Hospitallers in the Medieval Kingdom of Hungary, c.1150-1387
PhD-dissertation
Theses
1.
The choice of topic and the relevance of the research project
The primary goal of this dissertation is to reveal the
major characteristics of the history of the Hospital of St. John in Hungary
from its appearance in the mid-twelfth century up to the end of the Angevin
rulership (1387). The starting point of the research is obvious, but the choice
of the end dates was suggested by the fundamental changes which took place from
the last decade of the fourteenth century. These changes concerned not only the
Order of the Hospital as an ecclesiastical body but also the structure of the
Hungarian society as a whole at the beginning of the reign of King Sigismund of
Luxembourg (1387-1437).
Present-day scholarly needs spring from the enormous
hiatus in research on (medieval) church history after the Second World War
because scholars of the period adopted a different agenda. This dearth of
research affected particularly studies on the military-religious orders and
this situation is demonstrated by the fact that the last scholarly Hungarian
monograph on the Templars was published in 1912 (by Ferenc Patek) and on the
Hospitallers in 1925-1928 (by Ede Reiszig). A few articles and some popular
works have come out since then, but these were backed by no new research on
primary sources. Croatian scholars, primarily Lelja Dobronić, made several
attempts in the 1980s to correct the arrears of many decades of work, but in
the end she failed in several respects. Besides various misunderstandings
originating either from Reiszig or lying with herself, one of the fundamental
problems with her work is that she drew a one-sided picture on the Order. She
studied the activity of the Order in the region of present-day Croatia, which
is only one half of the former Hungarian-Slavonian priory of the Hospital
(which covered present-day Hungary, Croatia, Romania, and partly Slovenia).
Undoubtedly, the territorial distribution of the preceptories indicates a
certain preference for Slavonia from the fourteenth century onwards, but it is
still unhistorical to approach this issue according to the borders of modern
states. Similar research problems arose in the case of other religious orders
and it turned out that only detailed, critical research can resolve fundamental
questions such as the actual numbers of houses of religious orders in medieval
Hungary.
One problem with the early monographs (from
Georgius Pray to Ede Reiszig) is that they do not meet modern scholarly
standards, although many scientific works (especially source editions) have
stood the test of time. Re-thinking the questions about the Hospitallers is
motivated by the fact that the exploitation of new sources and using new
methods may yield more exact and reliable results, which will eventually
channel the students of the field towards contemporary international standards.
Accordingly, the thorough revision of Ede Reiszig’s work on the Hospitallers in
Hungary is not barely justified by the period of eight decades that have
elapsed so far. The historiography of the Hospitallers has also been burdened
with a serious conceptual problem for a long time. In contrast to the Western
European context, Hungarian -- and many Central European -- (Latin) written
sources often use the term crucifer
instead of the appropriate frater hospitalis, miles Templi, conceivably with reference to the cross depicted on
their habits. This led to confusion, as many scholars treated the houses and
the landed properties of other orders of similar status (e.g., the Order of St.
Anthony, the Order of the Holy Spirit, and so on) as belonging to the Hospital,
and vice versa. On the basis of this perception and by a close reading of
primary sources as well as by the clarification of the notions and
denominations applied in the primary sources, Karl-Georg Boroviczény, a German
hematologist of Hungarian origin discovered or, in fact, singled out (in the
late 1960s), a formerly unknown religious institution, the Order of Hospitaller
Canons Regular of St. Stephen, founded by the Hungarian King Géza II around the
mid-twelfth century. The members of this order were also called cruciferi in contemporary sources --
they even used this expression in the inscriptions of their own charters -- but
they had nothing in common with either the crusaders or with the Hospital of
St. John. Mainstream Hungarian scholarship accepted Boroviczény’s ideas but has
failed to draw the necessary conclusions, namely, that the history (settling
down, presence, activity, role) of the Hospitallers in the Hungarian kingdom
should be fundamentally reconsidered.
Partly on the initiative of Karl-Georg Boroviczeny,
I began my own research on the Hospitallers settled in this part of Latin
Christendom. The basis of my doctoral research is a database of primary sources
which is the outcome of a survey of thousands of published and unpublished
charters. Besides the source editions, I consulted primarily the medieval
holdings of the National Archives of Hungary and I also collected relevant
materials from the archives and libraries in Sopron, Zagreb, Zadar, Paris,
Poitiers, and London. In addition, one of the most important phases of the
collecting procedure was the research conducted in the central archives of the
Hospital, presently kept in Malta. I managed to research both its microfilm
copy in the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (Collegeville, USA) and the
original collection which is deposited in the National Library of Malta
(Valletta). In terms of numbers: 1,200 charters were utilized in some way
during the analysis, out of which some 950 documents pertain directly or
indirectly to the history of the Hospital.
This dissertation is rather positivist in nature,
but the portrayed premises noted above demanded the rigorous observance of the
old imperative: ad
fontes. As a conscious methodological decision, I trust
that only a work grounded in positivism can establish a solid basis for further
discussion of various problems/questions raised by modern scholarship. That is,
the clear determination of the corpus of primary sources had to be the first
step toward providing a satisfactory basis for re-constructing the history of
the Hospital in medieval Hungary. It should be emphasized that the sources at
my disposal are inadequate for an entire reconstruction. Moreover, begrudging
the situation of Western scholars of the field, I have to acknowledge that on
the basis of the primary sources at my disposal numerous areas of the life of
the Priory cannot be the subject of investigation. Thus, the choice of topics
in the dissertation at times does not reflect current historiographical trends
but has been done under duress. The reader has to settle for the mere
possibility of raising questions or applying analogies instead of
reconstructing intensive contours. One has to be careful with the application
of analogies, since, in the absence of a solid and palpable basis, the analogies
easily can mislead us by muting regional characteristics or deviances. I
intended to maintain a certain equilibrium during the presentation and
evaluation of the research presented. For instance, most of the written sources
produced by the kingdom’s central governmental organs vanished from a
considerable part of the country during the 150 years of Turkish occupation.
The extent of the destruction of the sources will never be fully known to
scholars and it is difficult for Western researchers to understand its gravity.
This loss of records concerns not only the number of the sources, but the fact
that almost entire types of documents were lost, such as official or private
letters sent to the Hungarian kings, many drafts of legal documents, accounts
of the magister tawarnicorum or,
later, of the Master of the Treasury.
In addition to this, I am fully aware (and have
tried to act accordingly) that there are different themes in the (re)writing of
the history of the Hospitaller Hungarian-Slavonian Priory. As a direct
consequence of this state of research, the core of this dissertation aims at
reconstructing the history of the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory. Nonetheless,
while analyzing and evaluating the facts and train of events, I also endeavored
to reflect upon both the overall history of the Hospital and on several aspects
of Hungarian society from the twelfth through the fourteenth century. This
approach was a prerequisite for exploiting recent achievements of mainstream
contemporary scholarship focusing on the history of the Order as well as new
fields of interest concerning Hungarian social history. As for the former, it
is important to emphasize that the last three decades have seen an enormous
advance in research projects launched on the history of the Hospitallers.
Hungarian scholarship, however, still seems to overlook the new trends and
results in that field (admittedly, tribute should be paid to the exceptions).
This can be explained by the language barrier and the often irksome procedure
in the accession of recent publications. This dissertation attempts to correct
arrears in research partly by briefly surveying relevant mainstream ideas as
well by pointing out the links between the Hungarian Priory and the Order as a
network of priories and preceptories. In addition, an attempt was made to
present and evaluate of all the specific activities of the Order as well as the
local characteristics of the Priory.
As for Hungarian historiography,
it is noteworthy that manifest progress can be seen in the perception of
Hungarian history in general as well as various fields of social history during
the last quarter of the twentieth century. Fundamental changes can be observed
in regard to the interpretation of the turn of the thirteenth century and the
Angevin period as a whole. This change concerns not only social but also
economic history and the history of religious ideas, which altogether requires
a different approach in many respects. The renaissance of institutional history
should also be noted, in the first instance, research projects focusing on a
particular Hungarian legal entity -- the place of authentication (locus credibilis). In the case of all
possible points of intersection, I created a background of mainstream scholarly
thoughts against which the activity/role of the Hospitallers can be more
accurately judged. The present thesis, however, does not undertake the burden
of terminating scholarly debates lying outside the central topic of the
Hospitallers, even though it attempts to contribute to the resolution of
unsettled problems. Nor had I presumed to conduct missing basic research in
several areas, but I tried to point out the fields which still await extensive
unearthing of primary sources.
2. the structure of the dissertation
The
elaboration of the dissertation aims at reflecting the research situation
described above. The thesis targets a three-fold overall objective: (1) a
critical confrontation of the research issues in the international scholarship
and Hungarian research, including the situation with sources; (2) to establish
the “backbone” of the history of the Order including the reconstruction of the
network of the administrative units; (3) to present several topics which show
important characteristics of the Hospitallers when the sources at our disposal
allow us to perform the discussion in adequate depth. In addition, these are the
themes which can be regarded as indicators of regional characteristics, thus
making them suitable for comparative research with international scholarship.
Accordingly, Chapter
I presents the historiography of both international and regional studies
on the Hospital. Besides its being a mandatory element of such a genre, it has
a particular significance in this case since Western and Eastern readers rarely
have appropriate information concerning publications of the “far side”. A
similar statement can be formulated concerning the short presentation of the
overall history of the Order in Chapter
II. It is not only an indispensable element of such a reconstruction,
but it also provides an opportunity for readers to grasp basic, reliable
information about the Order with special emphasis on its structure. Experts may
skip this part of the dissertation, but it is useful for those who have
hitherto relied upon a picture of the Hospital deduced from outdated and often
awkward summaries. The overall approach of the dissertation embraces a
three-fold correlation of the general and regional history of the Order with
the political, social, and ecclesiastical history of medieval Hungary.
Chapters III and IV
constitute the historical “backbone” of the history of the Hungarian-Slavonian
Priory from the mid-twelfth century up to the 1380s. These chapters embrace the
questions of the settling of the brethren, the spread and distribution of the preceptories
through time (illustrated on maps), the aftermath of the dissolution of the
Templars, and the local characteristics of the order. Chapter V is prosopographical in nature and the most
international unit of the dissertation. Thus, it expresses the international
and centralized nature of the Order and sheds some light on the mobility of the
major officials of the Order. Continuing down this path, Chapter VI is a repertory aiming at an
institutional reconstruction of the preceptories primarily through a survey of
their personnel. Its basic form is a catalogue with microhistories of the
preceptories of the Priory.
Due to their significance, two circles of questions
are discussed in separate chapters. Since one of the original and long-lasting
purposes of the administrative units of the Order was their fund-raising
activity, the estate management of the Priory is presented alone (Chapter VII). Similarly, the unique
activity of the Hospitallers in medieval Hungary in some of their preceptories
serving as places of authentication (loca
credibilia) in the administration of private legal affairs, along with the
use of seals in the priory, rendered in a separate chapter (Chapter VIII).
The dissertation closes with conclusions and a
bibliography of the works cited in the thesis. To facilitate the explication of
my ideas and results I have attached various appendices to the main corpus of
the dissertation. The first is the list of the primary sources (archive
number/signature, date, issuer, form of existence, place of publication and/or
calendar). The table contains a reduced amount of information since it aims to
facilitate the access/retrieval of the documents and not present the full apparatus criticus of the sources. For
the same purpose, a Diplomatarium is to
be found in the Appendix. It is
chiefly a selection of unpublished primary sources. In addition, there are also
charters which have already been edited but contain serious mistakes or
extensive omissions. In some cases I have incorporated important texts which
were edited in publications not easily accessible for potential readers. There
are also a few documents to which I made many references in the text of the
dissertation, therefore I found useful to put the whole text at the reader’s
disposal. For the time being, the Diplomatarium
has a rather illustrative function as I inserted into the text of the
dissertation all those passages which required (extensive) literal citation.
An integral part of Chapter VIII is a catalogue of the seals used by the Hungarian
Priory in the period under query and even beyond. There are also some
comparative visual materials included in Appendix
C; while Appendices D and
E contain additional tables and figures referring to and elucidating different
parts of the dissertation. The opus concludes with a gazetteer which lists the
toponyms cited throughout the dissertation in alphabetical order.
The objective of this dissertation
is (1) to produce a basic work on the Hospitallers in medieval Hungary based on
the most comprehensive source base possible; (2) to survey the correlations
among the overall and regional history of the Hospital along with relevant
segments of the history of the Hungarian kingdom. Last but not least, I present
conclusions on the role played by the Hospitallers in Hungary and on their
perceptible interaction with the social environment of medieval Hungary in the
period under query.
3.
Results, theses,
conclusions
The
dissertation is built on the most comprehensive source base ever compiled
concerning the Hungarian-Slavonian Hospitaller Priory. I augmented the database
complied by Ede Reiszig by utilizing hitherto unknown primary sources from both
foreign and local archives. This process, however, also meant the discarding
source materials from the corpus which pertain to orders other than the
Hospital. Accordingly, I assert that those units can be identified
unequivocally on the basis of my sources, which are listed in the catalogue.
The most significant units of the Priory are known and also the important common
features of the others. However, due to the great loss of sources it cannot be
fully ruled out that documents referring to the Hospital might be held in
either the National Archives of Hungary or in foreign collections. For
instance, several preceptories
(Szenta, Udvarhely, Lešnik)
in my
catalogue were either overlooked by former scholars or not recognized as having
preceptory status. Since the proofs of evidence are based on two or three
primary sources in some cases, it is conceivable that the emergence of a few
new documents could extend the list of the administrative units. Moreover,
various segments of the topic remained obscure in the course of the survey
(e.g., the liturgy, or caring for the poor), primarily due to the lack of
relevant sources. The appearance of one or two charters would radically
“upgrade” our knowledge.
I have adopted a policy remarkably different from
the former scholarly literature, first of all, from the work of Ede Reiszig,
the monographer of the Order in Hungary. Based on a much broader horizon of
sources and applying different methodological procedures, I have reconstructed
a rather different picture of the role the Hospitallers played in medieval
Hungary. One of the most important reasons for the discrepancy springs from the
discovery of the canons regular of St. Stephen of Hungary, which fundamentally
altered the main lines of the history of the Hospital. Thus, the leading role
of Székesfehérvár (as opposed to hitherto-famed Esztergom) became more
transparent and the disproportion in the distribution of the Hospitaller
preceptories in the different areas of the realm became more striking. An
additional alteration is methodological in nature; that is, unlike Reiszig and
others, I conducted my research according to the administrative units, the
preceptories, not the houses (domus)
of the Order. As is clear from the map of preceptories, except the
Transylvanian Torda and the preceptories northeast of Esztergom in the
thirteenth century, the Order was present in the Trans-Danubian region, in
Slavonia and -- after the dissolution of the Templars -- in the Dalmatian
coastal areas. The explanation for this phenomenon is manifold. The donation of
land grants to the Order is an important contributing factor. The grant of
Queen Euphrosyne and its confirmation in 1193 can be regarded as a starting
point; after a short examination of the map, the reason for the actual density
of the preceptories and other estates does not require further argument. The
next substantial royal gift of landed properties was given in 1238 and the
Slavonian properties proved to be significant through time, although many of
the rest were localized in different parts of the kingdom. Objective causes can
also be listed while elucidating the situation. First of all, the ever-greater
development of western Hungary should be mentioned, but the higher density of
population and the earlier prevalence of money economy must also be taken into
account as parameters for the choice of the location of the first gifts.
Nonetheless, these factors do not provide a satisfactory explanation why this
situation remained unchanged for so long.
The explication, I believe, can be deduced from the
aims and endeavors of the Hospitallers as well as from the overall and regional
characteristics of Hungarian society. In the dissertation, I worked from the
principle that the overall purpose of the preceptories of the European priories
was to provide the necessary supplies (recruiting, fundraising, etc.) for the
defense of the Holy Land and later for fighting the infidel. In this respect,
the Order had to organize the most profitable way of administering its landed
properties and dependencies. In Hungary the Hospital faced the problem -- like
most of the landowners in the kingdom -- of the difficulty of administering
widely scattered estates. The huge distances between the separate dependencies
required highly skilled administration and clearly reduced the quantity of
goods that could be sent out by the brethren. This consequently decreased the surplus
available to be furnished to the center of the Order. Moreover, since the
preceptories were established for the administration of the goods of the priory
it is conceivable that if there were a large number of landed properties in
other parts of the kingdom, they arranged additional administrative units.
Tracing the changes on the maps, however, it is striking that the two
substantial royal grants determined the framework of the future presence of the
Hospital in twelfth--fourteenth-century Hungary. In the background of this
phenomenon one can find not only considerable royal support -- characteristic
in Hungary and elsewhere in East Central Europe -- but also the lack of private
donations, which resulted partly from the different system of inheritance.
The determinant role of royal gifts and the lack of
private benevolence raised another circle of questions since there might have
been other factors concerning the support of the Hospitallers (as in case of
other religious orders). One such factor was the different forms benevolence
took: a mere gift, a donation for salvation, or a gift given upon the entrance
to a religious order either ad hoc or
on a regular basis, as in the case of the Hospitallers (elemosina). The results of my survey, however, show that the
leaders of the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory were -- with a few exceptions -- of
foreign origin up to the beginning of the 1380s. A similar situation was
reconstructed in the case of the personnel of the preceptories, although there
the number of locally recruited brethren had begun to increase somewhat
earlier, in the middle of the fourteenth century. Relatively little is known
about the preceptories’ personnel of lower rank, partly because they appear in
the sources quite late, in the 1340s. The fact that they are almost exclusively
indicated by their first names makes the identification of their origin and
social status virtually hopeless. Thus, one has to conclude that the
integration of the Order and its personnel in Hungary advanced remarkably slowly
and the majority of the brethren of the Priory was of foreign origin, which
partly justified the low level of benevolence of the locals. It should be
emphasized, however, that this is a somewhat special approach since the
Templars, having similar status, had more substantial private grants in Hungary
although their integration virtually failed. By the time the Hospitallers’
integration into society and church organization began to accelerate, the
prestige of the military-religious orders had dwindled radically, which also
decreased the number of potential donors and the amount of gifts received.
Surveying the integration of the Hospitallers into
Hungarian society, one faces not only a mere linear “maturation” as far as the
appearance of locals in the personnel of the preceptories is concerned; the
development of knightly culture in fourteenth-century Hungary should also be
taken into account. The appearance of high-standing local Hospitallers or
patrons of the Order (e.g., Lőkös Tót of Roholcz, Alexander Zudar, Emeric
Bwbek) in the Priory from the mid-fourteenth century shows that by that time it
was prestigious to become a member of a military/knightly order. It is,
however, again only one side of the coin, since, simultaneously, the leadership
of the Hospital imposed very strict limitations concerning the entrance to an
“overpopulated” order, which would have depleted the surplus produced in its
preceptories. Accordingly, telling prerequisites (e.g., high social standing, a
substantial entrance fee) were required to obtain the habit of the Order.
Especially because the prestige of the Order or at least that of its general
staff gradually increased and the Prior of Vrana (sc. of the
Hungarian-Slavonian Priory) was regarded as one of the prelates of the kingdom.
It is difficult to conclude accurately how the priors of foreign origin
perceived their status in Hungary (Baudoin Cornuti appeared in
the
entourage of King Louis I), but doubtless the
ambitious John of Palisna seized the importance of this office.
My research shows that the brethren did not
unequivocally excel in activities traditionally attributed to the Order, which
is another reason for emphasizing that the increase of prestige of the
Hospitallers was connected with the conveyance of knightly culture. Although
the Hospital was established with the intention of caring for the poor and
needy, very few hospitals of the Order in Europe provided professional curing
or healing. Thus, it is not surprising that this research could only prove the
existence of two hospitals (Székesfehérvár and Sopron) and two baths (Esztergom
and Győr) which were run by the Priory, although the latter were originally not
Hospitaller foundations. Inferring from the location of the hospitals it seems
that they primarily served the need of pilgrims. In addition, similar to many
other European hospitals of the Order, the Sopron hospital of the Priory was
taken over by the town around the mid-fourteenth century. Since the presence of
hospitals in towns can function (like the presence of the mendicant orders) as
an indicator of the development of a particular settlement, the outcome of my
research can broaden the horizon of such interpretations.
Neither can military activity, the other important
undertaking of the Order, be regarded as a characteristic feature of the
Hospitallers settled in the Hungarian kingdom. If not as early as the period of
the settling down (around 1150), doubtless later Hungarian rulers reckoned upon
the military power of the Hospitallers from time to time. Despite this general
observation, King Andrew II entrusted the Teutonic Order with the defense of
the eastern frontiers of the realm (1211-1225) against the pagan Cumans. What
sort of role the Hospital played during the Mongol invasion (1241-1242) is also
puzzling. Only the presence of the Templars can be proved at the fateful Battle
of Muhi, even though a group of Hospitallers probably accompanied King Béla IV
on his escape towards the Dalmatian coast. After the Mongol devastation the
king wanted the Order to play a significant role in his new defensive policy,
but these ideas had vanished by 1250. On the basis of my survey, one can also
raise doubts concerning the involvement of the Hospitallers in large-scale
castle-building activity after the mid-twelfth century. It also remains an
unverified supposition that the cruciferi
who backed Charles Robert in the Battle of Rozgony (1312) were Hospitallers.
After the dissolution of the Templars, the Priory gained a foothold in areas of
strategic importance (in Vrana, for instance, although its role as the
exclusive headquarters of the Priory could not be proved) and this may well
have led to involvement in the Dalmatian politics of King Louis I. The period
under query saw only the indirect participation of the “resources” of the
Priory in the fight against the infidel; although admittedly, this might have
been the consequence of the anti-Turkish policy of the Hungarian ruler. The
most palpable military activity can be seen in the self-defense of the Order. In
the course of the period of the oligarchs at the turn of the thirteenth century
and later, during the war(s) with Venice the Priory suffered serious losses and
was on the defensive. The evaluation of the end of the period under query (and
the following years) is problematic, since the ambitious (and by then
rebellious) John of Palisna (and later Emeric Bwbek) turned against the royal
power and the military force of the Hospital appeared as a “private army” of a
prior who revolted against the crowned ruler. The unique situation created by
the Great Schism (from 1378) can be seen behind these extraordinary events. The
schism caused fractures not only in the overall structure of the Hospital but
also (similar to the Bohemian situation) within the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory.
On the basis of the above, a question is
automatically raised: How did the Hospitallers deserve the support and
benevolence of the Hungarian rulers? What sort of activity justified their
presence in the Hungarian kingdom and how did it facilitate their integration
into the society? As far the first question is concerned, we lack palpable
pieces of information. First of all, the diplomatic service of the Hospitallers
can be mentioned from the reign of King Andrew II (e.g., the activity of
Raimbaud of Voczon) up to the rule of King Louis I (e.g., the Treaty of Zadar
in 1358). Beyond direct, factual proofs, the international network of the Order
as a supranational body can be taken into account in this respect. Most of the leaders
of the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory traveled constantly, they regularly visited
the Priory and administered the goods of their “province” through their
lieutenants. Accordingly, they could easily keep personal contact with either
the leadership of the Order or between the papal curia and Hungary. On the
other hand, albeit indirectly, the Hungarian rulers supported the Christian
efforts in the Holy Land in the broader sense by the donations to the Hospital
in Hungary (and outside). The preceptories which emerged on the basis of the
substantial royal gifts raised money and sent it to the center of the Order
(wherever it was located) and eventually these resources were utilized for the
defense of Latin Christendom. At times the contribution of the Hungarian
Hospitallers to the overall expenses of the Order seems rather symbolic, but
its significance may be understood from a later period.
This problem leads to another set of questions,
that is, how far the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory can be regarded as marginal
and/or peripheral in the overall hierarchy of the Hospital. Obviously, an
adequate answer could be given if priories in similar situation (e.g., Polish
or Scandinavian areas) had been thoroughly surveyed and analyzed through the
lens of fixed parameters. Lacking the abundance of such information, instead of
detailed comparison we are limited to speculation on this issue. As touched
upon in this dissertation, the payments made by the priories did not correlate
by any means with the significance or influence of a particular priory; it
rather related -- at least in theory -- to the profitability of the given
province. In this respect the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory was not under
favorable conditions. These circumstances, however, were not manifest at the
time of their settlement and later it was clearly not in the interests of the
Hospitallers to alter them. Nonetheless, two characteristic phenomena should be
mentioned. The langues (linguae) of
Provence and Italy steadily rivaled for the Hungarian Priory and finally they
elaborated a rotational system for the office of the prior. Moreover, from the
first third of the fifteenth century Alamania
also joined this “competition.” It is important to emphasize -- against
long-standing misinterpretations -- that the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory did not
belong to the Province of Alamania.
Lacking relevant primary sources, it is hard to judge whether it was a
consequence of the changes in dynastic relations of the Hungarian rulers or
more developed prestige (or both). This situation can also be linked to the
tense period of the early 1370s when a rivalry developed over the office of the
Hungarian-Slavonian prior. Besides the Master of the Hospital, both the pope
and the Hungarian king had their own appointees for the post. The actual
political relations and influence are mirrored in the fact that finally Louis
I’s will predominated over the others in the appointment of the Provençal
Raymond de Beaumont.
The question concerning how the Hospitallers were
integrated into the Hungarian society, however, is still to be raised. The
survey conducted suggests that there are at least two manners of approach. The
first is a somewhat obvious but less informative way. The preceptories of the Priory,
similar to other ecclesiastical lordships in Hungary, administered the
production of their own lands in an “ordinary” manner: they cultivated the
estates either through their tenant peasants (rustici, iobagiones) or they rented out (census) many pieces of land to predial nobles. The slight difference
was that, compared to other priories of the Order, it was not the preceptors
who collected the surplus or revenues. It was rather the prior who assembled
the predials of the Priory (who were said to live
more fidelium predialium nostrorum) at the provincial
chapters convoked annually or triennially. As testified by the sources, the
Hospitallers in Hungary followed local customs in the course of this activity,
even though they seemed to attribute more importance to fidelity expressed
towards the Order in their choice of leaseholders than was expected by other
religious orders.
Another approach to the question is through the
integration of the Hospitaller preceptories into the Hungarian institutional
system of the places of authentication (loca
credibilia). Nine preceptories of the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory were
involved in the administration of private legal affairs for shorter and longer
periods and the intensity of the activity of the Székesfehérvár preceptory was
remarkable country-wide. Several conclusions can be drawn from this phenomenon.
First, the trust of the members of a society was mirrored in the choice of a
particular place of authentication that they turned to with their affairs, for
instance, for procuring a charter. Especially this was the case if the chosen
place was not the nearest settlement. I hold a similar opinion concerning the
king or the highest officials of the realm. Beyond the sphere of operation
(which was gradually extended) of a particular institution, trust played a
decisive role when they commissioned a place of authentication to launch
inquests (inquisitio) into certain
cases. Among the aspects of selection, trustworthiness met with special
attention after 1351. Due to the general loss of credence private parties paid
to the places of authentication, which were often said to be corrupt
(especially in the case of proprietary churches by their patrons), King Louis I
deprived the minor religious houses of the authentic seal and thus from the
right to issue authentic documents. From this time onwards only the
preceptories of Székesfehérvár and Dubica performed such a role, although the
latter was in a particular situation as it acted on behalf of the County of
Dubica.
Besides the elusive “trust(worthiness)” attributed
to these establishments, at least three further points should be taken into
account. First, those members of a convent who played an active role in this
activity were supposed to speak Hungarian. In theory it cannot be ruled out
that they employed interpreters, but this is rather unlikely since it would
have burdened the “account” of the parties involved, who usually formed a
cost-sensitive circle. Second, a knowledge of Hungarian customary law, which
differed from Roman law at several points, was also a prerequisite. Last but
not least, it is worth highlighting that the scriptoria of the preceptories followed the path laid down by the
Hungarian places of authentication and there are no tangible signs that they
applied the erudition they potentially brought from abroad. The Hospitallers in
the European priories did not acquire particular fame in legal literacy; while
visiting the Hungarian-Slavonian Priory the priors brought with them notaries
public who were rarely fully professed brothers. Summing up, on the basis of
the role played by the Hospital in the authentication activity one can conclude
the following: (1) there might have been members of local origin in the Order
well before the appearance of direct pieces of evidence; (2) the activity
performed in relation to legal literacy might have played a mediating role
towards either the town (Sopron) or the county (Dubica).
Despite all the effort behind my survey, there are
still numerous “blank spots” on the map of the history of the Hospital in
medieval Hungary. Most of all, the enormous loss of records makes the whole
picture fragmentary, since the insufficient extant source material hinders the
modern scholar from completing the reconstruction. The feeling of completeness
is also reduced by the fact that I failed to disprove all the former unfounded
theses point by point and this basically springs from two reasons. Partly I
found it not fully reconcilable with the genre of a doctoral dissertation to
submit the whole structure to polemics; partly the original objective -- aiming
at a thorough revision of the work of Ede Reiszig -- got to the point that it
proved easier to start the investigation and analysis from the very beginning.
Moreover, with regard to the potential readership of the dissertation there
would have been numerous elements to be incorporated in order to facilitate the
mere understanding of the controversy, but they did not have scholarly
relevance and would have expanded the work redundantly.
Besides the immediate results of the present
dissertation, I am convinced that the outcome of this survey can be fully
exploited by putting it into a wider context of comparative investigations.
First of all, a similar analysis of the Templars in medieval Hungary would
provide a solid basis for comparative research. A research project was recently
launched aiming at such objectives, but unfortunately it remained unfinished.
As soon as it is completed there will be grounds for comparing the conclusions
drawn from the analysis of the Hospitaller sources with special regard to the
similarities or dissimilarities of the strategy of the orders or the effect
they had during their presence in the kingdom of Hungary. Additionally, the
comparison of the local characteristics of the neighboring regions (Bohemia,
Austria, Poland) would also yield important results and provide an opportunity
for broadening the horizon of interpretation. Finally, the new picture drawn of
the military-religious orders should be compared with those of other religious
orders settled in medieval Hungary. These future steps would complete a
contribution to the recovery of medieval church history in Hungary, which was
driven into the background for many decades.