Századok – 2003

TANULMÁNYOK - Tringli István: A szent királyok szabadsága. A középkori történelmi tudat és a történelem-hagyományozódás sajátosságai 809

A SZENT KIRÁLYOK SZABADSÁGA 847 ZsO = Zsigmondkori oklevéltár. I-II. Összeállította: Mályusz Elemér. Bp.1951-1956. III-VI. Mályusz Elemér-Borsa Iván Bp. 1993-1999. THE LIBERTY OF THE HOLY KINGS István Tringli (Summary) In the medieval conception of law it was required to be old and good. The sources of law were classified in a number of ways, but they were all subjected to the same requirement. The theoretical lawyers clearly distinguished the names of the different sources of law, but the practice was far less rigorous, and the charters frequently treated the various conceptions as synonyms. The Latin of medieval Hungary generally referred to customary law as consuetude, to law as decretum, and to liberty as libertás. Liberty meant before all privilege and prerogative, which were further defined by the following terms: immunitás, exemptio, privilégium, praerogativa, gratia. Liberty could be a whole system of law, such as that of the Saxons of Transylvania, but also the market right given to a single village. Liberty could in time be transformed into custom, but differed from it by origin in three aspects: liberty was theoretically granted by the grace of someone, whereas custom existed since time immemorial; for the grantee the possession of liberty was an exception from the general custom; liberty had a different form of transition, unless it became custom. Liberty, therefore, was a right conferring exemption or immunity from the generally accepted order of customary law. The old and important liberties were held in exceptionally high esteem. In several European countries they were attributed to one of the ancient rulers. In Hungary four expressions were generally used: the liberty of Saint Stephen (libertás sancti Stephani regis), the liberty of Saint Ladislas (libertás sancti Ladislai regis), the liberty of the holy kings (libertás sanctorum regum) and the liberty of the blessed kings (libertás divorum regum). The first Hungarian king, Stephen was canonised in 1083, and was followed by Ladislas in 1192. The expression of the liberty of Saint Stephen was first used by a papal bull of 1181, referring to the right to tithe of the Benedictine abbey of Pannonhalma. Later the libertás sancti Stephani regis was used when speaking about the special rights of some early royal churches, and those of the nobility, the jobagiones castri and some groups of the udvornici. Not all of these rights originated from Saint Stephen, of course, but they were regarded as the kingdom's constitution, which could only be established by the first Christian king. The liberty of Saint Ladislas occurs much less frequently, and mostly in connection with churches founded by him. The earliest example is a charter dated to 1217 but in fact forged some years later. Much more common than the previous two cases is the reference to the liberty of the holy kings. It can cover the liberties of the nobility, the kingdom, some privileged groups, towns and, in one exceptional case - the peasant revolt of 1437 -, those of the peasants, all thought to have originated from the holy kings. But by far the most frequent is the reference to the liberty of the blessed kings. It came into use in the late Angevine period and the beginning of the reigp of Sigismund, and was generally referred to in the 15th

century. Although in Hungarian and German it was called the liberty of the saint kings, in fact it referred not to the two Hungarian saint kings, Saint Stephen and Saint Ladislas, but to the privileges of the late kings in general. It originated in the expression used to refer to the deceased rulers, „of blessed memory" (divae memoriae). Some decades after his death each king began to belong to the divi reges, and the privileges he gave became the liberties of the blessed kings. The Hungarian charters contain thousands of mentions of this type of liberty. It was used to refer to the privileges of different ethnic groups, of the nobility, the counties, towns, market towns, churches etc. It occurs most frequently in connection with the exemption from tolls, but also in cases of different commercial privileges. Five subsequent phases can be distinguished in the development of the liberty of the holy kings. In the beginning only the liberty of Saint Stephen or of Saint Ladislas was mentioned. In a second phase the two saint kings were evoked together and their liberty was referred to. This practice spread quickly after the Mongolian invasion, the first example of the liberty of the holy kings in our collection dates from 1256. The new conception became so common that a few decades later its use lost much of its rigour. It was no use distinguishing the privileges granted by the founder of the