A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 1. - 1958 (Nyíregyháza, 1960)

Balogh István: Tithe register of the county Szabolcs-Szatmár of 1556

TITHE REGISTER OF THE COUNTY SZABOLCS-SZATMÁR OF 1556 From the second half of the 16

th century a fairly large number of registers remained which indicate the list of names of tax-paying serfs of an estate, of a county and so on — number and quantity of animals and of crop levied as church-tenth. The obligation of paying the tenth — which had been former an obligation for everybody according to the laws of the 11

th century — was regulated in the 14—15

th centuries by different laws. At the beginning of the 16

th century the tenth was paid only by serfs who possessed a stock of sheep or cultivated land obliged to ninth-or tenth-paying. In the second half of the 16

th century the tenth did not increase any more the incomes of the church because the tenth was collected by organs of the royal administration of inland revenue — the tenth-collectors of the Chamber, against a fixed compensation. Noblemen, domestic and farm servants, landless cottards were exempt from paying the crop tenth, but the sharecroppers and threshers were obliged to discharge the tithe according to the corn they obtained for harvesting and threshing as wage pay. As the ninth due to the landlord preceded the discharging of the tenth, the serf was in reality obliged to deliver 20% of his crop to the landlord or to the state. The first, broadly speaking, complete tenth-register in the county Szabolcs dates from 1556 and contains the list of payers of sheep and grain tenth. In spite of some omissions it gives a point of support to estimate the number of the population, its animal keeping and corn cultivation in the middle of the 16

th century. In the middle of the 16

th century there were in the county 143 inhabited communities, but the major part of them were sparsely populated. In the following decades 30 villages became desolate and even the name of some of them disappeared (v. map). There were tiny villages of 10—15 inhabitants, but the population of some villages and market-towns amounted to 1000 or more. The average number of the village population was 80—120. The population of the county in the middle of the 16

th century may be estimated to 30 000, on ground of a comparison of the dates of the tenth register with registers of similar character (plate 1). The registers of corn tenth indicate not only the levied quantity of crop but also show that the owners of some serfdoms have been paying the tithe not in kind but in cash. The reason for it is not always known. Sometimes it may have been the fact that the serf had a land subjected to tithe but it had no crop. In other cases the collectors of tenth exempted whole groups and villages from tenth paying in kind (chiefly on account of disasters). In some cases it can be stated that serfs belon168