Századok – 2003

TANULMÁNYOK - Péter Katalin: Jobbágycsaládok életvitelének különbözőségei az örökös jobbágyság korában; 16-17. század 549

578 PÉTER KATALIN THE TENANT PEASANTRY IN THE AGE OF "ETERNAL SERFDOM" (16th-17th CENTURIES): THE FORMS OF TENURE by Katalin Péter Summary The article deals with the lord of the manor/tenant peasantry relationship in sixteenth-seventeenth-century-Hungary under royal rule. The two other parts of the tripartite country of the period are excluded for the reason, among others, that the manorial court did not function there. The author investigates the meaning of the term „örökös jobbágyság" by which the relationship in question has been described for nearly six decades. She stresses the fact that it has no equivalent in foreign languages, neither does it have a clear meaning in Hungarian. The term's content depends on the historians' conviction as regards the situation of the peasantry. István Szabó understood it as the hereditary belonging to the feudal class ,jobbágy." (The latter term has been often translated as „serf." However, the allusion by that word to medieval servitude is misleading. The Jobbágy" in early modern Hungary can be compared with bastard feudalism's copy holder in England.) János Varga explained „örökös jobbágyság" as the situation in which tenant peasants had become the common property of the nobility. László Makkai used it as the synonym for „zweite Leibeigenschaft." Vera Zimányi understood it as an enforced dependence put on the tenant peasant by the lord. In the article the mechanism of owning or acquiring tenure has been explored. The emphasis is on the hereditary nature of the tenure. It went down as long as the descendants on both lines, the male and the female, of the first tenant lived. Originally, according to Jenő Szűcs, the tenure was the lord's donation to the tenant for certain feudal obligations. In the period discussed in the article that practice continued but then the tenure could be also bought, with obligations resting on it. In Hungary the donated, inherited and bought tenures were of the same status. The Crown did not interfere. The lord of the manor/tenant peasant relationship was the matter of the Estates. That changed in the next period, roughly from the beginning of the eighteenth century. The author suggests understanding „örökös jobbágyság" as a mutual relationship between the lord of the manor and the tenant peasant built on the hereditary tenure.