B. Halász Eva - Suzana Miljan (szerk.): Diplomatarium comitum terrestrium Crisiensium (1274-1439) (Subsidia ad historiam medii aevi Hungariae inquirendam 6. Budapest - Zagreb 2014)

Epilógus

Comes terrestris Crisiensis. An introductory study

tury, when Hungarian noble property law penetrated to Slavonia and broke the unity of the hereditary estates of the kindreds. The rulers of the Kingdom of Hungary gave their supporters in Slavonia the hereditary estates of kindreds which they could then hold as private property. The Kindreds were no longer in the hands of the king or his officials, but came into private hands. Then, at their head came the comes terrestris or the supanus terrestris, the steward of joint property, who was some kind of an economic supervisor. Furthermore, Bónis dealt with the establishment of the layer of Slavonian iobagiones castri, with the rights concerning their estates and the services which they owed.17

In the 1950s, somewhat in parallel with the Bónis' thoughts, the work of Marko Kostrenčić reopened the debate in Croatian scholarship regarding the origin of the counties in Slavonia and Croatia in the age of the Árpáds. He argued that they were introduced by the kings of Hungary, who based them upon the institutions of the Pannonian Slavs ever since the time of Saint Stephen. Furthermore, he states that this formed the foundation of the "donational and feudal system" which the kings of Hungary transferred to "Croatian lands" during the twelfth century, and that in Slavonia counties were organized on the "Hungarian type." Still, during the thirteenth century changes occurred in the county organisation. The old royal counties "decomposed" and counties received a new structure of authority organised on the basis of noble communities in which those who lived in its area formed a separate unit. Unfortunately, his discussions end with the period of the thirteenth century.18

In the 1970s Nada Klaić returned to the discussion of the castle system during the age of the Árpáds, which she expanded into the Angevin period in her work Hrvati u razvijenom srednjem vijeku [Croatians in the Central Middle Ages]. In this work she maintains that castle system around which castles were grouped was originally formed of only the royal estate. The institution itself, so she argued, was of Slavic origin, thus partly dismissing Kostrenčić's theory regarding the Hungarian influence on their organisation). For the castle of Križevci, she states that it was important because it was placed on the Coloman's (Military) road, and according to her opinion it was built after the county system was already established. She touched upon the explanation of the function of

17 György Bónis, Hűbériség és rendiség a középkori magyar jogban [Feudal System and Class State in Medieval Hungarian Law], (first edition: Kolozsvár s. a.), second edition: Budapest 2003, pp. 245-246.

18 Marko Kostrenčić, Nacrt historije hrvatske države i hrvatskog prava [The Draft of History of Croatian State and Croatian Law], vol. 1, Zagreb 1956, pp. 159-160, 176-177, 202-206, 221-223.

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