Századok – 2002
Tanulmányok - Zsoldos Attila: A királyné udvara az Árpád-korban II/267
302 ZSOLDOS ATTILA master of the cupbearers (m. pincernarum) and the magister tavernicorum. Their offices more or less corresponded to the offices of the royal court bearing the same names, which leads to the conclusion that they were modelled on the latter. The most honourable among them seem to have been the count of the court in the first half of the 13th century and the magister tavarnicorum in the second half of the century. We know very little about the functions carried out by the individual office-holders. All that can be safely stated is that the primary function must have been jurisdiction over the people subjected to the queen's authority, whereas the magister tavarnicorum seems to have administered the queen's revenues. Nevertheless, the analysis of the individual careers has clearly shown that the office-holders of the queen's court were in fact attached the ruler' person, and were thus the barons of the king instead of the queen. Consequently, the baronial stratum within the queen's court shoud be regarded as part of the royal court instead of its imitation of less authority and prestige. The other element of the queen's court was the household itself, which was made up of the ladies-in-waiting, the knights, the "court youths" discharging different functions, and of other service-doers such as the nurses. In their case a personal attachment to the queen can clearly be proved, as with the lady-in-waiting or the knight accompanying the foreign queen to her new homeland. It is surely no mere coincidence that it is in connection with one of the "court youths" that the fidelity towards the queen herself is emphasised. The leader of the household seems to have been the person referred to as the „major of the coaches" (maior plaustrorum) or master of the chamber (magister camere), who was in all probability chosen from among the „court youths". The use of the Latin terms referring to the queen's court in the Árpád age (curia, domus), more or less reflected this dual character of the court: whereas curia designated its baronial stratum, domus referred to the household itself. A third expression, aula, only turns up in connection with the head and members of the queen's chancellery. Yet the relationship of these terminological observations to the structure of the royal court has to be illuminated by further research.
