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 (1 301-1 526) 71 we know of a citizen from Pest, called Péter Csengén, who held this office. The bishop was both the landlord and the prelate of Vác but this did not give him unconditional control of the life of the citizens. Around the 1480s both towns - i.e. the German and the Hungarian halves of Vác - denied submission to Bishop Miklós Báthori. We might assume that it was not an independent initiative on their part: in this decade the bishop had come up against King Matthias, who even deprived him of half of his income for a short time, so there may have been a local issue of the royal ecclesiastical policy at the crux of the matter. Up to 1874 the Hungarian chapters managed the tasks of church government, and also served the demands of secular legal practice: from the 13th century onwards they acted as authorized offices. The authorized office was a special Hungarian and Croatian institution, its task was similar to that of a notary public today. To issue an authoritative deed an authorized seal was needed. Out of the seals of the Chapter ofVác three have survived from the Middle Ages, all of which represent the patron saint of the episcopal church,the Virgin Mary sitting on her throne.The first, round seal, which was used before the Mongol Invasion is of late Romanesque style, while both the second, mandorla-shaped one with a pointed tip, made after the Mongol Invasion, and the third, round one used from the 14th century onwards reflect the Gothic taste. The cathedral in Vác had a book-copying workshop as well. In 1425 a goldsmith guild had a short service book made here for themselves, which is owned by the National Széchényi Library today. Master János, who decorated the book, painted the patron saint of the goldsmiths, St Eligius into an initial “S”on one of the pages. The book is often described as the rite of the goldsmith guild in Vác, but the only relationship between the book and the town is that it was made here; actually it was probably used in Bohemia. LIFE INTHETOWN The community of the town was established with the settlement of the German guests (hospes) and the grant of their freedoms. Before that we cannot The tool-book of a goldsmith guild, made in Vác (National Széchényi Library) speak about a local government. It was not their nationality that turned the dwellers into town citizens, but the privileges they were granted, which were called freedoms in the Middle Ages. As in several other Hungarian settlements, these privileges were mainly granted to foreign, German immigrants. Before their arrival the inhabitants of the town might have been mostly serfs, but servitude ceased to exist after the Mongol Invasion. According to medieval legal principles to be established a community needed to have common property, common funds, common legal representatives and a common seal. To the outside world Vác seemed to be a unified town, strangers simply called it Vác and the family name of the people moving to other towns from here became Váci (= ofVác). However, actually there were two communities living side by side. The bigger one was probably the German town, first mentioned in the charter of Bishop Lőrinc in 1319 by the name of Vác-German Town. That was the name the town itself used whenever they issued a deed. The Hungarian town is mentioned later, which might mean that it took decades for the inhabitants of the Hungarian town to obtain civil legal status and gain community rights. The phenomenon of two towns living next to each other by the same name and
