Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
VÁC'S REMAINS FROM THE LATE MIDDLE AGES (1 301-1526) 69 the west, the town of Hódmezővásárhely was the farthest point in the east, and the southern borderline ran a few km south of the town of Kalocsa. The medieval bishopric was poor. At the end of the 12th century, the reign of King Béla III (1172-1196) the bishop of Vác was considered to have the second smallest revenue, only the bishop of Nyitra had even less income. Due to the Mongol Invasion (1241) this became a long-lasting situation: the king invited Cumans from the Eurasian steppes to settle down in the area between the rivers Tisza and Danube. The Cumans' conversion took a long time and they retained their stockbreeder lifestyle for a good while, which made it difficult for the tithe collectors to get any money from them. Right before the Battle of Mohács (1526) the income of the Bishopric of Vác surpassed that of Nyitra, Csanád and Szerém, nevertheless it was still a bishopric benefice with the smallest income. As a result, all the bishops who gained influence at the royal court, sooner or later exchanged the Bishopric of Vác for a more profitable one. In medieval Hungary the dignitaries of the church were elected mainly by the king. One of the diplomats of King Louis the Great (1342-1382), John de Surdis of Italian origin owned the title of the bishop of Vác for 12 years, then he became bishop of Győr, and at the end of his life archbishop of Esztergom, which was the highest rank in the ecclesiastic hierarchy in Hungary. In the late Middle Ages László Szálkái, who had been a treasury clerk and later the secretary of King Ulászló II (or Wladislas II) (1490-1516) gained the Bishopric of Vác despite the fact that he was not even an ordained priest. He kept on building his career: soon he became chancellor, but he was not contented with the Bishopric of Vác and was appointed bishop of Eger. Finally he finished his life on the battlefield of Mohács as archbishop of Esztergom. The financial hierarchy of the bishoprics implied that even Vác seemed to be attractive for the least wealthy bishops. In the age of Matthias Corvinus (1458- 1490) Miklós Báthori, the Renaissance builder of the Castle ofVác started his career as a bishop in Szerém The medieval Naszály Church and its vicinity on a 19th century map and he exchanged it for the Bishopric ofVác in a few years'time. The revenues of the bishopric came from two sources: one of them was the tithes taken from commoners of the diocese for certain crops, and the other came from the estates owned by the bishopric itself, which yielded an income to the bishop in the same way as their own estates did to any other landlords. The landed properties of the bishopric lay mostly around Vác. The villages were situated next to or near each other. Until the end of the 15th century the blocks of estates extended in two directions: partly east-southeast of the southern slope of the Hill called Naszály above the town towards the Galga Stream and the villages of the area called Cserhátalja, and partly north-east of the northern side of Naszály towards the Nógrád Basin. All of the estates were in Nógrád The Castle of Nógrád (18th century)
