Ságvári Ágnes (szerk.): Budapest. The History of a Capital (Budapest, 1975)
The Medieval Sister Cities
as Buda, was established on the site of the Roman legionary camp of Aquincum, and it appears that from the ninth century on, after the Magyar Conquest, it was one of the headquarters of the princely ruler. In the eleventh century, the king set up here an ecclesiastical corporation, a collegiate chapter. In the first half of the thirteenth century this settlement was already regarded as the centre of the country, partly due to its geographical situation, and partly because it was at the Óbuda Palace that the king traditionally celebrated Lent and sat court. Óbuda was the centre of the royal estates, and the later Buda Castle region, several miles to the south, was probably part of these estates. There is evidence of the acceleration of commerce in the thirteenth century, we have documents bearing in particular on the activities of Italian and what were probably several Walloon merchants in the first half of the century, and of German burghers in the second. The royal centre and the chapter were still restricted in area to the site of the one-time Roman camp at the end of the thirteenth century. South of the administrative-ecclesiastical township a market place came into being, and further down the Danube, a settlement of the royal smiths. Later a new royal palace was built south-west of the market in the course of the thirteenth century. In 1343 Óbuda became the queen’s dower town, and in 1355 the territory was divided between the king and queen on the one hand, and the chapter on the other. The southern part belonged to the sovereign, and the chapter received the original town. At that time the southern, more advanced settlement was already regarded as the town of Óbuda, and there were few people living in the district belonging to the chapter apart from the houses of canons and most of these few were serfs of the chapter. By the end of the Middle Ages, as a sign of the continuing spread to the south, the settlement called Szentjakabfalva (the area now known as Kolosy Square), was also considered part of royal Óbuda. Szentjakabfalva, built at the same time as Óbuda, obtained its medieval name from the parish church of Saint James. It appears that the ferry across the Danube was in the area of the queen’s dower town. The second settlement which later went to make up Budapest, and which probably preceded the founding of the Hungarian state, was Pest, on the left bank of the Danube. A Roman fortress once stood on the spot, which presumably was taken over by Hungarians in the tenth century. Pest obtained its importance as commanding the ford on the Danube. Beside the “fortress” of Pest an enclave of Moslem merchants was established; the Saracens of Pest are mentioned as late as 1218. At the beginning of the thirteenth century Germans settled here in large numbers, and around 1230 Pest received the first charter of special municipal privileges. The settlement called Pest Minor on the opposite bank of the Danube around Mount Gellért and Buda Castle Hill, was also loosely connected with this township; it was also populated by Germans with a parish church named after Szent Gellért (Saint Gerard). In Pest, on the left bank, a Dominican monastery stood prior to the Mongol invasion which destroyed so much of Hungary in 1241. The approximate location of this monastery is known today. Shortly afterwards a Franciscan monastery was also established. This monastery stood on the site of the later Franciscan monastery, on the later Franciscan Square, what is today the corner of Kossuth Lajos and Károlyi Streets. It helps to indicate the size of the thirteenth-century town, since the monasteries of the mendicant orders were always built on the outskirts of the town. Both monasteries were outside the lines of the Roman fortress, but the parish church of the Dominicans, named after Mary, which, restored, still stands (the Inner City Parish Church), was originally built within the 12
