Századok – 2013

TANULMÁNYOK - Gulyás László Szabolcs: Megjegyzések az északkelet-magyarországi mezővárosok középkori fejlődésének jellemzőihez II/317

346 GULYÁS LÁSZLÓ SZABOLCS REMARKS ON THE FEATURES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARKET TOWNS IN NORTH-EASTERN HUNGARY IN THE MIDDLE AGES by Gulyás László Szabolcs (Summary) Thanks to the system of ranking by centrality points which was elaborated by András Kubinyi, an ever increasing area of the research of the market towns is occupied by those analyses which examine the features and development of urban-like settlements in a well-defined region. Accordingly, the present study aims at outlining the course of development of 124 market towns which lay in the north-eastern part of Hungary. In the process of transformation into a market town the person of the lord was a factor of decisive influence. It appears that considerable differences can be grasped in the courses run during the transformation process between settlements under private lay lordship, those owned by the king, and those in the hands of the church. Basically, settlements belonging to the first group show a marked belatedness in their development into market towns as compared to those in the two latter groups, and the extent to which the terminology applied to them (civitas or oppidum) spread in the middle ages differs considerably also. Yet, alongside the person of the lord, other factors likewise determined both the possibilities and limits of evolution. Such factors shaping the model may have been the presence of an aristocratic residence, the settlement of privileged settlers, a place of authentication or the emergence of local mining industry. However, on the basis of characteristics offerred by the market towns examined in this study, it is evident that the process of market town development was basically limited to the sphere of private lay lordship: most of the oppida were in the hands of such lords already at the beginning of the transformation process, and remained there after the acquisition of the title, whereas the greatest part of the settlements originally owned by the king only entered the process after they had left immediate royal lordship.