Századok – 2013

KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Fedeles Tamás: Ördögi sugallattól vezérelve - egy 15. századi gyilkosság nyomában II/433

456 FEDELES TAMÁS LED BY THE DEVIL'S SUGGESTION In the traces of a 15th-century murder by Tamás Fedeles (Summary) The study examines the case of a Hungarian cleric who was accused of homicide. István Isztrói, canon of Bács and Pécs, and also chaplain and chancellor of Nicholas Újlaki, king of Bosnia, was drawn by a disputed piece of land into a conflict with a layman, Benedek Bugaci, which ended with the latter's death. Since he lapsed into homicide as a cleric, the patrons deprived him of his ecclesiastical benefices, the lectorship at Bács and the archdeanry of Baranya. Consequently, Isztrói turned to the Papal Court for legal remedy. In the spring of 1475, he travelled to Rome in the entourage of Nicholas, king of Bosnia, to hand in his supplications (supplicationes) there. The tactics he adopted in his supplications apparently yielded the desired results, for pope Sixtus IV did absolve him of the irregularity which had been the consequence of the homicide, and issued the required bulls. However, his opponents also made the journey to the Eternal City, and consequently a long litigation began before the Sacra Romana Rota. The detailed analysis of the case, while shedding light on administration within the Holy See, illustrates perfectly the changes which reshaped Hungarian domestic policies in the 1470s and resulted in marked shifts within the power relations. After the suppression of the conspiration of 1471, king Matthias increasingly isolated his opponent of a long date, king Nicholas, who had accumulated an important territorial power block in the southern regions of the country, and supported as a matter of fact Isztrói. In this, the king could count on the cooperation of both Gábor Matucsinai, archbishop of Kalocsa, a loyal official throughout, and János Ernuszt, ban of Slavonia and patron of the church of Pécs, a courtier of ever growing influence, who also augmented the family patrimony with remarkable efficiency. It is an evident indication of the declining influence of the old and infirm Újlaki that he did not manage to find any means by which to prevent his protégé from losing definitively his benefices.