Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

and Vas (István Vitnyédi, János Tolnay, Leonhard Lindenmayer etc.) in order to ease the integration. Finally, they needed also the Hungarian office-bearer nobility's and the lay and ecclesiastic high dignitaries' (Lippay, Csáky, Sennyey, Pálffy, Rákóczi, Wesselényi) support. Moreover, the study analyses the differences to be found in the governmental tutela of the towns being in Habsburg pawn, in the order of appeal and in the applied material and formal law before and after the reannexation of 1648. It also deals with the fate of local autonomy and with the vacuum situation concerning the legal proceeding in the period of transition as well. It discusses the alliance of the three winc-producing towns, Kismarton, Kőszeg and Ruszt with the royal court and also the related costs. As a conclusion, the author states that although the towns invested much into the acquirement of this privileged status, collective ennoblement was at this time already considered a sign of anachronism. TERÉZ OBORNI On the Problems of the Urban History of Transylvania in the Period of the Principality The survey of Transylvanian towns in the time of the principality is a fairly neglected field of the domestic urban history. András Kubinyi

's published studies concerning the Hungarian urban history and the ordination system worked out by him can well be used by the research of Transylvanian towns, settlements. However, it is already observable that the features of the medieval Hungarian urban development are in the case of Transylvanian towns also provable, although the new state frames of the period of principality, the new common-law situation, the tightened commercial possibilities and the devastation concomitant with wartime events generated new characteristics in Transylvania. On the one hand, towns and town-like settlements that evolved in the Middle Ages lived on in the time of principality, on the other hand new settlement types of special status were also formed in the new state. The survey of their privileges, their patents and insofar as it is possible their implication in one integrated system would principally be necessary for the definition of the town and settlement types of the period. The study tries to build up those larger town groups, in which the Transylvanian settlements can be classified based on a sampling pertinent to a circumscribed period. The chosen period is the time of the reign of Gábor Bethlen (1613-1629) and his direct successor, Katalin von Brandenburg (1629-1630). In the indicated period civitas nostra is the expression that is most frequently used in diplomas for the town group possessing the highest rank, the adjective regia usually misses, whereas the adjective libera in many cases remains. Therefore, it would be expedient