Majorossy Judit: Egy történelmi gyilkosság margójára. Merániai Gertrúd emlékezete, 1213 - 2013. Tanulmánykötet - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, A. sorozat: Monográfiák 2. (Szentendre, 2014)
I. - Szabó Péter: A pilisi királyi erdő a középkorban
Péter Szabó: The Royal Forest of Pilis in the Middle Ages Pilis in this period was its dense network of hunting lodges.19 The Chronicon Pictum informs us that there was a regale allodium in Dömös, where King Béla I (1060-1063) died when his throne collapsed on him.20 Archaeologists have identified the ruins of the building itself. Further hunting lodges lay near Pilisszentkereszt, Kesztölc, Pilisszentlászló and Pilisszentlélek.21 The memory of these buildings survived in a written form because they were transformed into monasteries. What all this tells us is that before 1200, wherever the king and his retinue stayed in Pilis, they had a lodge within a few hours’ ride, and the archbishop, the queen, Saint Stephen’s tomb, and their own residence within one day’s journey. Such hunting lodges were known in other Hungarian Forests as well, for example in Patak Forest to the north.22 We should not suppose that they all served the personal needs of the king, although in this early period the royal court was constantly on the move. They were rather centres of venison production with a specialized personnel focusing on hunting. Pilis was transformed into a county by the thirteenth century. The first appearance of a comes of County Pilis is from 1225.23 Another special feature of Hungarian Forests, the presence of Forest-guards (custodes silvarum), is first mentioned in the year 1285.24 These Forest-guards were responsible for hunting and the administration of the Forests, including the protection of physical boundaries and the regulation of wood extraction. In connection with the management of early royal estates in Hungary, there were several kinds of servants’ villages whose inhabitants had to perform specific duties in providing for the estates.25 Because early Forests were royal property, they had their special servant settlements. Their memory has been preserved mostly in the form of place-names. In the study region, Kovácsi, the smiths’settlement, stood just north of Pilis peak. Peszérd, a village situated a few kilometres south-east of Esztergom, was the home of the royal dog-keepers. Fedémes, at the south-eastern end of Pilis, was named after the bee-keepers there. Solymár, somewhat further to the south-east, was where the falconers lived. Such servant villages are known to have existed in the Middle Ages around Bialowieza Forest (Poland) as well.26 A further important characteristic of thirteenth-century Royal Forests in Hungary was their territorial integrity. Forests were integrated into the administrative system of the Kingdom at the level of counties: they had their own administrative boundaries, as demonstrated for example by the quotation at the beginning of the previous section. Unfortunately not much is known about where the physical boundaries of Pilis Forest ran. The only time they were explicitly mentioned is in 1274, when part of the boundary of (Pilis)Csaba was a road “where it separates from your [the king’s] Forest called Pilis.”27 There is another charter where I suspect we can detect a mention of the Forest boundary. In 1278, Ladislaus IV donated the village of Pomáz to his daughter. Pomáz was defined as being “below Pilis Forest.”28 Although this wording was unusual (the location of such settlements were usually specified with the in comitatu X formula), so far no one has noticed that the phrasing may have some extra meaning. I only became suspicious when I found a number of similar examples in reference to Bakony Forest.29 These strongly suggest that in the 1278 charter “below” most probably meant “next to,” thus defining the boundary of Pilis Forest. Changes The most important changes to the existing system came with the transformation of the hunting lodges into monasteries and the construction of the castle of Visegrád. These changes happened more or less at the same time. In 1184, King Béla III founded a Cistercian monastery near today’s Pilisszentkereszt,30 which was followed in the second half of the thirteenth century by the foundation of three Pauline monasteries (in today’s Szentlászló, Kesztölc and Szentlélek).31 This undoubtedly meant the kings no longer wished to maintain the network of hunting lodges in its earlier form. 19 Hunting lodges and forests were connected in other parts of Europe as well. Bosl 1963; Steane 1993: 79-93. 20 SRH 1.360. 21 For the Cistercians: Békefi 1891-1892; Gerevich 1984; Holl 2000. For the Paulines: Kovalovszki 1992; Lázár 1992; Györffy 1956. 22 Szűcs 1993:13-16. 23 ÁÚO XI. 183. For a list of all comites of County Pilis: Pesty 1880:1. 65-67. 24 MESH. 192,207. 25 Heckenast 1970. 26 Samojlik (ed.) 2005. 27 CD V/2.160 (translated by the author). 28 CD V/2.446 (sub sylua Pilis). 29 Szabó 2005:121. 30 Békefi 1891-1892; Gerevich 1984; НоП 2000. 31 Kovalovszki 1992; Lázár 1992; Györffy 1956. 76
