A Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár évkönyve 8. 1981 (Debrecen, 1981)

Közlemények - Gecsényi Lajos: Adatok tiszántúli és erdélyi kereskedők nürnbergi kapcsolataihoz a XVI. század második felében

Data of the Nuremberg connections of the Transsylvanian and Tiszántúl trades in the second half of the 16th century

by Lajos Gecsényi

An admission record of the Pozsony Chapter (preserved by the Slovenskå Statny Ustredny Archiv, Bratislava) had reserved for posterity 28 pieces of bond notes written in Hungarian, which were issued between 1588 and 1591. According these there were 19 east Hungarian traders obliged (from Debrecen, Mezőtúr, Nyírbátor, Szatmár, Várad and Gyöngyös) as well as 11 Transsylvanian traders (from Kolozsvár and Enyed) to pay back purchase prices, altogether 21 644 forint in value for goods to Andreas Khandler, a Nuremberg citizen.

The bond notes form an important, but only in a few cases preserved source of the trade connections from the 16th and 17th centuries. They contain names and dwellingplaces of the traders, the sums credited, the terms of payment, in some cases the nomination of the wares, the inmovable property bound as security of the transaction, as well as the consequences of the default in payment. In this case the exact designation of the accepted goods against bond notes is known only from three transactions, when the goods were cloth and other kinds of textile. These we can take as sure, because they were confirmed by other data. The main commercial connections of the era were cattle export and textile import. The wealthy citizens living at that time in Debrecen had they share in the transactions of the 16th and 17 th centuries commerce, and thus they maintained the existence of transacting goods between the part of the Turkish occupation and the western part of the country.

112