Századok – 2023
2023 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Gulyás László Szabolcs: A Swarcz-ügy. Perlogisztika és perköltségek Magyarországon a középkor végén
A SWARCZ-ÜGY A tanúk állításának költségei Mikor? Hová/hol? Kihez/kinek? Pénz elköltője/ kiküldött Kiadás/ út célja Összeg (Ft) 1495.nov. 12. Eperjesre Miklós a tanúvallomásra 2,88 1495.nov.26. Egerbe (Paulhenzel) Jeromos, egy familiáris három hét időtartamra 12,11 1496 Mikor? Hová/hol? Kihez/kinek? Pénz elköltője/ kiküldött Kiadás/ út célja Összeg (Ft) 1496 Kelemen Egerből hazatérésre 1,62 Caphan Egerből hazatérésre 1 Lőrinc presbiternek és ügyvédnek 1 Eperjesen a kihallgatóknak vallomáslevélre az ügyben 1,50 THE SWARCZ CASE The Logistics and Costs of Litigation in Late Medieval Hungary By László Szabolcs Gulyás SUMMARY At the end of the fifteenth century, the town of Bártfa (Bardejov, Bartfeld) pursued a major case for the possession of an extremely valuable vineyard on the Hegyalja. The opponent of the town in the case, which dragged on for a decade, was a rich and influential burgher of Kassa called George Swarcz. The case would be anything but exceptional in itself, for a lot of similar conflicts are known from the period. What makes it remarkable is the huge amount of documents, surviving for the most part in the town archives of Bártfa, which enables us to follow the process closely and thus to reconstruct the events down to the most insignificant details. By far the most interesting piece of the documentation is a pair of registers which record the costs that the people of Bártfa spent on the litigation over a period of ten years. These lists make it possible to track all the costs and challenges that the pursuit of such a case involved. Since hardly any similar sources survive from the Middle Ages, the values of the two registers can hardly be overestimated. 154
