erik fügedi and the elefánthy kindrederik fügedi and the elefánthy kindred

Erik Fügedi and the Elefánthy KindredThe Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and His Kïndred by Erik Fügedi; Damir KarbićReview by: Martyn RadyThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 1999), pp. 295-308Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4212839 .

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SEER, Vol. 77, No. 2, April I999

Review Article

Erik Fugedi and the Elefanthy Kindred' MARTYN RADY

Fugedi, Erik. The Elefanthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and his Kindred. Edited by Damir Karbic with a foreword by JAnos Bak. Central European University Press, Budapest, 1998. ix + 174 pp. Notes. Tables. $39.95: C25.oo: FT 4100.

STUDIES of the Hungarian nobility have often been influenced by political and ideological considerations. In the last century, the publication of ancient title deeds and of genealogical tables added both lustre to the great families of nobles and legitimacy to Hungary's hereditary ruling class. For its part, the gentry was extolled as Hungary's principal line of defence against Josephinist centralization and as the driving-force behind the nation's revival in the Vorrndrz. The gentry's power rested upon the county administration. During the second half of the nineteenth century, a number of the extensive collections of medieval documents kept in the Hungarian county archives were published. These publications of sources were seldom, however, accompanied by literature which elucidated and explained the behaviour of the gentry who attended the county assemblies and tribunals.

During the twentieth century accounts of the medieval nobility have assumed a more critical and comprehensive character. They have, nevertheless, often still been driven by a political agenda. Over the course of this century, therefore, studies of the medieval Hungarian nobility have successively sought to demonstrate the nobility's contribution first to the erosion of the public power of the state, then to the construction of a new type of polity resting on corporate privileges and principles, and finally to the consolidation of a mode of production resting on the exploitation of the peasantry. Only the type of 'settlement research' (telepiihlstdrtenet) and ethnographic Landesgeschichte promoted by the school of Elemer MAlyusz has managed to remain relatively free from overt political partisanship.2

The importance of the research and writing of Erik Fugedi (i 9 I 6-92) has been to remove the study of the medieval Hungarian nobility from the sphere of politics and ideology and to investigate the nobility afresh

' An earlier version of this essay was delivered as a paper at the third workshop on the Nobility in Medieval Central Europe Research Project, organized by the Department of Medieval Studies of the Central European University, Budapest, in November I998.

2 Even so, Malyusz's seminal essay, 'A nepis6g tortenete', in BAlint H6man (ed.), A magvar tortinetirds uj `,iai, Budapest, I932, pp. 237-68, still draws on themes redolent of the vdlkisch ideology of the 1930s.



296 MARTYN RADY

within a quite different context. Fugedi always claimed that his methodology was influenced by a short research trip to Paris in the early I970S where he first became aware of the contribution which anthropology and sociology could make to the study of medieval history. This may be so, but it hardly does justice to the originality of Fiigedi's own approach. At a time when the medieval noble family was still a largely neglected field of research,3 Fugedi grasped its significance for the Hungarian Middle Ages. In a series of articles and in a monograph on social mobility among the fifteenth-century aristocracy, Fugedi drew attention to the bonds of kinship and marriage which united individual members of the noble estate. He plotted the rise of parvenus and their entry into the baronage, and he tracked their families' subsequent decline on account of biological misfortune or political misjudgement.4

Fugedi originally intended to establish the behaviour of the medieval Hungarian nobility by the comprehensive investigation of thirty families, with a further fifty acting as a 'control' to the sample. This statistical approach ideally fitted Fuigedi's career as head of the Demography Research Group in the Library of the Central Statistical Office, and called upon skills which he had first learned during an earlier period of professional exile when he was employed as a number- cruncher in a canning factory.5 Fugedi soon realized, however, that his project was too vast. First, he established the unreliability of a good part of the material upon which he had hoped to base his research: principally, the genealogical studies published earlier this century by the Hungarian Genealogical and Heraldic Society in the journal Turul. Secondly, he was thwarted by the absence of clear accounts of family relationships in the surviving records. All too often, scribes would use

Jacques Heers, Le clan familial au moyen age. Etude sur les structures politiques et sociales des milieux urbains, Paris, I 974, p. i 6. Although Heers acknowledges Georges Duby, 'Structures de parente et noblesse. France du nord. Xle-Xlle siecles', in Miscellanea Mediaevalia in memoriamJan FrederikNiermeyer, Groningen, 1967, pp. I49-65, he takes into account neither F. Vercauteren, 'Une parentee dans la France du Nord aux Xle et XIIe siecles', Le Moyen Age, 69, I 963, pp. 223-45, nor Duby's contribution to the Twelfth International Conference on the Historical Sciences, Moscow, I970, 'Structures familiales dans le Moyen Age occidental' (published in English as 'Family Structures in the West during the Middle Ages', in Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 105-12). We may, however, forgive Heers for not knowing of AndrAs Kubinyi's important precursor to his own work, 'Budai 6s pesti polgArok osszekotett6sei a Jagell6korban', Leveltari Kozlemenyek, 37, I966, pp. 227-9I.

4 A 15. szazadi magyar arisztocracia mobilitdsa, Budapest, I970 (with English-language summary, pp. 195-21 I); 'The Avus in the Medieval Conceptual Framework of Kinship in Hungary', Studia Slavica, 25, 1979, pp. 137-42, reproduced in Erik Ftigedi, Kings, Bishops, Nobles and Burghers in Medieval Hungag, ed. JAnos Bak, London I986; see also in the I986 edition the previously unpublished 'The Aristocracy in Medieval Hungary: Theses'; 'Some Characteristics of the Medieval Hungarian Noble Family', journal of Family History, 7, I 982,

pp. 27-39. 5 Personal conversation with Erik Fugedi, August I 983.



ERIK FUGEDI AND THE ELEFANTHY KINDRED 297

terms such asfratres and sorores to describe not just brothers and sisters, but also cousins, nephews and nieces. Indeed, by the end of the Middle Ages,frater might simply mean a fellow nobleman.6 Moreover, and as was typical elsewhere in medieval Europe, female relatives and lines of descent were often unrecorded, and, as Fugedi explained in a separate article, often rapidly forgotten.7 Of necessity, therefore, Fiugedi's project had to be restricted to the study of a single family, the ElefAnthy of Nyitra county in modern-day Slovakia.8 The control had similarly to be limited to just a few families and to the evidence given by Stephen Werboczy in his early sixteenth-century account of the customary law of the Hungarian nobility.

Fuigedi's resulting survey of the ElefAnthy was first published in Budapest in I992 as Az Elefdnthyak. A kizepkori magyar nemes es kldnja. The new English-language edition under review here differs from the Hungarian original by having a much fuller explanatory and critical apparatus, including extensive quotations from hitherto unpublished manuscripts. The complete texts of all archival sources relating to the ElefAnthy kindred is otherwise available on the internet as www.ceu.hu/medstud/elephdip. Damir KarbiWs careful editing of Ftigedi's text has additionally removed the factual errors and mistran- scriptions which occasionally found their way into the Hungarian original. The outcome is a work of profound and transparent scholarship which will transform perceptions not only of the medieval Hungarian nobility but also of Hungarian medieval studies in general.

The aim of Fiugedi's study of the ElefAnthy is to illustrate the bonds of solidarity which united not just the family but also 'the community of all descendants of an ancestor' (p. 21): that is, the cluster of interrelated families which constituted the kindred, genus or generatio. This solidarity, Fugedi explains, manifested itself in social and political behaviour as well as in the provisions of customary law. It was, moreover, noted by contemporaries. The starting point of Fugedi's account of the ElefAnthy kindred is, therefore, a report made in the 1470S by Matthias Corvinus's envoy to Milan in which he stated that

6Joseph Holub, 'La representation politique en Hongrie au Moyen Age', in Studies presented to the International Commissionfor the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, Xth International Congress ofHistorical Sciences, Rome, 1955, Louvain and Paris, 1958, pp. 77- 12 I

(p. i I8). '"Verba volant ...": Oral Culture and Literacy among the Medieval Hungarian

Nobility', in Kings, Bishops, Nobles, pp. 1-25 (first published in Hungarian in Fugedi, Koldulo baratokpolgarok, nemesek, Budapest, I 98 I, pp. 437-62).

8 The name ElefAnthy is curious. Most probably it derives from a personal name, Oliphant, which was itself coined from the Chanson de Roland. Heroic names such as Roland, Oliver, Achilles, Hector and Paris were common in twelfth-century Hungary: see thus Agnes Kurcz, Lovagi kultira Magyarorszdgon a 3.-I 4. szdzadban, Budapest, I988, pp. 245-51. Later authors associated the name ElefAnthy with the story of the gift of an elephant from the king of Sicily.



298 MARTYN RADY

'the number of the nobles' houses (case) is seventeen hundred'. As Fugedi explains, the term casa 'refers to a social unit much broader than the concept of a modern family, one consisting of many related families, sometimes whole conglomerations of families, whose members were connected through their paternal lineage (patrilinearity)' (p. 3). Thus, while fifteenth-century Hungary may have had 40,000 nobles (and a much larger number of semi-nobles or nobiles unius sessionis), the estate of nobility was intersected by many hundreds of patrilineages, kindreds and case.

Family and kinship were by no means static institutions, but their composition, structure and meaning varied considerably during the course of the Middle Ages. A distinction is normally made in West European historiography between cognatic and agnatic kinship, usually as demonstrated through laws of inheritance. Cognatic kinship is bi- lineal since it permits female as well as male inheritance.9 Agnatic is, by contrast, unilineal or patrilineal since it recognizes only male inheritance. Behind this legal distinction almost certainly lie differences in social organization. Although less boundaried and more 'ego-focused' than patrilineal kinship, cognatic kinship is likely to admit far greater measures of collective ownership and communal activity. As Constance Bouchard's research on the twelfth-century lords of Seignelay in France suggests, it rested upon a 'concept of a group of consanguinei, existing through time, who fought together, made pious gifts together, assisted one another, whether in secular or ecclesiastical life, and were buried together'.'0 Agnatic kinship tended by contrast to promote the interest of smaller groups of relatives, who, sharing a common ancestor, distanced themselves from more remote branches and founded lineages of their own. The transition from cognatic to agnatic kinship is normally put at the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, although long periods of overlap clearly occurred. " I

Hungarian historians have often stressed the role played by the original tribal clans in the making of Hungary's earliest political institutions. It is not at all obvious, however, that these clans were of any long duration or that they exercised any great influence upon kinship structures beyond the eleventh century. For, in every other respect, medieval Hungary appears to have known both cognatic and agnatic varieties of kinship as are typical elsewhere in Europe, and to have accomplished the transition from the first to the second at more

9 For this and much of what follows, see David Herlihy, 'The Making of the Medieval Family: Symmetry, Structure and Sentiment', fournal of Family History, 8, I 983, pp. i I 6-30.

10 The Structure of a 12th-Century French Family: the Lords of Seignelay', Viator, iO, 1979, p. 56 (38-56). " D. A. Bullough, 'Early Medieval Social Groupings: the Terminology of Kinship', Past

and Present, 45, I 969, p. I 7 (pp. 3- I 8)




or less the same time. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, therefore, the families of freemen and royal servitors (who would later combine to form the Hungarian nobility), lived for the most part in extended kinship groups. They owned and worked their lands com- munally, and at the physical heart of their collective enterprise was often a proprietary monastery. Every three generations or so, the estate was subdivided between branches.12 In this type of kinship structure, the individual existed 'as if in a flexible and, so to speak, horizontal grouping, where marriages counted as much as ancestry'.13 As was typical in Western Europe, many of these extended horizontal groupings appeared to attach little importance to ancestry. Partly, therefore, because they were not thought to be important, it is virtually impossible in Hungary to establish lines of descent before the middle decades of the twelfth century. We can, however, discern from surviving wills that female descendants were not automatically excluded from rights of inheritance. 14

This structure began to break down in Hungary about the end of the twelfth century. First, we notice a far greater stress put upon notions of descent. This manifested itself in the titles after which kinsmen styled themselves and in a new concern for genealogy. During the thirteenth and fourteenth century (the earliest example is I 208), groups of Hungarian nobles began to refer to themselves as being descended from the genus of an ancestor, thus collectively entitling themselves de genere Erici or some such. Around I 200, a nameless notary, formerly in the royal service (the so-called Anonymus), composed a chronicle in which he sought to satisfy the emergent nobility's concern for lineage by backdating into the conquest period the careers of grandparents and of other close ancestors. Secondly, it became increasingly common for noble kindreds to divide up their communal estates with the passing of every generation. This practice, known to anthropologists as 'perpetual segmentation','5 was declared to be 'customary' even as early as the first decades of the thirteenth century.'6 It is evident, however, that many estates continued to be owned collectively among different branches of the kin until well into the fourteenth century, and that

12 Eszter Waldapfel, 'Nemesi birtokjogunk kialakulAsa a kozepkorban', Szazadok, 65, 193 1, p. I37 (PP. I36-67). This type of subdivision may be compared to the 'drift' method of segmentation discussed by Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage. an Anthropological Perspective, 2nd edn, Cambridge, I 983, pp. I 23-24.

13 Duby, 'Family Structures in the West', p. io6. 14 Imre Szentpetery and Ivan Borsa (eds), Az Arpad-hazi kira{yok okleveleinek kritikaijegyzeke,

2 vols, Budapest, 1923-87, I, nos 53, 72. 15 Fox, Kinship and Marriage, p. I 30. 16 Ilona Bolla, 'A kozszabadsag lehanyatlAsa a XIII. szAzadban', Tortinelmi Szemle, 17, 1974,

pp. 1-23 (p. 6).



300 MARTYN RADY

varieties of communal ownership persisted into the eighteenth century.'7 Curiously, however, the transition from cognatic to agnatic kinship was not accompanied in Hungary by any movement towards primogeniture. Although female rights of inheritance were circum- scribed by at least the early thirteenth century, all male heirs continued to retain an interest in the parental property. As Fugedi demonstrates in his discussion of the JAk kindred on the right bank of the RAba river, this practice could have as its consequence the break-up within just two generations of a once healthy estate into a congeries of dwarf-holdings (p. 38). The Hungarian nobility must have developed techniques of their own for obviating the effects of partible inheritance. Possibly some sons were sent into the church or were dissuaded from wedlock; possibly (as with the Hessian nobility) others married late so slowing the rate of generational replacement.18 This is an important area for further investigation which can only build on Ftigedi's own pioneering research.

Fiigedi's study of the ElefAnthy kindred represents, therefore, the study of a noble family living within an agnatic kinship structure. It is this which justifies and explains his definition of the kindred as 'the community of all descendants of an ancestor' (p. 21). We need, nevertheless, to ask what type of community was represented by this community of descent. What type of 'solidarity' did it evince? How, moreover, did its putative solidarity interact with those other elements of social cohesion evident within medieval Hungarian society? It is the present author's contention that, during the later Middle Ages, the agnatic kindred was itself undergoing a process of dissolution, that its solidarity was increasingly attenuated, and that this process is demonstrated most persuasively in aspects of Hungarian customary and royal law. The present writer believes, moreover, that while the kindred or genus was an important force within Hungarian noble society, it often existed in a state of tension with the smaller noble family or parentela.

Certainly, we will frequently observe clusters of interrelated families engaging in common political action. The various branches of the KistapolcsAnyi family of Bars and Hont counties thus, for instance, regularly joined together during the fifteenth century to mount assaults on the castle of Hruss6 which they coveted as their own.'9 In more peaceable fashion, members of kindreds vouched for each other in litigation affecting rights to property and claims to noble status. Nevertheless, divisions as surely existed within the kindred, particularly

'7 Karoly TagAnyi, 'A foldkozosseg tort6nete Magyarorszagon', Magyar Gazdasaigtortenelmi Szemle, I, I 894, pp. 199-238.

18 George Pedlow, 'Marriage, Family Size, and Inheritance among Hessian Nobles', journal of Family History, 7, I 982, pp. 333-52.

19 KAlman Hainczl, 'A Kistapolcsanyiak', Turul, 46, 1932, pp. 20-5I.



ERIK FUGEDI AND THE ELEFINTHY KINDRED 301

after the market in land began to tighten in the early fourteenth century. Having engaged in collective aggression, the constituent members of the kindred would, like the KistapolcsAnyi, as surely fight among themselves over the spoils. The frequent partition of estates likewise provided equal occasion for litigation and mutual violence. Well might contemporary custom and legal decisions affirm that the denial of a relative's rights was the greatest moral betrayal, and that the slaughter of a kinsman was the equivalent of treason, but perjury, assault and murder continued to mark relations within the kindred. As Fugedi himself concluded, having reviewed the deceptions, seizures and killings among members of the ElefAnthy, violence in Hungarian noble society was predominantly an intra-kindred phenomenon (p. 94).

The kindred's role as both an agent of social solidarity and as a cause of social disharmony is familiar from anthropological literature. As the words of one song from as far afield as Zimbabwe remind us: 'He who kills me, who will it be but my kinsman? He who succours me, who will it be but my kinsman?'20 Or, as Meyer Fortes has put it using a quite different vocabulary: 'Many ties of close kinship . . . subsume rivalries and latent hostilities that are as intrinsically built into the relationships as are the externally oriented amity and solidarity they present.'2' In this respect, violence within the kindred may constitute proof of its cohesion for the very reason that proximity and shared interests are likely to engender disputes. Nevertheless, we may adduce further evidence pointing to the attenuation of the kindred as a social phenomenon. First, as Fugedi himself observed in another work, during the civil conflicts of the early fourteenth century, when we might have expected the kindreds to have displayed a self-interested solidarity, we find them divided instead by factionalism.22 Secondly, the prestige of the genus and collective pride in a common descent were evidently in decline in the fourteenth century. Increasingly, therefore, individual families chose to identify themselves not by reference to a common ancestor but instead by reference to their premier property: de Debrenthe, de Debrecen and so on. Examples of the older de genere title are infrequent after I400.23 Identity and self-definition had, so it appears, removed themselves from affective biological bonds and relocated themselves in the territorial lordships over which the individual members of the kindred so frequently fought.

20 Cited in Derek Freeman, 'Kinship, Attachment Behaviour and the Primary Bond' in Jack Goody (ed.), The Character of Kinship, London and New York, I 73, pp. I09- I 9 (p. I I 5).

21 Kinship and the Social Order, London, I 969, p. 237. 22 Ispdnok, barok, kiskira'lyok. A kozepkori magyar arisztocrcica f6jlodise, Budapest, I986,

pp. i6o-6i. 23 The last known example of which I am aware is, however, from as late as 1479 with

reference to de genere Bogo: Hungarian National Archive, Collectio Ante-Mohacsiana, Dl 65345 (I owe this reference to the kindness of Zsolt Hunyadi).



302 MARTYN RADY

The strongest evidence which Fugedi presents to demonstrate the solidarity of the kindred derives not from his study of the ElefAnthy but instead from his reading of Werboczy. Hungarian customary law stressed not only the role of the kindred in moral terms, most notably in the care of orphans, but also its existence as a legal subject. Alienations of property required thus the consent not only of the immediate heirs but also of collateral relatives who might in the event of the sons' deaths have a claim to the estate. In an example which Fugedi cites, in I340 a father alienated half his estates. In order to do so, he acquired in advance not only the consent of his son but also the permission of his 'divisional brothers', for had he or his son died without heir these kinsmen would have expected to inherit the whole property (p. 28). The consanguinei of a noble landholder were therefore more than blood-relatives; they also had under certain circumstances a legal claim to the estate. Should a noble die without direct heirs then his land customarily passed to collateral relatives. Rights of collateral inheritance might be chased back even to at least the fourth or fifth generation, or up to two centuries if proper written proof was forthcoming. Only if these distant relatives were lacking (or were unable to prove their relation) did the estate default to the crown.

It is, nevertheless, evident that within individual families there was a strong antipathy towards the kindred having any claim over a property. This may be demonstrated by the use of three legal mechanisms, all of which Fugedi acknowledges. In his study of the ElefAnthy and in several other writings, Fugedi proposes these devices as exceptions which prove his rule with regard to the solidarity of the kindred. Reconsideration of these mechanisms together with the recent research of PAl Engel tends, however, to support an opposite conclusion. The three mechanisms at issue here are the institution of the daughters' quarter, prefection, and the charter of new donation.24

By no later than the first decades of the thirteenth century, daughters were excluded from any share in the ancestral estate. They might be left land which their father had acquired by purchase, but inherited land was reserved for male heirs. The explanation given in the legal literature of the time was the danger that estates which had been given to daughters would pass upon their marriage ad extraneos, i.e. to partners who did not belong to the kindred. Upon the death of a father, daughters were, therefore, supposed to be content with the 'filial quarter', which was a payment in cash equivalent to 25 per cent of the value of the estate. (The only exceptions were daughters who had married non-nobles. Since noble status depended upon the possession

24 PA1 Engel, 'Nagy Lajos ismeretlen ad6mAnyreformja', Tortenelmi Szemle, 39, I997,

pp. 137-57.



ERIK FUGEDI AND THE ELEFINTHY KINDRED 303

of property, these daughters were given their portion in land since otherwise they and their heirs would not only suffer the indignity of living sub alienis tectis but might also endure loss of rank.) It is plain, however, that many families did not have sufficient cash to compensate their daughters. Under these circumstances, the daughters were given the quarter in land on the understanding that their male relatives might later redeem it. Although Werb6czy did not specifically acknowledge this practice, his reference to the quarter as being non perennali, vel haereditaria sed redemptili lege (Tnipartitum, i:88) suggests the regularity with which the quarter might be temporarily ceded in land.

The land of nobles who had no sons was supposed to pass upon their death to their closest collateral heirs, even if they had daughters of their own. There emerged early on, however, a tendency among fathers to seek to hand on their estates to their daughters and to their daughters' children rather than have them pass to brothers and nephews. In law, the daughters were entitled to no more than the quarter and to a portion of the father's acquisita. If he was without male heirs, all the rest belonged to the collateral branches of the kindred. As early as the thirteenth century, however, the solidarity of the kindred was suffi- ciently weakened for fathers to seek to grant either a quarter or, indeed, all of their property to their daughters as unredeemable estate even though the land might thereby pass through marriage ad extraneos. Preliminary statistical research suggests that about a half of all quarters given to daughters in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries consisted of landed estate.25

A number of questionable devices might be employed to ensure a daughter's inheritance of land, as for instance pretending that ancestral land was acquired land, or giving the quarter in land by testament coupled with a clause in the will that the property might be held in perpetuity by the daughter and her children. Despite their proliferation, these were uncertain routes for they might be challenged in the common law courts. An alternative way was to appeal to equity and to obtain the royal consent for customary law to be set aside. During the thirteenth century, therefore, nobles petitioned the ruler to be able to bestow their properties upon whomsoever they wished and, on several occasions in the thirteenth century, the right to free testamentary disposition was extended by royal statute to all nobles who had no male heirs. This concession was, however, plainly damaging to collateral branches since properties which they might otherwise have expected to revert to themselves could now pass by testament outside the kindred.

25 I owe this information to the kindness of Pter Bany6. In the case of the nobles of Turopolje near Zagreb in Slavonia, Marija Karbi6 tells me that all quarters were given in land. This extreme circumstance may possibly be explained by reference to the practice of endogamy which seems to have prevailed within this noble community.



304 MARTYN RADY

The right to free testamentary disposition in default of direct male heirs was eventually withdrawn in the law code of I 35 I .26

By this time, however, nobles had established another route through equity in order to obviate the customary rights attaching to the kindred. During the fourteenth century, it thus became increasingly common for fathers without direct male heirs to petition the king to make their daughters into sons, thus entitling them to the entirety of the estate. Although, to begin with, privileges permitting the prefection of daughters (prefectio infilium in heredem masculinum) were only given to the high nobility, in the second half of the fourteenth century they were increasingly ceded to petitioners coming from the common nobility. Altogether over a hundred grants of prefection are known to have been made in the two centuries following the earliest use of this device in 1332.27 Nevertheless, and as with the right of free testamentary disposition, the prefection of daughters was damaging to the interests of the larger kindred. Consequently, it became generally accepted that acts of prefection should not be allowed while male relatives within the fourth degree were still alive, and in the I370S all prefections which harmed the interests of such collateral relatives were declared void. The diet of I397 extended this principle by declaring that prefections were not permitted 'within the fifth generation'. It seems, however, likely that by association with matrimonial law the fourth degree remained the convention.

These restrictions on the right of prefection represented only a partial victory for the kindred. For the first time, the generations constituting the kindred had been laid down, but in a restrictive sense detrimental to those collateral branches which shared a common ancestor beyond the fourth degree. Moreover, it is apparent that the royal consent was still given for prefections well within the fourth degree, although these later examples were probably made with the agreement of members of the relevant collateral branches. It is, however, evident that once the collateral branches had agreed to a prefection then they lost all future claims to the estate even if the daughter subsequently died without heirs. In a passage which probably derived from a genuine case, Werboczy explained the relations between two brothers each of whose daughters had been prefected with the agreement of the other. In this instance, Werboczy maintained, the prefections had the consequence of creating completely new noble lines. Thus, if one of the prefected daughters died heirless, the property would not default to her uncle's line, as one might otherwise have

26 The rights of free testamentary disposition and of prefection are analysed both in Fugedi's Elefanthy, pp. 50-62, and in his earlier article, 'A koznemesi klAn szolidaritAsa', Szdzadok, i I 8, I 984, pp. 950-73. 27J6zsefHolub, 'Kozepkori fiusitAsok', Turul, 41, I927, pp. 84-88.




expected to be the case, but would instead escheat to the crown (Tripartitum, 1:50; discussed by Fugedi, p. 27).

The examples of the filial quarter and of prefection illustrate several tensions within medieval Hungarian noble society. In the first place, there was plainly a tension between customary law and equity which bears some resemblance to contemporary developments in English law. In this respect, Fugedi's own observation that 'public opinion considered prefection a legal chicanery' (p. 6i) coincides with John Selden's remark in the seventeenth century that 'equity is a roguish thing'.28 Secondly, there was a further tension between the kindred and the smaller family unit, or in other words between the genus and the parentela. As we have seen, in order to ensure their daughters' and grandchildrens' inheritance, fathers were prepared to proceed to equity and, by obtaining from the king either the right of free testamentary disposition or the right of prefection, jeopardize the interests in land of their kinsmen. Otherwise, and in evidently a very large number of cases, they unilaterally apportioned land to daughters both in defiance of customary law and in complete disregard of the rights of collateral branches to inheritance. In order to establish, however, whether this behaviour was exceptional or not, we need to turn to the recent research of PAI Engel.29

Inheritance law in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century appears under certain circumstances to have recognized not just sons but also brothers, nephews and other male relatives as entitled to inherit ancestral estate as immediate heirs. There was certainly no clear understanding in this matter even within kindreds. One example given by Engel indicates this only too clearly. On two occasions around 1320 the two sons of Jacob of PAnyok divided between themselves their father's lands. In 1327 they made a third division, but this time they included in the division their two cousins. This is the first occasion we have notice of these cousins' existence, and they had certainly not been involved in the preceding two divisions. Nor was the land which they received of any special legal status; it was, like most of Jacob's estate, property either which he had bought or which had been given to him by the king. Again, we have other illustrations of legal actions being successfully brought against individuals obliging them to disgorge properties to collateral kinsmen and not to pass them on to their sons alone. This confusion between practices, let alone between practices and prescriptive law, may perhaps most conveniently be blamed on the uncertainties accompanying the transition from cognatic to agnatic

28 Table Talk of John Selden, ed. Pollock, 1927, p. 43, cited in Hanbury and Martin's Modern Equity, i5th edn, London, 1997, p. 7.

29 For this and much of what follows, see Engel, 'Nagy Lajos ismeretlen ad6mAnyreformja'.



306 MARTYN RADY

kinship structures. More specifically, it may indicate that rights of inheritance were negotiated between members of the kindred rather than being the subject of normative laws.

From the 1320s onwards, we find it increasingly common for noblemen to petition the king for a charter of new donation. This royal re-grant of property was often accompanied by clauses prohibiting collateral heirs from inheriting the estate upon the death of the owner: quod adfratres ejus et consaguineos non in aliquo extendatur; exclusisfratribus et consanguineis eius; exceptis aliisfratribus suis uterinis etproximis and so on. To begin with, grants of new donation acknowledged that the king was setting aside customary provision and that the petition was agreed by special royal dispensation. After the 1340s, however, a complete reversal appears to take place. From this time onwards, it was understood that unless relatives were specifically mentioned in the charter of donation, they had no rights as immediate heirs. Only if they were recorded in writing as having these rights were they entitled to a share of the estate along with the owner's sons.

This rapid change in the way the laws of inheritance were understood is well illustrated by a case from the I 360s, as recorded by Engel.30 Nicholas Baracskai, a landowner in Bars county, died around I 365. He had a brother, Stephen, but no sons. Immediately upon Nicholas's death Ladislas of Oppeln petitioned the king to be given Nicholas's properties on the grounds that he was without heir, and that his lands lay now at the ruler's disposal. The king concurred with Ladislas's petition, at which point Stephen protested. He brought before the king several charters which proved that the lands in question had been jointly ceded both to Nicholas and to him. Inspecting the charters, the king 'saw with the proof of his own eyes that the name of Stephen was written there', and upheld Stephen's plaint. Stephen was duly seized of his brother's lands. Clearly though, Stephen only obtained possession because the property had beenjointly awarded. Had his name not been in the charters, then he would have had no right to his brother's estate which would instead have defaulted to the crown.

As the Baracskai case suggests, the narrowing of the rights of the kindred held obvious benefits for the crown since it extended the grounds on which a property might be considered to be without heir and thus might revert to the crown. As it turned out, the crown was unable to preserve the new rights it claimed over the properties of nobles who died without sons. Nevertheless, we may observe that the institution of the new donation constituted a further stage in the attenuation of the kindred. Whereas at the start of the fourteenth century it had been at least partially understood that kinsmen had a

30 Ibid., pp. I 51-52.



ERIK FUGEDI AND THE ELEFkNTHY KINDRED 307

claim equal to sons in matters of inheritance, by the end of the century a complete reversal had taken place. Unless kinsmen were formally recorded as heirs in the title deeds to the estate, they took second place to sons when it came to the division of a father's property. For only if the landowner had no immediate heirs were collaterals entitled to a share in the estate.

The charter of new donation confirms what we have already alluded to with regard to the filial quarter and prefection. It was increasingly the aim of landowners to assert the rights of the parentela against the genus, even if this had the consequence of diminishing the resources in land available to the kindred. The attenuation of the kindred as a legal institution is additionally reflected in changes in inheritance law which, through the institution of the new donation, had the consequence of diminishing the kindred's collective rights to the property of its constituent families. In short, the solidarity of the kindred is no more apparent in the legal behaviour of its members than it is in respect of their economic and social behaviour.

Concentration on the kindred as an institution of solidarity may have the further consequence of obscuring those other institutions of social cohesion which operated within the Hungarian countryside. Fugedi himself was, however, only too well aware of these other forces and so his study of the Eleflnthy also includes important discussion of vassalage and of the county. In a separate work, he draws attention to the structures of lordship and to their impact upon Hungarian noble society.3" Of these other institutions, vassalage orfamiliaritas is perhaps the most thoroughly researched and in recent years both Erik Fugedi and PAI Engel have explored the interaction of familiaritas with the holding of royal offices and honores.32 Some doubts must, nevertheless, remain as to the degree to whichfamiliaritas offered anything more than a very temporary cohesion. It was not usually reinforced by the granting of fiefs but expressed itself in money payments or the right to revenues. Nor were relations offamiliaritas sealed with quasi-religious ceremonies which might have served to strengthen the bond between lord and man. As a consequence, there appears to have been rapid movement from one lord's service to another, as vassals sought out more generous paymasters or a more advantageous opening for a career in the royal court.

The county community was, however, a much stabler institution and instrument of social solidarity. The majority of the Hungarian nobility

31 Castle and Society in Medieval Hungagy (I0ooo-437), Budapest, I 986. 32 PAl Engel, 'Honor, vAr, ispAnsAg. TanulmAnyok az Anjou-kirAlysAg kormAnyzati

rendszer6r6l', Szaizadok, iI6, I982, pp.88o-922; 'A honor (A magyarorszAgi feudAlis birtokformAk k6rd6s6hez); Tortenelmi Szemle, 24, I98I, pp. I-I9; Erik Fugedi, 'KirAlyi tiszts6g vagy h bAr?', Tdrtenelmi Szemle, 25, 1982,pp. 482-509.



308 MARTYN RADY

had the bulk of their properties in just one county. If they acquired estates farther afield then they usually either exchanged them or made them the starting-point of a cadet-line's future landed wealth. The nobility of the county frequently met together in assemblies, in tribunals, in inquisitions and in arbitration. They vouched for one another's boundaries, affirmed each other's status as fellow-nobles, and agreed to manage and oversee a fellow's legal cases when he travelled abroad on business. Generation after generation, the same families would contribute officers to the county administration. Of course, the nobles of the county stole each other's sheep and serfs, and they occupied one another's lands. Nevertheless, the violence which they perpetrated had a certain ritualistic character and was probably intended to speed litigation over contested properties. In all these respects, the 'fictive kindred' of the county community shared many of the characteristics of the biological kindred of which Fugedi has written.

Only a little has been published on the county communities of medieval Hungary and on the behaviour of its noblemen. Doubtless this situation will change as the county community has already been identified as a subject which has been far too long neglected.33 When the first studies are done, they will almost certainly demonstrate a close interaction between biological and fictive kinship. They will doubtless also affirm Fuigedi's provisional conclusion that the county's assemblies and institutions contributed to the creation and maintenance of relationships both within and between kindreds (pp. I 2-22).

33 Pal Engel at the I996 workshop on the nobility, organized by the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University: reported in Marcell Seb6k (ed.), Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 1996-97, Budapest, I 998, p. I 42.

34 On marriage patterns among the nobility and their relationship to the county organization, see, for a later period, IstvAn M. SzijArt6, 'Relatives and Miles: A Regional Approach to Social Relations of the Lesser Nobility in the County of Somogy in the Eighteenth Century' in JAnos M. Bak (ed.), Nobilities in Central and Eastern Europe. Kinship, Property and Privilege (History and Society in Central Europe, 2), Budapest, 1994, pp. I 4-6I.

Martyn Rady is Senior Lecturer in Central European History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, and General Editor of the Slavonic and East European Review.



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