Horváth M. Ferenc (szerk.): Vác The heart of the Danube Bend. A historical guide for residents and globetrotters (Vác, 2009)
Tartalom
70 VÁC'S REMAINS FROM THE LATE MIDDLE AGES (1 301 -1 526) county except for Csörög lying on the borderline of Nógrád and Pest counties, but belonging to Pest county; by ecclesiastical law they were all under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Vác. Eastwards Kálló was the farthest point (37 km of Vác), while 1 north-eastwards Borsosberény (28 km of Vác). Dur- I ing the Jagiellonian Age (1490-1526) the estates of I the bishopric extended in a third direction: south- I eastwards into Pest county. In the late Middle Ages three of the bishopric estates of Vác were considered towns: Vác, Nógrád (22 km of Vác) and Verőce (11 km of Vác). According to the legal categories of the age they all rated as market towns, but Vác 1 had a highlydistinguished position among them. Throughout the Middle Ages Vác was called a "civitas" in Latin, not because its inhabitants lived in exceptional circumstances but because it was an episcopal see. One must know that secular and ecclesiastical law had different views on the towns at that time. By canon law Vác was a civitas because the bishop held his seat there while Buda, the capital Í city, was called only an oppidum, as only in mod- I ern times did it become an episcopal see. However, 1 secular law saw it just the opposite way: Buda was regarded a real town, a civitas. To use the terminology of contemporary Hungarian language it was a "keyed" town, i.e. a gated community. Whereas Vác was only an oppidum, translated into Hungarian as "market town". The terms "keyed" and "market" referred to the appearance of the towns: the former got its name because it was surrounded by a wall and one could get in through locked gates only; the latter because it had no walls and the houses were surrounded by fields. However, Vác did have walls, so in this case - as in several other episcopal sees -"market town" was just a legal term. Medieval people were mostly illiterate and they were helped by symbols to find their way in the world. The sign of the customs was a wheel hung at the customs place. The so-called customs wheel could be found in the three episcopal towns: Vác, Nógrád and Kösd (7 km of Vác), the most significant of which being, of course, that of Vác. Duties were levied on the goods offered at the markets and the annual markets, and tolls were taken from people even when they just travelled through the town. The merchants arriving either on road or by ship had to pay duties and these revenues were the bishop's due. Bishops spent a lot of time at the royal court and they rarely intervened in the life of the town; the power of the landlord was represented by the commander of the castle or the castellan. This post was not a military office but mainly an economic one, especially because not until the very end of the period could we speak of a real castle in Vác. The castellan represented his lord in major cases like capital punishment at the town court, he presided at the landlord court, he collected the tax from the town and the other villages of the bishopric, he was in charge of exacting tolls in Vác. He received his salary from the bishop and made good contacts. We know of a nobleman who was castellan in Vác and then in 1524 he became the deputy prefect of Nógrád County. The bishop was free to appoint as castellan whoever he wanted; The seal of the Chapter of Vác used in 1451
