Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)

The Medieval Sister Cities

deals with this dispute. The burghers vainly claimed exemption from the toll imposed by these bodies and against the toll imposed by the Cathedral Chapter of Esztergom, Archdiocese on the road between Vienna and Buda. The Buda Commune, headed by the rector appointed by the king, courageously defended the interests of its merchant citizens, in opposition to the Archbishop of Esztergom who supported the ecclesiastical foundations in possession of the tolls, and even the Pope himself. In 1304, supported by the Rector, Petermann, the Buda clergy excommunicated all the bishops of Hungary and even the Pope himself. Although Petermann was driven out in 1307, the patricians continued to guard their privileges jealously against all feudal demands, thus defending the economic prosperity of the city.

Buda, after its foundation, became the favoured residence of the kings of Hungary, and in their absence it was the seat of the Deputy Lord High Justice. Although the king and the central authorities left Buda in the first half of the fourteenth century, residing mostly at Visegrád, the character of Buda as the capital city of the realm had only then been confirmed. But the city was not only the economic and political centre of Hungary; it was also the local market for the whole surrounding neighbourhood. This was where the peasants brought their products for sale and this was where they bought such goods as they needed. This stimulated the development of the crafts: both the crafts satisfying everyday requirements and those more designed for the wealthy inhabitants of a capital city, luxury items such as the work of goldsmiths and silversmiths. Artisans became more and more differentiated in their crafts, a number of master gold- and silversmiths, furriers, butchers and bakers in particular, became wealthy men.

After the restitution of the right to elect the magistrate (mayor) of Buda (1347), actual power became concentrated in the hands of a small group of patrician burghers, consisting of a few banking families, but who, at the same time, were not backward in the acquisition of feudal estates. The disadvantages of the charters of privileges granted earlier became increasingly obvious. The Staple and the enforcement of a single route perforce centred foreign trade on Buda, but this had the corresponding effect that the citizens of Buda enjoyed profits with no exertion on their part, began to act as agents, and abandoned all independent buying and selling of goods. At the same time, the South-German cities, in the full flush of economic expansion, turned their attention to the domination of the Central and East European markets. Hungary increasingly imported Western cloth and other manufactured goods, paying for these with her silver and other metal ores. In Hungarian cities the number of burghers dependent on South-German merchant capital increased, and certain wealthy South-German firms even sent agents to the city. It was thus, for instance, that members of the patrician merchant families of Kraft and Groland from Nuremberg became members of the Buda Council towards the end of the fourteenth century.

With the passing of time these newcomers increasingly supplanted the old feudal families as the dominant caste in the city of Buda. The new patrician burghers were no longer interested in intermarriage with the Hungarian nobility as their predecessors had been; they also acquired estates much more rarely, and then only for business purposes, and they maintained close business and family relations with the leading firms of Vienna, Nuremberg, Bamberg, etc. It appears that between 1370 and 1390 the old families then in power —the Lóránds or Ulvings—were already in some sort of tacit alliance with the middle stratum of citizens against the new patricians. The craftsmen of the town and the growing