Zalai történeti tanulmányok - Zalai gyűjtemény 42. (Zalaegerszeg, 1997)
Zsoldos Attila: „Eléggé nemes férfiak...” A kehidai oklevél társadalomtörténeti vonatkozásairól
ATTILA ZSOLDOS: „SUFFICIENTLY NOBLE MEN” ABOUT THE SOCIAL-HISTORICAL RESPECTS OF THE KEHIDA CHARTER Summary The freeholders, called serviens regis (knights dependent of the king only) from the beginning of the 13th century on, had the privilege that the king, the palatine or the Lord Chief Justice could pass judgement on them. In principle, this privilege was of immense importance, but in reality it was very difficult to make use of it. The change of the county institution solved the problem: towards the last quarter of the 13th century the so called noble-type of county was formed. The beginning of this change is usually connected to a charter issued in Ke- hida in 1232. In this document the local serviens regis, having the royal permission, attempt to judge themselves in a possessory action. The serviens regis of County Zala, lacking any kind of social strata and without any officials, proceeded in a quite archaic way. Some of the cases recorded in the Abstracts of Várad lead us to believe that the attempt of the serviens regis of County Zala wasn’t the only and not even the first similar act. But this fact doesn’t decrease the charter’s significance, as it is of great social-historical importance: it reflects an entirely new interpretation of the world „nobility” by extending the concept also to lower classes. The extension of the meaning did naturally not query the existence of the traditional nobility, but from that time on, the respectability of smaller communities were ranked among them. Whereas the royal court desired not simply to preserve the traditional nobility but, in contradiction with the serviens regis’ opi-nion, it clearly wished the restriction of it. In spite of these, the serviens regis’ view about nobility could gradually but irresistibly spread and at the middle of the 13th century it already surpassed the royal court’s aristocratic policy. 19
