Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 3. (Budapest, 2008)

Abstracts

reason a number of foreigners settled in the town, who lived in a separate quarter. The town was the centre of the secular and church public administration of Slavonia, within its walls a chapter and a place of authentication had also been operated. Even in country level many religious orders selected the town to be their residence. The emphasised church presence facilitated the development of the handicraft industry. Its importance is proven by the fact that it got a number of privileges from the ruler. Based on the method applied in Hungarian town history research, it is certain that Zágráb was not only the most important town-like settlement of Slavonia, but it had a significant importance also from the aspect of the Hungarian Kingdom as a whole. PÉTER DOMINKOVITS Relatives, finances, charities. Connections of the burghers of Szombathely with the countryside in the seventeenth century The late Middle Ages functional examination of the Hungarian town network developed by Mr. András Kubinyi listed Szombathely under the category of „smaller towns and market towns of significant town functions". On the basis of the differentiated aspect system of urban development the former Savaria already at the turn of fifteenth and sixteenth century had a more important role in the settlement hierarchy of county Vas than Vasvár, the county seat of the time. In the second half of the 16th century the importance of Szombathely increased in the settlement structure of the Vas county and in the wider West Transdanubian region. Due to the danger of the Ottoman occupation the ruling orders of the country ordered in law XX of year 1578 to move the important place of authentication, the society chapter (társaskáptalan) of Vasvár to a more protected place, to Szombathely. (Temporarily the documents of the convents of Zala were also moved here.) It is quite certain that the moving the place of authentication, its continuous operation in Szombathely also strengthened the process as a result of which the town became clearly and in a stable manner the seat of the Vas county by the last decade of the 16th century. This inevitably resulted in some of the officers of Vas county also acquiring a place of residence in Szombathely or in its vicinity, in addition to the settlement of the noblemen, who escaped from Slavonia, from the South Transdanubian from the Ottoman occupation. At the same time the estate centre functions of the town had not been reduced either. Szombathely having a smaller landlord castle and a (small) military force, the privileged market town of the bishop, exactly because of the above, is the centre of the Vas and Sopron county estates of the head of the church, who