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

Renáta Skorka

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

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

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

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

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

Contracted for Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Destiny of the Bride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your Place or Mine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Archival Sources

Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv

Auswärtige Staaten

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

Diplomatikai Fényképgyűjtemény (DF)

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Secondary literature

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B. Halász, Éva. “Bajor Margit hercegnő (1325–1374) magyarországi tevékenysége” [The affairs of Princess Margaret of Bavaria, 1325–1374 in Hungary]. Turul (2005): 109–16.

C. Tóth, Norbert: “Szilágy Erzsébet ‘udvara’” [The court of Elizabeth Szilágyi]. In Márvány, tárház, adomány: Gazdaságtörténeti tanulmányok a magyar középkorról, edited by István Kádas, Renáta Skorka, and Boglárka Weisz, 51–114. Budapest: MTA BTK TTI, 2019.

Csukovits, Enikő. Az Anjouk Magyarországon. Vol. 2, I. (Nagy) Lajos és Mária uralma (1342–1395) [The Angevins in Hungary. Vol. 2, The reign of King Louis I the Great and Queen Mary, 1342–1395]. Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, TTI, 2019.

Csukovits, Enikő. Az Anjouk Magyarországon: I. Károly és uralkodása (1301–1342) [The Angevins in Hungary: King Charles I and his reign, 1301–1342]. Budapest: MTA BTK TTI, 2012.

Eckhart, Ferenc. Magyar alkotmány- és jogtörténet [Hungarian constitutional and legal history]. Budapest: Politzer, 1946.

Engel, Pál. “A 14. századi magyar pénztörténet néhány kérdése” [A few questions concerning the history of Hungarian coinage in the 14th century]. Századok 124 (1990): 25–93.

Engel, Pál. Magyarország világi archontológiája 1301–145 [The secular archontology of Hungary]. Vols. 1–2. Budapest: MTA TTI, 1996.

Holzfurtner, Ludwig. Die Wittelsbacher: Staat und Dynastie in acht Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2005.

Hóman, Bálint. A Magyar Királyság pénzügyei és gazdaságpolitikája Károly Róbert korában [The finances and economic policy of the Kingdom of Hungary in the era of Charles Robert]. Budapest: Budavári tudományos társaság, 1921.

Hönsch, Jörg K.. Kaiser Sigismund: Herrscher an der Schwelle zur Neuzeit. 1368–1437. Munich: Beck, 1996.

Illés, József. A magyar házassági vagyonjog az Árpádok korában [Hungarian matrimonial property law in the Árpád era]. Budapest: Grill, 1900.

Károlyi, Árpád. “Adalék Mária és Zsigmond eljegyzésének történetéhez” [Addition to the history of the engagement of Sigismund and Mary]. Századok 11 (1877): 18–26.

Kertész, Balázs. Székesfehérvár oklevelei és levelei 1249–1526 [The charters and letters of Székesfehérvár 1249–1526]. Székesfehérvár: Városi Levéltár és Kutatóintézet, 2019.

Krieger, Karl-Friedrich. Die Habsburger im Mittelalter von Rudolf I. bis Friedrich III. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004.

Lackner, Christian. Hof und Herrschaft: Rat, Kanzlei und Regierung der österreichischen. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2002.

Lichnowsky, Eduard Marie. Geschichte des Hauses Habsburg IV. Vienna: Schaumburg, 1839.

Maléth, Ágnes. A Magyar Királyság és a Szentszék kapcsolata I. Károly korában (1301–1342) [Relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Holy See during the reign of Charles I, 1301–1342]. Pécs: PTE BTK TTI, 2020.

Mayer, Franz Martin. Untersuchungen über die österreichische Chronik des Matthäus oder Gregor Hagen. Vienna: Gerold, 1880.

Mészáros, Orsolya. “Az elit és az udvar” [The elite and the court]. In Az Anjou-kor hatalmi elitje, edited by Enikő Csukovits, 189–209. Budapest: Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, TTI, 2020.

Niederstätter, Alois. Die Herrschaft Österreich. Fürst und Land im Spätmittelalter. Vienna: Ueberreuter, 2004.

Pór, Antal. “István úr árvája” [Lord Stephen’s orphan]. Századok 35 (1901): 193–208.

Pór, Antal. “Pecséttani újabb apróságok” [Some new small matters regarding sigillography]. Turul 15 (1897): 10–19.

Pór, Antal. Nagy Lajos király 1326–1382 [King Louis the Great 1326–1382]. Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1892.

Rudolf, Veronika. “Megjegyzések I. Károly első és második házasságkötéséhez” [Notes on the first and second marriages of Charles I]. Turul 96 (2023): 64–72.

Skorka, Renáta. “A csökkentett vámtarifájú út kialakulása I. Károly uralkodása alatt” [The emergence of the trading route of reduced tariff during the reign of Charles I]. Történelmi Szemle 55 (2013): 451–70.

Skorka, Renáta. “A Habsburgok és a magyar Anjouk kapcsolatainak kronológiája IV. (Luxemburgi) Károly uralkodása alatt” [Chronology of the relationship between the Habsburgs and the Hungarian Angevins during the reign of Charles IV of Luxembourg]. Világtörténet 36 (2014): 631–59.

Skorka, Renáta. “Az alapító, a copfos és a harmadik: A Regesta Habsburgica újabb kötetének margójára” [The founder, the pony-tailed and the third: On the margin of the new volume of the Regesta Habsburgica]. Századok 147 (2013): 523–28.

Skorka, Renáta. “Luxemburgtól Váradig: Beatrix magyar királyné története” [From Luxembourg to Várad: The story of Queen Beatrix of Hungary]. In Nagyvárad és Bihar az Árpád-kor végén, edited by Attila Zsoldos, 175–90. Tanulmányok Bihar ország történetéről 3. Nagyvárad: Varadinum, 2016.

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1. 1 Die königsaaler Geschichtsquellen, 400; on the history of the marriage of Charles and Beatrix of Luxemburg, see Skorka, “Luxemburgtól,” 175–90; on the marriages of Charles, see Csukovits, I. Károly, 109–13; Rudolf, “Megjegyzések.”

2. 2 “Nec longo post per nuntios solempnes regis Karoli haec tenella puella in metis Moraviae et Ungariae reverenter suscipitur.” Die königsaaler Geschichtsquellen, 400.

3. 3 Skorka, “Luxemburgtól,” 193.

4. 4 “Nuntio de Ungaria missa pro matrimonia domine Elizabete ducisse Karinthiae.” Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Auswärtige Staaten, Literalien Tirol 11, fol. 110r. See also Stolz, Der geschichtliche, 35–36.

5. 5 On the antecedents to the Nagyszombat alliance, see Skorka, “A csökkentett vámtarifájú út,” 452–56.

6. 6 Anna was the granddaughter of Jutta, also known as Guta, daughter of Rudolf Habsburg, so the mother of King Charles I of Hungary. Clementia and Jutta were sisters.

7. 7 Wenzel, Magánjog, 152.

8. 8 On the embassy of George, citizen of Buda, see Maléth, A Magyar Királyság, 283.

9. 9 Vet. Mon., vol. 1, no. 800.

10. 10 Vet. Mon., vol. 1, no. 798. The document is dated 1327, but since the document is dated September 8 in the twelfth year of John XXII’s pontificate, and since the election of the head of the Church took place in August 1316 and his investiture on the following September 5, the year of issue of the document is correctly 1328.

11. 11 Eckhart, Jogtörténet, 371; Illés, A magyar házassági vagyonjog, 9, 42.

12. 12 The Czech mark of 56 groschen was considered to be equivalent to one Buda mark of common silver, and in the first half of the fourteenth century, 56 groschen were equal to 3.5 gold florins. Engel, “Pénztörténet,” 34.

13. 13 In both cases, the source uses the term dotalicium, which in the case of Anna is understood as a dowry because the amount brought by the royal princess of Bohemia reverts to her family in the event of childlessness. In the case of Ladislas, the term dotalicium is interpreted as a dos, as defined by Werbőczy. Cf. Hármaskönyv, 172.

14. 14 Zsoldos, Az Árpádok, 43.

15. 15 Ibid., 171.

16. 16 Skorka, “A csökkentett vámtarifájú út,” 460, 469.

17. 17 A Czech mark of 64 groschen was considered equivalent to a fine silver mark of Buda, and in the first half of the fourteenth century 64 groschen were equal to 4 gold florins. Engel, “Pénztörténet,” 34.

18. 18 Interpreted as a morning gift: dos est donatio propter nuptias uxori a marito facta. Illés, A magyar házassági vagyonjog, 16, note no. 1.

19. 19 CDM, vol. 7, 136–37; Anjou oklt., vol. 22, no. 67–68.

20. 20 Zsoldos, Árpádok, 180. The castles of Becse and Szeged can be traced back as the queens’ property even after the death of King Sigismund of Hungary. Cf. C. Tóth, “Szilágy Erzsébet,” 55.

21. 21 “Quo dicta filia sua in aulam eorundem parentum nostrorum, pro informandis moribus et idiomate Hungarico, traducta extitit.” CDM, vol. 7, 313; Anjou oklt., vol. 26, no. 293–94.

22. 22 Anjou oklt., vol. 28, no. 118.

23. 23 On the order of the date of birth of the children of Charles I and Queen Elizabeth see Szende, “Piast Erzsébet,” 79–91.

24. 24 For more recent scholarship on Margaret’s coming to Hungary and her marriage, see B. Halász, “Bajor Margit,” 88.

25. 25 B. Halász, “Anjou István,” 88–89.

26. 26 Commentarii, 187.

27. 27 CDH, vol. 9/2, 500.

28. 28 For an interpretation of it as a morning gift, as in the case of Prince Ladislas, see dos est donatio propter nuptias uxori a marito facta. Illés, A magyar házassági vagyonjog, 16, note no. 1.

29. 29 From the 1340s, one mark was worth four gold florins. Engel, “Pénztörténet,” 75.

30. 30 On the use of morning gift in the original Roman legal sense of dowry see Illés, A magyar házassági vagyonjog, 16, note no. 2.

31. 31 For its origin, see Weisz, “Gertrúd királyné,” 52, 55.

32. 32 MNL OL, DF 258248; Anjou oklt., vol. 42, no. 887.

33. 33 For the issue of the charter, see Pór, “Pecséttani,” 14–15.

34. 34 Pór, “István úr,” 101.

35. 35 On the alliance of 1353, see Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 641.

36. 36 Krieger, Die Habsburger, 131.

37. 37 Pór, “István úr,” 102.

38. 38 Hönsch, Kaiser Sigismund, 16.

39. 39 Wolfinger, Rudolf IV, 70.

40. 40 Commentarii, 333–34.

41. 41 As the cause of the war, the research points to the Emperor’s disparagingly mocking outburst against Queen Elizabeth. Pór, Nagy Lajos, 434.

42. 42 Skorka, “Az alapító,” 526.

43. 43 Pór, Nagy Lajos, 432–36.

44. 44 Cf. Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 646.

45. 45 CDM, vol. 9, 198.

46. 46 Skorka, “Az alapító,” 527.

47. 47 On the peace of Brno, see ibid., 527.

48. 48 CDM, vol. 9, 257–59.

49. 49 Pór, “István úr,” 106–7.

50. 50 ADE, vol. 2, 630–32, Anjou oklt., vol. 49, no. 115.

51. 51 Vet. Mon., vol. 2, no. 128, 129, 130; Anjou oklt., vol. 49, no. 266, 267.

52. 52 ADE, vol. 2, 638–39; Anjou oklt., vol. 49, no. 283.

53. 53 Anjou oklt., vol. 49, no. 594.

54. 54 CDH, vol. 9/3, 536–37; Anjou oklt., vol 49, no. 618.

55. 55 Lichnowsky, Geschichte, no. 715.

56. 56 MNL OL, DF 257 990, Anjou oklt., vol. 50, no. 73, 115.

57. 57 CDH, vol. 9/3, 537; Anjou oklt., vol. 50, no. 123.

58. 58 Vet. Mon., vol. 2, no. 172.

59. 59 Holzfurtner, Die Wittelsbacher, 91–96; Niederstätter, Die Herrschaft, 172–73.

60. 60 Reg. Habs., vol. 6/1, no. 109.

61. 61 Anjou oklt., vol. 50, no. 317.

62. 62 Aeneae Silvii, 84–85.

63. 63 Pór, “István úr,” 114–15. The source cited by Pór is wrongly dated to 1355 in the edition, since German research has confirmed that it was addressed by the emperor from Modena to the archbishop of Trier on August 28, 1368. Vones, Urban V, 236. For the publication of the source with the wrong date, see Historia Trevirensis, 186–88.

64. 64 If our hypothesis is correct, we can place Elizabeth’s birth between February and June 1354, for the date of birth, around 1353, as concluded by Antal Pór, has been used so far. On the basis of the Luxembourg family tree in Joseph Palacky’s Geschichte von Böhmen, Pór has concluded that Elizabeth was eight years “older” than Wenceslas of Luxembourg, who was born in February 1361. Pór, “István úr,” 99.

65. 65 Letter from the emperor: Anjou oklt., vol. 50, no. 226.; Louis’s stay in Pozsony: Skorka, “A Habsbur­gok,” 650.

66. 66 CDH, vol. 9/4, 58.

67. 67 On February 4, 1368, cooperation was confirmed in Mainz. Rerum Boicarum, 187–88, 192.

68. 68 This was confirmed on September 13, 1369 in Pozsony. Regesten der Pfalzgrafen, vol. 1, no. 3744, no. 3745, no. 3845.

69. 69 Of territories conquered together, the one on the inner side of the Enns would have been Hungary’s, and the one on the other side, or in Carinthia or Tyrol, would have been the Bavarian. Cf. Rerum Boicarum, 188.

70. 70 Historia Trevirensis, 188.

71. 71 Hönsch, Kaiser Sigismund, 35.

72. 72 Vet. Mon., vol. 2, no. 172.

73. 73 The fact that Elizabeth was in her sixteenth year in December 1369 does not contradict our earlier assumption that she was born between February and June 1354. For the full age of majority of the daughters, see Hármaskönyv, 194.

74. 74 CDH, vol. 9/4, 244–46.

75. 75 Philip II’s grandfather was King Charles II of Naples, who was also Elizabeth’s great-grandfather.

76. 76 Pór drew attention to the fact that Pope Urban V, in a letter dated July 18, 1370, first considered Elizabeth Kotromanić a “political factor,” from which Pór concluded that “Queen Elizabeth the Younger was in a pregnant state.” Pór, “István úr,”, 205. and note 3. It is more likely, however, that the Queen’s increase in political power was due more to the birth of her offspring, which means that Catherine was born in July 1370 and the news reached Avignon.

77. 77 For the details of the campaigns in Naples in retaliation for the death of Prince Andrew, see most recently Csukovits, Lajos, 27–48

78. 78 Vones, Urban V, 215.

79. 79 For the wedding, the city of Pozsony sent oats and wine to Zadar. Cf. Források a Magyar Királyság, 129–30. On the court of the Charles II of Durazzo, see Pór, “István úr,” 205.

80. 80 Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 652.

81. 81 Pór, Nagy Lajos, 455.

82. 82 Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 653.

83. 83 CDH, vol. 9/4, 390; Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 653.

84. 84 Sigismund was originally the third in the line of Charles IV’s sons, since Wenceslas, born of the emperor’s second marriage, died as a baby. Hönsch, Kaiser Sigismund, 32.

85. 85 Károlyi, “Adalék,” 19. and note no. 5.

86. 86 If our assumption is correct, Hedvig could not have been born later than the very beginning of 1373.

87. 87 On the role of Visegrád and Buda during the reign of King Louis see Mészáros, “Az elit”; Weisz, “Királynéi udvar.”

88. 88 Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 654.

89. 89 Monumenta historica Boemiae, vol. 2, 383–84.

90. 90 “Intentio regis est, dictae filiae suae nomine dotis dare ducenta millia florenorum.” Ibid.

91. 91 From the 1340s, a mark was worth four gold florins. Engel, “Pénztörténet,” 75.

92. 92 MNL OL, DF 287480.

93. 93 Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 654–55.

94. 94 On this, see most recently Csukovits, Lajos, 125.

95. 95 Pór, Nagy Lajos, 531–32.

96. 96 Vet. Mon., vol. 2, no. 305.

97. 97 The grandfather of Sigismund’s mother, Elizabeth of Pomerania, was King Casimir I of Poland (1333–1370), who was the half-brother of Louis I’s mother, Elizabeth of Piast, and their father was King Vladislas I of Poland (1320–1333).

98. 98 MNL OL, DF 287481.

99. 99 Skorka, “A Habsburgok,” 654.

100. 100 Ibid.; On the war against Venice in 1373, see Pór, Nagy Lajos, 473–83.

101. 101 ADE, vol. 3, 85–86.

102. 102 ADE, vol. 3, 103–4.

103. 103 As a comparison, Bálint Hóman estimated the amount of money that Elizabeth Piast took with her in 1343 to acquire the Kingdom of Sicily at approximately 1,500,000 gold florins. Hóman, Károly Róbert, 136.

104. 104 MNL OL, DF 258366

105. 105 CDH, vol. 9/5, 377.

106. 106 If they were indeed married on June 15, Bishop Demeter of Zagreb must have been the elected archbishop of Esztergom by that date: Engel, Világi archontológia, vol. 1, 64.; Demeter became cardinal on September 18, 1378. Ibid.

107. 107 CDH, vol. 9/5, 377.

108. 108 Mayer, Untersuchungen, 325.

109. 109 “Hageni Chronicon,” 1147.

110. 110 Krieger, Die Habsburger, 147–48.

111. 111 Reg. Habs., vol. 5/3., no. 1940.

112. 112 Lackner, Hof, 52.

113. 113 Elizabeth von Reutenberg became once again the Duchess of Visconti’s chief mistress of the court after Hedvig. Lackner, Hof, 52.

114. 114 MNL OL, DF 239 215. The document can be dated according to the Pozsony magistrate and the office of Mihály Szegi, the castellan of Óvár.

115. 115 “Hageni Chronicon,” 1147.

116. 116 CDH, vol. 9/5, 378–80.

117. 117 For the publication of the two charters, see Kertész, “Székesfehérvár,” 77–79.