): 186–93.

Roderick, Philipps. “Stepfamilies from a Historical Perspective.” Marriage and Family Review 26, no. 1–2 (1997): 5–18. https://doi.org/10.1300/J002v26n01_02.

Safley, Tomas Max. “Civic Morality and the Domestic Economy.” In The German People and the Reformation, edited by R. Po-Chia Hsia, 173–90. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press.

Sárdi, Margit S. “Rozsnyai Dávid.” In Rozsnyai Dávid, Koháryv István, Petrőczy Kata Szidónia és Kőszeghy Pál versei: Régi magyar költők tára, XVII. század [Poems of Dávid Rozsnyai, István Koháry, Kata Szidónia Petrőczy and Pál Kőszeghy: Early Hungarian poets, 17th century] no. 16, edited by Tibor Komlovszki, and Margit S. Sárdi, 534–38. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2000.

Schmidt, Ariadne, Isabelle Devos, and Bruno Blondé. “Introduction. Single and the City: Men and Women Alone in North-Western European Towns since the Late Middle Ages.” In Single Life and the City: 1200–1900, edited by Julie De Groot, Isabelle Devos, Ariadne Schmidt, 1–26. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Simonfi, János. “Rosnyay Dávid naptári följegyzései” [The diaries of Dávid Rozsnyai]. Erdélyi Múzeum 9 (1914): 108–26.

Sipos Gábor. Református eljegyzések, házasságok és válások az erdélyi traktusok jegyzőkönyveiben [Reformed engagements, marriages and divorce cases in the protocols of the Transylvanian districts]. In Sipos Gábor. Reformata Transylvanica: Tanulmányok az erdélyi református egyház 16–18. századi történetéhez [Reformata Transylvanica: Studies on the history of the Transylvanian Reformed Church in the 16–18th century], 127–58. Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2012.

Sipos Gábor. “Rozsnyai Dávid török deák válópere” [The divorce of Dávid Rozsnyai, Turkish scribe]. In Emlékkönyv Egyed Ákos születésének nyolcvanadik évfordulójára [Volume in honor of the 80th anniversary of Ákos Egyed], edited by Pál Judit, Sipos Gábor, 301–6. Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2010.

Stjerna, Kirsi Women and the Reformation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2009.

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Volume 8 Issue 4 CONTENTS

Noble Lineage as Stepfamily Network: An Eighteenth-Century Noble Autobiography from the Principality of Transylvania1

Andrea Fehér
Babeş-Bolyai University
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In this essay, I examine how an eighteenth-century Transylvanian nobleman constructed the meanings of kinship and family relations. The investigation primarily draws on the autobiographical work of László Székely (1716–1772), an educated and sensitive Transylvanian nobleman, who recorded the brief history of his family and himself. Being orphaned at a young age the author made his way out in life without the help of his biological parents, with the advice and support of his extended family: guardians, blood relatives, brothers-in-law; and other personal connections, such as servants, former colleagues, and friends. Due to the detailed description of his lineage and his constant preoccupation to record the major family events the present article offers an exhaustive study of the emotional bonds and kinship ties between some of the most important noble families from Transylvania.

Keywords: kinship networks, stepfamily, orphanhood, egodocuments, eighteenth-century Transylvania

Introduction: Egodocuments and Family History

The present inquiry is based on a recently edited Transylvanian autobiography written by Count László Székely (1716–1772).2 Initially his autobiography raised the interest of some historians, but due to the little importance this Count played in the political history of Transylvania, and due to the lack of political information from his narratives, the full edition of his egodocuments was delayed. Some parts, conside red probably of greater interest, such as his journey to Vienna, or his autobiographical poem were previously published.3 The new, recent edition contains all the narratives included in the initial manuscript, not just all Székely’s personal retrospective writings but also the continuation of his autobiography by his second wife, Zsuzsánna Toroczkai (1730–1788),4 and then a last narrative written by a family-servant, Zsigmond Kis,5 the administrator of Toroczkai.6

László Székely began to arrange his personal narratives at the age of 47, without a living heir, almost convinced that with him, since his brother Ádám (1724–1789) did not want to marry, the Székely family will disappear. The family’s countship, which his father Ádám Székely (1679–1730) had acquired a few years before he was born, and in particular the disdain of Transylvanian society for the “homines novi,” as his grandfather László Székely the Elder (1644–1692) was considered, exerted a decisive influence on him. His autobiography aims to justify not only one, but three life-stories: that of his grandfather and father too, contributing in this way to the construction of the family memory as well.7 Székely was constantly frustrated by the socially low descent of his lineage, therefore a great part of the autobiography is concerned with his ancestors, and family alliances, since the kinships gained through marriage were very important for the author. The present inquiry suggests that these relationships were complicated, and there is no place for generalizations. Families belonging to the same cultural and social group exhibit signs of different emotional behavior from case to case, blood bonds being frequently overwritten by friendships based on sympathy. Family and kinship ties were determining factors, but it seems that in the Székely family, beyond the network of biological or step relatives the alliances of friendship were just as important.8

Orphaned at a very fragile age, Székely was trying to find his place in society with the help of his blood-relatives, distant kin and friends. Therefore the autobiography offers an exceptional and detailed insight into 18th century family-life, into the construction of kinship-networks and family-relationships. From these one could easilly examine the supportive networks which stood at the disposal of a noble orphan.

“Complaints about the Bad Fate of the Origin” – The Paternal Lineage

Since a mandatory structural part of modern personal narratives is the one concerning lineage, it is not difficult to reconstruct the kinship network of this family that had only survived for three generations in Transylvania. Székely touches with unmatched detail upon the kinship acquired both on the mother’s and the father’s side.

The history of a family begins with marriage. Transylvanian narrative sources keep emphasizing the importance of harmonious coexistence between partners, and it seems that the authors themselves sought successful marriages. While reading the memoir literature of the time, one may even get the feeling that with the exception of some memoir writers, everyone lived in a happy marriage, and married according to their individual wishes, for by this time love had already been interlocked with marriage for a while.9 The reality is, of course, far more nuanced. These memoirs report on tragedies, divorces, and, in the language of the time, on so-called forced marriages arranged by relatives. It is true, memoir writers mostly disapproved of these unions considered favorable by parents and relatives.10

The marriages within the Székely family are amongst those that are a result of individual choice rather than of family decision or coercion.11 The best example for this is the marriage of László Székely the Elder, who managed to obtain the hand of Sára Bulcsesdi (b.1656–1708), raised in a very influential family – a pursuit where suitors belonging to more well-to-do families with more important lineages had failed.

László Székely, the Elder, due to his role played in the history of the principality, is an active, –and not a particularly beloved– character of Transylvanian memoirs. Miklós Bethlen (1642–1716) had written the following about him: “László Székely was a poor, two-horse nobleman from Jenő, and was such a favorite of the Prince [Mihály Apaffi, 1632–1690] in the role of Postmaster that his wife and all his relations and counsellors did not do as much in his view as László Székely,”12 and this is somewhat completed by György Rettegi (1718–1786): “together with Mihály Teleki (1634–1690) they have sold the country and emerged at the same time.”13 The quotations point rather to the low origin and unscrupulous character than the actual lineage. The present autobiography does not reveal much more about the “great” László Székely either: all we find out is that he was the son of János Székely; the author does not record anything of importance about the sisters of his grandfather who remained in Hungary–it seems that their fate was not being monitored attentively. But the modest origins of his grandfather bothered the autobiographer, since he constantly feels the need to justify the actions of his ancestor.14

Unlike in the case of the grandfather, quite a lot is known about the grandmother, Sára Bulcsesdi.15 Luckily for him, László Székely, was not familiar with the contents of Romanian chronicles, because otherwise he would have had to justify this lineage as well. The reason is that Sára’s grandfather, Diicu Buicescu (ca.1610–1659), just like László Székely –according to public opinion– exhibited serious shortcomings in his character, defects that could not be erased from the chronicles, not even through him founding numerous monasteries. The careerist nephew of Matei Basarab (1588–1654), ruler of Wallachia, was also infamous for his intrigues, as well as his negative influence on the ruler.16 Diicu’s son, Preda (†1656), became a victim of the family’s pursuit for titles and wealth, being sacrificed on the altar of politics and forced to marry Anna Szalánczi.17 Death, however, had ended the marriage quite early on, but not before the birth of the common child, Sára, who inherited many Wallachian properties through her father.

Following the death of her husband, Anna Szalánczi married “old” István Jósika, from whom she gave birth to four children: Imre, István, Dániel and Mária. Sára Bulcsesdi had thus four half siblings, one of them, the bachelor Dániel later taking under his guardianship the orphaned memoir writer, László Székely, and his brothers, Ádám and József (1726–1736). It seems that Dániel Jósika was closest to his elder half-sister Sára, because in his youth, according to the autobiography, he was raised in her court, and spent a lot of time in the company of the young married couple. Otherwise it was not unusual for sisters to take care of their bachelor brothers, not to mention that the time spent together influenced also the emotional relations between siblings. It is presumed that the bound between siblings was always stronger for those who lived a long time together or near each other.18

Table 1. The siblings and half-siblings of Sára Bulcsesdi

The Transylvanian Early-Modern Marriage Market: The Székely–Bulcsesdi Marriage

Luckily, many interesting antecedents of the Székely–Bulcsesdi marriage are known to us, which sheds light on the fact that the early modern marriage market did not always develop according to the expectations, and that the calculations of relatives could often be overwritten by the young girl’s feelings. Namely, Sára Bulcsesdi had several suitors who were all above her later husband in terms of lineage.19 Her first suitor and fiancée was a member of the Bethlen family. The family’s marital intentions were conveyed by the memoir writer Miklós Bethlen, who proposed to Sára on behalf of his brother Pál (1648–1686). But the engagement was broken off to the consternation of Transylvanian society due to the objections of Klára Fekete, stepmother of the Bethlen brothers. According to Bethlen’s autobiography, Klára Fekete had a great influence on her husband and interfered “too often” in the private life of her same-aged stepchildren, especially when she hindered the engagement of Pál Bethlen. The stepmother managed to ruin the emotional balance of the family, turning the father against his sons, and probably as a result of these tensions the engagement was eventually broken. Following the “unsuccessful engagement” of his brother, Miklós Bethlen visited Sára Bulcsesdi once again with similar intents, this time on behalf of his friend Boldizsár Macskási (ca. 1650–ca. 1700). His argumentation conveys the views of traditionalist Transylvanian nobility: “I found the opportunity of saying, among other things, to István Jósika, her stepfather that I would rather give my daughter to a true-blue nobleman of ancient lineage than to a postmaster.” To what extent could Jósika influence his stepdaughter is unknown, but Bethlen’s quote suggests that whatever the stepfather personal opinion was, Sára preferred “the beardless and somewhat younger man of her choice rather than the widowed beard,”20 thus the suitor did not succeed. We may also suppose that a promising political career, and a fortune acquired in short time have overwritten social rigidity and seclusion,21 even though Transylvanian society tended to be still suspicious of homo novus-es.

The betrothal and the celebration confirming it were looked at with repulsion by contemporaries; the grandchild, however, proudly mentions that his grandfather “managed to marry in such a way that even today is rare to find, not only back in the days; in short: he married into a rich family.”22

The marriage was rich not only in financial terms, but also considering the number of offspring. The pair gave birth to eight common children, only two of them reaching adulthood: the father of the memoir writer, Ádám, and his younger brother Mózes (1685–1712), who died a brutal death in 1712, i.e. before the birth of the author. Sára Bulcsesdi gave birth to eight children in ten years, at the time of her husband’s death in 1692 the youngest of them being only four, the eldest fourteen years old. She decided to remarry after five years of widowhood.

Between Biological Kin and Step-family Relations: The Bulcsesdi–Haller Marriage

In his memoir, Székely relates the second marriage of his grandmother as well, although it did not bring about blood bonds, not to mention that he does not consider this marriage of Sára Bulcsesdi a successful one. The author’s objections were on one hand of religious nature, since the up until then zealously charitable woman of the Reformed Church married a Catholic lord to the contemporaries’ great surprise, on the other hand by economic reasons: “There is no doubt, that my grandmother’s second marriage differed a lot from her first one, which can be easily tracked down in the testament she left behind, and which I have read. I don’t say anyhing about the family, since that is a fine old noble one, but taking others in consideration, and I am not going to discuss it further. What good it is for me to mention how much we lost? It was God’s will, so had to be.”23

What motivated Sára Bulcsesdi to marry the twice widowed István Haller (ca.1657–1710) would be hard to explain in the absence of her personal narratives. At the time, she was not in need of a man’s support, her children were not endangered, her husband’s family could not claim them or their inheritance since their existence was unknown to them. Usually women in Transylvania remarried, including not only those of the lower nobility but also the aristocracy,24 even more often than in Hungary,25 expecially if they had small children.26 But this was not Sára’s case. Her reasons were presumably financial, or power-related, because it was easier for a woman to face everyday problems with the support of a man.27 Not to mention that she had still two young males in her houshold, who had to be married at some point, therefore a strong aliance with one of the most influencial families of the time was desirable.

Moreover, István Haller did not come into this marriage on his own, bringing six small children with him. His son Gábor (1685–1723), born from his first wife, Mária Kemény (ca.1656–1685), had not even turned one when he became an orphan. Finding a caring woman for the infant was an urgent matter, thus came into the family as second wife Borbála Torma (1670–1697), who later gave birth to three girls and two boys. But they, too, lost their mother soon: László (1697–1719), the youngest one, was just a baby when his mother died thus leaving István Haller to a second widowhood. This is when the third wife, the 41-year-old Sára Bulcsesdi arrived into the family. Her adolescent sons probably did not play a lot with the Haller children, from which the oldest was 12 and the youngest one-year-old. We don’t know how much time Ádám and Mózes Székely (18 and nine years old) spent in the company of their stepfather and stepsiblings, but since the Haller-Bulcsesdi marriage lasted ten years, there was enough time to develop emotional attachments. During these years Ádám got twice married, and we know that Haller actively promoted the making of an advantageous second marriage for his stepson.28

The relationship between Sára Bulcsesdi’s sons and their stepfather was interrupted however by the mother’s death. Tensions arouse when Haller refused to give Sára Bulcsesdi’s corpse over to her sons and to take her beside her first husband to the church on Farkas Street in Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca); not to mention that Haller refused to pay for the funeral services. The conflict is recounted in detail by Ádám Székely’s former brother-in-law, the diarist István Wesselényi (1673–1734).29 Wesselényi does not only write about the tensions, but about the funeral ceremony of Sára Bulcsesdi as well. Fulfilling the role of the main ceremony master (főgazda), he recorded every detail regarding organization, from expenses to listing the persons with functions during the funeral. Through him we find out that Sára Bulcsesdi was eventually buried in Szeben (Sibiu), the funeral masters (temetési gazdák) and wailers being members of the extended family; amongst mourners were, beside Ádám and Mózes Székely, her stepchildren from Haller’s first two marriages.30

István Haller after his third wife’s death took a wealthy widow as his fourth wife, but death separated them after one year. István Haller did not enrich the list of stereotypically evil stepparents, although he could have that chance since he managed to marry more than most of his contemporaries, moreover he managed to live in all the possible blended family-formations.31 His first marriage followed a somewhat normal path, both parties being single; for the second one the widowed man chose a maiden for the upbringing of his orphaned child;32 and in the third and fourth marriages it was two widows who tied together their own and their orphans’ fates. Thus, Haller had raised his children in a complex blended family: beside his offsprings from the first two marriages he had presumably raised the children of his third–and most definitely also of his fourth–wives, too; a “sad result” of this coexistence would be the marriage between Kata Bethlen (1700–1758) and her stepbrother, László Haller.33 In her memoir, Kata Bethlen never speaks negatively of her stepfather, although she had only spent one year in his household, during which time she would experience his unmatched tolerance.

It is clear from the enumeration of the parents’ genealogy that, as we shall see further on, the great sympathies were directed towards the relatives on the maternal side, since László Székely, did not manage to establish life-long friendships with anyone on the father’s side. The grandmother’s, Sára Bulcsesdi’s half-siblings are only occasionally mentioned by the author, excepting one, the guardian, Dániel Jósika, who is a constant figure in the first part of the autobiography, but the relation the author and his great-uncle had was not based on mutual sympathy. We know barely anything about the family of the grandfather, László Székely, the Elder, since he did not keep in touch with his relatives from Hungary. Only two of the Bulcsesdi-Székely children reached adulthood, and only the memoir writer’s father had started a family, therefore there were not many relatives to be inherited. Two persons are prominent in the enumeration of collateral relatives, and curiously both belonged to the Haller family: László (ca.1717–1751), the son of his father’s stepbrother, Gábor Haller (1685–1723); and Farkas Bethlen (1705–1763), Kata Bethlen’s brother, “my adopted and dearly beloved Bruder,” whose short characterization we encounter for the first time during the enumeration of the Haller relatives.

 

 

Supportive Kinship Ties Across Generations: Aunts and Cousins on the Maternal Side

The reason why László Székely presents in such detail the marriages of his maternal grandmother and of her sibling is that, as we shall see, the most reliable family members for him were on this side of the kinship. As recent studies have demonstrated the fate of orphans was dependent on kinship-networks.34 This is perhaps the most important part in the description of his lineage, where the presentation of the maternal side–the less problematic one–takes place.

Table 4. The extended family of Kata and Borbála Boros. Siblings and half siblings.

 

The author describes in detail the course of Borbála’s (†a.1734) and Kata’s (†a.1742) life, the daughters of his great-grandparents, László Boros and Zsuzsánna Gálffi (†1742). Both Borbála Boros and Kata Boros married twice. László Székely knew nothing more of his maternal grandmother Borbála’s first marriage than the husband’s last name; he also only mentions in passing the boy János born from Péter Nádudvari, without stating his first name. It seems he would not play any part in the family’s life later on. Much more thorough is the presentation of the second marriage of Borbála to Pál Rhédei (1661–1720), especially because the Rhédei family served as cure to the already mentioned frustrations regarding ancestry,35 since the Rhédeis had obtained acknowledgement of their nobility in Hungary as well. From Borbála Boros’s marriage to Pál Rhédei were born the mother of the autobiographer, Kata (1700–1729), and her siblings, József (ca.1702–1744), Zsuzsánna (1716–1771) and Mária. The author himself mentions it as an interesting fact that his mother and his grandmother were pregnant at the same time, and that his aunt Zsuzsánna was a few months younger than him: “It is quite remarkable that my mother, Kata Rhédei was already married to my father, and when my mother was half-time with me, my grandmother became pregnant with her daughter, Zsuzsánna, wife of Ferenc Wesselényi, and therefore I was born a half year before my mother’s sister Zsuzsánna.”36

From his maternal uncles, József played an important role in Székely’s life, being referred to as “rather a father, than uncle to me.” József was present, together with his wife Kata Bíró (†a.1764), at several important events of Székely’s life, for example at his wedding as ceremony masters,37 and when he left for Vienna for half a year, they took care of his daughter from his first marriage, the then only six-months-old Zsuzsánna (1743–1744). Nothing proves better Székely’s deep sympathy for his uncle than the emphasis on József Rhédei’s death in both of his autobiographical works, the one written in prose and the one in verse. At the level of narration, the part relating Rhédei’s death is certainly the most dramatically constructed one among the passages dealing with the loss of male relatives, especially because the death of the uncle was preceded by the loss of the author’s first wife: “They did not dare to tell me about the death of József Rhédei […] after understanding that my poor uncle has passed I was terribly saddened, I was so confused, that when I started reading the Bible I could not see the letters from my tears.” 38

Although the half-siblings born from Borbála Boros’s two marriages did not get along very well with each other, the Rhédei children coexisted really well with their cousins. The children of Ádám (1674–1704), brother of Pál Rhédei, were raised together with the latter’s children after the loss of their mother, and based on László Székely’s account, it seems that the relationship between cousins and uncles was very harmonious: “[Ádám Rhédei was] an uncle whom my mother and her siblings loved tenderly.”39 Being raised together must have strengthened this alliance, which had perpetuated itself: Druzsiánna Rhédei (†a.1764) “an undeniable kind kin” as the author mentions, but especially Éva (†1750) and Pál (1716–1764), also due to a certain generational shift, maintained a strong friendship with László Székely. Pál played a role in the forming of the first family nucleus, too, accompanying the author to Bonchida (Bonţida) during courting, and László would have been the ceremony master at Éva’s wedding. But Éva had suddenly died under tragic circumstances, thus Székely had to take on the role of funeral master. Éva’s death had deeply affected the author, since the emotional bond between them was very strong: “many should indeed possess such love and honesty as this poor soul had toward her siblings and other relatives too, and especially to me.”40 The narrative techniques used in the account of the funeral ceremony and of the grief being similar to the ones used in József Rhédei’s case. The affectional bound could be easily traced through this life-cycle-related duties kindred perform in one another’s life, or in this case death. It is not a coincidence, that most of our Transylvanian ego-documents, however laconic, always enumerate the occasions when authors performed roles at baptisms, weddings or funerals.

Székely László relates with this same thoroughness the marriages of his grandmother’s siblings: the first marriage of Kata Boros to Pál Bagosi, and also the life journey of their daughter Erzsébet (ca. 1703–1764), who married into the Bánffi family; then the fate of Kata Boros’s sons born from her second marriage to László Vaji. There is more to this thorough account than the author’s drive to present the divergence of family networks. The interest in horizontal kinship ties was based on individual sympathies. Székely mentions Erzsébet Bagosi as a deeply beloved aunt, who had been, together with her husband Farkas Bánffi (1701–1761), a great promoter of Székely’s first marriage. Farkas Bánffi was the one to urge the girl’s family for an answer, brought engagement gifts back and forth, and served as master of ceremony during the wedding together with his wife.41 The author describes Farkas Bánffi as “rather father than uncle to me” as well, like József Rhédei. Furthermore, László (†1782) and Mihály Vaji (†1783), although they were cousins of Székely’s mother, belonged to the author’s generation, and are quite frequently mentioned in the memoir as childhood friends. What is more, Mihály also accompanied the author on his journey to Vienna. In contrast to the children of the Nádudvari and the Rhédei family, the half-siblings born from the Bagosi and the Vaji marriages, lived together in a beautiful friendship according to the memoir.

The author’s great grandmother, Zsuzsánna Gálffi, who lived almost 100 years, got to see seven adult grandchildren from her two daughters, and 30 great-grandchildren, and only one year had separated her from meeting the grandchild of her grandchild. Her daughters had raised their children and often their nephews and nieces in extended families. The generational shifts, the great age gaps between siblings, half siblings and cousins resulted in very interesting kinship networks, uncles and aunts being in certain cases younger than their nephews or nieces.

László Székely’s Childhood as an Orphan

As studies of Early Modern marriage markets reveal, first generation marriages were the most important ones, since these laid the foundations for the future of family members without grants of nobility by opening the way for better and better marriages.42 In the Székely family this was particularly true in the autobiographer’s father, Ádám’s case, who managed to enter into even more advantageous marriages than his father, the “great” László Székely.43 On the first occasion, Ádám Székely, with his freshly acquired countship (1700), announced his marriage intents to one of the most influential Transylvanian families. His marriage to the governor György Bánffi’s (1660–1708) daughter, Anna (1686–1704), was cut very short by death, leaving no chance for providing a successor. As mentioned earlier, Ádám Székely maintained a very good network of family relations, friendships and links that paid off after several years, too. At his second wedding his former brothers- and sisters-in-law performed some very important duties: István Wesselényi was groomsman, and his wife lady of honor; Dénes Bánffi (1688–1709) was bridesman, and his sister maid of honor.44 This second marriage to Sára Naláczi (1692–1760) however, was also cut short, this time by divorce. His third marriage in 1715 must have been strongly motivated by the wish to produce an heir.45 From his third wife, Katalin Rhédei, was born the autobiographer himself, on September 4, 1716.

The birth of László Székely, was not devoid of agitation, the 17-year-old mother almost losing her life during labour. Otherwise during his infant- and early childhood, the author himself was also continually in a state between life and death: “from the very beginning, from my birth until I was almost 14 years old, I struggled continuously with different diseases, so I grew up wearing clothes made for my funeral.”46 In a feverish state, he often listened to old women preparing for his funeral, among them especially his mother’s old servant spoke openly in front of the child about his death, as though she wished to hasten it. This was because the old servant, Mrs. Galgóczi did not like the boy, what is more, she rejoiced in tormenting and frightening him. László’s childish imagination was invaded by the image of the evil witch, master of life and death, and not even time could alter this impression of her; he did not even dare to eat her cooking: “This pour old woman never loved me, and I was rather scared off her too, after my parent’s death I avoided eating what she cooked.”47 But by that time his parents’ love provided some healing for all his childhood pain and fear: “But all my sorrow and pain was sweetened by the gracious providence and diligence of my sweet parents.”

Naturally, in time the family was expanded with new members. László was followed by Ádám I (b-d. 1719), Mária (1722–1728), Ádám II (1724), and József (1726–1736). Ádám I died as an infant, Mária at the age of eight. Soon the children had to face the death of their parents. László Székely was 14, Ádám six, and József four years old when they lost first their mother, and then, their father. József also died at the age of ten, therefore only two children from the third marriage reached adulthood, László and Ádám, who were rather separated than brought closer by their orphanhood. The brothers did not even have time to deepen their relationship, because Ádám was only one-year old when László was sent to college, and except a short period when the Székely boys were spending time together in Szeben (Sibiu) in order to learn German, they had never lived under the same roof. Due to the customs of child circulation, siblings, not only orphans, often spent their childhood years separately, in the company of other children such as their cousins.48

The author, being of legal age, was in the position to name a guardian for the three of them since his parents did not leave behind a will. He decided upon Dániel Jósika, the bachelor half-brother of his paternal grandmother: “After my parents died, I remained orphan at the age of 14. When, because my poor parents did not make any testaments known to me, being the first born of my father, in 1730, I made my poor great-uncle Dániel Jósika to be guardian for me and my brothers, therefore for seven years, until the spring of 1737, I truly lived on orphan bread.”49

The author’s choice had a background, too: the unmarried Jósika had promised Ádám Székely the Elder that he would leave his fortune to the latter’s children. Probably this had also played a part in the fact that the relatives did not object to the autobiographer’s choice. The ego-document later reveals that the author ended up utterly regretting his decision. Dániel Jósika’s educational methods were considered outrageous even in those times. The guardian verbally and physically abused the elder boy left to his care, what is more, during his time spent at home, Székely often slept in the company of servants or on the dusty floor next to greyhounds, for he was not allowed to sleep in a bed. His clothing also resembled rather that of the servants. This may remind us of other barefoot and badly dressed little noblemen, who spent the nights on the cold floor; but just like István Apor (1638–1704) or Mihály Cserei (1667–1756),50 László Székely also considered that it was due to this harsh upbringing that he became a responsible man: “In a word, he kept me in an extremely miserable state. It is true that if a young man is left alone, and he is not tempered, hardly would become a good man out of a thousand, and even if all things would have gone in the world as I wished […] nothing good would come out of me.” As Székely argues, corporal punishment as a tool to solicit respect and obedience towards fathers was applied more by Protestants, since Catholics were much more indulgent with their children, which he attributes to the influence of Jesuits.51

The sorrow of orphanhood, it seems, was felt not only in the lack of (parental) love, but first of all also in the change in financial circumstances.52 László Székely would have wished somehow to suffer rather from the reduction of his wardrobe or harsh treatment, but not through the lack of side expenses necessary for the establishment of relation networks, which would develop during dinners or wine consumption. This also hurt his vanity, his college mates and fellows often mocking their “ragged” Count colleague. But orphanhood also put an end to the Székely boys’ prospects for further studies. While László simply thought of it with regret, Ádám, made great financial sacrifices in his adulthood in order to attend Western academies.

By his authority as a guardian, Jósika was tied to the children left to his care through different interests. These were, first of all, financial interests, and although theoretically it was his Christian obligation to compensate for the absence of parental love, it is obvious that more rational reasons had guided him.53 Jósika did not treat the Székely boys the same way: he did not behave badly towards Ádám, and he even liked the youngest one, József, which was certainly also due to the fact that József’s youth made him more impressionable than his brothers.54 László Székely was unable to do anything against the abuses. Normally it was the family’s duty to protect the child from the abuse of guardians, since the family network had to counterbalance the authority of a guardian in major conflicts.55 But since the author himself made this otherwise logical choice (Jósika was his closest male relative on the father’s side) no kindred interfered in the dispute between the two.

The severity of the guardian had to be suffered only occasionally. Székely spent most of his childhood at college, and he often suggests in his autobiography that he could not have been in a better place in Transylvania then because 50 fellow students coming from noble families were there simultaneously.56 College years were followed by three years of apprenticeship spent in the service of the prothonotary (ítélőmester) András Szentkereszti (†1736), the one-time prefect of his grandfather at the chancellery. The Szentkereszti family did not take care of the author only with regards to the “great” László Székely, but also due to the insistence on relatives. Székely’s aunt on the maternal side, Zsuzsánna, younger than him with a few months, had recently married Ferenc Wesselényi, who intervened with the solitarily living Szentkereszti to take in László Székely. This is how Székely entered into the friendly environment of the Szentkereszti family for a while, which somewhat eased the pain of emotional wounds caused by his guardian. He later formed life-long friendships at the prothonotar’s table, and would roam the dusty roads of Transylvania together with Szentkereszti’s grandson, Sámuel (1721–1772), in search of a marriage partner. This friendship was eventually strengthened by marriage too, the two becoming brothers-in-law.57

Székely, freed from under his guardian with the help of András Szentkereszti, did not know how to manage his freedom and fortune at first, wasting it, making mistake after mistake.

Table 5. The lineage and marriages of László Székely

The Autobiographer’s First Marriage

As a result of his grandfather’s property acquisitions László Székely came by a considerable financial capital, as well as a noteworthy social capital through his father’s marriages. Thus with his own marriage he did not really need to achieve anything, and since as an orphan at the age of marriage he could make an individual decision with the assistance of distant kin and close friends. By that time his guardian Jósika was no longer present in the life of the author, since a few years earlier, when he reached the legal age, Székely terminated the guardianship. In the absence of parents and guardians the support of distant kin and friends was extremely important, since in early modern times the majority of youth were orphans or half-orphans when making their marriages.58 Following the custom of repeated marriages, he also consciously tried to strengthen an existing alliance with the same family:59 his first wife was a member of the Bánffi family, the also orphaned Kata Bánffi (1724–1745), niece of his father’s first wife.

Kata Bánffi lost her mother, Ágnes Toroczkai (1703–1733), when she was nine years old, then after two years, in 1735, her father, György Bánffi (1688–1735). Kata’s upbringing was taken on by her paternal aunt, Klára Bánffi (1693–1767), whose husband, Ádám Bethlen (1691–1748) was named guardian of the orphans by testament. Kata also had a brother, Dénes (1723–1780), and four sisters, Klára (†1750), Ágnes (1731–1754), Anna (†1740) and Zsuzsánna. The Bánffi orphans thus grew up together with their guardians’ children, Ádám (1719–1772) and Gábor Bethlen (1712–1768),60 who loved their cousins as siblings, proof of this being the role they played in marrying them off.61 But it was not only the guardians’ immediate family that took care of the Bánffi orphans; the other Bethlen and Bánffi relatives had also spent time in Bonchida. Székely’s autobiography emphasized several times how supportively the kinship ties within the Bethlen family operated. The siblings: Kata Bethlen (the wife of József Teleki (†1732) by this time), Imre (1698–1765) (with his wife Klára Gyulai (†1757) and Ádám spent not only holidays, but also the everydays together. The author’s courtship was thus observed with attention by many interested people who most certainly voiced their opinion on it, too: “The wives of József Teleki and Imre Bethlen [the aunts of the bride, sisters of Ádám Bethlen] often said that they have never seen such a shy suitor as I was, although they constantly observed me, to see if I stare at my future bride, but they couldn’t catch me.”62 The autobiography enumerates the aunts for several times, therefore we can be sure that every gesture of the young couple was carefully measured, and not just in order to be sure that nothing inappropriate happen, but to analyze the character of the suitor as well. The whole family acted as mediators, taking a great interest in the future of their relatives, fulfilling in this way their Cristian obligation toward them.63

Table 6. Ádám Bethlen and Klára Bánffi’s household with their biological and foster children

 

We meet the foster family for the first time in the description provided on the occasion of the official bride-visit. Every serious marriage plan began by visiting the home of the chosen girl. It seems that this did not happen in such an official manner, with such accompaniment and grandeur as we may read in Péter Apor’s (1676–1752) Metamorphosis Transylvaniae,64 through diligent workings of parents and guardians, but mostly with the help of young bachelors and friends,65 as earlier Transylvanian memoirs seem to confirm.66 The first encounter between László Székely and his first wife was organized with the help of Kata’s cousins, especially that of Gábor, who helped the loving couple from the beginning.

The otherwise disliked guardian, Dániel Jósika entered the scene only after these steps, when Székely, putting aside his childhood wounds, requested it from him to ask Kata Bánffi’s hand on his behalf. The custom was to ask the family’s most influential member to carry out the proposal.67 But the answer was delayed by four months. Eventually it was Farkas Bánffi, husband of Erzsébet Bagosi, Székely’s aunt, who urged things forward at the girl’s house. Theoretically the proposal of the young bachelor was being considered first by the head of the family or the most influential men, but as the autobiography clearly suggests, the opinions of the family’s female members were also taken into account. The final decision, with few exceptions was left to the young ones.68

During courtship and the bride-visit it was friends who had a greater role; during the proposal and the exchange of engagement gifts – the relatives. At the wedding ceremony the two kinship networks met: the bearers of good tidings (örömmondók – Székely’s college mate and dear friend Sámuel Szentkereszti; his mother’s cousin, Pál Rhédei), the wreath runners (koszorúfuttatók – Mihály Vaji, his mother’s cousin, who played a great role in winning the wreath), the bridesman (vőfély – his younger brother Ádám), the groomsman (násznagy – Ferenc Wesselényi, husband of Székely’s aunt), the lady of honor (nyoszolyóasszony – the wife of Ferenc Wesselényi Zsuzsánna Rhédei, Székely’s aunt), the maid of honor (nyoszolyóleány – Krisztina Bánffi (b.1726), daughter of his mother’s cousin, Erzsébet Bagosi). At mealtime, helpers were Székely’s friend Farkas Kun and the several masters of ceremony: Zsigmond Bánffi and his wife, Erzsébet Bagosi, Farkas Bánffi, József Rhédei and his wife, Kata Bíró.

Székely served the family of his first wife in his quality of brother-in-law, too, because he helped a lot during Dénes Bánffi’s courtship and in acquiring a positive answer from the Barcsai family, and it was also him asking for the hand of Klára, his wife’s younger sister, on behalf of Sámuel Szentkereszti, his college friend. Kata’s brother, Dénes would become a constant figure in the young married couple’s life. Among the siblings it seems that it was these two who were closest to each other. They lived also near, and when they were not at their estates, they ran a common household (in Szeben and Vienna).69

Just like his father’s first marriage, the author’s first marriage did not last long either, due to Kata’s sever lung-illness. As he notes numerous times, “the Székely family has no luck with the Bánffi girls.” Kata Bánffi spent the last weeks of her life with her foster family, at Dénes Bánffi’s mansion in Csanád (Cenade), where the rest of the relatives were also dwelling. Klára Bánffi insisted to be by her foster daughter’s side during her last moments. The Bánffi family did not leave László Székely by his own in his widowhood either; both his brother-in-law and the foster parents of his wife would be by his side in the following years of his life.

Székely’s Remarriage and Second Family

The thought of remarrying was alien to László Székely for a while, who believed that “second marriages were rarely lucky.”70 It seemed extremely complicated to fill the void left by the ideal wife who had died young. But because his younger brother, Ádám Székely wished not to marry, the 32-year-old author had to ensure the family’s survival by producing offsprings.

Table 7. The second wife Zsuzsánna Toroczkai’s family

Székely started to think about remarrying under pressure of friends, who recommended the Toroczkai girls and praised especially the beauty of the younger one, Zsuzsánna Toroczkai. Even though Zsuzsánna had an elder maiden sister, and Székely was warned that there was little probability for “the younger one being married off before the elder one,”71 he chose Zsuzsánna, which probably induced the older sister’s later resentment towards his brother-in-law. The bride-visit was organized by his brother-in-law in his first marriage, Dénes Bánffi, with whom the author had also discussed his views on the Toroczkai girl: “After dinner I went to sleep over the Count’s apartments, when only the two of us remained, the Count asked me if I liked the person, to which I replied, that I really liked her, and if they would give her to me, I would gladly marry her. To which Master Dénes replied, if I trust him, he would ask her for me.”72

However, the second marriage faced trials already in its incipient stages. Dénes Bánffi, charged with the proposal, was preparing for widowhood (since his wife was suffering in child-bed), and in the meantime he ended up taking a liking to the younger Toroczkai girl himself, thus he did not rush to initiate a discussion on Székely’s marriage intentions with the girl’s parents.73 Eventually László Székely received unexpected help from a former college mate, András Barabás, who at the time was in the service of the Toroczkai family, and would be the one bearing the good news to Székely.74 The exchange of engagement gifts, as with the first marriage, happened without the pair meeting, the Toroczkais being represented in this matter by the prospective bride’s sister, Klára Toroczkai (†1753). The narration of marriage rituals is succinct; one could say it conforms completely to our expectations regarding Transylvanian memoirs, since it narrows down to the short description of the guests list, relatives and friends with more important functions in the wedding ceremony. We meet Farkas Bánffi again, this time as groomsman, next to him the wife of Ádám Kemény Druzsiánna Rhédei as lady of honor, and her sister Éva as maid of honor. Therefore, the most important roles are again played by the maternal lineage. Farkas Bánffi the husband of Erzsébet Bagosi, Druzsiánna and Éva, cousins of Kata Rhédei, the author’s mother. Ádám Székely not only did not take on the role of bridesman, but we do not find him amongst the guests either, the brothers’ relationship having completely deteriorated by this time. The author was actually very concerned regarding this matter, since he tried in his testament to protect his second wife from any future unpleasantness coming from Ádám Székely, by that time very influent and powerful: “And since the Lord has not given me any successors so far, and foreseeing that if my brother mocked a lot even with me, his older brother, he would be all the more unpleasant with my widow.”75

The relationship with the in-laws, however, began to form. The author’s second marriage differed in more regards from the first one. The prospective bride was a maiden, who had not experienced the sorrows of a long orphanhood since she had lost her father only one year before her wedding. Thus Székely had to obtain the approval of the mother and gain the sympathies of the biological siblings. The autobiography – and the two memoir fragments, that of the author’s wife and of the administrator Zsigmond Kis–suggests that in contrast to the Rhédei, Bethlen and Bánffi families mentioned in the previous subchapters, sibling relations in the Toroczkai family tended to be more often tense than loving. Just like with László and Ádám Székely, there were insurmountable disagreements between the Toroczkai siblings, too, which would only periodically ease up. The pressures did, of course, only intensify with time, and the clueless Székely approached his future wife’s family with great trust during his courtship.

The second marriage is barely present at the narrative level, which could be of course explained structurally. While the recounting of the first marriage can be said to follow the scheme of typical framed narratives where the subsequent biographical episodes bear their own chapter titles, the second marriage unfolds day by day as an ongoing experience.76 This is where the narration about the children born in the second marriage finds its place, children whom the memoir mentions more rarely than we would expect from an author “living an unusually deep emotional life.” We would like to avoid the usual trap of searching for excuses and explanations for why the descriptions of hunts and sledding adventures were allotted more narrative space than the children. It is a fact though that the author’s daughter from his first marriage was only six months old when the parents parted with her for half a year; the children from the second marriage were also divided between parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts.77 The Transylvanian ego-documents suggest that the uprbinging of children was not only the responsibility of the nuclear family, but of the extended family, adult siblings cooperating and sharing in the task that secured the future of the noble famlies. Klára (1751–1754) spent the three years of her life at her maternal grandmother, Klára Toroczkai (†1754), unlike Zsigmond (1750–1754), who was raised by his parents, and only spent shorter periods at his grandmother’s court.

Zsigmond Kis’s accounts tell us also of the presence of other children, too.78 László Székely does not mention the eight Katonai–Barcsai orphans whom he had raised, educated and then properly married off. We don’t know the lineage-connection between the author and the Barcsai family, we only know that they were distant kin. The children are therefore missing, although a flitting entry at the end of the autobiography does mention Klári Katonai’s (“my dear little daughter”) illness,79 we do not find out anything more about the child or her siblings. Székely expressed his emotions often, sometimes even in an artistic way, such is the case with his autobiographical poem, and he enjoyed recalling the emotional bounds he nourished with his family and friends. The reason for the absence of the Katonai–Barcsai orphans, from the Székely family chronicle, could be explained with the fact that they do not fit in the narrative of the family lineages. Székely recalls not just his life-events, but transformed his autobiography at a certain extent into a family chronicle as well. In this chronicle these children played no roles, they did not inherit, did not carry the name further, thus they are part of another family-saga, not the Székely.

The Emotional Barometer: Grief, Support and Consolation

The Székely–Toroczkai couple had lost both their children in a short time. Contrary to what one would expect, they did not receive any emotional support from their relatives. Székely emphasized it multiple times, that after the loss of their children, neither his own brother nor his brothers-in-law stood by his side during the mourning period, and that he and his wife only received spiritual support and consolation from friends and acquaintances. Moreover, the Toroczkai siblings, after the death of both of their parents, wanted to exclude Zsuzsánna from the inheritance saying that she did not need her part since she had no living children: “[Klára and Borbála Toroczkai (1716–1802)] were very upset about the way things turned out for them, but it was too late and they could not change the draw. Both asked for our arrow [i.e. the states they inherited by draw] arguing in such a nice, brotherly compassionate way, that we did not have any children [i.e. do not need the inheritance].”80 It seems that the brother Zsigmond Toroczkai (1732–1790) was the only one who could somewhat gain Zsuzsánna’s confidence by leaving his son to his widowed sister’s care multiple times, hoping that thus he could acquire a larger part of the fortune as well.

In Székely’s memoir, the description of mourning and its rituals has a central role. The detailed account of the funeral ceremonies, the description of the participants and their roles are important not only from the viewpoint of representation, but served also as a sort of emotional barometer. All the three texts (the autobiography of Székely, and the two memoirs of Toroczkai and Kis which follow and continue it) highlight the behaviour and the number of participants at the funeral ceremony, which was, it seems, followed with lively interest by many in those times. The expression of feelings on such occasions was of great significance. Transylvanian ego-documents contain a great amount of information regarding the preparations for funerals from both sides, from the one of the moribund and from the family as well. While for the first one it was extremely important to behave like a true Christian, and not to fear death, for the later it was required to expose as many emotions as possible, since their tears and sorrows reflected their feelings towards their kin. The society was very vigilant and keen is observing the intensity of these emotions. In Székely’s autobiography the dying persons played exceptionally their parts, preying or singing psalms on their last hours.81 But we know from Wesselényi’s diary that the grandmother of László Székely, Sára Bulcsesdi wasn’t at all content with her situation, she had a difficult passage, and was bothered by the “curiosity” of her visitors, asking at one point if it is really necessary for a dying person to be so exposed to public eyes.82 It seems that it was, since the majority of our personal narratives reflect on this topic, describing the last moments and dialogues between the dying and its family, interpreting the lack of emotions as a bad sign. The loosening of bonds between siblings from the Toroczkai and Székely families, detailed above, or estranged relations are best noticed in the case of grief and funeral ceremonies. Zsuzsánna Toroczkai mentions that many had visited László Székely on his death bed, but neither his brother Ádám Székely nor the Toroczkai sisters-in-law or brothers-in-law honored him with their presence.83 Zsigmond Kis records similar things about Zsuzsánna Toroczkai’s death struggle.84 Neither the sisters nor the brother-in-law went to Alămor [Alamor], but following the news of his death they immediately sealed up the doors of Toroczkai’s house in Szeben. There were veritable fights for the inheritance which not only the blood relatives wanted to acquire: “The administrator [Zsigmond Kis] and the doctor as well reported this last and deadly affection of hers [Zsuzsánna Toroczkai] to Baroness Naláczi [Borbála Toroczkai], but she did not bother to come […] she was rather thinking how could she seal all the good and houses [of her sister] from Szeben. Just as she did it, right away, in the day the Countess died, very sudden, since the Countess died between four and five in the morning […] and by six all her things were sealed in such a hurry, that the late Countess body was not even in the Church when all her goods were already locked.”85

The reading of the accounts of Toroczkai and Kis suggests that the kindred was not so much preoccupied with mourning but rather with securing the fortune. Every eligible family member delegated guards to the deceased person’s houses, properties, and waited tensely for the division of the inheritance. And even if it has been suggested that the weaker the blood relationship was, the greater was the greed, the autobiographical narrative suggests that close blood relatives caused the biggest tensions. Zsigmond Kis describes the lack of fraternal love in both houses without any emotional attachment, as an outsider, and he also points at scrounging as the reason for all estrangement. Neither Ádám Székely nor the Toroczkai sisters are painted in a favorable light in Kis’s recollections. In fraternal bonds within the Székelys and Toroczkais, feelings were overwritten by personal interests.

Conclusion

The autobiography of László Székely familiarize the reader with the complicated network of Transylvanian noble families. In the first part of the article I focused on marriages, and the way these alliances shaped the kinship networks of the author. While describing his lineage, László Székely touched upon these complex family models, and based on his detailed accounts, the kinship with the paternal (Székely, Szalánczi, Jósika) and that of the maternal (Boros, Vaji, Rhédei) side can be easily traced. The autobiography lingers more on the maternal lineage, in contrast to other Transylvanian egodocuments written by nobles, which usually underline the importance of the paternal side. This shift could be on one hand explained by the fact that the Székely family belonged to the new-nobles of the principality, therefore they were not totally accepted by the old Transylvanian families, thus the importance of the well-known and “pure” lineage of the maternal side. On the other hand, the autobiography suggests that the supportive kinship network the author relied on after he faced orphanhood came also from this side of the family. Moreover, this supportive network was formed not only by biological kin, but by several distant relatives coming from a step-lineage, since each four grandparents of the author in different life stages, either as children or adults, experienced living in families including stepparents, half-siblings and stepsiblings. The autobiography suggests that small children lived as orphans for only a limited period of time before gaining a stepparent, until their parents seek a new partner, as did the great-great grandmother (Anna Szalánczi) and the grandmother of the author (Borbála Boros). If both of the parents died other solutions were found, such as the foster parenthood, as was in the case of the author’s first wife, Kata Bánffi, which was also a common kinship tie that reintegrated orphans into families, or the guardianship, as was the case of the author. These new alliances and family-formations were not always successful, since the author himself faced great difficulties living under the guardianship of his grandmother, Sára Bulcsesdi’s half-brother, Dániel Jósika. Székely’s life changed once he entered into college, since his circle of interest expanded beyond his kindred. The friendships he made during these years with his fellow noble students were of utmost importance, some of them got integrated into the extended family through marriages, as brothers-in-law, and others coming from the lower nobility became integrated into his household fulfilling services for life.

After Székely founded his own families family life became more flexible, due to the overlapping of the biological family and the new one. Once important relations became now less significant, since new family members and several new family relations appeared. These new family alliances sometimes outlast the original bound. After the death of the partners the “inherited kin” did not disappear, but supports for several years their former sons and daughters-in-law, or brothers and sisters-in-law. In Székely’s life these new families played a very important role, even if sometimes not in a positive way. The autobiography tells us not only about the presence, but also about the absence of emotional ties between the Székely and Toroczkai siblings. The ego-documents suggest that in the adulthood of the author, and especially after losing his biological children, alliances outside the nuclear family, the fictive kinship network and the inherited step-family relations proved to be more determining.

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Bethlen, Miklós. The Autobiography of Miklós Bethlen. Translated by Bernard Adams. London: Kegan Paul, 2004.

Cserei Mihály históriája [Histories of Mihály Cserei]. Edited by Gábor Kazinczy. Pest: Emich Gusztáv, 1852.

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Rettegi, György. Emlékezetre méltó dolgok [Things worthy of remembrance]. Edited by Zsigmond Jakó. Bukarest: Kriterion, 1970.

Gróf Székely László önéletírása [The autobiography of Count László Székely]. Edited by Andrea Fehér. Budapest–Kolozsvár: MTA BTK–EME, 2019.

Székely, László. Bécsi utazásomról [About my journey to Vienna]. Edited by Katalin Németh S. Adattár XVI–XVIII. századi szellemi mozgalmaink történetéhez 24. Szeged: József Attila Tudományegyetem, 1989.

Székely, László. Bécsi utazásomról [About my journey to Vienna]. In Bécsi utazások: 17–18. századi útinaplók [Travels to Vienna: 17–18th century travelaccounts], edited by Margit Sárdi, 105–200. Budapest: Tertia, 2001.

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Toroczkai Zsuszánna feljegyzései [The memoirs of Zsuzsánna Toroczkai]. In Gróf Székely László önéletírása [The autobiography of Count László Székely], edited by Andrea Fehér, 441–50. Budapest–Kolozsvár: MTA BTK–EME, 2019.

Wesselényi István. Sanyarú világ: Napló 1703–1708 [Wretched world: Diary 1703–1708]. Edited by András Magyari. Bukarest: Kriterion, 1983.

 

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Collins, Stephen. “British Stepfamily Relationships, 1500–1800.” Journal of Family History 16, no. 4 (1991): 331–44.

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Dülmen, Richard, van. Kultur und Alltag in der Frühen Neuzeit. Vol. 1. Das Haus und seine Menschen 16.−18. Jahrhundert. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2005.

Erdélyi, Gabriella. “Confessional Identity and Models of Aristocratic Conversion in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth Century Hungary.” Social History 40, no. 4 (2015): 473–96.

Erdélyi, Gabriella. “Stepfamily Relationships in Autobiographical Writings from Seventeenth Century Hungary.” In Stepfamilies in Europe, 1400–1800, edited by Lyndan Warner, 146–67. London: Routledge, 2018.

Fazakas, Tamás Gergely. “ ‘tetszett az Úristennek […] a gyámoltalan árvák seregébe béírni:’ Bethlen Kata önéletírásának és az özvegyek reprezentációjának kulturális hagyománya a kora újkorban” [‘The Lord My God wished to see me in the army of helpless orphans:” The early modern cultural tradition of widowhood-representation and Kata Bethlen’s autobiography]. In Emlékezet és devóció a régi magyar irodalomban [Remembrance and devotion in old Hungarian literature], edited by Mihály Balázs, Csilla Gábor, 279–87. Kolozsvár: Egyetemi Műhely Kiadó, 2007.

Fehér, Andrea. “Család- és élettörténetek: A Székely család három generációjának családi kapcsolatrendszere [Life-and family stories: The three generation kinship network of the Székely Family]. In Gróf Székely László önéletírása [The autobiography of Count László Székely], edited by Andrea Fehér, 9–44. Budapest–Kolozsvár: MTA BTK–EME, 2019.

Fehér, Andrea. “From Courtship till the Morning After: The Role of Family, Kin and Friends in the Marriages of László Székely.” Hungarian Historical Review 7, no. 4 (2018): 785–804.

Fehér, Andrea. “Székely László önéletírása” [The autobiography of László Székely]. Erdélyi Múzeum 75, no. 4 (2013): 65–75.

Fehér, Andrea. Sensibilitate şi identitate în izvoarele narative maghiare din secolul al XVIII-lea [Sensitivity and identity in eighteenth-century Transylvanian narrative sources]. Argonaut and Mega: Cluj-Napoca, 2012.

Hanawalt, Barbara. “Remarriage as an Option for Urban and Rural Widows in Late Medieval England.” In Wife and Widow: The Experience of Women in Medieval England, edited by Sue Sheridan Walker, 141–64. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 1993.

Horn, Ildikó. “Orphans of Noble Birth.” In Beloved Children, edited by Katalin Péter, 99–161. Budapest: CEU-Press, 2001.

Jakó, Klára. “A Szalánczyak: Egy fejezet az erdélyi fejedelemség keleti diplomáciájának történetéből” [The Szalánczy’s: A chapter from the history of the eastern diplomacy of the Transylvanian Principality]. In Emlékkönyv Imreh István születésének nyolcvanadik évfordulójára [Studies in honor of the 80th birthday of István Imre], edited by András Kiss, Gyöngy Kovács Kiss, and Ferenc Pozsony, 199–210. Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 1999.

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Tüdős, Kinga. “O doamnă pentru vremuri noi: Sára Bulcesti–Székely–Haller” [A lady of old times. Sára Bulcesti–Székely–Haller]. In Grădina Rozelor: Femei din Moldova, Ţara Românească şi Transilvania. (sec. XVII–XIX) [Gardens of roses: Women from Moldova, Wallachia and Transylvania], edited by Violeta Barbu, Maria Magdalena Székely, Kinga S. Tüdős, and Angela Jianu, 241–68. Bucureşti: Editura Academiei Române, 2015.

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Volume 8 Issue 4 CONTENTS

Dynasty as a Patchwork House, or the (Evil) Stepmother: The Example of Zofia Jagiellonka

Almut Bues
German Historical Institute Warsaw
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The significant age difference between Princess Zofia Jagiellonka and her husband had as one advantage for the princess that she had no competitors within her age group (e.g. a stepmother). Moreover, her stepdaughters were approximately the same age and, after her husband’s death, she found herself in similar circumstances to the as a widow. Zofia Jagiellonka eventually resolved the long-standing relationship between her husband and his mistress, knowing in this regard how to defend her social position. She consciously took up the role of mediator among the relatives, and she had a mitigating effect on the tensions between father and son. Her social consciousness included providing for the welfare of the new family by meeting the expectations placed on her with regards to her stepchildren. Her life was not that of the stereotypical “evil stepmother.” Rather, she was someone from whom her stepchildren and others repeatedly sought counsel. Through her royal birth, she was (with regard to her social status) superior to her Guelph relatives, and she had the king—her brother—as her protector. In terms of her relationship to her stepchildren, it was perhaps a great advantage that she herself bore no children, and thus there was no competitive milieu at the court in Wolfenbüttel.

Keywords: aristocratic stepfamily, stepmother, stepchildren, widowhood, court in Wolfen­büttel

Already in Virgil’s his third eclogue we find mention of iniusta noverca.1 In fairy tales such as Snow White, Cinderella, or Little Sister and Little Brother, the evil stepmother appears in a central role, albeit predominantly since the nineteenth century. Today, words conjoined with “step” carry a pejorative connotation, and not just in German; for example, Polish and Italian both talk of dealing with someone/something in a “stepmotherly” way (traktować kogoś/coś po macoszemu, trattare qualcosa/qualcuno da matrigna). This shows that the middle-class family—comprised of father, mother, and children—was seen as the norm. And whereas an aunt or a sister-in-law could serve as a “second mother” for the care and rearing of children, a stepmother was always perceived as a stranger.2

Blended families, as it turns out, were quite common in the early modern period, a simple result of the fact that people did not live long lives and women were not legally competent to act on their own, that is why the widows soon got married again.3 While an untold number of men fell in battle, for women the rigours of childbirth were critical moments in life, moments which many did not survive. One can observe the famiglia as a dynamic process in which different constellations of individuals, bringing their respective circles with them, came together and then once again dispersed.4 With this, the relative ages of the members fluctuated and generations could overlap, making that the nuclear family was the exception. This was also true in the case of dynasties: the continued existence of the ruling house was dependent on a rightful heir, whose appearance or non-appearance led to either the idealization or diminution of the wife/mother. It was at this point that economic and political factors came into play: marriage was subject to strict regulations and prohibitions, both secular and religious.

The Jagiellonians, originally from Lithuania, began their rule in Poland toward the end of the fourteenth century.5 Władysław II Jagiełło’s first marriage ended suddenly due to the childbirth-related death of his wife Jadwiga, who was heiress to the throne. His second wife Anna left behind a daughter, also named Jadwiga (1408–1431). His third spouse, Elżbieta, whom he married in 1417 and became the stepmother of Jadwiga, brought with her children and stepchildren from her previous marriages;6 she soon became ill and bore no further children. The royal stepfather took care to arrange marriages for the two youngest stepdaughters. Finally, Jagiełło’s fourth marriage—at around seventy years of age—produced three sons. The stepmother, Zofia, was said to have poisoned the sole remaining biological child from the previous marriages of her husband, the daughter Jadwiga.7 So, the dynasty of the Jagiellonians in Poland-Lithuania began with a truly “patchwork family”; as for what its daily life was like, however, we know very little. The next generation of monarchs in Poland would ultimately prove quite healthy and the familial situation was uncluttered: Kazimierz Jagiellończyk had thirteen children with his Habsburg wife, with only two of the girls dying at a young age.8

In this paper I will follow the fate of a Jagiellonian princess of the following generation who married an elderly Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. I will examine how she matched the challenges in the new family and how she got along with her stepchildren, especially how she reacted to the illegitimate “step-family” and how she acted as mediator in the conflict between her husband and the hereditary prince.

The Royal Family in Poland

In the sixteenth century, things became more complicated. Zygmunt I, as prince, had a steady relationship with a mistress, who bore him three children. Prior to his marrying at the proper social level for a royal, his mistress Katarzyna Telniczanka was married off to the Grand Treasurer of the Crown Andrzej Kościelecki, thereby staying within the royal orbit. Zygmunt’s illegitimate son Jan (1499–1538), vested with a papal dispensation for having been born outside of wedlock and raised to a noble rank, was later made Bishop of Vilnius and Posen and involved himself in political matters. Their first daughter Regina’s birth (1500/01–1526) was never legitimized; on October 20, 1518, she married the royal secretary Hieronim Szafraniec, with whom she had earlier attended the royal wedding in April that year. Finally, their second daughter Katarzyna (1503–1548) grew up at the royal court in Buda; in 1515 she attended the Jagiellonian Double Wedding in Vienna and in 1522 she became Countess Montfort.9 Rumours suggest that the fourth child of the now-officially married Katarzyna Telniczanka was also begotten by King Zygmunt, but in any case the girl, Beata Kościelecka, grew up at the court of Queen Bona Sforza.10 The illegitimate children were not in competition with the legitimate offspring and they were never kept away from court. Suitable partners were sought for the girls, and for the boys a career in the church was possible. One might even suppose that this committed relationship to his mistress protected the king from the fate of his brothers, who died young of venereal disease.

The relationship of a stepmother to the children from the first marriage could be more difficult, since here there might well be competition among them. When Zygmunt I married for the second time in 1518, the daughters from his first marriage, Jadwiga (1513–1573) and Anna (1515–1520), were present at the wedding celebration, as noted by the chroniclers. After the early death of their mother, Barbara Szapolyai, in 1515, Jadwiga—for whom a husband was sought forthwith, but without success until 1535—and her sister were put under the charge of the Head of the Household, Mikołaj Piotrowski, and the female family members of the Great Chancellor of the Crown, Krzysztof Szydłowiecki. They lived in the princess house at the Wawel.11

Bona Sforza did not have much contact with her underage stepdaughters, but she developed an especially close relationship with her first-born daughter Izabela (1519–1559).12 After the heir to the throne, Zygmunt August (1520–1572) was born, he was followed by three sisters: Zofia (1522–1575), Anna (1523–1596), and Katarzyna (1526–1583). Queen Bona ensured that her daughters would have a good humanistic education. The princesses profited from the animated intellectual climate both at the court and in Cracow; they were living in the heyday of the Polish renaissance. In a period of religious tensions, the children were raised with an emphasis on tolerance, and all three inherited from their mother an enthusiasm for the arts. It was not easy for the three youngest daughters (who remained unmarried during their father’s lifetime) to live for so long with such a domineering mother, initially at the Wawel and then in the Ujazdów castle near Warsaw. Princesses at their home court had no tasks other than to perform official duties, making marriage proved to be a good option.

A man twice the age of the thirty-three-year-old Zofia, Duke Heinrich II von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, sought her hand;13 after some brief negotiations the marriage by proxy took place in Warsaw at the end of January 1556, marking the last family gathering of the Jagiellonians. Duke Heinrich had been widowed fifteen years earlier and had not contemplated marrying again. In total, twenty-one children—of whom eleven were legitimate—had seemed to secure the continuation of the dynasty. However, the duke had lived for decades with his concubine Eva von Trott zu Solz (1506–1567), even during his first marriage.14 In 1532, after his paramour’s third pregnancy, the affair could no longer be kept secret. The duke sought to resolve the problem with a ruse: the sham burial of his lover as a plague victim.15 Even after that, an additional seven children were born in secret at the Stauffenburg and Liebenburg.

But the hereditary configuration changed dramatically in 1553 for the Wolfenbüttel branch of the Guelph dynasty: by then, four of the boys from the legitimate relationship had died at a young age, and in the battle of Sievershausen both the hereditary prince and his brother died. The continuation of the dynasty now hung solely on a single prince, Julius, who was eligible to inherit the crown, but with whom Heinrich absolutely did not get along. Heinrich’s sole purpose for entering into the marriage with the Jagiellonian princess in 1556 was perfectly clear: the birth of a son.

The New Relatives

After marriage, an educated and cosmopolitan princess could, at least superficially, find her way relatively quickly within the early modern class structure of her new court. Of course, there were often local idiosyncrasies to accommodate and language barriers or religious differences to overcome. How quickly she achieved a position of respect within the new court structure depended on her flexibility and perseverance. Support from her husband, her mother-in-law or other female relatives by marriage could help. What also proved useful was strong backing from her family of origin. Corresponding with cognate relatives, advisors, scholars, and artists allowed the princess to take part in public affairs, and being well-informed helped her to make the right decisions. This network of correspondents could turn out to be a sort of “life insurance.”

On February 22, 1556, after travelling for three weeks, Zofia Jagiellonka reached Wolfenbüttel, one of the many small towns in the Holy Roman Empire that hosted a ducal residence. Imposingly decorated as it was, her entrance into the town made quite an impression. Her spouse embraced the old knighthood and the Catholic faith and was one of the last princes of this kind in the north of the empire. Princess Zofia was superior to him not only in social rank, but also intellectually. However, in Wolfenbüttel she was not surrounded by a flowering renaissance; the duchy had recently been ravaged by war and was devastated.16 Zofia was also in a difficult situation at court: her stepchildren were older than her, or only slightly younger; she had to tolerate the duke’s well-known affair with a lady-in-waiting at the court, and consequently, his frequent absences; she sought as well to mediate the persistent and fierce confrontations between the duke and his only son. In addition, the hoped-for offspring (the sole reason for the marriage) never came to be.

The Wolfenbüttel branch of the Guelph dynasty was in fact quarrelling with other branches of the house, as well as with surrounding cities. Yet, her husband’s age did bring advantages: the woman who would have been her mother-in-law had been dead for thirty years, and all of his siblings in the clerical state would live only a few more years.17 The brother-in-law, Christoph (1487–1558), archbishop of Bremen and bishop of Verden, not only had to do battle with the Lutherans, but also with his brother, who claimed the dioceses for his son.18 The next brother-in-law, Georg (1494–1566), after his nephew resigned as hereditary prince, became bishop of Minden in 1554, then in 1558 his brother’s successor in Bremen and Verden, and led a cultured life while holding several sinecures. Her brother-in-law Wilhelm (1514–1557), who had been held prisoner by Duke Heinrich for years, was able (thanks to Mecklenburg’s protection) to live out his life as a commander in Mirow.19 Sister-in-law Elisabeth was the abbess of Steterburg from approximately 1515 until 1560/63.20 Duke Heinrich was involved in a lengthy dispute with his nephew, Franz I of Sachsen-Lauenburg, over the dowry of his sister Katharina, the widowed duchess of Sachsen-Lauenburg.21

The Illegitimate “Step-family”

All the problems in the highly complex social structure of the court quite quickly became apparent to Zofia Jagiellonka: namely, her husband’s mistress and the contact with the stepchildren. At that time the unmarried Hereditary Prince Julius and the youngest stepdaughter Clara lived in Wolfenbüttel, and the illegitimate Eitel Heinrich served at court. Naturally, Heinrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel did not immediately end the relationship with his long-time lover.22 In April 1556, Hereditary Prince Julius complained to his maternal relatives about rides “to the whorehouse” to Eva von Trott at Löwenburg.23 During hunting trips, the duke would stay for a while with her; in the beginning, his new wife could not take any pleasure in such hunting outings. Evidently something changed later, for in 1563 we hear that Heinrich went on a hunt with his wife.24 Whether the two women ever had direct contact with one another is not clear. The ducal court provided for the maintenance of a lavish court for the concubine and her daughters; the Wolfenbüttel court accounts show that they were afforded valuable fabrics and furs, silver objects and pearls, as well as history books.25

Of the ennobled children (von Kirchberg), five of them would survive Eva von Trott and Zofia Jagiellonka.26 The girls were well looked after by their father and given in marriage to distinguished officials at court. The widowed daughter, Bransifora, entered a second marriage on March 9, 1556, two weeks after the wedding of her father.27 Sidonia von Kirchberg was married in 1560 to a councillor and captain from Schöningen, Christof von Weferling, and upon his death she received as dowager the Watzum estate.28 The educated Eva von Kirchberg remained unmarried; in the 1590s she is mentioned as a companion to the widowed Duchess Hedwig (1540–1602), daughter-in-law of Duke Heinrich.29 The Kirchberg inheritance fell in 1606 to Eva’s five nieces.30

The two oldest sons, to the delight of their father, showed some military talent. Heinrich Theuerdanck (1524–1592) had been raised together with his half-brother who was of the same age. After Duke Heinrich’s return to his duchy—he had been held prisoner in Hesse from 1542 until 1547—he put his house in order and on February 27, 1547, he enfeoffed the oldest son and his brothers with the fiefdom of Kirchberg, which they held for the rest of their lives and whose name they bore.31 In 1549 and again in 1570 (after the death of their father) the sons received writs of protection issued by the emperor.32 Even in the Guelph family, Heinrich made sure that his oldest sons would guarantee the perquisites for the illegitimate siblings.33 Eight days after the battle of Sievershausen in 1553 and the deaths of the two sons, Hereditary Prince Julius had to commit himself to the following: upon his father’s death, he would neither reduce nor suspend for Heinrich Theuerdank von Kirchberg, his mother, and his siblings the bequests assigned to them from the income and holdings of the Stauffenburg. These consisted of 12,000 gold gulden for him and his brothers and 4,000 Joachimsthalers for the sisters Sidonia and Eva. Furthermore, he had to leave unchanged, as well as protect, the rights of all those named.34

Eitel Heinrich von Kirchberg (1537/40–1597), who lived in a house in Wolfenbüttel, served as master of the stables and councillor at the ducal court;35 his twelve horses were kept at the court and his servants were fed from the court kitchen. He fought as a colonel in the 1570s in the Netherlands, shortly after which he was given diplomatic missions. In 1585 he supported Hereditary Prince Heinrich Julius (who lodged with him) in welcoming his bride.36 Duke Heinrich had intended to legitimize his quite capable illegitimate son to be his successor, but the young man had declined the honour. Nevertheless the duke insisted that his legitimate son should have good relations with his half-brother.37

As the youngest, Heinrich Karl von Kirchberg (ca. 1548–1591) was destined for the clerical state; in 1558 the priories of St. Crucis and St. Mauritius in Hildesheim were vested to him. He lived a princely life, to such an extent that complaints were frequently lodged that he did not carry out his duties as provost of the collegiate church,38 and these complaints even made their way to the Imperial Chamber Court (Reichskammergericht).39 Duke Julius protected his younger half-brother more than once and also paid his debts.40 He died following a fall in the residence of his paternal nephew, Julius Heinrich, in Gröningen.

How eminently the von Kirchberg brothers were viewed in the duchy is shown by their positions in the funeral procession for Duke Julius in 1589. Eitel Heinrich led the seventh and final horse, right before the funeral horse that preceded the funeral carriage. “The whole Braunschweig coat of arms, carved and adorned with colours and gold,” was carried by Heinrich Karl following the carriage, and Heinrich Theuerdank carried a helmet “covered with black velvet and a band.”41 One can assume that the brothers had also been included in the funeral procession of their father; Duchess Zofia must have met them even if there is nothing to be found in the archival sources. The younger generation met among themselves, and while not as equals, their relations were nevertheless gracious. There was remarkably little potential for conflict in these relationships.42

The Year of Transition: 1558

Zofia Jagiellonka was clever enough to accept her fate without complaint. As quickly as possible, she took advantage of the limited possibilities to cautiously effect what changes she could. Initially twenty-seven Polish men and women were in her household; three of her ladies-in-waiting married Wolfenbüttel court officials, remaining in Zofia’s service until her death.43 However, most of those who came with her left to return to their homeland within six to twenty-four months, so from an early stage her court household would have included German staff as part of it. In short order, the duchess learned German so as to communicate with her husband and staff. 44 She did not have her own office; in addition to her husband’s correspondence, she fostered contact with the family members in an effort to preserve the dynasty.

Zofia Jagiellonka learned in the first two years how to make her way within the realm of Wolfenbüttel court relationships. The year 1558 brought many innovations, and she had a considerable part in this: one can even talk about this year being a caesura at the Wolfenbüttel court. Two years after the wedding, the dowry had been paid in full by Poland-Lithuania. From a family law perspective, the marriage was now a completed transaction, and Zofia was no longer a member of the Jagiellonian family: at her wedding she had renounced her rights to any inheritance.45 At that point, the duchess had finally “arrived” in her new home. Fourteen days later, Zofia composed her will, in which she designated her husband as sole inheritor.46 She made bequests to her unmarried sisters and stepdaughters, as well as to the women in her entourage. Also in 1558, Duke Heinrich surveyed Zofia’s widow’s seat, as that year’s inventory of the manor house in Schöningen shows.47 There was always a need for money in Wolfenbüttel, so in 1558 a battle began that lasted for many years regarding Zofia’s maternal inheritance in Naples. Bona Sforza had bequeathed 50,000 ducats to each of her daughters.48

There must have been some earnest discussions between Zofia and her husband. Settling the estates of his brothers Wilhelm and Christoph, as well as a protracted severe cold, reminded the sixty-nine-year-old duke of the fragility of life.49 In this same year, Duke Heinrich dealt with his relationship to Eva von Trott; he had a house built for her in Hildesheim, where she would live until her death in 1567. How Zofia Jagiellonka achieved this, and whether the royal relatives exerted any pressure, remains unclear.50 We only know that Duke Heinrich spent almost all of August 1558 at Liebenburg. A letter he wrote from there to Duchess Zofia stated that the construction had been completely finished, the Bishop of Minden had not yet visited, but he wanted to take care of what she had requested.51 This can only relate to the planned transfer of his mistress to Hildesheim, because in the spring Heinrich had asked his brother—the provost from St. Crucis in Hildesheim—to ensure that Eva von Trott would be allowed to live in the associated court for the rest of her life,52 while the priory was promised to her son, Karl Heinrich.

A peculiarity in the marital contract of Duchess Zofia from November 30, 1555, lays out the ius succedendi for the expected sons of this union; after the wedding ceremony, on February 25, 1556, Duke Heinrich issued a cautio de successione in Wolfenbüttel.53 However, things did not work out as he intended. After a couple of years, the ducal pair gave up hope of producing any children. The question of succession consequently remained acute: without a solution, the duchy would revert to the widely-branched Guelph dynasty. Therefore, the relationship to the legitimate hereditary prince, Julius, from Duke Heinrich’s first marriage (and with whom he was estranged) somehow had to be resolved.54

The Conflict between Husband and Son

Since Zofia quickly gained a position of respect, one can infer that it was not only family members who repeatedly pleaded with her to intercede with Duke Heinrich. The duke’s fourth son from his first marriage, Julius (1528–1589), was not suitable for military service because of an injured foot, and so was put on the path of an ecclesiastical career. He pursued his studies, and as a young man spent two years in France.55 His father was not at all pleased when, after the death of his two older brothers in 1553, Julius became hereditary prince: this provided the motivating factor for Heinrich to wed the Jagiellonian princess. The tensions between father and son led to repeated conflicts. Immediately after his father’s marriage in June 1556, Julius contacted King Zygmunt August, his “step-uncle.”56 In 1557, the hereditary prince was arrested, at which point his maternal relatives in Württemberg and his brother-in-law Margrave Johann von Brandenburg-Küstrin attempted to mediate in the row. The situation at the Wolfenbüttel court was also discussed at the Frankfurt meeting of the Prince-Electors in March 1558. The newly elected emperor, Ferdinand, in fact asked the father to permit Prince Julius to join the imperial court for a time.57 In the spring of 1558, a new fierce quarrel resulted in Julius fleeing to the court of his married sister in Küstrin.58

Hereditary Prince Julius now turned in confidence to Zofia Jagiellonka who understood the character of her husband and who believed in the innocence of her stepson. “God willing that matters may proceed as we hope, so that such conflict and such discord not last long,” she wrote; she promised “to do what we can to turn matters to the best outcome, and we are always benevolently disposed toward you.”59 That autumn she sought to encourage him: she and Julius’ sisters had expressed support for him to Duke Heinrich and they were confident that reconciliation would be possible. In December 1558 she promised “to help so that all conflict and all discord may reach a peaceful conclusion and unity”; he just needed to be patient, since given her husband’s poor health, she could not upset him.60

Zofia proceeded quite diplomatically. She discretely explored different possibilities and skilfully used her dynastic connections not only in Saxony, Brandenburg, Pomerania, and in the region of Bohemia, but also those of her husband in Württemberg and Hesse. With relatives in neighbouring Brandenburg, where her half-sister Jadwiga had been electress since 1535, she arranged for a marriage between her stepson Julius and her niece Hedwig, and in the autumn of 1559 they worked on the marriage contract. At the end of that year, Duke Christoph von Württemberg approved an advance of 4,000 thalers for the upcoming wedding.61 The knights in the duchy of Wolfenbüttel mentioned in correspondence that twelve or thirteen princes had died in recent years and no others had been born for almost thirty years, so they gladly approved of the planned marriage.62 In the end, Duke Heinrich also gave his approval, and in the course of this a successful reconciliation between both the Guelphs was worked out.

Hereditary Prince Julius confirms Duchess Zofia’s active role:

 

And so our kindly beloved mother responded to his proposal not just with encouragement and assistance, but also sought ways and means for how it might be had from our kindly beloved father, so that we may hope, with the help of the Almighty, His Highness will allow himself to be moved, and kindly and paternally approve of such a marriage.63

On February 25, 1560, the wedding took place in Cöln on the Spree, however Zofia Jagiellonka could not participate in it since her husband did not attend.64 Margrave Johann von Brandenburg-Küstrin reminded Duchess Zofia that the marriage did not yet resolve the question of succession. He stressed the importance “that His Highness not forget to insert his son, Duke Julius, in his testament as the legitimate heir, for without that, one might fear that otherwise such a testament might justifiably be overturned.”65 She must have been successful in this. In the summer, the young couple returned home to Wolfenbüttel with the dowry and presents, at which time Hereditary Prince Julius showed his Württemberg relatives the splendid wedding gifts from his stepmother.66

The close proximity and tight living space in the small residence town did not lend themselves to harmonious family life; in the spring of 1561 there was persistent argument between father and son, both of whom had wildly different temperaments. The situation worsened during the course of the year. Duchess Zofia had plenty to do, seeking to have a balancing influence on both sides. Her astuteness was confirmed by her spouse: “because we however judge that to us Your Highness is much too erudite, we do not want to engage in any further disputation with her.”67 The solution to the father-son conflict came in the autumn of 1562 with the young couple setting up their own court in Hessen–in the meantime a daughter (and Zofia’s godchild), Sophie Hedwig, had been born.68 The birth of an heir to the throne, Julius Heinrich, in 1564 was what ultimately led to a true reconciliation between the now proud grandfather and his own son. Duchess Zofia’s exemplary behaviour during these years was also highlighted as one of her virtues in the sermon at her funeral in 1575: “And since indignation and strife occurred between His Grace, the Prince, and His father of praiseworthy memory, Her Princely Grace of holy memory was the unifying peacemaker, helping to avert much damage that could have been consequent to such discord.”69

Duke Julius and his wife called Duchess Zofia simply “mother”; she had assured him that “we do not want to be a stepmother to both.”70 She had been able to nurture a good relationship with her stepson: first of all, because she had no children of her own; secondly, because the wife she thought of for her stepson, her daughter-in-law was a close relative; and thirdly, because the personality types of her stepson and herself were similar. Julius appreciated her cosmopolitan attitude and tolerance, her subtlety and good taste, her numerous artistic interests and her good management of the household. He adopted her as his model in many things, but being only six years older than him Duchess Zofia never played a mother role for him.71 The renovations and enlargement of the palace at Wolfenbüttel came, for the most part, from Zofia Jagiellonka’s ideas: the remodelling of the interior, and the laying out of the pleasure garden, along with spice and herb gardens, where in 1563 one found, for example, cypresses and rosemary bushes.72 The duchess also refined daily life; the inventories at the time of Duke Heinrich’s death distinguish between the old and new silver cutlery.73 Zofia, accustomed to the artistic sense of her homeland, had a central role in all the projects, through which she sought to create a well-functioning court that was in keeping with their social position. It was now once again worthwhile to stop for a visit in Wolfenbüttel.

Contact with the Stepdaughters

Upon her marriage, Duchess Zofia immediately came into contact with ladies of the Guelph dynasty; two unmarried stepdaughters still lived in Wolfenbüttel, even though efforts had been made (unsuccessfully) between 1549 and 1555 to find partners for them.74 The extent to which Zofia involved herself in seeking marriages for these stepdaughters is not known. In her testament written in 1558, she remembered both Guelph stepdaughters (at the time still unmarried) with a valuable piece of jewellery ad beneplacitum ipsius coniugis nostri.75 The youngest, Clara (1532–1595), who had initially been intended as abbess of Gandersheim, married her cousin Philipp II von Braunschweig-Grubenhagen (1533–1596) in Wolfenbüttel in the summer of 1560,76 subsequently living with him at the Katlenburg, which was expanded into a renaissance palace. A year later, the oldest stepdaughter, Margarete (1516–1580), was married to Duke Johann von Münsterberg-Oels, a marriage that was troubled from the very beginning.77 In addition, there was as well Katharina (1518–1574), who since 1537 had been married to Margrave Johann von Brandenburg-Küstrin, and through that marriage was a brother-in-law’s wife of Zofia’s half-sister Jadwiga in Cöln on the Spree. Zofia corresponded now and then with her and her spouse, who was meant to support her in the event of the death of Duke Heinrich.

By 1561 (that is five years after her own marriage), all the children now had a spouse. But that was not the end of the stepchildren’s role in her life. There were discussions of economic matters, they exchanged pleasantries and family news, or they stopped by to visit. As long as Duke Heinrich was alive, his daughter Margarete was surely the source of the greatest concern. While Margarete initially only corresponded with her father, in the autumn of 1562 she began to exchange letters with her stepmother Zofia as well; there were not just money worries, but also significant marital problems.78 All the relatives and Duchess Zofia were called upon to try and influence Duke Heinrich: “I beseech Your Grace by the will of God, that Your Grace would seek the best for me and to intercede for me kindly to my Lord and Father to consider how one might help poor me.”79 While in 1563 it ostensibly came to an official settlement, even the death of Duke Johann at the beginning of 1565 did not resolve all the problems. Duchess Margarete (and her relatives) struggled with her stepson, Karl Christoph, over her jointure. After the latter’s death in 1569, she left the duchy of Münsterberg and lived until her death at Stauffenburg, which her brother had granted her.80

In the new family Duchess Zofia took the place expected of a motherly figure. She always had an open ear for the personal needs and problems of her stepchildren; she advised them in all circumstances and intervened with her husband for them. In summary, she led the household skilfully and effectively.

The Period of Widowhood

Seldom did this turning point in the life of a princess proceed without problems. The widow had to fight for the promised jointure, which had often been granted to her years earlier. Her finances then determined her other possibilities, presuming she ran the household well. Now she had only herself to rely on as she held her ground in both a totally new living environment in what were mostly rural areas, and where she now had to be the ruler in a new smaller-scale setting. Key to adapting well were good social contacts with both the female members of the family that she had married into, and the nobility living in the area, which were fostered through mutual visits to one another. What likewise showed itself to be advantageous was when the princess had earlier developed an extensive circle of people with whom she corresponded, and who now supported her with both counsel and active help.81

On June 11, 1568, after the death of Duke Heinrich II, Zofia Jagiellonka entered this new phase of her life at the age of forty-six. By the end of July she was already corresponding from Schöningen with her stepson, Duke Julius, about her jointure.82 As for her inner emotional state, we know very little. Those who corresponded with her wished her luck and offered support.83 The widowed duchess tussled with her stepson for more than three years over her jointure: the correspondence from this period is marked by mutual mistrust. The conflict also involved her brother, the Polish king, and Emperor Maximilian II. In the end, her settlement and various inheritances left her financially so well off that she could maintain a larger court than she had been able to afford earlier in Wolfenbüttel.84 After the issue of her jointure was clarified, Zofia’s relationship with her stepson improved, as they found that they shared common interests. Duke Julius, an admirer of art, oriented himself according to her good tastes, and in many ways took her as his role model.

As duchess, Zofia retained her elegant and confident tastes from her home life in Cracow. She was taken to be (in a modern sense) a style icon among the Guelph family.85 It was not just in questions of etiquette that Zofia’s advice was so appreciated.86 Her fashionable headdresses amazed; her niece Elisabeth Magdalena inquired about the beautiful style of her bonnet,87 and Julius asked his stepmother for drawings of it since he wanted to have one made for his wife on the occasion of his accession at Braunschweig.88 He also requested to have copies made of the tapestry series “The Nine Heroes.” After the resolution of the jointure in 1573, Zofia generously bequeathed this series to her stepson, which from then on would decorate the Knights’ Hall in the Wolfenbüttel palace.89

Whenever Duke Julius wanted to impress his guests at official receptions, he borrowed Duchess Zofia’s silver tableware that she had brought with her from Poland.90 Duke Julius also had sketches made of the two large silver candlesticks (from her dowry) that were in her court chapel, as he wanted similar pieces for the Wolfenbüttel palace chapel.91 In the sixteenth-century Lutheran church, altar candles were not essential liturgical elements, yet this zealous proponent of the reformation gladly adopted the decorations of his Catholic relatives for religious services.

Immediately after the death of Duke Heinrich in the summer of 1568, Duke Julius introduced Lutheranism into the duchy.92 In these early years of her widowhood, Duchess Zofia had contact with Jakob Andreae and other theologians.93 Zofia, who was responsible for church governance in her jurisdictions of Schöningen and Jerxheim, soon converted to Lutheranism; however, for political reasons this was not made public.94 On the ideas of the reformation, she was in accord with her stepson, and she likewise supported his plans to found a university in Helmstedt. The two had shared interests that reached beyond merely economic matters. Both had come to appreciate one another, and Zofia was a most welcome guest in Wolfenbüttel, especially for a merry St. Martin’s Eve, Shrove Tuesday events, or the baptism of a child. Social contact with the ruling family, however, primarily ran through Duchess Hedwig.

Her daughter-in-law and niece, Hedwig, advised Zofia after the death of her husband “that grieving would not assuage the loss, but instead only weigh down the heart,” and she sought to console her mother-in-law by sending her artichokes, wild cherries, fresh salmon, and other delicacies.95 For spiritual reflection, she sent her a newly published Corpus Doctrinae and later a Church Ordinance (Kirchenordnung).96 Duchess Zofia kept in close contact with her daughter-in-law/niece and grandchildren, writing and visiting them, as well as sending presents. Zofia was godmother to the firstborn daughter, Sophie Hedwig (1561–1631), and donated a valuable family Bible from Poland to her grandson and heir to the throne, Heinrich Julius (1564 –1613). Hedwig’s sister Elisabeth Magdalena (1537–1595), dowager duchess from Braunschweig-Celle, regularly came to Schöningen.97 Despite being a widow, it was not insignificant that Zofia was totally financially independent, something of which all the relatives were aware: as one remarked, “I was recently informed that Your Highness has brought together a handsome sum of money.”98

Widowhood also strengthened her connection with her stepdaughters. The Dowager Duchess Margarete, six years older than her step-mother, immediately after the death of her father, established contact with the Dowager Duchess Zofia.99 A similar common destiny–widowhood–intensified the relationship. In 1569 Margarete returned to the duchy and lived at Stauffenburg, so it was easy for her to see and visit Zofia, exchange news with her and seek her advice.100 As 1569 turned to 1570, Zofia, together with her stepdaughters Margarete and Clara, went on a journey to Berlin.101 Her stepdaughter Katharina had not only invited them to a bear hunt, but also to attend the wedding festivities of her step-granddaughter Katharina with step-grandson Joachim Friedrich (of the Electress Jadwiga von Brandenburg), a major family event.102 As part of Zofia’s ensuing journey to Bad Ems the following spring, a visit with Margarete at Stauffenburg lay on the way, and when returning, the dowager duchess took the opportunity to pass through Katlenburg to visit Duchess Clara.103 The journey to the court in Kassel in 1574 led Duchess Zofia once again via Stauffenburg, at which point she simply took her depressed stepdaughter with her to Kassel and then back to Wolfenbüttel and Schöningen as well.104 This shows the good relationship between Zofia Jagiellonka and her stepdaughter, who was five years older than her.

The relationship with her stepdaughter Clara (who was ten years younger than her) and her husband was not quite as close. Zofia did correspond with the ducal couple of Braunschweig-Grubenhagen, exchanging inquiries about their health, recommendations for physicians, complaints about staff, and also sending small gifts.105 When returning from another treatment to Bad Ems in 1571, the Dowager Duchess Zofia again stopped by to visit her stepdaughter.106

Two family members who had a special relationship with Zofia Jagiellonka were her stepdaughter Katharina and husband Margrave Johann von Brandenburg-Küstrin (the latter’s sister-in-law being Electress Jadwiga von Brandenburg, who was Zofia’s half-sister, producing a double family connection). Duchess Zofia was the contact point for letters from their residence,107 and she also sent her staff to Poland by way of Küstrin.108 Together they had both been engaged in the family’s father-son conflict and were involved in the wedding of Julius and Hedwig. The relatives would have been pleased to see the Wolfenbüttel ducal couple at that wedding, but it was not to be.109 Once widowed, Zofia was able to attend Katharina’s wedding in Küstrin a year later, and then on the same trip visit her half-sister in the Margraviate,110 returning to Brandenburg in the spring of 1571.111 After the death of the margrave at the beginning of 1571, contact between the two women became even closer; Dowager Duchess Zofia lent money to Katharina.112 They sent each other prescriptions for medicines and ordered foodstuffs, especially fish.113 In November 1572, Katharina visited Zofia in Schöningen, at which time they planned a springtime journey together to Karlsbad / Karlovy Vary.114 Katharina died in 1574, prior to Duchess Zofia.

Her good relationships with the family of her husband also included his extended family. Dowager Duchess Zofia corresponded with her husband’s niece, Dowager Duchess Clara von Sachsen-Lauenburg (1518–1576); they exchanged letters about family matters (widowhood and remarriage of her daughter, also named Clara), invitations, gifts as well as some discussions of business matters and an exchange of doctors.115

Similarly, Zofia Jagiellonka supported Duchess Sidonia (1518–1575), a sister of August, Elector of Saxony, in her difficult living situation. The marriage between Sidonia and Duke Erich II von Braunschweig-Calenberg (ten years her junior) had been tumultuous for a long time: childlessness, separation and mistresses, debts, house arrest, confessional differences, and accusations of poisoning all demonstrate how dysfunctional this marriage was. During the witch trials, Sidonia repeatedly visited Duchess Zofia and asked for her advice.116 In a coordinated effort, Zofia, stepdaughter Margarete, and daughter-in-law Hedwig wrote a letter petitioning Duke Erich II to release Sidonia’s lady-in-waiting Katharina Dux, (née von Dassel), wife of the head bailiff in Wolfenbüttel, against whom a trial was underway in which she was charged with participating in a conspiracy to poison Duke Erich.117 Ultimately Sidonia fled by way of Schöningen, where she stayed from July 20 to August 7, 1572, after which she reached her home territory, Saxony, where she died at the beginning of 1575. Upon news of her death, Duke Julius and Duke Wilhelm von Braunschweig-Lüneburg immediately consulted with Zofia Jagiellonka on how best to proceed.118 Her foresight and her levelheaded judgments were both welcomed and sought-after. Here too, then, one sees Zofia Jagiellonka’s remarkable position within the web of relatives in the Guelph dynasty.

Conclusion

In summary, one can conclude that Zofia Jagiellonka got her bearings with remarkable skill and ingenuity at her new court, reacting with prudence and intelligence. The significant age difference between herself and her husband brought an advantage with it, namely, that she had no competitors within her age group. Moreover, her stepdaughters were approximately the same age and, after her husband’s death, in similar circumstances to her as widows, and they gladly socialized with her. Zofia eventually resolved the long-standing relationship between her husband and his mistress, knowing in this regard how to defend her social position and not to be content with merely providing him an “alibi.” She consciously took up the role of mediator among the relatives, and had a mitigating effect on the tensions between father and son. She was always active in traditional princess’ pursuits: namely, finding appropriate marriage partners for the next generation. Her social consciousness included providing for the welfare of the new family in fulfilling the motherly responsibilities for her stepchildren. She tried to strengthen the connectedness of the family members corresponding with all of them and giving her appreciated advice. One does not see in her a “stepmother’s life”; rather Zofia’s counsel was repeatedly sought. It was to this Jagiellonian’s benefit that she had grown up in a tolerant, humanistically-oriented and multiethnic kingdom. Through her royal birth she was (with regard to her social status) superior to her Guelph relatives and she had the king—her brother—in reserve, as her protector. In terms of her relationship to the stepchildren it has been a great advantage that she herself bore no children, ensuring there would be no competitive milieu at the court in Wolfenbüttel. Zofia Jagiellonka, highly educated, and good at languages, had many different interests, letting many people gladly engage her in correspondence and discussions. From her mother Bona Sforza she had inherited the talent to run a good household, and through several inheritances she was financially independent even as a widow which strengthened her position and acceptance within the family.

Archival Sources

Archiwum Główne Akt Dawnych, Warsaw (AGAD): perg. 5480; perg. 5482; perg. 5487

Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Abteilung Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (HHStA):

RHR Judicialia APA 6–34; RHR Schutzbriefe 8–2–31; StAbt Polen I 8 1556

Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart (HStAS): A 71 Bü 404; A 71 Bü 412; A 71 Bü 415; A 71 Bü 416; A 71 Bü 423; A 71 Bü 1565

Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Hannover (NLA HA): Cal. Br. 21 no. 501; Cal. Br. 21 no. 935; Cal. Or. 3 no. 105; Celle Br. 44 no. 1539; Hann. 27 Hildesheim 97; Hann. 27 Hildesheim 939; Hann. 27 Hildesheim 2143

Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Wolfenbüttel (NLA WO): 1 Alt no. 8; 1 Alt no. 6; 1 Alt no. 10; 1 Alt no. 22; 1 Alt no. 23; 1 Alt no. 24; 1 Alt no. 26; 1 Alt no. 27; 2 Urk 1

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Schattkowsky, Martina ed. Witwenschaft in der Frühen Neuzeit: Fürstliche und adlige Witwen zwischen Fremd- und Selbstbestimmung. Schriften zur sächsischen Geschichte und Volkskunde 6. Leipzig: Leipziger Univ.-Verl., 2003.

Schulz, Corinna. Von Bastarden und natürlichen Kindern: Der illegitime Nachwuchs der mecklenburgischen Herzöge, 1600–1830. Quellen und Studien aus den Landesarchiven Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns 17. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2015.

Strombeck, Hilmar von. “Eva von Trott, des Herzogs Heinrich des Jüngern von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel Geliebte, und ihre Nachkommenschaft.” Zeitschrift des Harz-Vereins für Geschichte und Altertumskunde 2, no. 3 (1869): 11–57.

Wagnitz, Friedrich. “Der Lebensweg von Herzog Julius von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel bis zum Regierungsbeginn 1568.” In Blutige Weichenstellung: Massenschlacht und Machtkalkül bei Sievershausen 1553, edited by Gerd Biegel and Hans-Jürgen Derda, 77–105. Braunschweig: Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, 2003.

Warner, Lyndan ed. Stepfamilies in Europe, 1400–1800. London, New York: Routledge, 2018.

Watanabe-O’Kelly, Helen. “Consort and mistress: A successful job-share?” In Der Hof: Ort kulturellen Handelns von Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Susanne Rode-Breymann and Antje Tumat, 90–99. Musik—Kultur—Gender 12. Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2013.

Wdowiszewski, Zygmunt. Genealogia Jagiellonów i Domu Wazów w Polsce [Genealogy of the Jegiellonians and the House of Vasa in Poland]. Cracow: AVALON, 2005.

Volume 8 Issue 3 CONTENTS

Origin Narratives: Pier Paolo Vergerio and the Beginnings of Hungarian Humanism

Farkas Gábor Kiss
Eötvös Loránd University
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Earlier studies have attributed a pivotal role to Pier Paolo Vergerio Sr in transmitting the fundamental ideas of humanism to the writer Johannes (Vitéz) of Zredna, the first acolyte of Renaissance humanism in Hungary. This paper investigates the possible contacts between Pier Paolo Vergerio Sr and Johannes of Zredna, mapping the channels through which Johannes of Zredna first encountered humanist rhetoric. Whereas many of these possible connections turned out to be historical fictions that proved to be untenable in the form they are described in later historiography, there seems to be a genuine core to the embellished stories. I argue that his direct use of Italian early humanist texts (Guarino’s translation of Plutarch, Gasparino Barzizza’s letters) and an avid reading of Livy’s historical work (witnessed by the ms. Cod. 3099 of the Austrian National Library) are the earliest testimonies of his humanistic interests.

Keywords: Pier Paolo Vergerio, Johannes (Vitéz) of Zredna, humanism

The appearance of Renaissance Humanism in Hungary is closely connected to the most decisive political events of the first half of the fifteenth century in Europe. First, the Council of Constance (1414–1418) succeeded in eliminating the schism in the Catholic Church and brought religious peace to Europe, with the exception of conflicts with the Hussites. The meetings of the emperor, kings, church prelates, and ambassadors created numerous occasions for cultural exchange between north and south, Italy and the rest of Europe. Italy’s new “cultural capital,” Renaissance Humanism, could infiltrate northern courts through the agency of the representatives of the states by spreading new stylistic ideals in Latin composition and new interest in the discovery of long-lost, ancient texts.1 The following efforts to resolve the conflict between the Council and the Pope and to unify Eastern and Western Christianity (the Council of Basel in 1431–322 and the council of Ferrara and Florence in 1438–39) offered further opportunities to generate new diplomatic and intellectual ties. Thus, intellectual exchanges were created in a new context, in the field of politics and diplomacy, and not limited to the scholasticism of the university and or to the monastic environment.

The other important element of change, which became especially important for Hungary, was brought about by the new political situation following the first Battle of Kosovo (1389) and the Battle of Nicopolis. After these two clashes, the rising Ottoman empire became a direct threat to Western Christianity. The organization of a common resistance resulted not only in collective political action but also in a mutual exchange of ideas and a redifinition of a political and social identity (e.g. the idea of Europe, or the Respublica Christiana), which could be perceived as a common ground for Western and Central European political powers. These ideas became a primary touchpoint for the intellectuals of the regions which were most exposed to the Ottoman expansion, i.e. Italy (mostly Venice and the Papacy), Hungary, the Empire, and Poland.

The idea of a Europe primarily not as a geographical but as a cultural and political unity was created in the writings of the Enea Silvio Piccolomini (the future Pope Pius II) from the perception of a common threat. It reached back to the ideology of the Crusades.3 Two parallel theories tried to describe the process of how Renaissance Humanism took root in Hungary, which, although they did not contradict each other, put emphasis on different events and personalities in this process. In his classic work, “The Revival of Classical Antiquity” (Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums, 1859, revised in 1893), Georg Voigt (1827–1891), a professor at the prestigious university of Leipzig, identified Enea Silvio Piccolomini in his role as the secretary to Emperor Friedrich III as the most important instigator of Renaissance Humanism in Hungary.4 Voigt’s conception of the genesis of Humanism was entirely based on the nineteenth century nationalistic idea of a competition between nations which tried to outdo each other by absorbing various cultural and political agendas in order to reach a higher intellectual rank. As Voigt writes, Hungarians were generally open to ideas coming from Italy, as they had shared sympathies with Italians, and they were politically distant enough in order to avoid any conflicts of interest.5 Accordingly, the early acceptance of Humanist ideas was facilitated by the agency of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who was an Italian, even if he was acting on behalf of the German Emperor, and thus more sympathetic among the Hungarians than a German would have been. Thus, according to Voigt, the lack of a conflict of interest between an Italian movement and the Hungarian national spirit explains at least in part the early acceptance of Humanist ideas brought to Hungary by Piccolomini.

Another theory supposed a more direct connection to Italian Humanism in the person of Pier Paolo Vergerio the Elder. The Hungarian literary historian József Huszti saw the importance of Vergerio in the fact that he was the first Humanist to join the chancellery of the Hungarian king (and later Emperor) Sigismund I, which helped spread Humanist ideas in the scriptoria of Hungary.6 As he wrote in his monograph on the poet Janus Pannonius in 1931, “I cannot explain the Humanism of John Vitéz [of Zredna] without Vergerio […] I think that John Vitéz [of Zredna] could not have existed without Vergerio, and Janus Pannonius could not have existed without John Vitéz [of Zredna].”7 Sigismund of Luxembourg, the king of Hungary and emperor from 1431, received book dedications throughout his life from Italian Humanists, but especially during his travels in the last decade of his life. Just to name the most significant authors, Ciriaco d’Ancona, Francesco Barbaro, Maffeo Vegio, and Antonio Beccadelli (whom he crowned poet laureate in 1432) all dedicated works to him. Nevertheless, only Pier Paolo Vergerio came to Hungary and settled in the country. Hence, Huszti stressed that Vergerio’s Humanist ideas may not only have exerted a lasting impact on the style of Vitéz of Zredna’s official and private letters, but also may have influenced the Humanist education which King Mathias and Janus Pannonius received under the guidance of Vitéz of Zredna. Furthermore, he assumed that after his death, Vergerio’s books might have become integral parts of Vitéz of Zredna’s library, thus forming the first Humanist library in Hungary.8 A similar theory was exposed by Leonard Smith, the scholarly editor of Vergerio’s letters in 1934. In a long footnote to his work, he claimed that both the “father” of Hungarian Humanism (John Vitéz of Zredna) and the “father” of Polish Humanism (Gregory of Sanok) were students of Vergerio,9 although there was no direct proof of such a relationship between any of them. The same thesis became the foundation for József Huszti’s speech held on the occasion of becoming a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1941 (although it was published as an article only in 1955),10 and the idea of a direct link between Vergerio and Vitéz became a cornerstone of Tibor Kardos’s history of Humanism in Hungary.11

In comparison with the theory which posits the local origins in the influence of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, this hypothesis might have seemed to suggest “autochtonous” origins, with Vergerio being present in the Buda court. Nevertheless, there were serious problems with its foundations. There was hardly any proof of direct personal contact between Pier Paolo Vergerio and John Vitéz of Zredna, not to speak of any exchange of letters or any contemporary written documents.12 Whereas Vitéz of Zredna was a member of Sigismund’s chancellery at least from 1437,13 Vergerio, who died in 1444, did not seem to have had any influence on the official literate culture of the court, and he did not have the title of secretarius. There survives one single reference as to his official activity in Hungary from a contemporary Bolognese copyist of his famous letter against Carlo Malatesta, addressed to Lodovico Alidori (1397). According to the explicit of this copy (Vatican, Barb. Lat. 1952, 110r), Vergerio was a “referendarius,” a referendary of the Emperor at the time of copying, which is otherwise unknown.14 It seems that Vergerio did not participate actively in politics after 1426, and King Sigismund did not him take him along anymore on his frequent travels after this date.15 How can the scarcity of written documents be reconciled with the importance attributed to Vergerio’s presence in the Buda court? The aim of my paper is to reconsider these ideas in the light of recent research on early Humanism in Hungary.

In order to understand how Vergerio could have had such a pivotal role in the evolution of Humanism in Hungary, it is worthwhile to give a summary of his literary output. The first phase of this Capodistrian Humanist’s career is closely connected to Padua and its ruling family, the Carraras, at the end of the fourteenth century. In his youth, Vergerio compiled a historical work on the deeds of the family,16 and his most popular text, On noble character and liberal studies of youth (c. 1402), was in fact a pedagogical guide for Ubertino Carrara, the son of Padua’s lord, Francesco Carrara. Vergerio’s cultural canon was entirely secular, and it completely ignored theological subjects. In addition to raising questions of moral philosophy, he emphasized the importance of Ciceronian “civilis Scientia,” rhetorics, poetics, and the seven liberal arts, and he also held the practical sciences, such as military knowledge and sports, in high esteem.17 His treatise became one of the bestsellers of the fifteenth century, transmitted by more than one hundred manuscripts and printed at least 30 times until 1500, mostly in Italy.18 Vergerio was the author of the first Renaissance Latin school comedy, entitled Paulus.19 His translations of the history of Alexander the Great by Arrianus, and the Hippocratic oath demonstrate his knowledge of Greek, although we do not know how and when he learned the language. He was probably the first person in the Hungarian royal court in the fifteenth century to attain this advanced knowledge of Greek, although his translations were deemed unsuccessful by the following generation of Humanists.20

The Venetian conquest of Padua in 1405 meant a significant break in his career, as he had to flee the town together with the members of the Carrara family. He joined the retinue of Cardinal Francesco Zabarella in Rome, and through these ecclesiastic connections, he met King Sigismund of Hungary. The history of these contacts has been fully expounded by Florio Banfi, thus a short summary will suffice. King Sigismund started a war against Venice in the direction of Friuli in 1411–12, and he joined his army in October 1412. The war came to an end with a truce with Venice in April 1413, and Sigismund’s Italian contacts were greatly intensified afterwards. In October 1413, the king started negotiations with Pope John XXIII with the participation of cardinals Francesco Zabarella and Antonio de Challant, which were terminated by an agreement in Lodi in December 1413, which specified the time and place of a general council as Constance, November 1, 1414.21 Zabarella’s retinue included not only Vergerio, but also Manuel Chrysoloras, who became so closely connected to the Hungarian king that the king named him his “familiaris” on June 15, 1414.22 Vergerio reached Constance together with Cardinal Zabarella on October 18, 1414, followed by Pope John XXIII and his secretaries (Poggio Bracciolini, Antonio Loschi, and Leonardo Bruni) and King Sigismund himself, who arrived on December 24, 1414.

The unexpected death of Manuel Chrysoloras on April 15, 1415 had important consequences for Vergerio, his friend, who composed a funerary inscription for the Greek scholar which is still visible in the former Dominican convent in Constance.23 As Chrysoloras was a “familiaris” of Sigismund, Vergerio could take his place. On July 15, 1415, the council elected him as one of the fourteen “procuratores generales et speciales,” the special envoys who were supposed to join King Sigismund on his road to Perpignan and help him reach an agreement with Antipope Benedict XIII.24 Vergerio disappears from the records of the council of Constance between July 1415 and January 1417. Florio Banfi’s suggestion that he remained part of the retinue of King Sigismund and traveled around Europe with him seems reasonable.25 After his return to the council, Vergerio openly switched sides and changed his patrons. Sigismund and the cardinals from Northern Europe preferred to bring a conclusion to the Church reforms first and only then to elect a pope, whereas the Italian and “Latin” cardinals would have rather elected a pope first and then finished the reforms. Vergerio, representing himself both as a lawyer and a poet (“utriusque iuris ac medicine doctor necnon laureatus poeta”), suggested an open disputation and proclaimed three statements, which he attached to church doors in Constance (“affixe valvis ecclesiarum”) and promised to defend on August 10, 1417: 1. those who want to elect a pope without the council support the schism; 2. it follows from the term “reformatio in capite” that church reform should precede the election of the head of the church; and 3. the negotiations concerning the election of the pope should be postponed.26 With the publication of these three theses, Vergerio distanced himself from his former patron, Cardinal Zabarella, who was a leading figure of the “Latin” party, and began to side with King Sigismund. Nevertheless, the switch was not completely successful, as Vergerio fled from the debate when it turned out that the counterparty would present three canon lawyers and three theologians against him. Therefore, as the diary of Cardinal Fillastre indicates, “many thought that the abovementioned Pier Paolo is foolhardy, and he was derided.”27 After hearing Zabarella’s moving oration, Sigismund finally accepted the plan to have the council elect a pope first. In September 1417, Cardinal Zabarella died, thus Vergerio could join the retinue of Sigismund without moral scruples. Afterwards, his name occurs in documents concerning the circles surrounding Sigismund more often: he vindicated the bull of the Crusade against the Bohemian heretics, stepped up as an orator in Prague against the Hussites, and his name occurs in several charters of Hungary in 1424 and 1425.28

Nevertheless, the only surviving documents which bear testimony to Vergerio’s Humanist activity are his translation of Arrianus, dedicated to Emperor Sigismund and dated to 1433–37 by Smith, and the two letters (n. 140 and 141 in Smith’s edition), which contain altogether three short anecdotes. Whereas the second letter (n. 141), which is addressed to Giovanni de Dominis, Bishop of Senj (Segna/Zengg), must be dated to after 1432 on the basis of the bishop’s title,29 the story comparing the Czech and the Polish (n. 140) was dated to after 1420 only because of its Central European references.30 A recent discovery was made of Vergerio’s scholarly interests in Hungary. György Galamb has called attention to a lost text which was once contained in the ms. Münich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, clm 359031 and which bore the title “Collatio D[omini] P. de Capodistri super Disputatione Fr. Iacobi de Marchia ordinis Minorum facta cum Iudeo Rabbi Ioseph in Buda, A. D. 1433. Scripta in Pelisio sine manibus. A. D. 1468 per Michaelem Ruttenstrauch” according to a catalogue from the seventeenth century.32 Although this part was later torn out of the manuscript,33 the description clearly states that it contained a collation (a speech or perhaps a reportatio or a summary) on a disputation held by the famous Observant Franciscan, James of Marchia, who was active as an inquisitor in Hungary, against the rabbi Joseph in Buda. According to the note, Pierpaolo Vergerio prepared this summary of the disputation in 1433, and the only (lost) copy was made by the otherwise unknown Michael Ruttenstrauch in 1468 in the Cistercian abbey of Pilis, which had a significant library.34 Nevertheless, this collation was probably not a Humanist literary product, but rather a scholastic summary of James of Marchia’s disputation against the rabbi of Buda.

Thus, the contemporary evidence of Vergerio’s influence in Hungary is meagre and uncertain. Four decades later, in Cracow Filippo Buonaccorsi wrote a biography of his former patron, Gregory of Sanok (Gregorius Sanocensis, 1403–1477), archbishop of Lvyv. In this biography, Buonaccorsi described the symposia held in the court of the Bishop of Várad (Oradea, RO), where Gregory of Sanok was supposedly also present and Vergerio was among the select participants. Unfortunately, Buonaccorsi’s description conveys several chronological impossibilities, and the events could not have happened in the way the text suggests.35 As Buonaccorsi claims, a certain John Gara, Bishop of Várad (who later was transferred to the See of Esztergom) hosted Filippo Podocataro, the Cypriot Humanist, Vergerio, and Gregory of Sanok in his court, where they held literary debates and poetic exercises. As Vergerio died in 1444 (at the age of 74), but John Vitéz became the Bishop of Várad in June 1445, the bishop in question could not have been John Vitéz, who in fact became Archbishop of Esztergom later (and whose surname was not Gara anyways).36 On the other hand, Vitéz’s predecessor, the Italian Giovanni de Dominis (Bishop of Várad from December 1440 to Nov 10, 1444, dying in the battle of Varna) was never transferred to the See of Esztergom, and he hardly could have been mixed up with the famous Humanist bishop and archbishop, Vitéz.37 Buonaccorsi remarks that Bishop John lured Gregory of Sanok to his court because he persuaded the governor of Hungary (i.e. John Hunyadi) that his sons should be educated by someone who spoke their mother tongue, not a foreign one. The fact that the bishop was entrusted with the education of the governor’s sons befits John Vitéz.38 Furthermore, at one of the Humanist debates described by Buonaccorsi, the bishop recounted the entire history of Hungary by heart (“memoriter et ornate recensuisset varietatem fortunae utriusque Pannoniae39 et qui mortales diversis temporibus eas tenuissent”), which implies that the bishop was a local, not an Italian. It is clear from Buonaccorsi’s words that when he spoke of Bishop John of Várad, he meant John Vitéz, and not Giovanni de Dominis.

These anachronisms throw Buonaccorsi’s historical reliability into question, and the doubts which arise are further strengthened by other arguments. According to Sabbadini, Filippo Podocataro, who must have been very young at this time, was in Ferrara in 1444, the year Vergerio died in Hungary.40 Although Buonaccorsi claims that Vergerio was better in oral rhetoric performance, while Podocataro was prominent in poetry, and Gregory challenged both of them, no poetry by Podocataro survives to my knowledge.41 In many respects, Buonaccorsi’s descriptions of the Humanist debates do not seem to be more than fictional rhetorical exercises embellished with small details from the actual events. According to the Italian Humanist, Vergerio raised the subject in Várad (ch. 19) that, according to the law of Charondas, one who has been widowed once, should not remarry, because if his previous marriage was successful, it is not reasonable to risk his luck, but if it was bad, he must be considered foolish, because he did not learn from his experience.42 The law of Charondas states that if one’s marriage ends, that person should not remarry, because he could be blamed for foolishness, and it survives only in Diodorus Siculus’ historical work (in prose: 12, 12; in verse: 12, 14).43 When Vergerio, Podocataro and Gregory of Sanok were supposed to discuss these issues, the twelfth of Diodorus was not yet accessible in a prose translation.44 Buonaccorsi’s version follows the prose variant given by Diodorus word by word, and it is hard to imagine that he was not working from the original Greek text. Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that Vergerio read the Greek original,45 Gregory of Sanok remembered it, and Buonaccorsi searched the locus in Diodorus for the exact phrasing. But it is more probable that Buonaccorsi selected stories according to his own preferences, as he did in other places, where he embellished the figure of Gregory of Sanok with stories taken from Diogenes Laertius.46 In sum, his account seems to contain more fiction than fact.

I raised the possibility of another connection between Vergerio and Vitéz in an earlier article. Johannes Tröster was an Austrian Humanist who enjoyed the patronage of Enea Silvio Piccolomini but who was forced to leave the court of Friedrich III because of a conspiracy. He turned to John Vitéz of Zredna with a letter on September 14, 1454, and tried to speak to his heart, asking for help. He started his letter, with which he introduced himself to the bishop, with the following words: “So that I would talk about domestic and contemporary people, my reverend father, many have told me that Pier Paolo Vergerio of Capodistria used to say often that there is nothing more salutary among the mortals, than to become the friend of excellent men and to be revered and loved by them.”47 Tröster, in his troubled situation, looked for a new patron in the person of Vitéz, and this gesture gives the impression that Vitéz had indeed been a close friend (de domesticis) of Vergerio, who could have remembered the favorite saying of the great Italian Humanist. Nevertheless, a thorough research on the sources revealed that the proverb comes not from Vergerio, but from Tröster’s own master, Enea Silvio Piccolomini. In fact, it was Piccolomini, the secretary to Friedrich III, who wrote to Zbigniew Oleśnicki, the Archbishop of Krakow, in April 1443 that, “there is nothing more salutary among mortals than to become the friend of excellent men and to be revered and loved by them.”48 Thus, Tröster copied the sentence word for word from this Viennese patron and used it as a friendly introduction to Vitéz, putting it into the mouth of Vergerio. Upon a closer look, it turns out that several phrases in Tröster’s letter to Vitéz are derived from the letters of Piccolomini. When Tröster cites from Cicero the sentence that “as Plato has admirably expressed it, we are not born for ourselves alone, but our country claims a share of our being, and our friends a share,”49 the direct source was probably the letter collection of Piccolomini, who cites the same dictum in a letter written to Johann Eich on October 21, 1445.50 When Tröster describes himself as a homuncio, a tiny man, he again imitates Piccolomini, who characterises himself as such in his letter to his father.51 Speaking of his “small genius,” his ingeniolum, Tröster reapplied a term that was once written down in a letter to Giuliano de Cesarini by Piccolomini in 1434.52 Thus, he mostly used the stylistic patterns set by the imperial secretary, whose letter collection started to circulate in Central Europe in several copies after 1443, and the reference to Vergerio in his letter is nothing more than a clever imitation of Enea Silvio Piccolomini.53

The research efforts to establish a well-documented historical link between Vergerio, the “referendarius” of King Sigismund, and John Vitéz, the first Hungarian chancellor with Humanist interests, have proven fruitless. Another method of retracing the genealogy of Hungarian Humanism would be to examine the literary output of its first author, John Vitéz of Zredna, with a more thorough examination of the imitation and paraphrase of Classical and contemporary Latin sources in his texts. The method of composing epistles by paraphrasing and imitating expressions taken from earlier letter collections, formularies, and Classical texts was in widespread use in Humanist correspondence. The epistolary material was still considered a kind of dictamen.54 A telling proof of this is the title appended to the letter collection in Vienna, ÖNB cod. 3330, in which Humanist authors such as Guarino Veronese and Gasparino Barzizza appear as medieval dictatores and the entire collection is called “epistole diversorum doctorum et excellentium dictatorum” (1r). Furthermore, not only letters but also basically any linguistically powerful form of expression could serve as the basis of imitation if it had a Classicizing tone. Also, Ciceronian Latinity was not an inevitable standard in the first half of the fifteenth century, especially among Central European early Humanists. Late Antique authors and Medieval texts could inspire authors like John Vitéz of Zredna just as easily as Humanist translations of Greek literature if they seemed to possess enough rhetorical force.55 Many examples can be found of this stylistic eclecticism in Vitéz’s epistolary, and some of them (e.g. his imitation of Rufinus of Aquileia) have been already analyzed.56 His dedicatory letters in particular are well-formed rhetorically.57 I offer the following example:

 

statui mittere tibi infirma mea legenti potiora, ut cum inter excellentes illas litterarum veterum regiones lassus forte versaberis, ad haec remittens animum iocabundus conquiescas, utque tandem, si summa miraberis, inferiora quoque probes.58

 

I have decided to send you my weakest to the one who reads the better, so that when you get tired of moving around in the excellent regions of Ancient literature, you can rest your soul a bit jokingly, and so that you would approve the lower planes if you admire the summits.

It is obvious that Vitéz’s sentence is built around a phrase from Gregory the Great’s dedication to his homilies on Ezekiel, addressed to Bishop Martinian:

 

Sed rursum dum cogito, quod saepe inter cotidianas delicias etiam viliores cibi suaviter sapiunt, transmisi minima, legenti potiora, ut dum cibus grossior veluti pro fastidio sumitur, ad subtiliores epulas avidius redeatur.59

But again, as I ponder that amid daily delights simple food also often tastes sweet, I have delivered the least to the one who reads the better, so that when you consume cruder food, you may, as if through aversion, the more eagerly return to subtler feasts.60

 

Whereas the clausal sentence structures are clearly parallels, Vitéz imitates only one phrase word by word, “legenti potiora,” and the rest of the sentence is transformed to reflect his own situation.

Another example shows him at work transforming two citations. one from Antiquity, specifically Cicero, and one from the writings of a contemporary Humanist, Guarino Veronese, into a single sentence in his:

 

Igitur si tu quoque recte erudiri volueris, perge ut hos deinceps imitabundus aemuleris, ex iis velim edas paresque studia, ac demum adiungas frequentem usum, qui omnium magistrorum praecepta superabit. Nec amplius properes indoctam hanc scientiam consectari, qua Те ipsum facile perdes, ad labefactandas eloquii vires procaciter obeuntem.61

 

So, if you want to achieve real erudition, you should continue to imitate and emulate these texts [Jerome and other Church fathers], because I would like you to eat from these, and prepare your studies, and finally add a bit of frequent practice to it, which surpasses the precepts of all the masters. And do not hurry anymore to follow that ignorant science by which you would easily lose yourself, because it cheekily comes to meet you, only to weaken the power of your eloquence.

While the first italicized phrase was imitated from Cicero (de oratore 1, 15), the end of the second sentence was a clever and complicated idea (“cheekily coming to weaken someone”) taken from Guarino’s translation of Plutarch’s Life of Alexander the Great.62 This translation was prepared by Guarino, who was still in Constantinople, between 1403 and 1408, and he started to circulate it publicly after 1412.63 The latter example also demonstrates how the description of a person who wanted to overthrow the empire (imperium) could be transformed into the abstract concept of weakening one’s eloquence (eloquium).

The manuscripts which Vitéz used for these texts (Cicero’s de oratore, Plutarch’s Alexander the Great, and Gregory the Great’s homilies) have not been found yet.64 In a unique case, Vitéz’s actual source manuscript could be identified. It is the cod. 3099 in the Austrian National Library, containing the first, third, and fourth Decades of the Ab urbe condita of Livy.65 The large folio manuscript is damaged both at the beginning and the end (with one folio missing at the beginning), but the fact that it was in Vitéz’s possession can be established with relative certainty, as the margins of the two-column text contain a large number of marginalia from at least three different hands. One of these hands, who often annotates the text in red ink, copied hundreds of stylistically interesting words, expressions, and phrases from Livy to the margins, and his hand resembles that of Vitéz. Livy was perhaps Vitéz’s favorite author, as revealed by the number of expressions used in his letters and orations from him.66 Many of the expressions in the margins of the ms. cod. 3099 reoccur in Vitéz’s letters and speeches. Just to quote a few examples, on May 28, 1448, he wrote from Buda the following sentence: “feratque opem, qui spem dedit, ne differendo elangueat res” (“let the person bring help who gave hope, so that the situation would not languish because of procrastination”), which is composed of two sentences from Cicero (pro Ligario 30) and Livy (5, 26, 3: differendo deinde elanguit res). The annotator of the cod. 3099 (most probably Vitéz himself) noted twice in the margins: “Nota differendo elanguit res” and “nota bene hanc rem” (“Note that the situation languishes because of procrastination” and “note well this thing”; ÖNB, cod. 3099, 57va). In a letter addressed to Pope Nicholas V on June 15, 1450 in the name of John Hunyadi and the prelates of Hungary, he used the phrase “hoc incommodo in irritum cadentis spei preter ius et phas amplius torqueremur” (“we would be further tortured by this inconvenience of the uselessly failing hope beyond what is legally allowed”).67 At the exact place where Livy uses this phrase (1, 6), Vitéz’s annotation can be found in the cod. 3099 (13ra): “dolore ad irritum cadentis spei. Nota bene” (“Because of the pain of uselessly falling hope. Note well.”).

Vitéz of Zredna also used Livy’s phrases in his orations. Accordingly, orations were of special importance to him in his copy of the Ab urbe condita, and wherever a speech occurred in the text, he marked it with the sign ω. In his speech addressed to the young King Ladislaus V on October 8, 1452, he wrote: “quamvis heres esses, consenciens tamen vox populi — ut veteres dicere solebant — ratum nomen imperiumque tibi regi efficeret” (“although you are a heir to the throne, nevertheless the consenting voice of the people—as the ancients used to say—ratified your name and rule as a king”).68 The source of this expression (Livy 1, 6) is noted in red in the margin of the first surviving leaf of the ms. cod. 3099: “Consenciens vox ratum nomen imperiumque regi efficit” (1ra). In another oration, held in front of Friedrich III on March 23, 1455 in Wiener Neustadt, the emperor’s task appears as “ut sociorum salutis vindex sis et custos tue” (“so that you would be a vindicator of the security of your allies and a guard of your own”),69 which is again a phrase from Livy repeated in the margins of the cod. 3099 (12rb: “non acrior vindex libertatis fuerat quam inde custos fuit”). In sum, the marginalia in his Livy show how Vitéz of Zredna made use of the vocabulary of the Ancient historian and show him as a systematic and eager reader of Classical authors. These examples clearly show that Vitéz’s quotations from Livy could and should be doublechecked against the manuscript he used, which would lead us to a better understanding of his compilation methods. At the same time, the chronology of these Livian appropriations also demonstrates that he must have owned the Vienna manuscript cod. 3099 of Livy early in his career, already before 1445.

Along these lines, the best method to prove Vitéz’s dependence on Vergerio would be to demonstrate his direct use of Vergerio’s letters, which often appeared in early Humanist letter collections. Unfortunately, no unquestionable example of the imitation of Vergerio has surfaced yet in Vitéz’s letters, but there are a few signs which tend in this direction. Vitéz’s epistolary collection opens with a rhetorical game in which Vitéz reacts to the request of his subordinate, Paul of Ivanić, who asked him to compile a letter collection, as if it were a debt which he was forced to take upon himself:

 

Rursus evocor instancia tua usum seriemque laboris repetere, quo compos efficeris debiti, superiore mea caucione polliciti. […] Sed uter nostrum initum exinde pacti genus prevaricatus sit, tu pro te videris […] At mihi multo asperior exactio ipsa visa est, quam pactio fuit, quandoquidem decidis tempore condicto, et numero adicis, atque (ut pace tua loquar) fenore in fedus irruis. Quo fiet, ut dum me debitorem huius morati federis insimulas, tu ipse fenoris expetiti reus videberis.70

 

I am forced again by your perseverance to take up this long job, by which you receive back the debt, which was promised to you by my earlier provision. […] But you should see for yourself which one of us has violated this agreement which we have made […] For the retortion seemed to me much coarser than the covenant was, because you have shortened the agreed deadline, raised the sum, and (pardon my word!), you destroy the contract with usury. As a consequence, while you pretend that I am a debtor of a delayed loan contract, you actually will be sinning in usury.

 

Thus, the compilation of the letter collection is presented as a debt, but the repeated demands of Paul of Ivanić are usury.

Gasparino Barzizza wrote a letter to Cardinal Francesco Zabarella from Padua in August 1414 in which he used a similar leading metaphor of indebtedness, as he felt obliged to his new patron because of the praise transmitted to him by Vergerio. Barzizza described his feelings for his new friend, Zabarella, using the same rhetorical motifs:

 

Tantum ergo hac re tibi debeo, quanti amicitiam hominis et eruditissimi facio. Qui si solvendo essem, non differrem in diem, sed statim hoc alieno aere me exolverem. Nunc vero quum nihil dicere mihi etiam religio sit, ut verbis poetae comici utar, et me ipsum superiori tempore pro multis aliis meritis tuis insolutum dederim, faciam quod debitores non mali solent, quum non suppetentes sunt, unde suis creditoribus reddant, saltem hoc curant, diligentem calculi rationem habeant. Conficiam ergo novos calendarios, nam priores tuis creditis iam omnes sunt pleni, et a capite libri in albo, ut dicitur, scribam: ‘Receptum P. P. Vergerium nostrum’: Summam autem non taxabo, est enim mea sententia inextimabilis. Tu quanti voles taxabis, et ego ratum habeo. Vale.71

 

I owe you as much because of this as much I esteem the friendship of a man, and of a very learned one. If I had to pay now, I would not delay it even a day, but I would pay it even by a loan. But now, when I am scrupulous not to say anything, to use an expression of the comic poet [Ter. Heaut. II, ii, 6], and I have become insolvent to many of your honors previously, I will do what those debtors do who are not that bad: when they cannot secure the money from which to pay back their debts, at least they care for a diligent and careful payroll. Thus, I will start a new calendar, because the earlier ones are full of your credits, and on the first page of the book I will write on an empty page: “I received P. P. Vergerio.” And I won’t even estimate the final sum, because it is invaluable.

Was it perhaps this section of Barzizza’s letter which inspired him to compose his own metaphoric dedication to his works?

This connection seems all the more probable because of some circumstantial evidence. Vitéz of Zredna’s letter collection, which was edited by Paul of Ivanić, his collaborator at the royal chancery, in 1451, survives in two copies, the elegantly written Vienna manuscript cod. 431, which bears Humanist tendencies,72 and another one in the Library of the Metropolitan Chapter in Prague ms. G. XX, written in characteristic Central European Gothic bastarda scripture. Whereas the Vienna manuscript contains only the letters of Vitéz of Zredna, the Prague copy also includes a Humanist letter collection on folios 315r-451v with the works of Gasparino Barzizza,73 Guarino Veronese, Ognibono Leoniceno, Pier Paolo Vergerio, Francesco Barbaro, Piero da Monte, Poggio Bracciolini, Carlo Gonzaga, Leonello d’Este, and others. As this part of the manuscript has not been described in detail in the catalogue of the library, no one noticed that this collection is closely related to the one transmitted in the manuscript Munich, University Library 2o ms. 60774 and, to a lesser extent, to the mss. London, British Library, Arundel 70, and Vienna, National Library, cod. 3330.75 This connection hinted at by Ludwig Bertalot,76 but the contents of the Prague manuscript, which transmits these early Humanist letters and orations along with Vitéz of Zredna’s letters, have been never examined. This Humanist anthology in the Prague manuscript was copied by the same hand as the letter collection of Vitéz of Zredna, and it can be safely dated to 1459 (“feria V ante festum S. Bartholomaei,” 315r). It is important to note that Barzizza’s letter to Zabarella, which we have cited above and which might have influenced the rhetoric of Vitéz of Zredna’s letter to Paul of Ivanić, is contained in the Prague manuscript (331r-331v: “Gasparinus Pergamensis Francisco Gabarele [=Zabarelle]”), as well.77 Thus, it seems reasonably possible that this—probably Bohemian—copyist had access to Vitéz’s letters in the same place where he had found this Italian Humanist letter collection: at the Hungarian chancery. If this hypothesis is correct, this “Humanist copybook” might have had a serious impact on the composition of Vitéz of Zredna’s letter collection.

In sum, the beginnings of Hungarian Humanism can be better characterized using a philological approach and finding the codicological evidence behind the practice of textual appropriation than by looking for direct personal and historical contacts. As Humanism began to take root in Hungary, there stands a letter collection, that of Vitéz of Zredna, which relies heavily on late medieval notarial practices. His working method reflects the compiling techniques of medieval litterati: texts are basically made up of formal elements the primary function of which is to confirm the authenticity of the text, not to recognize the source or establish some kind of textual relationship. Nevertheless, in this Humanist letter collection, the most important difference from a medieval formulary is the range of texts that are considered authentic and worthy of imitation. In the case of Vitéz of Zredna, the range of these authentic authors extends from Plautus through Cicero, Livy, and Lucanus to figures of late Antiquity, such as Saint Jerome and Gregory the Great. Most probably, he also turned to contemporary Humanist authors, such as Guarino Veronese, Gasparino Barzizza, and Pier Paolo Vergerio. The final result was not yet a clean, Ciceronian Latin prose, but something that was Classical at least in its intention. One could apply the judgment of Marcantonio Sabellico on Gasparino Barzizza’s Latinity to Vitéz of Zredna: “As I hear, he was the first person who cast an eye on the shadow of Ancient eloquence, because that was all that was left of this very noble subject.”78

 

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Toldy Ferenc. “Szánoki Gergely Magyarországon, és Kallimachus történetírói hitelessége” [Gregory of Sanok in Hungary and Callimachus’ historical reliability]. Új Magyar Musaeum 10 (1860): 183–93.

Tournoy, Gilbert. “La storiografia greca nell’Umanesimo: Arriano, Pier Paolo Vergerio e Enea Silvio Piccolomini.” Humanistica Lovaniensia 55 (2006): 1–8.

Vergerio, Pier Paolo. “Ad Ubertinum de Carraria de ingenuis moribus et liberalibus adolescentiae studiis liber.” Edited by Carlo Miano. Atti e memorie della Società istriana di archeologia e storia patria, n.s., 20, no. 1 (1972–3): 183–251.

Vergerio, Pier Paolo. “De principibus Carrariensibus et gestis eorum liber.” Edited by Attilio Gnesotto. Atti e memorie dell’Accademia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova, n.s., 41 (1924–1925): 327–475.

Vergerio, Pier Paolo. L’Epistolario di Pier Paolo Vergerio. Edited by Leonardo Smith. Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1934.

Vitéz de Zredna, Iohannes. Opera quae supersunt. Edited by Iván Boronkai. Budapest: Akadémiai, 1980.

Voigt, Georg. Die Wiederbelebung des klassischen Althertums. 2 vols. 3rd ed. Berlin: Reimer 1893.

Walter, Hermann. “Il Paulus di Pierpaolo Vergerio e la commedia elegiaca Baucis e Traso.” Studi Umanistici Piceni 15 (1995): 241–53.

Witt, Ronald G. “Medieval ‘Ars Dictaminis’ and the Beginnings of Humanism: A New Construction of the Problem.” Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 1–35.

Wulfram, Hartmut. “Ein Heilsbringer aus dem Osten: Manuel Chrysoloras und seine Entindividualisierung im italienischen Frühhumanismus.” In Byzanzrezeption in Europa, edited by Fosteini Kolovou, 89–116. Berlin–Boston: Brill, 2012.

Zippel, Gianni. “Enea Silvio Piccolomini e il mondo germanico: Impegno cristiano e civile dell’umanesimo.” La Cultura 19 (1981): 267–350.

Zsupán, Edina. “János Vitéz’ Book of Letters: Prologue.” In A Star in the Raven’s Shadow: János Vitéz and the Beginnings of Humanism in Hungary, edited by Ferenc Földesi, 117–39. Budapest: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, 2008.

Volume 8 Issue 2 CONTENTS

Debates Concerning the Regulation of Border Rivers in the Late Middle Ages: The Case of the Mura River*

Bence Péterfi
Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
peterfi.bence@btk.mta.hu

It has been well known for ages that atypical elements of a border line, such as ditches, large trees etc., may have served as points for orientation. Literate societies, however, have had the privilege of conserving the knowledge not only by oral tradition but also by various kinds of written word. In the following, I present an especially well-documented conflict between Styrian and Hungarian families regarding the riverbed of the River Mura, which was the border of the two polities for some 20 kilometers. The debate emerged in the beginning of the sixteenth century and lasted until 1546. The Mura-question was one of the most permanent ones in the political discourse of the first third of the sixteenth century. Although we can grasp hardly any of it, the conflict involved a fear on the part of the estates of both countries that they might lose lands. First, my goal is to show the dynamics of such phenomena as an archetype of border conflicts in a nutshell. Second, I seek to identify the main reason why the conflict was so protracted and explain how eventually the issue was addressed in order to put an end to the conflict in 1546.

Keywords: Austria, Styria, Hungary, River Mur(a), river regulation, border disputes

In March 1573, the Styrian estates informed Archduke Charles II of Austria (1564–1590) that the Hungarians again had diverted the Mura River and, in doing so, had wronged the German lands. This happened despite the fact that, until then, regulation was prohibited by a strict agreement (“bis letzlich ein starkher vertrag aufgericht, dardurch die Hungarn von sollichn ihrem fürnemen abstehen müesten”).1 Within a short period of time, the Styrian estates informed the Lower Austrian Chamber of the archival research they had carried out at the request of the estates, and, though they had found some of the documents concerning the problem, they had not found the 1546 treaty.2 Some months later, Emperor Maximilian II of the Holy Roman Empire (1564–1576) himself (in part at the request of his brother, Archduke Charles II) ordered the Lower Austrian Chamber, then half a month later – this time as king of Hungary – the Hungarian Chamber, to retrieve the agreement concluded between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Duchy of Styria from their registry books.3 The archduke also contacted the Lower Austrian Chamber, from which he eventually got a copy of the treaty.4 The copy that today is held in the archive of the Styrian estates may have been produced from this version.5

What importance does this treaty have, and what was the investigation for? According to the sources, it put an end to a border conflict of different intensity which lasted a good forty years, and it had an impact which proved unusually strong, even if not put in print,6 as its strength and memory only started to fade about a generation after its conclusion. This, in the circumstances of the period, was an extraordinarily long period of time. In this article, I will sketch out in short the stages that led to the conclusion of the treaty. During the negotiations, which lasted almost two decades, the Styrian and Hungarian estates followed different and, with respect to the issue to be discussed here, in many ways contradictory legal traditions, but one may ask whether this was of any real relevance, as the success may have depended on something else. How could the parties approximate their stands to a point which generated peace for such a long time?

Permeability and Malleability of Borders

While unlike in the case of the Early Middle Ages7 there can be no doubt that each geographical/political entity had well defined borders, it would still not be appropriate to project our present ideas and preconceptions onto the Late Middle Ages. In the context of the late medieval period, one can hardly speak of state power in the modern sense, so Peter Moraw’s statement that border and border could significantly differ and the abilities of the landlords to enforce their interests could carry weight can be confirmed.8 This in many cases could hold for state borders, as these borders were also estate borders, and their keeping count – that being land or riverine border – could not differ.9 “The border of the Kingdom of Hungary is well known both for Germans and Hungarians,” wrote nobleman Ferenc Batthányi (or Batthyány) around 1529.10 On the other hand, for a given polity, conflicts that crossed borders, were obvious matters of prestige. However, because of the immature form of concluding a case, enforcing one’s interest went uneasily, therefore again, recalling Moraw’s statement cited above, much could depend on the aptitude and influence of the claimant and the other side when it came to putting an end to a dispute or conflict. The number of similar conflicts in the sources is countless, as well as the attempts to resolve them, the diversity of which starts to become clear beginning in the 1530s in the Hungarian source material.11

“Previously, people had walked straight across the boundary; aristocrats, men of letters and merchants crossed it quite naturally. The frontière only existed for soldiers and princes, and only then in time of war,” as Lucien Febvre writes in one of his essays.12 The apropos of the petition of Ferenc Battyányi, quoted above, comes from the nature of crossing the (state) borders on a daily basis: a conflict and then a lawsuit arose with the Polheim family, landowners with holdings on the other side of the River Lafnitz,13 which was the border between the Kingdom of Hungary and Styria. The Polheims therefore counted as inhabitants of the Empire. The stake was how and how much seigniorial duty the subjects of the Polheims should pay after their possessions in the estate of Battyányi which was settled by an agreement between the two families in 1546. The conflict unfolded despite the fact that in the previous century the same problem has been regulated a number of times (1429, 1440, 1452). Apart from extorting better conditions, two things can be seen behind the questioning of lordship: first, the tithe of Hungarian plots of the Styrian peasants was collected by their Styrian lords who paid it to the bishop of Győr. Second, one cannot contest that the Styrian tenants had cultivated the lands on the other side of the Lafnitz collectively since before anyone could remember, and because of the routine, these lands on the Hungarian side had been counted as part of the lands on the Styrian side of the border.14 The case in itself is extraordinary, but the problem is not, as the Austrian–Styrian burghers had vineyards in Western Hungary for centuries.15 Moreover, the mostly German speaking people who lived in the border area were in had close ties to one another, so one cannot be surprised by the appearance of some legal customs of the Empire, such as the legally binding private charters in Western Hungary.16

Some of the estate complexes in Western Hungary that got into the hands (a smaller part as pledge, the majority by arms) of Emperor Frederick III (1440–1493) or his younger brother, Archduke Albert VI of Austria (1458–1463) during the years of the civil war and weak royal power in the 1440s and 1450s in Hungary further increased the degree of interlocking and “disturbed” the perception of the border. Most of these areas remained under the authority of the Habsburgs until 1647. In some cases, they were considered part of the Archduchy of Austria, and not without any reason, since beginning in the 1530s, they were under the financial control of the Lower Austrian Chamber. Despite this, in most cases they still were considered parts of the Kingdom of Hungary. The way they were acquired, however, has been rewritten in collective memory, according to which the peace treaty of Bratislava in 1491, which put an end to the war between the Habsburgs and the Jagiellonians (who finally took the Hungarian throne in the autumn of 1490), had an important role. This treaty handled the estates that ended up under Habsburg control in all manner of ways the same way. In fact, only two of them were achieved by pledging, most of them were taken by arms unlike how the well-known narrative in the Austrian, and Hungarian scholarship goes about the 1463 contract between Emperor Frederick III and Matthias Corvinus (pledging Western Hungary for Holy Crown of Hungary held by the Emperor that time).17

Based on what has been said so far, the case of Sinnersdorf on the Styrian–Hungarian border becomes clearer. The village originally belonged to the estate complex of Bernstein in Western Hungary, which the Habsburgs acquired in the 1440s. Sinnersdorf was donated in 1499 by King Maximilian I (1493–1519) to his influential Styrian councilor, Georg von Rottal. It was then attached it to his Styrian estate complex, Thalberg. While by the mid-seventeenth century in lay matters, the settlement, otherwise in almost every direction bordered by the Hungarian Pinkafeld, became an organic part of Styria (for instance, it paid taxes to Styria), in ecclesiastic matters it still belonged under the jurisdiction of the parish of Pinkafeld, which means it was part of the bishopric of Győr. Similar problems occurred in the case of Zillingdorf and Lichtenwörth along the River Lajta, as well as in the case of four villages of the estate of Scharfeneck (Mannersdorf, Sommerein, Au, and Hof). While in the middle of the fifteenth century, the six settlements practically were torn from the Hungarian crown, in an ecclesiastic sense they still belonged to the authority of the bishop of Győr. This is how the peculiar situation arose in which the villages of the bishop of Wiener Neustadt, Zillingdorf, and Lichtenwörth, which the bishopric owned as a landlord, continued to pay the tithe to the bishop of Győr.18 This also indicates that the borders of dioceses could be more permanent than state borders.

Finally, two examples of permeability are worth mention: Hornstein, which until the mid-seventeenth century as one of the aforementioned estates in Western Hungary was under Habsburg authority, was joined to Seiberdorf on the Austrian side of the River Lajta during the fifteenth century by Ulrich von Grafeneck, and the latter became the center of the dual estate complex. The reason for this may have been the little income of the small estate complex of Hornstein and the ruined state of the castle of Hornstein.19 The Counts of Montfort administered the estate complex of Rohrau together with their Rohrau estate in the Archduchy of Austria and other lands in Hungary,20 even if their acquisition in Hungary (1419, 1435) took place only many years after their acquisition in Austria (1404). The Hungarian parts were also acknowledged by the representatives of the vendor, Count George III of Monfort, and the buyer, Leonhard von Harrach, in front of the chapter of Bratislava when, in December 1524 (i.e. significantly later), for the sake of safety, had transcribed with the chancellery of King Louis II of Hungary.21 In both cases, practical reasons and more effective farming were in the background of joining the parts of different origin, yet the border remained unchanged.

“Variations on a Theme”

Being a neighbor went with the presence of conflicts, which the parties first tried to negotiate between themselves. However, when they were unsuccessful, the parties may have had trust in the royal-imperial court(s) so that the ruler(s) would appoint some kind of committee to evaluate the causes of the disagreement. Of most border disputes one can only have a fragmented view, as in the majority of cases neither the first nor the last step in the course of the events can be known, and moreover, what is generally missing is the different opinions of the two parties. From the 1510s on the sources become more abundant. Nevertheless, the complaints of the Austrian party are much better known than those of the Hungarians because of the ways in which the sources were preserved and stored. Most of the similar documents can be found in the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv and the Austrian provincial archives (Graz, Sankt Pölten).22

The Styrian–Hungarian border was fixed along rivers in a number of its sections: for forty kilometers it ran along the abovementioned Lafnitz, for a few kilometers the Feistritz Stream, one of the tributaries of the Lafnitz, formed the border, and then, further to the south, the Mura River was the border for ca. 22–23 kilometers, followed by the River Dráva for approximately the same length, and then almost at its full length, for 90 kilometers, a tributary of the River Sava, the Sutla. Moreover, the Dráva and the Mura in the border sections are old rivers; they have numerous branches, and they are scattered with islands. This means that major floods that could change the flood plain even more than once a year always remained a source of conflicts for the people who lived by the river and worked to harness it.23

Moreover, at least in theory, in such cases, the legal stance of the two parties, here the Austrian or Styrian and the Hungarian, may have been different. According to the Roman legal tradition, which by the Late Middle Ages was used throughout the Holy Roman Empire, as a supplement in a case of riverbed changes, borders did not change. Hungarian practice, however, was the opposite (the borders moved with the river beds), although in the customary law collection of István Verbőci (or Werbőczy) compiled in 1514 a different opinion based on the Roman tradition also appeared. In the sixteenth century, however, this view was still not accepted generally.24

The abovementioned short section of the Mura was split between Vas and Zala Counties, and the county border reached the river somewhere opposite the Styrian Veržej (Wernsee). The Mura River was referred to as a border river between the “German” territories (i.e. Styria) and Hungary in 1331 for the first time,25 however it probably is not an overstatement to suggest that the border, if it did not along the Mura, was not far from it from the thirteenth century onwards,26 as a source from 1249 tells of the Germans earlier (sometime in the 1230s) having dammed up the Mura River, which flooded the lands of many villages.27 In the Late Middle Ages, the estate complex of Grad (Vas County) and that of Lendava (Zala County) ran along the bank of the Mura River. Both gave names to important aristocratic families, the Szécsi (or Széchy) family of Grad (Felsőlendva) and the Bánfi (or Bánffy) family of Lendava (Alsólendva), respectively. In the border conflicts along the Mura in the Late Middle Ages, these two families played the most important role, especially the count of Vas County, Tamás Szécsi (1501–1526),28 his son, István, and to some extent Antal, Jakab, and Zsigmond Bánfi, as well as their tenants and noble retinue, who sometimes were ready to act without the knowledge of their lords. On the Styrian side of River Mura we could find the Pernegg family with a seat in Negova (Negau) as well as the Schweinpecks with a residence in Ljutomer (Luttenberg).29

An agreement survived from 1504 concluded with the mediation of imperial councilor Georg von Weißenegg and Kaspar von Khuenburg, Styrian provincial lieutenant (Verweser), between Bartolomäus von Pernegg of Styria, and Tamás Szécsi of Hungary. The complaints connected to the agreement had already been appealed to the provincial administration.30 Both parties were aggrieved and felt they had been caused damage, as becomes clear from the text of the agreement. According to the Styrian nobleman, the subjects of Szécsi, who owned vineyards in the slopes next to his village called Turjanci (Siebeneichen), kept him out of grape juice, in answer to which he took the harvest of the past eight years and brought it to the castle of Negova. As Szécsi did not bring up any arguments in defense of his tenants, they agreed that the confiscated goods would remain with Pernegg, but in the near future, the vineyard owners would present their documents, and all the affairs connected to the sale and purchase could only happen with the consent of the Styrian nobleman. Finally, the tenants of Szécsi in the coming three years (probably as a reduction of the confiscation) did not have to pay seigniorial dues. The other case is probably difficult to dissociate from what happened at the vineyards, but one cannot be certain which one was first (or whether it was just part of the daily back-and-forth squabbles). The Hungarian aristocrat did not deny anything: he had the course of the Mura River diverted by a dam, as a consequence of which part of Turjanci owned by Pernegg was destroyed. While the Styrian nobleman argued that the diverted river should be returned to its original bed, this either would have been very costly or not possible at all. For this, and because Szécsi had a good relationship with the brother of Bartolomäus, Stefan, he offered personal assistance for the son of Stefan, and as a redemption, keeping in mind the suggestions of the uncle and his friends, he offered to cover the costs of the education of his nephew and legal guardian until his adulthood as if he were his own son. This, as Szécsi cynically argued, would have been more useful for the youngster than a village with 50 tenants (ihm sein hilff und freündschafft lieber und nutzer sein soll, dann ain dorff, darinnen fuefzig bauren haußlich sitzen).31

Be that as it may, we learn from the distance of two decades that in 1511, at the call of the steward of the Styrian provincial estates (Vizedom), a building master set out with laborers to modify the course of the Mura River to the benefit of the Styrian side. However, the building master was arrested by Szécsi and was kept in custody until his death. Szécsi had the existing dam strengthened and three ditches cut, allegedly in order to detach a major piece of land from the territory of Styria. As a result of the work, three villages were flooded by the river.32

But not only can the blackmailing potential be seen in the attempts to divert the river: the earlier riverbed modifications probably had to be repeated from time to time, since the Mura River could not be kept in the its bed and in its current course without securing the banks.33 As the most important viewpoint was the protection of their own lands, the Hungarians obviously erected the dams and deepened the ditches so that the water would spare the left bank, i.e. their bank. This, of course, went with the right (Styrian) bank being increasingly endangered by the destruction of the water, to which the locals and landowners gave voice. In addition to protecting the settlements themselves, the flood plains may also have been used for fishing or animal herding, and they may have provided favorable places for watermills. All of these factors may have been important to local communities. Thus, modification of water systems could even be done for such purposes (maintenance, improvement etc.).34

The changes in the course of the Mura River may have been closely tied with the different endeavors of the neighbors, too. Most of them are complaint letters which one has to read with some precaution, as they usually only represent the viewpoint of one of the parties, in this case usually that of the Styrians.35 Beginning in the 1520s, the names of Tamás Szécsi and his neighbor Jakab Bánfi occur again and again in the documents, probably for different reasons, but they both took aim at the same settlement along the Mura; in 1520 they raided Veržej.36 The Styrian party appears as a perpetrator only exceptionally because of the nature of the source material. For instance, in 1519 one of the men of Jakab Bánfi was murdered at the fair of Radkersburg,37 or when, in December 1522, the retinue of the Hungarian nobleman raided Styria, because allegedly one of their tenants was being kept in custody.38 A letter written by a Styrian nobleman named Hans von Schweinpeck from December 1522 tells of his continuous conflicts with the Szécsis (Zetschy krieg): eighty of his cattle were said to have been drawn away by the servants of the Hungarian aristocrat. Schweinpeck answered violence with violence, and he also had captives taken.39 In another undated letter which certainly was written at the time, Schweinpeck notes similarly unfortunate circumstances, telling of his relation with the Bánfis in a number of cases and reiterating the claims he had made in his previous letter.40 The conflict with the Szécsis was still an issue in 1523.41

Negotiation Attempts in the 1520s and 1530s

There is no clear answer as to why it was possible not only to bring the two parties to a table to negotiate, but also to spur them to come to an agreement in 1504. It is similarly unclear why there was no similar thing after the above conflicts. Moreover, in the course of 1523–1524, the Austrian–Hungarian commission members met at least once in Sopron, although the issues there strictly concerned the regional conflicts that crossed the border of the Austrian Archduchy and the Kingdom of Hungary.42 This regional division of border conflicts was not be new, as a similar system existed already in the fourteenth century.43

The Styrian party apparently turned to King Louis II of Hungary through Archduke Ferdinand of Austria in vain. The royal orders sent to Tamás Szécsi and/or Zsigmond Bánfi in roughly the same period in (1524–1525) to destroy the newly built dams were proven to be pointless,44 just as when the provincial procurator (Verweser) sent them in response to pressure from the Styrian estates to, for instance, Szécsi.45 (Allegedly, in 1524, the Szécsis made the members of the committee who were sent to the bank of the Mura leave at the point of the sword.46) One of the complaints of the Styrian estates from 1533 directly addressed the fact that when Tamás Szécsi had diverted the Mura River, he had gone against the treaty concluded between Emperor Frederick III and King Vladislas II of Hungary (the treaty of Bratislava of 1491), as his acts were in sharp contradiction with the peace reached in the treaty.47 Probably in the middle of March 1528 or in May 152948 at a commission meeting on the border conflicts held in Sopron, Wilhelm von Pernegg sent an envoy who claimed that the promises Szécsi made in the agreement of 1504, namely on his education, had not been kept.49

Even though, Tamás Szécsi died probably in late spring or early summer in 1526,50 this did not change anything with regard to the conflicts concerning the Mura River. Instead of his name, the name of his son, István Szécsi, appears in the legal documents, and in the late 1520s and 1530, documents again testify to the dam building activities of the Szécsis and the Bánfis. (Although it is not always clear from the complaints whether these were renewals of older dams or entirely new dams.) After 1526, the Hungarian estates did not invest major energy into solving this. In the shadow of the threat of the Ottoman Empire and the conflict between King Ferdinand I and his rival, John Szapolyai (who was also elected as king of Hungary) that quickly escalated into a civil war this problem did not seem so significant. This was further complicated in the Hungarian Chamber by a lack of financial and personal assets for the above reasons. It was not unique that the councilors ordered to the different negotiations did not receive any money or only received money with difficulties.51 In the summer of 1531, news spread that the supporters of the John Szapolyai again diverted the Mura, as they wanted to extend the Hungarian authority towards Styria and in the meantime guard the bank of the river with firearms. It was to be feared that the conflict would end in violence.52 Meanwhile (at the end of July 1531), the Styrian estates brought in a person who had great respect among the Hungarian elite. This is how their choice fell on one of the key figures in the war against the Ottomans, Hans Katzianer, whose presence they hoped would lead to changes to their advantage in the Styrian issues.53 For King Ferdinand I, the utilization54 of joint commissions was in focus, which had been written down in the 1491 treaty of Bratislava.55 However, this must have been rather a theoretical consideration. Finally, Katzianer is unlikely to have attended the commission’s meeting called for on August 24, 1531 at Radkersburg. He was not the only person who missed the meeting. To the surprise of the Styrian estates, so did the Hungarians, and Hans Ungnad complained to King Ferdinand I that the Hungarians gave no explanation for not having attended, even after four days.56 One of the most influential Hungarian noblemen in the court of King Ferdinand I, Elek Thurzó, reasoned for the overburdening of the Hungarian councilors in a letter dated to the beginning of September 1531, in which he also asked for the postponement of the commission meeting. 57 But similar queries had also been shared with the king by the Hungarian councilors six weeks earlier, as by then he must have known that the diet was set for September 8 to Bratislava.58

What was discussed there may not have had a major impact on the conflicts, as two years later, on July 25, 1533, a joint commission meeting was held, again at Radkersburg. Three long complaints were written against the late Tamás Szécsi and his son István, and one concerned the abuses of the retinue of Antal Bánfi,59 but they did not have any visible impact. Only the Styrian appointees traveled to the Styrian town, and similarly to what had happened two years before, no one from the Hungarians appeared.60 After the death of István Szécsi in spring 1535,61 the abovementioned Elek Thurzó,62 the new landlord63 of estate complex of Grad, the foster father of István Szécsi and second husband of Magdolna Székely of Kövend/Ormož (Friedau) (i.e. widow of Tamás Szécsi), was named liable for the abuses in the past and the present. In July 1537, he made a complaint fairly similar to those the Styrian estates had written before, as they did not attend the joint commission meeting called for March 11, 1537. The Styrians, protected by armed men, were said to have diverted the water of the Mura River into a ditch by which his plow lands and forests were detached from the estate complex. After that, the men of Thurzó entrenched the ditch, and the Styrians destroyed it.64 The results of the joint commission meeting held good half a year later (called first for September 1537, then for mid-October, and finally for the end of November, for the last time probably to Radkersburg65) are unknown, and neither do the sources give any details concerning the allegedly futile meeting held at the end of March 1538 at Murska Sobota (Muraszombat).66 As for the negotiations held at Petanjci by the Mura River in October 1539, it is the one and only occasion when we are aware of the dynamics of the discussion between the parties. The arguments were not based on classical legal principles but solely on highly technical aspects of water management as well as damages caused by the Mura River. In the end, the parties managed to settle all the points, but for some reason their decisions were never implemented.67 A letter sent by King Ferdinand I from January 1540 makes it clear that Thurzó was somewhat resentful of the newly initiated “armistice” (though actually we do not know how many times it was initiated), as he definitely wanted to have his dam on the Mura River, which was under construction at the time, completed.68 For this, a new meeting was set to February 25, 1540,69 and even if, of course, there were complaints in the first half of the 1540s (in the majority of the cases about Hungarians, most importantly the Bánfis70), the number of complaints dropped significantly. It is also telling that there is no further information on joint commission meetings. The death of Elek Thurzó on January 25, 1543, who as noted above stood in for the male line of the Szécsi family, probably had a major role in this.71

The Agreement of 1546

A private diary of the Hungarian diet of 1546 gives a good summary of the basic problem in this case, as well as the general functioning of the border commissions: all the involved parties tried to favor themselves.72 Therefore, the king decided to take the questions to a special committee consisting of Czechs and Moravians,73 which the Hungarians also acknowledged. (The tasks of the delegated judges included not only the Mura case, but also possibly other litigations, e.g. on the Dráva River.)74 The decision concerning the course of the Mura River was made two days before the arrival of the king to the Hungarian diet in Bratislava,75 on February 4 in Vienna.

What conclusion did the Czech and Moravian appointees arrive at? The narrative elements, which with some exaggeration were repeated for decades, were presented: the Styrians complained that the Hungarian nobles had modified the course of the Mura River by building ditches and/or dams, which had caused damages to the landlords on the right bank, and moreover relocated animals and people of the Styrians. The Hungarian Bánfis either denied these accusations or reasoned that their actions had been a counterstrike to compensate for damages they had suffered. The appointees decided that, as the three dams built by the Bánfis were rather new and they indeed had caused damages to the Styrian neighbors, they had to be eliminated, including the piles put down four weeks before the agreement. Regarding the future, they also advised the “opposite neighbors” along the river to negotiate and determine where the banks should be strengthened. And if that had been done, dams should be built on both sides out of earth and not sand in a width of four Viennese fathoms (7.584 meters76). However, the regulation of the smaller branches of the river (in the form of dams or ditches) would have been everyone’s individual task. The appointees declared that the riverbed should be kept in its present form, and the parties should cease causing losses to each other.77

The claims against the Szécsis were more complicated than those against the Bánfis, as Tamás Szécsi has been dead for twenty years and his son István had been dead for eleven years. After the death of the second husband, Elek Thurzó, Magdolna Székely (who was marrying for a third time) and her daughter, Margit Szécsi, would have been the people to have to face consequences because of the acts of the late male members of the family. It was enlightening to read, after the long lists of complaints, that the biggest abuse of the Styrian party was caused by Tamás Szécsi back then when he had caused damages to the village of Turjanci with a newly built dam. The husband of Margit Szécsi, Niklas Graf zu Salm (the Younger), however, successfully persuaded the commissioners that the living members of the family could not be punished for the crimes of their forefathers, so all related claims were disregarded. The regulations on the main and the smaller branches of the river were the same as in the case of the agreement of the Bánfis and the Styrian estates. The violator of the agreement had to pay 50 marks within three months.78 It seems that the agreement paid off even in the short term, and in 1549, the Styrians actually wrote that by then they did not have any border disputes with the Hungarians, except for the complaint concerning the Zrinski/Zrínyi family and the Styrian town of Ljutomer.79

Conclusions

King Ferdinand I probably wanted to accelerate the decision so that he could show progress for the Hungarian estates in at least some questions at the 1546 diet of Bratislava, which the estates took with satisfaction. From the point of view of the estates, who took all the measures to guard over the border of the country, especially in the period of the Ottoman conquests, the ruler made an apt decision. He could say, that with a simple technique, choosing members for a committee who were entirely independent and came from another country ruled by him, he managed to do away with conflicts which had lasted for at least two and a half decades. The seemingly moderate committee decisions managed to address the complaints raised in the letters, and even if the Styrian and Hungarian territories followed different legal principles, the decisions of the committee in the present situation can be considered a generous resolution. This may have had major significance for the parties, who were probably fed up with the lasting conflicts.

It is also clear, if one can believe the complaints made in the letters of the Styrian estates and other rather sporadic evidence, that strong men like Tamás Szécsi could even deny royal orders. Elek Thurzó, who was even more important and influential, may have also used his political connections to settle his own issues, though there are fewer concrete signs of this in the sources.

Obviously, even before the sixteenth century, a frequently changing geographical boundary such as the Mura River was inevitably a source of sharp conflicts. However, these conflicts usually broke out because of changes in private landownership rather than changes in state borders This is well reflected in the 1504 and 1546 treaties as well as in the files of the failed negotiations of 1539 held at Petanjci. It may have been totally clear to people at the time that the course of the Mura River could not be preserved without human intervention, neither on the short term nor on the long term. Even if from time to time one could find a solution either because of the death of someone involved or, in a more lucky case, with some kind of compromise concerning the problem of the changing flow of either the Mura or other rivers, the damages going back to the different, not necessarily ill-intentioned water management systems were hard to address simply. The Mura River along the Hungarian–Styrian border splits into numerous branches, and the riverbed changed constantly. Year by year, the dam and ditch system had to be modified. It was precisely this border situation that increasingly triggered the people to take action. This is why in the eighteenth century on a number of occasions (1717–1718, 1753–1755, and 1793) bilateral commissions were set up to negotiate not only the riverine but also the land borders. The sources on the abovementioned conflicts were partly preserved thanks to these negotiations, as the historical documents had an important role in defining the new borders. The parallel running of the border and the crooked course of the Mura were separated during the long negotiations in the 1750s, which is how the almost straight running Linea Theresiana80 came into existence in 1755 as the new Styrian–Hungarian borderline. From then on, the changing of the bed of the Mura River was merely a hydrological issue.

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Volume 8 Issue 2 CONTENTS

Border by the River – But Where is the River? Hydrological Changes and Borders in Medieval Hungary*

András Vadas
Eötvös Loránd University / Central European University
vadas.andras@btk.elte.hu

Medieval estate borders were mostly formed by natural borders, such as hills, ditches, forests, meadows, etc. Of course, in many cases trees were marked in some form, or small mounds were built to clarify the running of estate borders. Almost none of these would seem at a first sight as firm as a border along rivers and streams. However, a closer look at law codes, customary law collections, and legal disputes that arose in connection with estate borders makes clear that, as borders of estates, bodies of water could be a basis for conflict. In this essay, I discuss sources from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries that concern the problem of the change of land ownership as a consequence of changes in riverbeds.
In the late medieval compilation of the customary law of Hungary by Stephen Werbőczy, the Tripartitum, a surprisingly long section is dedicated to this problem. He clearly suggests that landownership does not change if a piece of land is attached to another person’s land by changes in the course of a river. Historians have drawn attention to this section of the Tripartitum and have suggested that this is one of the few parts in which Werbőczy does not apply Hungarian customary law, but rather uses Roman law. In my paper, which is based on a collection of similar lawsuits, I aim to demonstrate that there are a number of examples of cases in which Roman law prevailed before Werbőczy’s work, and, thus, the land in question was left in the hands of the previous owners as well as decisions according to which the shifting riverbed went with a change in ownership.

Keywords: Legal history, water history, customary law, rivers, boundaries

Introduction

This river [the Tiber] moreover circles that splendid mountain on which the city of Perugia is situated and while flowing a great distance through its district, the river itself is bordered by plains, hills and similar places (…) when I was resting from my lecturing and in order to relax, was travelling towards a certain vacation house situated near Perugia above the Tiber, I began to contemplate the bends of the Tiber, its alluvion, the islands arising in the river, the changes of the river-bed as well as a host of unanswered questions which I had come across in practice. (…) I began to consider in various ways what the legal position was, not believing that I would take it any further (…) while I slept that night, I had a vision near dawn that a certain man, whose countenance I found gentle, came to me and he said the following: ‘Write down what you have begun to think about and since there is a need for illustration, provide mathematical diagrams[.]’1

The quotation above is from the prologue of a treatise by Bartolus de Saxoferrato (Sassoferrato), one of the most celebrated jurists of the fourteenth century. Bartolus, who was probably one of the most influential and, by 1355 (when this text was written), busy professors at the University of Perugia, decided to take some time off during the year. As is mentioned in the text, he headed to a villa (the location of which has not been identified by historians) overlooking the valley series of the Tiber. There, he began considering the question of who the islands emerging in the river belonged to and what happens with the ownership of a certain piece of land when the river which constitutes its border starts to meander along a different path, eroding parts of one person’s property and adding them to the far bank.

As suggested by the prologue, which is not lacking in topoi, Bartolus first thought it was an eccentric idea to discuss an issue like this in a treatise until a mysterious man, who occurred in his dream, urged him to do so. The anecdotal story behind the inspiration of the treatise known as Tractatus de fluminibus seu Tyberiadis (or sometimes referred to in an abbreviated form simply as Tyberiadis) may not have had much connections to what actually happened, and it is difficult to believe that the whole treatise could have been completed in just a few weeks’ time, as Bartolus suggests. Existing scholarship on the treatise attributed major importance to the circumstances of the formation of the work, especially the possible vacation and the location of the villa mentioned.2 These questions are important, of course, from the point of view of Bartolus himself, but they are probably less crucial with respect to the present essay. What is more interesting in the context of this discussion is simply that a major authority on Roman law at the time engaged in writing a work dedicated to the topic. It is worth noting that it seems from the above quote that he did not consider the question worthy of similar treatment.3 The prologue is somewhat controversial, as Bartolus also states that he encountered similar problems during his legal practice.

Bartolus’ work consists of three parts and focuses on two questions: who owns the land if an island emerges from a river and, when the river changes course, how should the borders of the connected estates be demarcated? One of the most important features of the treatise is that, in its argumentation, it combines legal reasoning and geometry. Bartolus drew numerous geometric figures with which he meticulously described how newly emerging islands or newly emerging lands connected to the existing lands should be divided. There are several variants of these drawings (because of the manuscript tradition), but an autograph fragment of the Tyberiadis preserved many figures which can be associated with Bartolus himself.4

Although as noted above, historians have tended to focus on the circumstances of the creation of the work and have dealt less with the text itself, the problem touched upon by it does come up in a number of law codes, customary law collections, and different documents related to lawsuits. And as mentioned, the very fact that Bartolus engaged in writing such a work suggests that the problem was not as rare as it may seem at a first glance. To what extent were the questions he was raising important as matters of theory? To what extent did he mean to offer an example, with this text, of the potentials of combining geometry and law instead of simply addressing a legal problem? Does the Hungarian source material offer insights into similar problems? How were such cases resolved in medieval Europe and in Hungary? In this essay, I discuss these problems on the basis of legal evidence, more specifically, the example of legal codes, customary law collections, and, most importantly, diplomas that settled similar, land-related disputes.

Despite the fact that Bartolus’ work discusses in detail what happens if a piece of land emerges on the bank of a river because of alluvial activity, he partly disregards a problem which, in light of the Hungarian source material, appears to have been a recurring issue.5 He never considers what exactly happens if the piece of land in question used to be the property of the landlord of the other bank of the river, i.e. it did not emerge from the river, but was detached from one person’s property and attached by the river to a property belonging to someone else. In the cases Bartolus discusses, the principles of geometry can be applied using geometrical diagrams. The general principle he suggests is quite easy to explain in the sense that it aligns the ownership of the islands on a bank to the parallel landownership. In Bartolus’ treatise, the same applies to lands which emerge from the alluvium in consequence of years of accumulation. This phenomenon in Roman law is usually referred to as accretion, and it was adjudicated in the ancient legal tradition in the same manner as used by Bartolus.6 This was not only important in cases of meandering rivers, but also in the case of lands emerging along seashores.7 Of course, in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and probably with a few exceptions, everywhere in Europe, the formation of new lands was a consequence of shifts in the flow of rivers rather than the movement of seawaters. This process in legal tradition is usually referred to as avulsion. It can be considered a special form of accretion. As noted, Bartolus did not suggest a definitive solution to this question. It is not clear why was the question partly omitted by Bartolus. It can be connected to the fact that the most important motivation for the work was to demonstrate the possibilities of integrating geometry and law. This works well in the classical cases of accretion, but in the case of avulsion, the legal principle is the main question, and there is little space for geometry. Even if Bartolus disregarded this particular problem, it nonetheless was clearly a recurrent issue in historical times going back to the period before the birth of pragmatic literacy.

As a consequence of this, historians have devoted some attention to the problem for quite some time now. It has been discussed in at least three quite distinct fields of research: property rights in general, history, and geography/geomorphology. Historians were the first to study the problem. In most cases, they analyzed emblematic events on a local scale and considered how the processes in question impacted societies and economic and political structures. The most important example was a major hydrological change in the valley of the River Po. The event, usually referred to as Rotta della Cucca (Cucca breach), first attracted the attention of Italian historians in the eighteenth century. Ludovico Antonio Muratori, one of the pioneers of the study of medieval Italy, was the first historian to discuss the Cucca breach.8 The basis for the assessment of the event is a chapter in Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards, in which Paul describes the floods of 589. As he notes, in this year, several floods occurred along different rivers in Italy of which the most dangerous was that of the River Adige.9 Scholarship, building a great deal on the work of Muratori, saw the event as the main force in the transformation of the riverine landscapes and the course of the Po and Adige Rivers. It created extensive marshlands in the surroundings of the mouth of the two rivers and transformed the borders of properties in Veneto. In recent decades, historians have criticized this oversimplifying view of the landscape changes in the region and have tended to see it as a long process during which the channel system maintained by the Roman administration and taken over by the Lombards was intentionally abandoned. The marshes that came into being as a consequence of the end of the maintenance works proved to useful as a form of protection for the northern Italian territories against the Exarchate of Ravenna.10

In the explanation of the processes involved, the change in the landholdings was only a marginal issue, but it nonetheless drew the attention of scholars to the fact that riverine landscapes were not nearly as fixed in the Early (or High or Late) Middle Ages as they became in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, by which time most of the rivers in the densely inhabited areas of Europe has gone through long regulation processes. This probably is the most thoroughly studied medieval landscape change brought about by shifts in riverbeds, but at least one further area is worth emphasizing. Going back to the nineteenth century, research on the changing waterscapes of the Low Countries also generated interest among Dutch and Flemish historians. As was true in the Italian case, the most important element of the geographical processes which caught the attention of historians was not primarily the change in individual estate borders, but rather the major transformation of long stretches of the seashores. Documentary and cartographic documents were the first sources used by historians in the Low Countries, but as is true in the case of Italy, in the last half century, research done by geographers and geomorphologists has significantly widened the opportunities to study the hydrological processes of the Holocene, or in this case, the Late Holocene. Geographers in most cases working together with historians, have shown the potential of research on the avulsion histories of particular rivers in the Low Countries,11 southern France,12 and other parts of Europe.13

The use of written, cartographic evidence combined with geomorphology not only lead to studies on changes in riverine landscapes and, accompanying this, the connected land holding structure in Western Europe, but also produced studies addressing the problem in Central Europe and in Hungary in particular. A number of works were dedicated to the changes in the waterscape around Vienna in the late medieval period and the Early Modern times, changes which resulted in a series of lawsuits between the landowners by the Danube.14 Research also demonstrated significant changes in the riverine landscapes in the Carpathian Basin in historical times, including the Danube River,15 the Rába river,16 the Tisza River,17 and the Dráva River18 valleys.19 Most of the above mentioned studies, however, addressed the riverbed changes and the alluvial development of major rivers in Europe. Much less attention has been dedicated to minor rivers and streams, despite their potential relevance. There is ample and adequate source material in part because, like the major rivers, in many cases minor rivers were also boundaries of estates, as is evident on the basis of hundreds of perambulation documents, boundary markers, and cartographic data. The Hungarian source material, especially up to the late fourteenth century, is somewhat exceptional in this sense, as perambulations make up probably as much as seven to eight percent of the whole of the medieval legal source material.20 In case of legal disputes concerning the riverbed changes, this group of sources will be of crucial importance to this discussion, as perambulations in most cases were done as stages of legal disputes, and one of the most important kinds of disputes (if not the most frequent) involved changes in riverbeds. These legal disputes concerned not only natural changes in the hydrogeography, but also artificial riverbed modifications for mill races, fish ponds, irrigation, etc. which in some cases went with changes to the borders of estates. Along with historians and specialists in geomorphology, as mentioned earlier, legal writers also devoted attention to the legal problems created by the changing riverbeds in sections where the rivers were boundaries themselves. They mostly contributed to the problem by analyzing the collections of Roman law and considering the contemporary implications of avulsion.21

All of the approaches listed above are important with respect to the present paper, as in many cases they contribute to the contextualization of the results based on the Hungarian source material. In the next subchapters, drawing on the source material from the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, I will argue that the problem raised by Bartolus is not entirely theoretical, and there was a more or less stabilized customary law concerning how to resolve the similar disputes, even if it was not based on the principles he argued for.

The Border between Ľubotín and Orlov – What can a Single Case Reveal?

In 1349, one of the landlords in Sáros County, Rikalf son of Rikalf, supplicated to King Louis I according to which the Poprad River had detached a tract from his land called Ľubotín (Lubotény). While the river had demarcated his land from the village of the king called Orlov (Orló), when its course changed, it flowed through his estate, Ľubotín.22 The question of the ownership of the lands of Ľubotín may have not been simple, as only a quarter of a century earlier, the family had had to appeal to King Charles I as Phillip Druget, the influential Italian nobleman and member of the king’s entourage, had attempted to obtain some of the lands that belonged to Ľubotín.23 The endeavor of the Drugets may not have come as a surprise, as this was the period in which the family rapidly extended its power in the region, but the Poprad River’s changing riverbed may not have been among the potential threats with which Rikalf had calculated.24 In answer to the appeal, King Louis ordered Sáros County to investigate the case. The investigation was led by a noble magistrate (iudex nobilium or szolgabíró in Hungarian) of the county named Tivadar and a bailiff (homo provincie), a certain Jacob son of Sükösd.25 In the course of the investigation, they interrogated the local nobility and tenant peasants, especially those of two nearby settlements, Plaveč (Palocsa) and Gerlavágása (a lost settlers’ village somewhere close to three previously mentioned settlements). The investigation came to the conclusion that the supplicant was right and the Poprad River indeed had detached pieces of lands from Rikalf’s property.26 According to the documents related to the case, the change in the riverbed happened without human intervention. It was probably caused by floods which changed the hydrography of the area, although this was never explicitly stated in the sources.27

Despite the verification of Rikalf’s claim, the case was probably not settled, as ten years later, in 1359, the question was again brought to the court by Rikalf’s family. Based on the documents issued in 1359, it is safe to assume that the lands in question during the ten years between the cases were used by the kings’ tenant peasants, and the territories in question were never returned to Rikalf and his family. This is interesting in light of the fact that obviously the intention of Rikalf in 1349 was to get back the lands in question, and the investigation concluded with the acknowledgement that lands originally had been in his possession. This suggests that in these cases, land was thought to belong to the original owners, in this case Rikalf. But apparently it took ten years to gain back these pieces of land in response to the complaint of Rikalf and Peter son of Ladislaus, from the same family. In the end, the lands were reassigned not (or not only) because they originally belonged to Rikalf’s family, but because of the merits of the family in service of King Louis I.28 This time, the document clearly referred to the reason for the change in the riverbed. As was already probable from the documents from 1349, the river’s main flow was not modified artificially, but was identified as a consequence of the rapid current of the river. This time, the case was settled with a reinstitution of the previous owners to the lands in question in the presence of a deputy of the chapter of Szepes (Spišská Kapitula) and a homo regius. As usually done in these cases, a new perambulation of the land in question was carried out in which a section is described as the former bed of the Poprad River.

Even if, in 1359, the land in question seems to have been clearly reassigned to Rikalf and his family, the case was not settled for the rest of the Middle Ages. Almost fifty years after this episode, in 1405 at the noble assembly of Abaúj and Sáros Counties held in Košice, the noble judges and vice-counts (vicecomites) of the latter county testified that the same lands that had been disputed in 1349 and 1359 originally belonged to Ľubotín and thus rightfully belonged to the successors of Rikalf.29

The set of documents relating to the case of the lands by the Poprad River between Ľubotín and Orlov reveals a number of important issues. In 1349, according to the surviving sources Rikalf attempted to prove that the Poprad River had changed its bed because proving this would have allowed him to keep using the lands despite the fact that by then they were on the other bank of the Poprad River. This suggests that even if the change in the riverbed of the Poprad River took place as part of a natural process, this still would not have changed the landownership. However, the picture is less clear in the case of 1359, when the lands in question were (re)instituted to the Rikalf sons in return for their service and not because they had belonged to the family. Nonetheless, the fact that the same lands were reinstituted to the Rikalf family suggests that the question was also connected in some way to the notion of previous ownership. In light of the seemingly contradictory documents, it is certainly worth considering whether there was a customary law in medieval Hungary which would have applied to similar cases.

 

Riverbed Changes and Estate Borders – Was There a Medieval Customary Law in Hungary?

In an article cited above a number of times, István Tringli not only discussed mill construction but also devoted some attention to the problem I am addressing here. He suggested that the changes of estate borders in consequence of riverbed changes may have been a problem of minor importance in medieval Hungary, and these issues were certainly minor compared to the lawsuits concerning water mills. Simply the number of lawsuits related to the two problems shows that milling rights were more frequently occurring problems than lawsuits related simply to riverbed changes. By the thirteenth and especially by the fourteenth century, the number of mills in Hungary was high enough that the buildings had become obstacles to one another. As was shown, this gave ground to the formation of a relatively well-defined customary law related to the use of waters and the construction of water mills.30 However, the lasting struggle for the ownership of the lands between Ľubotín and Orlov suggests that with regard to riverbed changes, the norm either was anything but clear or the tenants of Orlov, who belonged to the land of the king, attempted to use their favorable position against Ľubotín. The picture is not clear based on this one case study, but it becomes somewhat clearer if one looks at a number of cases. But before doing so, I turn to the seemingly most self-evident source one can touch upon when discussing whether there was a customary law on a specific question, namely the Tripartitum by Stephen Werbőczy, compiled in the 1510s. Webőczy discusses the question in a surprisingly extensive manner compared to its seemingly minor importance:

 

Then, as the boundaries and borders of many free cities, villages, estates and many towns and deserted lands are set and defined by rivers and streams; and by the flood and force of these waters often large pieces of land, meadows and woods are separated, carried away and attached to the area of another neighboring city, town or estate; since the river, driven by vehement flood often strays and spills from its usual course, flow and bed into a new bed; so some people think and believe that the lands, meadows and woods that were annexed and attached to the area of another neighboring free city, town or village due to a change in the flow, course or bed of the river ought to belong to and come into the possession of that free city, town or village; arguing and stating that their boundaries are set by the flow, course and bed of the river. But this opinion is not correct.

[1] For, this way many frauds could be committed, and the waters and rivers—with hidden canals, and sometimes by making shallow dikes, or raising dams or filling up the bed—could be driven into a new course and bed in any direction, according to will; thus someone could easily usurp another’s lands, woods and meadows.

[2] Therefore the opposite opinion shall be accepted as correct (…)31

These points of Werbőczy’s work were discussed first in the nineteenth century. In his discussion of this part of the Tripartitum, Rezső Dell’Adami suggests that, unlike in the overwhelming majority of the work, in this case, Werbőczy applied the principles of Roman law and not Hungarian customary law.32 In the 1930s, Alajos Degré came back to the question and also drew attention to the fact that Hungarian customary law was different from what Werbőczy actually applied. Unlike Dell’Adami, Degré gathered a number of documents which support this contention.33 Following in the footsteps of Degré, Tringli also accepted that the origin of this part of Werbőczy’s work is in Roman law. Roman law and the Digest itself is not as unambiguous on this question as Werbőczy’s text or what has been suggested by the later scholarship.34 The Saxon Mirror (Sachsenspiegel) compiled in the early thirteenth century offers a similar resolution to the problems as the solution proposed in the Tripartitum, but in the case of the Saxon customary law compilation, the influence of the Digest is more clear-cut according to research.35 When addressing changes to the waterscape, all three law sources start from the principle that in the case of a rapid shift in the course of a river, the detachment of a piece of land from someone’s property and its attachment to someone else’s property would not result in a change of landownership. However, while the two customary law collections from the Middle Ages did not include any exception to this principle, the Digest did include a very important one, namely if this shift in the flow of the river proves lasting.36

From the point of view of this paper, the most important question is whether the points made by Werbőczy represented practice by the late medieval period or not. The picture that unfolds on the basis of an analysis of court cases from the period up to the early sixteenth century is not straightforward. Based on the above example from the Poprad River valley, one may suggest that Werbőczy summarized the existing customs, but in the following pages, I discuss a number of cases on the basis of which I conclude that, in many respects, Werbőczy applied a different principle than what was prevailing in his time.

In this, the most important step was to gather at least a statistically relevant number of cases. The existing secondary literature refers only to a few examples, but based on an investigation of the most important regesta collections and cartularies, I identified almost sixty relevant cases as part of my research. There would be no point in discussing each case one by one, mostly because, for the most part, little information is provided on the background of the legal case. I chose rather to analyze either cases which for some reason seemed important to an understanding of the different legal norms or cases which showed shifts in practices.

The earliest lawsuit which may illustrate the application of customary law dates from 1338. As indicated by the document, a certain Ivánka son of János Turóci submitted a complaint to the ispán (comes) of Zólyom County, Master Doncs. According to Ivánka, his interests were harmed by a land transaction that had taken place on Galovany, an estate neighboring his own. Provost Pál son of Gele and Gál son of Jakab son of Albert agreed to exchange certain pieces of land. According Ivánka’s complaint, Pál came into possession of the piece of land that neighbored his. While Ivánka was engaged in growing crops, Pál was herding animals, and according to Ivánka, Pál’s animals caused losses to his ploughlands and meadows. Pál, however, claimed that Ivánka had erected boundary markers on fields which he (Pál) had received from the ispán himself, Doncs. Ivánka insisted that it was Pál who had erected these boundary markers. Doncs called Pál and fifty witnesses to appear at the convent of Turóc (Kláštor pod Znievom) and testify that it was Ivánka who had erected the boundary markers. The case was further complicated by the fact that Pál was the notary of Doncs. It turned out that it was Pál himself who penned the charter and that it was Ivánka who erected the markers. This element of the case became somewhat obsolete, as the boundaries later changed when the stream called Porouathka found a new riverbed and detached a piece of land from Ivánka’s estate and attached it to that of Pál.37 This strongly suggests that, according to both parties, independent of the boundary markers, the boundary between the two properties changed with the change of the stream’s bed.

Another case from the following year suggests that similar cases were not always considered in the same way in the Angevin period. In 1339, a case unfolded on the running of the border between two estates, Čoltovo and Lekeňa (part of present day Bohúňovo) in Gömör County, not very far from the area involved in the previous case. The boundary between the two estates at one of its sections was the stream called Hablucapataka until the point where it reaches the Sajó River. The litigants were Pál son of Gallus, who owned Čoltovo, and the sons of Miklós Forgách, András and Miklós, who owned Lekeňa. Both parties contended that the other side had taken possession of lands which belonged to them. According to András, Pál artificially let the stream into a new riverbed. The witnesses, however, testified that the change in the course of the river had been caused, rather, by floods. The alluvium carried by the floods, according to the witnesses, filled up the former bed of the stream, and thus the water changed course. The importance in proving that the change in the riverbed was artificial or natural shows that the two cases were assessed differently. Of course, it was the change in the natural riverbed that meant a boundary shift in the period and not the artificial modification of the riverbed. Despite the fact that in this case the riverbed change would have resulted in a change in the ownership of this piece of land, this did not take place. It turned out, during the trial that the whole area in question indeed fell in the land of András Forgách. Thus, the land in question remained in his hands.38

From the very same decade, however, there is a case which suggests that for the parties involved not even natural changes to the course of a river implied a change in landownership. For instance, this was the case in 1340 when the boundary between two pieces of lands, Szentmárton and Kóród in Transylvania (today both within the borders of Coroisânmărtin), was demarcated, a section of which was formed by the Holt-Küküllő River (a branch or backwater of the Târnava Mică River). Probably because of the less clearly defined riverbed, the two parties decided they would erect boundary markers in the dry section of the bed together. They did so in order to fix the boundary between the lands in case floods washed away the riverbed.39 This indicates that even natural changes to the boundaries were not associated with a change in ownership or at least that sometimes parties could come to an agreement that went against custom. Probably the show of caution in this case was in the interests of both parties, as it may not have been evident which path the river would choose in if the old riverbed were filled, so none of the landlords would have known if they would have won or lost territories. It is difficult to identify the exact reason for this kind of agreement, as by the time of the First Military Survey (1782–1785), therefore the first precise mapping of the area, this branch of the Kis-Küküllő (Târnava Mică River) had disappeared entirely.

Even clearer proof of the not fully crystallized customary law regarding these cases is provided by a boundary dispute from 1347. The two parties involved were the bishopric of Eger and István son of Pál of Ónod. One section of the boundary between Ónod and Hídvég (present day Sajóhídvég) was the bed of the Sajó River. However, as time passed, the hydrography of the area changed, and two islands emerged with lands (duabus angulationibus vulgo zygeth vocatis), as well as a place for fishing (loca piscaturarum), on the Ónod side of the river. As part of this hydromorphological change, the main course of the Sajó River started to run within the borders of Hídvég. The sheet of the First Military Survey did not allow the identification of a former bed of the Sajó River between Hídvég, but a detailed mid-nineteenth century manuscript map of the area does.40 The bishopric of Eger tried to take possession of the abovementioned land, which was worth 13 marks, but István raised an objection against the bishopric’s claim. Pál Nagymartoni, the chief justice of Hungary, obliged István and thirteen other nobles to swear an oath that the land in question had belonged to him. As István took the oath along with the noble witnesses required, the lands in question were returned to him. Furthermore, because he had made a false claim, Miklós Dörögdi, the bishop of Eger, had to pay 13 marks as a fine.41 This suggests that, according to the chief justice, the case was clear, and ownership of the land was not changed simply by the fact that it had been shifted from one bank of the river to the other. The fact that the bishop had to pay a fine suggests that Nagymartoni considered this the norm at the time. In light of the few cases discussed above, this is not as clear as is suggested by the chief justice’s decision. Rather, this case may have been part of an attempt to create a custom in evaluating similar cases.

Analyses of every single case in which similar issues were involved would be superfluous, as very few considerations would arise which have not been raised by the disputes discussed above. While based on the above discussed examples it is not entirely clear how similar cases were handled in legal norms from the late fourteenth century on, there were only a few cases in which the change in the riverbed did not result in a change in the ownership of lands in questions.42 Of course, this does not mean that similar riverbed changes did not prompt lawsuits. With the systematic study of similar cases, probably a few hundred such cases could be uncovered. In all likelihood, they would point to the same process identified here, of course, providing a more solid foundation for the conclusions I am suggesting here.

Some of the examples discussed above, apart from the fact that they point to different practices than the late medieval cases, are exceptional from another perspective as well. Among the almost sixty cases discovered, there are only about a dozen that point to natural riverbed changes. In the majority (about three fourths) of the cases, at least some human intervention contributed to the formation of the new riverbeds. Most of the related disputes were centered on the nature of the riverbed modifications. In some cases, this was not as evident as it may seem. Probably due to the less regulated flow of the rivers in the Carpathian Basin, as well as elsewhere throughout Europe, the rivers changed their beds much more frequently than they did in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when major regulation works began in the Carpathian Basin. This is not only true for the smaller river branches but also in the case of the major rivers. Of course, in the case of smaller rivers and streams, shifts in the riverbeds were probably almost an everyday process, especially in the lowlands and the hilly areas of the Carpathian Basin. The question in many cases was not the change itself, but whether the river would find its way back to its old bed and would continue to flow in it or not. This is probably why Domitius Ulpianus’ Edict, which was included in Justinian’s Digest, forbade any intervention that would change the flow of a “public river” (as he and Roman authors usually refer to permanent waters) after a flood or under any other circumstance. This goes back to the assumption that rivers the course of which had shifted would eventually return to their original beds, presumably at the lowest water-level, which was generally reached in the summertime.43 This is why the Digest had different principles on the basis of which short-term and long-term modifications of riverbeds that also constituted estate borders were adjudicated.

Nonetheless, in many cases riverbeds were modified after earthworks which caused rivers to find a new bed. Sometimes these works were probably difficult to identify, as indicated by the legal evidence from a number of cases from medieval Hungary.44 In some cases, pieces of lands considerable in size were attached to other land in this way.45 In these cases, because of the major income that was foreseen from the lands in question, the river walls were torn down and channels were dug to divert the waters. Since many of the lawsuits were centered around the way in which a river’s flow had been modified, it is more or less obvious that the two were treated differently in the legal practice of the late medieval period. While the change of a river’s flow as a consequence of natural hydromorphological processes without direct human intervention went with a change in the ownership, in case the opposite–direct human intervention to a river’s flow–was demonstrated during court cases, it did not touch the ownership of the lands in question.

One further note should be made at this point. These alterations to the flow of rivers were probably not always intended as a way of gaining possession of someone else’s land. A case from the early fifteenth century indicates the extent to which some of the interventions to a river had unexpected and, more importantly, unwanted consequences, even for those who actually committed the intervention. In 1405, two sons of Pető of Gerse, János and Tamás, submitted a complaint regarding the construction of a new channel by the Sárvíz Stream between their Gerse and Sármelléke estates (now both part of Gersekarát) and the estates of the nobles of Telekes. The Pető sons had made the new channel, which was meant to provide water for a new mill they had built. The stream most probably had a small discharge, so the whole of its flow was diverted into this artificial channel. It is reasonable to assume that the stream was small, since the valley in question today lacks a permanent water flow and only fills with water after rainfall. The construction of mills by similar (similarly small) streams was not unique to pre-modern times. Later, these mills were often referred to in Hungarian as pokolidő (meaning “storm time”) or felhőt kiáltó (“sky squalling”) mills, as they only could function when the runoff of stream they were built on grew as a consequence of rainfalls.46 Because of the diversion of the water, the old riverbed, which from that time on probably received no water for most of the year, started to silt up. The nobles of Telekes used this change to their advantage. They started to consider the channel as the new riverbed and border between Telekes and the estates of the Petős, and they started to use the meadows between the two branches of the river as their own. Even if the new riverbed was meant to serve the interests of the Pető family, it resulted in the detachment of their estate and the occupation of these areas by the nobles of Telekes.47

Conclusions and Outlook

This paper was intended to provide an overview of the Hungarian legal customs under a special legal circumstance in the Middle Ages. Before any further conclusions it is worth noting that the problem raised by Bartolus in his treatise quoted in the introduction, marginal as it may seem at a first sight, probably had some actual practical relevance. Although the almost sixty cases identified by me in the course of my research and presented here are anything but comprehensive, they provide a sample which nonetheless allows us to identify different practices and customs. A systematic study of a more significant proportion of the available source material probably would have yielded similar results, although the formation of the legal customs in similar cases may be seen in a more nuanced manner. The sources discussed above nonetheless suggest that from the Angevin period on, the changes in riverbeds caused recurrent property disputes. While the cases from the fourteenth century do not show a clear pattern, from the fifteenth century on, in an overwhelming majority of the similar cases, the change of the riverbed went hand in hand with a change in the ownership of the connected piece of land. This suggests that by the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, there was a more or less settled customary law on the basis of which similar cases were adjudicated. In the meantime, the sources also point to the fact that most of these riverbed changes were not or not solely outcomes of natural hydromorphological processes, but rather were results of intended interventions in the flow of the rivers. Of course, in these cases the legal customs mentioned immediately above did not apply.

In many cases, however, it was not easy to identify these human interventions, especially because, as shown above, sometimes these processes were partly artificial and partly natural, and sometimes these changes were not intended by the persons who ordered earthwork or construction work by a river. Although none of the above mentioned cases suggest this per se, in many cases probably the change in the riverbed may have been caused indirectly by interventions at entirely different sections of the same water flow. The rather ambiguous nature of these changes was identified already in the Middle Ages, which is probably why Werbőczy attempted to change the existing legal customs in his Tripartitum. As noted, to some extent, he applied Roman law by building on some of the points of Justinian’s Digest. In contrast to what has been suggested in the earlier secondary literature, however, he did not fully accept the Roman legal tradition, but modified it to clarify similar situations as much as possible. By stabilizing the borders of estates even in cases involving changes to the bed of the border river, he probably thought he had put an end to similar disputes.

Although the focus of this paper is not the Early Modern period, it is certainly worth considering the relevance of the conclusions I have drawn to similar legal procedures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, the collection in this case could hardly be considered comprehensive, unlike in the case of the Middle Ages, so it would be foolhardy to generalize. However, at least one thing is clear from the few sources on which the existing literature rests. First, in the period of roughly 100 years following the compilation of the Tripartitum and the fall of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary to the Ottoman Turks, the legal principles put down in writing by Werbőczy were not systematically applied. Rather, the consuetudo was in effect.48 Nonetheless, almost 150 years after the completion of Werbőczy’s Tripartitum, his principles were accepted as law. In 1655, Act 81 took the relevant passages of the Tripartitum: “With regard to lands which by [flash] floods or floods that happened or happen slowly were carried away from a land and were attached to another, Book 1 Title 87 of the Tripartitum has to be applied.”49 Although by this time many points of the Tripartitum had become standard points of reference and many of them were also accepted as laws of the Kingdom of Hungary, the practice in the problem discussed above still was not consistently applied. There is a source from the year in which Act 81 was accepted by King Ferdinand III which points to an unresolved problem. In December 1655, the provisor of one of the most influential noble families in Transdanubia, the Batthyány family, was involved in a lawsuit in Dobersdorf (part of present day Rudersdorf) which concerned pieces of land by the Lafnitz River. In the letter, it was Magdolna, the sister of Ádám Batthyány (1610–1659), the landlord of the estate complex of the family informed him of this property dispute. According to the letter, the family insisted that, even if the river changed its bed, the lands would not change hands.50 The opposing party, however, took a different position. This may be due to the fact that the Lafnitz River in this section was the border between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Habsburg duchies,51 so the legal practice was different. In such cases, there was no reason to give a priority to the Hungarian legal system. Nonetheless, it was probably in this period that similar lawsuits almost entirely disappeared from Hungarian court cases.

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* This paper was supported by the Bolyai János Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I am thankful for the suggestions of Bence Péterfi, Katalin Szende and István Tringli made at an earlier version of the present paper.