Gyulai Éva: Szőlőbirtoklás Miskolcon a 16. században (Officina Musei 3. Miskolc, 1995)

Vineyard possession in Miskolc in the 16th century

In the second half of the 16th century the whole population of market town Miskolc became converted to protestant faith and the former vineyard possessions of the altar directories (rectorates) of the Catholic Church were taken into possession by the landlords. The Protestant Church also possessed three vineyards in the town and also a flour mill from the time of Catholics. In addition to his share from the ecclesiastical tithe, the priest enjoyed - with the rector of the school - a separate income also from the owners of vineyards receiving one butt of wine per vineyard. The majority of vineyards, however, even in early modern times remained held in villeanage in Miskolc, too but their free sale and purchase created an extremely vivid trade of landed property in Miskolc. This vivid sale and purchase of vineyards is documented in the so-called Town Manual, the record of the town council, which started to be kept from 1569. It was very characteristic of the sale and purchase of vineyards in Miskolc that it fell not under the authority of the landlord but under the authority of the town council and it was the competence of the town council to administer the sale, purchase, exchange and assessment of vineyards and to draw up the relevant contracts and enter them into the Town Manual. It was also a custom in Miskolc to wet a bargain (mercipotus in Latin) as a reinforcement of the validity of sale and purchase. In 1570 a citizen of Miskolc was obliged to sell half of his vineyard to his fellow citizen to be able to pay the randson for his getting freed from Turkish captivity, as it is put in the Latin-language diploma of the town (Picture 10). If a vineyard was left uncultivated it was the competence of the town council to give it to somebody else for cultivation and the former owner could regain his possession only after he had paid for the work invested so far. Mr György Her, a member of a famous slaughterer dynasty in Miskolc acquired vineyards several times this way and no wonder that on the helmet decoration of his coat-of-arm you can see a bunch of grapes as well (Picture 11). To document the wine yield in the 16th century in Miskolc, the most excellent sources of records are those of the list of ecclesiastical tithes preserved at the Hungarian National Archives. They are dated from the years 1549, 1575, 1577, 1678, 1579, 1581, 1582, 1583, 1594, 1597, 1599, 1600, 1603. From these lists it is clear that there were 14 hillside winelands (Promontorium) in Miskolc where wine was grown, the names of which still survive in geographical names (Picture 12). Even in the first list of ecclesiastical tithes paid in Miskolc in the year of 1549 (Picture 14) there are 405 names recorded as tithe payers but there were years (e.g. 1577 and 1578) when the number of persons paying the tithe were above 600. The figures in the record of tithe payments and payments in wine show that during the years when the best vintage was achieved (i. e. in 1549, 1577 and 1583) the citizens of Miskolc gave wine of 2 or 3 Eger butts (i. e. 60 or 70 litres of wine) as an average meaning that the total vintage could have been 600-700 litres per capita (Picture 14). The ninth part paid to the landlords was the same in value as that of the ecclesiastical tithe but little is known of its administration from contemporary sources. Due to multi-possession system, the fellow vineyardists, co-possessors used a very simple way of collecting the ninth parts deteriorating the quality of the wine supplied as a tithe service. This was the institution of the so-called „public vat" (communis cadus in Latin) meaning that after the villeins collected their wines they poured them into one common vat and made a selective allotment of wine portions to the landlords according to the size of the land they possessed. The wines blended such way, however, could not be of superior quality so the landlords even bought wine from their villeins to be able to sell a blend of higher quality at a higher price. Despite the consistantly high price and saleability of wine, Miskolc did not become a market town of monoviniculture as the market towns of the Tokaj-Hegyalja district did.