A Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár évkönyve 27. 2000 (Debrecen, 2000)
Forrásközlés - Varga Gyula: Bocskai István Kismarjának adott privilégium levelének néhány tanulsága
the most ideal living conditions for the inhabitants of his birthplace so dear to him. The text of the charter, along with other proofs discussed in my study, raises the old dilemma anew, namely, that it would perhaps be expedient to re-examine the question of István Bocskay’s actual birthplace since he had always considered Kismarja his “homeland” and that is why he provided it with unusually high privileges. Even more important than that, however, is the fact that the copy of the charter given to Kismarja reproduced for the first time here in the original Latin version and its true translation to Hungarian furnishes us with a more precise and detailed picture of the prince’s concept of society than what could he seen in all the other charters granted by Bocskay known to us before. A summary of this concept is as follows: 1. He elevated the village from the jurisdiction of the land- owner, he annulled all the taxes and obligations levied by the landowner, and he even ordered that the tithe could be used by the village for the benefit of its own church and school. Furthermore, instead of state taxes, it only had to pay the tax levied by the Transylvanian Parliament. 2. He endeavored to decrease the influence of royal power also by ordering that the property of those who died without issue should not be transferred to the fiscal authorities but rather to the settlement itself. 3. In order to maintain the anatomy of the settlement, he left all the following regal rights of considerable importance within the jurisdiction of the settlement (to be spent on the upkeep of its church and school): the rights of running a mill, a pub, and a slaughterhouse, the right of feeding swine on mast, of fishing, and of holding fairs. 4. He provided the town with an authentic seal of his own with his likeness on it. These privileges all in all exceed the usual amount of privileges normally conferred upon market-towns. In a number of ways, they resemble the autonomy of free Transylvanian Székely communities, in other ways, they might remind us of the autonomy granted to royal towns of the crown. One might even recognize similarities between Hajdú-Bihar Megyei Levéltár Évkönyve XXVII 319
