Tari Edit: Pest megye középkori templomai (Studia Comitatensia 27. Szentendre, 2000.)
Settlements, villages and churches than we have written records on. Settlements of Arpádian Age found in the course of field survey in many cases do not represent independent settlements. Let us notice, that if there had been a church at a settlement, than in any case we have to consider it to be village. It can not be regarded any more that in the Arpádian Age the territories between the Danube and Tisza and that of the Great Hungarian Plain were desolated or poorly populated before the Mongol Invasion. It is evidenced also by the archaeological results in Pest county. György Györffy got to the conclusion that two thirds of comitat Pest was a royal (that is to say king's, queen's or prince's) possession, and only one third of it belonged to lay private owners. This percentage differs from the firstly founded comitats, where the first third belonged to the castle, the second one to the royal court and the third one was owned by old or new private landlords. Györffy explains by this fact that the administration of comitat Pest (and also Pilis) did not have castle-serfs, because the population living at the royal estate and soldiers served the local king's, queen's and prince's estate centres. In this comitat neither ecclesiastical, nor lay possessions were significant, sometimes they appeared in the form of a scattered estate. 421 The project of archaeological study of rural churches went on in the southern part of county Pest, in the surroundings of Nagykőrös and Cegléd. In the course of archaeological investigation, it was proved that in the 12th—13 th century for example in the surroundings of Cegléd almost each village (situated 2—4 km from each other) had a church. SITES WITH CHURCHES IN THE WRITTEN RECORDS The small number of Árpádian Age records in whole Hungary can be explained by reasons generally known. Records later than the Árpádian Age also mention churches that can be much earlier than the date of the record, so a part of them was used in my study. In my database there are also settlement names formed from the names of patron saints, because their formation can be dated to the period between the 12 th-14 th century; and also toponyms ending "-egyháza " (church), because their origin can be dated to the period before the Mongol Invasion. More precisely, the village had existed before the Mongol Invasion, but the name of the settlement meaning at that time "deserted area" (praedium) formed after the Mongol Invasion. As it was said above, about one third of the churches (247 sites - 68 %) are mentioned in written records referring to a church (or its key), the priest or the patron (titulus): 11 th cent. 4 (1.62%) 12 th cent. 4 (1.62 %) 13 th cent. 34 (13.76%) 14 th cent. 92 (37.25 %) 15 th cent. 57 (23.07 %) 16 th cent. 28 (11.34%) 17 th cent. 13 (5.27 %) 18 th cent. 15 (6.07 %). 421 Györffy 1998. 497-502. 240
