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

Abstracts

Swabian Mirror, were found precisely in Kassa and Nagyszeben (Sibiu, Rumania). This finding proves that burghers lived their lives according to the nomis laid down in the two Law Books and in the Tavernical law in the majority of Hungarian towns during the Middle Ages. Beside the German-speaking inhabitants, who followed primarily the South German town law, the Buda law was also spread by the kings. They bestowed numerous towns with the Buda town law, or at least parts of it belonging to public law, such as market- and toll privileges, or the right to use an own seal. Not only those towns adopted the Buda town law, which had German-speaking inhabitants, but the Hungarian inhabitants of Debrecen and Szeged, or the mixed population of Zágráb (Zagreb, Croatia) lived also according to it. Some elements of this law spread from the free royal towns and the royal free towns to the manorial towns as well, which can be seen on the example of the town Újlak (Ilok, Serbia). In the northern parts of the country the effect of the Magdeburger law predominated, which is confirmed by the articles of the Zips law, the Zipser Wilkür. The Magdeburger law reached the Lower-Hungarian mining towns (in present-day Westem Slovakia) with Silesian transmittance. Furthermore, the law book of Zsolna (Zilina, Slovakia) is evidence for the presence of this law in Zsolna and Korpona (Krupina, Slovakia). Therefore, as the study points out, two regions existed considering urban law in medieval Hungary that can only be distinguished in nuances. KATALIN SZENDE To be a Burgher: Principles and Practice of Acquiring Burghers ' Right in Late Medieval Sopron From a topographical viewpoint the basic unit of medieval towns was the burgage plot with a house built on it. The social equivalents of this unit were the burghers, whose ranks were just as clearly limited as the boundaries of a town. The two concepts are closely linked to each other, with one significant difference: While the area occupied by the burgages changed only in the long run, the circle of the burghers was subject to more abrupt changes. One of the most important characteristics of the "free" cities, both in medieval Hungary and in the more urbanised parts of Europe, was their liberty to define the criteria for acceptance among their burghers according to their needs and free will. My article deals with the principles of the process through which one became a burgher, and with the practice how this was implemented in the West-Hungarian town of Sopron in the late fifteenth and the early sixteenth century. The written administration of the admission into the rank of burghers developed very slowly, and orality pre-