Századok – 2015
2015 / 5. szám - Dobszay Tamás: "A falu jegyzője" Az alsófokú igazgatás személyi feltételeinek kérdése a rendiség utolsó évtizedeiben
ták terjeszteni.38 Minthogy pedig ugyanez a diéta a községek rendkívül széles köre, minden az urasággal valamely szolgáltatás akár csak időleges megváltására szerződést kötött község esetében megszüntette a földesúri hatóságot, a törvényjavaslatban egy polgári jellegű alsófokú igazgatás rendszere körvonalazódott. A főrendek azonban nem tartották időszerűnek a rendezést, s a bevezetésére a rendi korszakban és a szabadságharc alatt már nem maradt idő. AZ ALSÓFOKÚ IGAZGATÁS ... KÉRDÉSE A RENDISÉG UTOLSÓ ÉVTIZEDEIBEN 1067 „THE VILLAGE NOTARY” The Problem of the Personnel of Local Administration in the Decades Preceding 1848 By Dobszay Tamás (Summary) The administration of Hungary at the lowest level was carried on by the county magistrates (szolgabírák) through the assistance of the villages in the nineteenth century. In practice, the burden of office was held by notaries instead of the mostly illiterate village headmen, whose time was anyway consumed by estate management. While the government encouraged the employment of notaries, most of the villages were too poor to provide sufficient salary. Consequently, they entrusted the chanter-teachers with the notarial tasks as well. Just as the village headmen themselves, the notaries also found themselves in the crossfire of those factors which fought for domination over the villages. While the local population expected the defence of their own interests, the emerging modern bureaucracy urged for effective administration, and the local lord demanded participation in estate management. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the employment and dismissal of notaries had become a matter in which, alongside the village itself, the local lord and the county also had a word to say. Thanks to the mutually exclusive expectations of parties with conflicting interests, the notarial office lacked stability and the constantly menaced existence of the notaries was detrimental to the efficiency of their work. The reform diets, recognising the importance of notaries in running the administration, wanted to stabilise their position through increased central control and more extensive regulation. More radical solutions were also proposed, such as the suppression of lordly influence, and, as it was most frequently the villages which dismissed the notary the nationalisation of the notarial office. Due to the parallel role of chanter-teachers in the church, another factor to influence the selection of notaries emerged in the form of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the workable solution, that is, the establishment of notaries detached from all other responsibilities, and their organisation into districts of poorer villages, was clearly seen by contemporaries, it was only realised after 1848. 38 Dobszay Tamás: A szabad községek rendezésétől a szerződött községek felszabadításáig. A községek ügye az 1843/44-es országgyűlésen. Századok 139. (2005) 3. 545-584. Különösen: 576-579.
