Majorossy Judit: Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Tanulmánykötet - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 2. (Szentendre, 2014)
VI. English Summaries
To the Margin of a Historical Murder - English Summaries Attila Zsoldos Queen Gertrude and Queenship in the Kingdom of Hungary during the Arpadian Period It is a well-known fact that the members of the Árpád dynasty almost exclusively took wives from outside the Hungarian Kingdom. Consequently it can be a relevant issue whether queens (and their foreign retinue) played an influential role in domesticating certain foreign institutions and customs. On the other hand, it can also be raised that these foreign queens might have been influenced by certain effects they experiences in their new home and these impressions motivated parts of their activities. The institution of queenship might have been also shaped by certain influential queens. The author of this article first discusses these issues with examples and concludes that for queens being able to influence the institution of Hungarian queenship as such, they would have needed a certain level of independence in acting, but this was not the case in the Kingdom of Hungary. At first glance it seems that the medieval reginatus existed parallel to the royal institution of the kings. Since the queens - like the kings - had landed properties on which one could find serving people (like on those of the kings) and their legal status and order was also rather alike. The Hungarian queens also had their own courts (like the kings) with the same types of courtly dignities, one even could find a chancellery issuing similar charters concerning their inner and outer characteristic features, though in a much smaller number. However, a thorough investigation of the development of the queenly institution proved that in the Kingdom of Hungary its place was not next to the kingly one, but within its frameworks. Consequently, in reality there was little action sphere for the foreign queens to activate their “cultural dowry” and implant new customs in the kingdom, if it was not with the consent of the ruler kings. In the second part of the article certain changes were discussed that happened after the extinction of the Árpád dynasty - during the Angevin and Luxembourg rulers as well as under the reign of King Matthias - concerning the functioning of the queen’s institution. Within the context above, the role and character of Queen Gertrude of Andechs-Meran was also investigated. By certain chroniclers it was highlighted that she had a strong, masculine character, but according to the author her influence in certain matters of the kingdom must be attributed to the personal relationship between Gertrude and her husband, King Andrew II of Hungary. As a few sources hint to this, the rulers probably left the governance of the whole country in his absence to Gertrude at least twice (for the second time in 1213 when he conducted his campaign against Halych), which was an unusual act of the time — and in the history of queenship of the Árpáds. László Szende From the Holy Land to Catalonia. The Foreign Policy of King Andrew II and His Contemporary Dynastic Connections in Europe Until recently most of the Hungarian historians had a rather negative opinion not only concerning the personality but also the foreign policy of King Andrew II (1205-1235). The repeated elements of this bad image consisted mainly of the failure of his campaigns against Halych (Galicia-Volhynia), the prestige demolishing consequences of his Crusader venture to the Holy Land, his violent expansion towards the South-East, and his relatively cautious ambitions in the Balkans. However, due to the in-depth research of the past few decades, these stereotypes related to his personality shifted to a more positive perception, and in the latest literature on King Andrew II he already appears as a ruler with a wide international horizon in regard to his foreign actions who was able to succesfully preserve the political and territorial integrity of his kingdom in spite of the everchanging international coalitions of his age. In the present study the author attempts to provide a brief summary of Andrew Us foreign policy based on the above old and new literature as well as on the relevant sources, he tries to outline the several directions of foreign affairs together with a short analysis of their efficacy, and discusses his possibilities behind the established dynastic ties. Regarding the goals of Andrew’s foreign policy, one must count with the legacies of his predecessors, namely with the heritage of his father, III. Béla (1172—1196), and his elder brother, Imre/Emeric (1196—1204). This was the case, 308
