Diaconescu, Marius (szerk.): Mediaevalia Transilvanica 1997 (1. évfolyam, 1-2. szám)
Elite
Aleşii nobilimii române din perioada 1440-1514 111 A famous personality appeared from this group, lancu de Hunedoara (John Hunyadi), voivode of Transylvania and governor of Hungarian Kingdom, the well-known fighter and defender of the Christianity against the Ottoman Empire. Especially, durig the time of reign of his family (1440-1490), the Romanian nobles consolidates their positions, their number, their status and their wealth, raising their social position, based on their military merits and on favourable policy of the central power. The Romanian nobility could thus now mutatis mutandis the same social strata as the Hungarian nobility, that is: ordinary nobility, local gentry (potiores), higher nobility (proceres) and some families of barons and magnates (barones regni, magnaţi), to whom we may add some important number of conditionary nobility on the domains of the Crown, of the Church and private ones. From among these categories we presents only the families whose members were promoted to important state jobs: consellors, County Lord Lieutenants, Wardens of Southern banats (border military zone), castle commanders, higher judges, which permitted entering the category o higher nobility (proceres), who were called as egregii. Some of them belong to leading families of leading Romanian districts, who had been able to preserve their position even after their assimilation with the Hungarian nobility. From the point of view of wealth, the elite of the Romanian nobility distinguished themselves within a period when the process of feudalisation and of disintegration of the royal property were ending. Thus, only three families: Corvin de Hunedoara (Corvinus de Huny adj, Dragfi de Beltiug (Dragfi de Belthewkj and Ungur de Nădăştia (XJngur de Nadasdj succeeded in obtaining properties larger then 100 villages, corresponding to their rank, although, besides these, some members of families Fychor and More de Ciula ( de Chwlaj and Dej de Timisei and Iclod (Desy de Themesel, - de Iklod) had also become barons. The other families could not overpass as wealth the conditions of local landlords, with properties varrying from some villages to no more than about 30. The paper identifies and presents short monographic files on the families and persons who belong to the second category of high nobility, so-called proceres. The 27 families registered with one or more members in this category are geographically divided as it follows: 10 from Hateg-Hunedoara region, 11 from Banat of Severin and Timiş couny, 3 from Maramureş-Bereg and 3 others from Zarand, Turda and Sibiu. This repartition especially demonstrate the contribution of these regions to the war with the Turks and the vasality (familiaritas) relationships with the Corvin ruling family. To all these we may add other about 25 families, who during this period gave at least one representative for important jobs, equivalent to the above mentioned ones, but generally their vasals (familiäres j and deputies.
