C. Tóth Norbert: Az esztergomi székeskáptalan a 15. században, I. rész. A kanonoki testület és az egyetemjárás - Subsidia ad historiam medii aevi Hungariae inquirendam 7. (Budapest, 2015)
A felhasznált irodalom és forráskiadványok, valamint a rövidítések jegyzéke
The Canonical Body and University Studies 171 their careers, apparently kicked off well, got stuck in Esztergom: with the sole exception of Simon of Treviso, who stands apart from all possible regards, none among them managed to enter the elite of the church, the prelacy. (The prelatures of Gregory and Michael Túronyi, who both held titular bishoprics, only involved higher rank within the chapter, as their bishoprics provided no separate source of revenue.) It was perhaps connected to this fact that the number and proportion of prebend-collectors — at least by the present state of the research — remained fairly low. Those canons who, in accordance with the criteria elaborated by the scholarly literature, can be regarded as real gatherers with prebends held simultaneously in several different places, remained a small minority within the chapter (5 persons). The same impression is confirmed by the low number (3) of those who came from elsewhere to the chapter of Esztergom, and the even lower number of those who departed therefrom to another ecclesiastical institution. If we add to all this that those persons who joined the chapter in the 1450s played a dominant role there for several decades thereafter, it is perhaps safe to say that the chapter of Esztergom creates the impression of an exclusive body, virtually closed to outside influences. In the background of such a situation there seems to emerge the dominant figure of archbishop Denis Szécsi, who, in the difficult political context of the 1440s and 1450s, probably kept the canonical body under tight control. Consequently, it seems possible to conclude that from the chapter of Esztergom no ways led towards higher dignities, and for those who joined the chapter the prebend at Esztergom constituted the very peak of church career. Whether this situation was advantageous or disadvantageous to the individual canons and the chapter in general should be decided by further research. While preparing the database, I was forced to answer questions which not only necessitated separate research but also revealed information which would have overstrained the framework of a classical database. Yet this kind of information — while giving help in identifying individual benefice-holders and thus in separating pieces previously wrongly attributed to one and the same person or, conversely, merging those which, hitherto attributed to different persons, in fact refer all to the same canon — may be of considerable help for the experts of other fields as well, such as church or literary history, or codi- cology. Consequently, the second chapter of the book offers no biographies of a traditional structure, but, in accordance with the specific nature of the Hungarian source material, career sketches consisting of pieces which are necessary for the separation of persons with the same Christian name who held canon- ries both at Esztergom and in other chapters. The period investigated was that extending from the first quarter of the 15th century to its last years. The choice was fairly obvious: in order to prepare a trustworthy archontological database of the Esztergom chapter, I intended to follow the lives of those canons who, on the basis of previous scholarship or my own research, appeared as problematic. On the other hand, the careers reconstructed offered the possibility to formulate more general conclusions, while the problems encountered during the
