Kingdom of Hungary

The developing science of criminal law in the Early Modern period in the Kingdom of Hungary, like elsewhere in Europe, produced few synthesizing works and manuals dedicated to the amendment of substantive and procedural criminal law of the time and its theoretical-dogmatic basis. All the while, Beccarian ideas of modernizing the science of criminal law resounded throughout Europe.

Counties in the early modern Hungarian kingdom despite of their particularities fulfilled much the same functions. However, research had shown that there were some counties that functioned on different principles, such as the special counties occupied by the Ottomans.

After the battle of Mohács, political elite of the Hungarian kingdom was apart from the prelates formed predominantly by aristocracy. They were represented by about fifty families who in the middle of the century owned 45-50 % of the country's land. Their members would hold the highest administrative and military offices, occupy prominent positions at the Diet, become leaders of the Estates Confederated against the Habsburgs, controll majority of the comes posts in the counties and with the help of their familiares practically govern the whole regions.

Research of the oldest aristocratic clans in Hungary encounters several difficulties. Sources of the period until as late as the 12th century usually noted only names of nobles without any mention of their family affiliation, nor any other genealogical relation, such as father or grandfather. Therefore, genealogical trees of most Hungarian aristocratic families can be put together only from the 13th century. However, there are some exceptions, such as the Hont-Poznans, an exceptional family that is written into the early medieval history of Hungary.

In the early modern period people were deeply aware of the importance of consanguinity and according to the heritage rights of the period they were expected to take care even of distant relatives. Moreover, in the aristocratic families special attention was paid also to familial ties created by their wedding strategy. Nonetheless, continuity of the family could be endangered by several factors, such as inadequate contemporary level of medicine, death of the male members of the family in war conflicts or some adverse demographical conditions.

It was in the beginning of the 16th century that fashion to publish about proper behaviour and improvement of manners from childhood to adulthood reached its peak. Court instructions and codes of conduct aimed to discipline a court society and depict to a great extent life at the aristocratic court. On the one hand, they represented an ideal of proper manners, on the other, they are also a reflection of certain conventions, traditions and common practice of the given time and place.

The period after the battle of Mohács saw significant migration movements from southern towards northern and north-western parts of the country. The research is delimited to the area bounded by the newly formed border - approximately in the line of the counties of Zala, Veszprém (Weißbrunn) and Komárom (Komorn). Areas behind this line served as a basis for recruitment of new effective troops for the battles against the Ottomans. Landlords in order to be able do protect their property and at the same time to fulfil their duty to defend the country, organised their own armies.

The research of nobility and lives of nobles in the Hungarian metropolis after the battle of Mohács has been rather neglected. The paper attempts to give a basic outline of the problem mainly from a genealogical and partly from an archontological perspective.

The church or liturgical calendar was the crucial factor that influenced differentiation between everyday and festive days in the whole Christian Europe. Religious service divided a day into separate sections; feasts of the church did the same within a year. The church calendar has an ultimate influence on the way how medieval men would spend their days.

The paper analyzes formation of nobility as an independent social group in the early Hungarian kingdom. The first mention of the term "noble" (nobilis) appears in the sources of Hungarian origin in the Law 3 of the king Ladislas I. Persons designated in the contemporary society as nobles were people born into upper class and wealthy families, forming a group which would be nowadays termed "aristocracy". The appearance of the term "noble" is connected with social changes in the 70´s of the 11th century, when a group of extra privileged was extolled from previously compact group of freemen.