CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2007
| Author | Gabris, Tomas |
|---|---|
| Title | Maintaining Peace and Justice in Arpadian Hungary: Punishment and Settlement of Disputes |
| Summary | The goal of this thesis is to conduct research on conflict resolution in Árpádian Hungary (1000-1300 AD) and to compare the results with the conclusions made for Western Europe. The main questions asked are as follows: How were disputes settled in Árpádian Hungary–by judgment or private settlement? Was statutory law used in the practice of conflict resolution? Who intervened in the extrajudicial process? What were the most common punishments or means of settling a dispute? Why is there a dearth of reports on corporal punishment? What were the goals followed by the parties and the authorities deciding the dispute? What was the relationship between the offender and the victim after the conflict was settled? In the first chapter, sources and literature are evaluated. The second chapter deals with judicial conflict resolution, comparing the statutory law of the first kings with the surviving sources on later practice. The third chapter examines the extrajudicial settlement of disputes and the fourth chapter explains the goals followed in the process of conflict resolution and its effectiveness. The conclusion is that the conflicts were resolved in both judicial and extrajudicial manners. The latter, connected with the intervention of notable people of the area, perhaps prevailed. The use of statutory law in practice in the period of the first kings can not be proven. Later, the invocation of legal norms in practice is very rare. The disputes finished mostly in the form of pecuniary satisfaction paid by the culprit. Corporal punishment was not used in the free layer of society as this would not have satisfied the victim seeking material compensation and would probably only have caused deeper animosity. The goal of punishment and conflict resolution was to maintain peace and social order. The promises of the victim and his/her relatives to give up the animosity and to help the culprit in the future support this conclusion as well. |
| Supervisor | Bak, Janos M. |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2007/gabris_tomas.pdf |
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