Századok – 1992
Tanulmányok - Székely György: A polgári rend előzményeihez: a városi elit a 12–13. századi Európában V–VI/517
560 székely györgy TO THE EVENTS PRECEDING AND LEADING UP TO THE BOURGEOIS ORDER. URBAN ELITE IN 12TH-13TH-CENTURY EUROPE. by Székely György (Summary) In the early Middle Ages the most developed urban areas of Europe belonged to the Byzantine Empire. The sporadic urban movements of the area surrounded by the Crimea, the Balkans, Syria and Southern Italy did not result in an overall feudal system. It was only as late as the 13th century that Southern Italy reached this stage. In Dalmatia and Istria the urban system developed into a strong self-government in the 12th and 13th centuries with an urban nobility to govern it. In the decadent townships of Northern Italy there could be seen certain remnants of the participation of the citizens in political life in the 9th and loth centuries, and in the next two centuries Northern and Central Italy witnessed the development of the town magistrates, but all this led to the creation of city-states instead of the creation of a nation-wide feudal system. The townships maintained their own local or regional interests both in financial and in military matters. The Italian cities were characterized by an urban nobility, the knighthood, lon-distance merchants, bankers and an intelligentsia represented at times by separate bodies and occupying various leading positions. In Western and Central Germany it was the long-distance merchants who initiated struggle against the lords of the city for self-government. Their colonies were the bases of the urban communities. The followers of the city lords, the „ministerials", the landholding and trading bourgeoisie made up the leading stratum of urban society and the first independent leading bodies of the cities. In the Netherlands there are a lot of narrative and documentary sources that testify to the self-confidence of this leading stratum whose life-style could be compared to that of the nobility. It also played an independent role in the clashes of the local princes and the neighbouring monarchies and did not remain within the city walls. The movement for self-government manifested itself in a sharper and more organized form in the fairly different northern and southern parts of France. The relationship of the king, the landlords, and the church on the one hand, and the urban communities in the making on the other was more complicated there. It was the sailing merchants of Paris who had the widest outlook and entered political life at the feudal diets at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. The significance of the long-distance sailing merchants is also conspicuous very early in English urban life. Besides the trading elite, the skilled craftsmen also joined the occasional meetings and economic bodies soon. The rich English Jews belonged to the financial elite of the country but remained outside the leading stratum of the cities. In the struggles around ecclesiastical policy and urban leadership in the 13th centuiy the Estates came to express their views regularly with the representatives of the cities among them. It is in the countries of the Iberian peninsula that the feudal diets first appealed. Town knights, city burghers and legally versed city-dwellers played a role in the political institutions of the „cortes" in Castile and Aragon. We also know how the representatives sent to the „cortes" were elected The Alighieri family and their intellectual environment is a fine example and illustration of the phenomena in question. György Székely AUX ANTÉCÉDENTS DE LA ROTURE: L'ÉLITE URBAINE DANS L'EUROPE DU 12e ET DU 13e SIÈCLE (Résumé) Les terrains urbanisés les plus développés de l'Europe du pré-moyen âge appartenaient à l'empire de Byzance. Les mouvements séparés des villes dans la première moitié du 11e siècle entre la Crime-Balkans-Syrie-Sud de l'Italie ne pouvaient pas aboutir à un développement de type féodal cohérent. Le Sud de l'Italie atteignait à ce type de développement dans le 13e siècle. La structure urbaine en Dalmatie et en Istrie s'est développée en autonomie forte dans les siècles 12-13 avec une noblesse de ville. Dans les
