Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 1. (Budapest, 2006)

Abstracts

GYULA BENDA The Noble Communitas and the Noble Population in Keszthely The author's study surveys the question, whether the nobility of Keszthely built a separated unit or integrated into the society of the market-town between 1746 and 1845. In the seventeenth century the whole town lived under military rule, at this time no separation can be observed. However, in the first half of the eighteenth century the situation changes, the first sign for this phenomenon is an agreement from the year 1730 regulating the relationship between nobles and non-nobles. The examination of the numerical rate of the Keszthely nobility and its comparison to the rates of the oppida of the Dunántúl (Transdanubia) shows that the formation of local nobility can not be explicated by the immigration of the so called owners-of-onc-plot (sessio) of the surrounding villages. It can rather be explained by the circumstances of Turkish occupation and the border fortress situation. Likewise, the growing number of nobility can not be ascribed to the immigration, but to the process of segregation, promoted by nobility surveys and later by the lordship of the Festetics family. The registration of the nobles Keszthely's was carried out by the author on the basis of the censuses, the poll books of nobles and the annual registration of the tax-paying nobles. However, the three different sources do not form a homogeneous set of data. Therefore, the question concerning the integration of the nobility into the town society may only be answered in case the heterogeneity of the related source material is surmountable. Moreover, the author analyses the social division of the legally unified nobility. He observes that it was manifold, and that it appeared at various levels, in different ways, in the mirror of the every-day experience of the Keszthely nobility. The analysis centres around three research fields, namely the analysis of the marital relations, the god-parental network and the three possibilities to rise through school education (the clerical, the military and the official or intellectual field). The landowner-official group that formed a customary community was gradually excluded form the town ruled by the Festetics family. Moreover, the fanning, industrialist small nobility that built the bulk of the Keszthely nobility married hierarchically downwards. Although some impact of the noble origin on marriages can be observed, occupation, financial situation or the more-generation membership of the local society were of much greater importance. The influence of the family milieu and the micro-environment is more important than noble origin also in the case of emergence through learning. Therefore, according to the author's final conclusion the bulk of the Keszthely nobility integrated into the market-town society.