Két meghívólevél erdélyi tartománygyűlésre (1478, 1502)

Two Unpublished Letters of Summons to the Transylvanian Provincial Assemblies (1478, 1502) Keywords: Transylvania, voivodal congregation, diet, noble society, Middle Ages \nBefore the conventional end of the Hungarian Middle Ages (1526), we know of only four letters of summons to provincial assemblies, issued by the voivodes and addressed to the county nobility. The present study publishes the two letters that have remained unpublished. One of them, the document of 1478, is the only one known so far which is not only addressed in general to the nobility of a county, but nominally lists the fi ve “most prominent” (nobiliores) nobles of the county of Dăbâca/Doboka, who were expected to attend the consultation with the voivode. Among them we fi nd a landowner of large estates, a member of the Bánff y family, but also small landowners (who may have represented other families in whose service they might have been). The smaller landowners nominalized in the letter of summons did not hold any offi ces in the county organization, but presumably they might have represented more infl uential families they were serving as familiares. Some data suggest the presence of county counts at such voivodal assemblies, who may not even have been invited, but were present ‘ex offi cio’. Including the latter, the number of nobles gathered from the seven Transylvanian counties seems to have remained below fi fty. The procedure for the selection of the delegates is not known, but it is not excluded that they were appointed in advance by the community of nobles of each county

Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Historical Studies of British Isles · Psychology