CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Incze, János |
|---|---|
| Title | My Kingdom in Pledge. King Sigismund of Luxemburg's Town Pledging Policy, Case Studies of Segesd and Bartfa |
| Summary | King Sigismund of Luxemburg was already known in his age as a ruler who was constantly struggling with serious financial problems. Pledging royal domains was a possible remedy for these problems, but one that had grave consequences for the future. His activities led to an increase in imperial town pledgings to an extent unknown before in the Holy Roman Empire and his successor in Bohemia took the throne almost on the verge of insolvency as a result of Sigismund’s pledging policy there. Many scholarly works state that Sigismund pledged various towns, but one can find hardly any detailed information about what was in fact it meant to pledge a royal town. In Hungary, three historians between the 1930s and the 1960s (E. Léderer, J. Deér and Gy. Rázsó) tried to reckon all of his pledgings, without full success. Unfortunately, research on King Sigismund’s pledgings in Hungary has not moved any further since, leaving many uncertainties and unanswered questions. Because what royal pledging was in the medieval Hungarian Kingdom has not been precisely defined in the literature, an entire chapter is devoted to this problem. This thesis, through two case studies, thoroughly describes the procedure of pledging a royal town, what it meant in practice, and what the character and background of the pledging transactions was. The two examples, Segesd (Somogy County) and Bártfa (Bardejov, Slovakia) represent two extremes of Sigismund’s town pledging practices in Hungary and they illustrate well the authority the pledgees gained through the transaction. The whole town of Segesd was pledged only for a few years with all of its pertaining, but this short period was long enough to have an impact on the town’s medieval history. In Bártfa’s case only the town’s yearly tax and the New Year’s gift were pledged by the ruler and as a result the Hungarian kings lost for decades this source of income. Information is provided about the profitability of the transactions for the parties involved and the impact of the pledgings on the towns’ development. |
| Supervisor | Katalin Szende, Balázs Nagy |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/incze_janos.pdf |
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