Drăgan, Ioan (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 2001-2002 (5-6. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Societate
Domeniul cetăţii Hunedoara în timpul Hunedorenilor 29 detronând practic celelalte două cetăţi, mai ales după ce ambele au intrat în posesia sa. Francisc Páznádi a fost primul castelan al Hunedoarei, din 1446, care era totodată şi comite, la început încă împreună cu castelanul Devei, Matia Rápolti, iar din 1452, singur. în a doua jumătate a secolului al XV-lea cetatea Hunedoara s-a impus definitiv în fruntea comitatului. Prin acordarea titlului de comite perpetuu al Hunedoarei lui loan Corvin, iar apoi prin obţinerea de către acesta a cetăţii, statutul de proprietar şi funcţia de comite s-a împletit, relaţie întărită şi de către regii de după Matia. Astfel practic Hunedoara şi-a redobândit importanţa de odinioară când dăduse numele comitatului ca centru al acestuia. însă esenţa acestui centru evident s-a schimbat foarte mult de atunci. The Estate of Hunedoara Castle in the Age of the Hunyadis (Abstract) The present article focuses on the evolution of the estate of Hunedoara castle, especially on its owners and how the estate was gradually enlarged. Although this is only one of the main castle domains of the medieval Hungarian kingdom, its owners, the Hunyadi family, conferred a special importance on .it, and it became the subject for several works of modern scholarly research and interpretation. The land property of Hunedoara was granted to the Hunyadi family in 1409. Scholarly interest concerning the estate started in the mid-I9,h century, when the donation charter was published for the first time by Fejér György and was interpreted by Teleki József in his great monograph about the Hunyadi era. Since then several misleading interpretations have emerged, especially concerning the dimensions of the original land grant and how the estate evolved. In general, scholars made a fundamental mistake by projecting the first record of the component parts of the estate, dated 1482, back in time. Between 1409 and 1482 the estate underwent several changes and scholarly research has to follow another methodology to establish the different periods of its evolution. Written sources are very scarce, but there is some evidence that makes it possible to determine at least the main periods of domain enlargement. My investigation was based especially on these sources. Concerning the antecedents, sometime between the !l'h and I3'h century a fortification functioned at Hunedoara (identified not far from the present-day castle), which was at least for a while the center of Hunedoara County. During that period the county took over the name of its center. Besides the fortification a large cemetery was revealed that suggests the existence of a settlement in the region. This supports the idea of a significant settlement-complex that once was the centre of the county. When Hunedoara is mentioned for the first time in 1278 the fortification was no longer functioning, or at least was no longer the center of the county, its place having been taken over by the castle of Deva. Although Hunedoara lost its former importance, a district emerged around it that still existed at the beginning of the 15'h century. Part of the Hunedoara district was granted as ‘nova donatio ’ to the Hunyadi family in 1409. Basically there are two questions to be answered concerning the royal grant: what was the territorial extent of the donation, and was a castle part of the donation? The question about the castle has already been answered by Pál Engel, who demonstrated that no castle was part of the donation in 1409. The territorial extent of the royal grant was debated extensively in scholarly research, with the suggested number of villages varying between 40 and 2-5 settlements. In this paper I try to demonstrate that only Hunedoara and no other villages were obtained by the Hunyadi family at that time. Hunedoara was the first real estate of the family in Hungary. Later they started to extend this property, and the framework of this enlargement in the first stage was the district around Hunedoara. This land refers mainly to a region situated west of the Cerha River, which was the oldest and always part of the estate. John Hunyadi continued to enlarge the estate with several new
