Urbs - Magyar várostörténeti évkönyv 4. (Budapest, 2009)
Recenziók
442 Abstracts election of the magistrate). The third question in focus is how some features of the reconstruction and identification of the plots of the urban elite within the town walls can be utilised for indirectly solving other research problems concerning space. In the background of the study stands the systematic investigation and process of a huge corpus of sources: beside the relevant individual charters, the relatively continuous chamber accounts (Kammerrechnungen) for the period between (1434)1439 and 1530; the first register of last wills (Protocollum Testamentorum) for the period between (1410)1427 and 1529; the first land-registers (Grundbuch 1439, Satzbuch from 1439 onwards); and all the extant tax-registers. The period under query is primarily the fifteenth and the first decades of the sixteenth century, that is the time before Pressburg (as a result of the Turkish occupation of the central areas after 1541) became the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom and thereby the usage and perception of space by its burghers altered. In the mirror of the available and investigated medieval source material, from the perspective of individual and community usage of space, it seems that mainly the individual spatial realms can be reconstructed (see, for example, the possession of houses and plots, the parish or confraternity memberships, the support of the several urban or ecclesiastical institutions, etc.). However, with the help of these individual realms, partially certain elements of the community usage of space can also be defined. Anyone appears as participant in the space of not only one but several smaller communities — either as active (benefactor) or as passive (spectator) character -, therefore, embodies in person diverse usage of space. Limited only by the framework of such a short study, the author tried to touch more issues of the civic usage of space, but also indicated that several questions need further investigation. Her intention was mainly to disclose that reading the sources from a new and different angle as well as combining the quantitative and the qualitative methodology in case of sources that are available in a larger quantity can lead us to new ways and possibilities in reconstruction. In addition, since several elements in the usage of space disguise continuity, sometimes certain early modern practices are worth to be reconsidered in the mirror of the late medieval sources. TAMÁS FEDELES Urban structure and space usage in medieval Pécs Medieval Pécs was built on the early Christian burial ground of Roman Sopianae, with a square ground plan some 69 hectares in area. Its streets were laid out around the intersecting north-south and east-west main roads leading to the city gates. Their
