Veres Gábor - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Hagyomás és megújulás - Életpályák és társadalmi mobilitás a végváriak körében - Studia Agriensia 27. (Eger, 2008)
KENYERES ISTVÁN: Végvári karrierek: udvarbírák, ellenőrök, élésmesterek
István Kenyeres BORDER CASTLE CAREERS: STEWARDS, SURVEYORS AND QUARTERMASTERS This study is based on the archontological and prosopographical database which is a bi-product of my research into the treasury estates of the 16th century. The treasury estates, that form the main focus of my research, can be divided into three categories: a) the king’s (or queen’s) private possessions, b) estates owned by the treasury and under treasury control, c) church lands under the control of the treasury. Most of the above were accompanied by border castles. During the course of our research into the administrative history of the castle estates we dedicated a great deal of attention to the officials working there, particularly the stewards who oversaw the running of the estate, the prefects, the clerks, the auditors and the surveyors. Apart from looking at estate administration and management my research has also included food provisioning at the border castles, hence the inclusion here of quartermasters, who played such an important role in this field. We started out by endeavouring to assemble all the officials’ archontological data, particularly that relating to when they entered and left office. We subsequently tried to collect as much information as we could referring to the people themselves, and with it what they did before and after attaining their positions, as well as any information concerning the acquisition of properties. Apart from the information concerning the ten estates that formed the focus of our study we also collected data relating to other castles and estates. It is for this reason that our archontological database now covers 95 castle estate officials and 34 border castle quartermasters. It is from the prosopographical data recorded during the course of the research that the other element of the database came into being, which also functions as a kind of biographical database for the estate officials and quartermasters. This collection now contains data referring to 709 officials. The quantitive analysis and outlining of the individual family histories of border castle officials offers the possibility of providing the kind of general conclusions, which, among other things, allow one to understand the subsequent economic-social-political role of the official nobility from the perspective of the pre-Mohács treasury and the treasury system established by the Habsburgs from the mid 16th century. 211
