Petercsák Tivadar: Nemesi és paraszti közbirtokosságok Heves Megyében (XVIII-XX. század) - Studia Agriensia 23. (Eger, 2003)
NOBLE AND PEASANT JOINT TENANTRY IN HEVES COUNTY (18th-20th CENTURY)
an overview of the state of historical and ethnographic research into joint tenantries in Hungary. The second chapter describes the geography, the economy and the administrative boundaries of Heves County. According to statistical data the hills and plains of this particular part of northern Hungary have proved favourable to those engaged in animal husbandry and forestry. The other chapters (III-IV.) in the volume detail how land was used by both gentry and peasantry, how pasturage and woodland collectives were set up and how they functioned and were organised. During the final centuries of the feudal era many nobles lived in Heves County, indeed during the running battles which went on during the 16th and 17th centuries in what was the border region separating the Turkish Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary many of those peasant warriors who fought with distinction were rewarded with titles. By the 18th century in most villages in Heves County the number of families belonging to the lower gentry either reached or exceeded 50%. At the end of the 18th century the number of gentry enjoying property rights had increased in a quarter of the county’s villages. They and the so- called curial (Hung.: kurialis) or patented (Hung.: armalis) gentry, who had no tenure, lived on joint-owned land, the organisational framework for which was established by the noble joint tenantry (Lat.: compossessoratus; Hung.: nemesi közbirtokosság). Joint tenantries included all those plots of land not divided amongst the landowning nobility for fear of their becoming uneconomic in the process. In noble villages at the beginning of the 18th century arable and meadows were still being used as common land, and it was this form of common ownership which ceased to exist from the beginning of the 19th century. Tradition dictated, however, that the right to use woodland and pastures and to hunt continued right up until the disappearance of the noble joint tenantries. Up to the beginning of the 20th century the noble joint-tenantries were partitioned in proportion to the incomes individuals acquired from the regálék (incomes from royal endowments) derived from the right to open a butcher’s shop, run inns or hold fairs. The workings of the noble joint tenantries were not regulated, and 292
