Lukács László (szerk.): Märkte und Warenaustausch im Pannonischen Raum - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 28. (Székesfehérvár, 1988)

Imre Dankó: The Ethnocultural Role of the Transdanubian Fairs

THE ETHNOCULTURAL ROLE OF THE TRANSDANUBIAN FAIRS

Imre Danko, Debrecen

I should like to begin by making some remarks, which concern the erlier lectures too.

First by, I say that our researches cannot be whithout certain geographicalethnogeographical, historical and social aspects. The definition of the socalled Pannonian territory and of Pannonian culture is a point in question.

As we have seen from a map - I think after Prof. Milovan Gavazzi -, the real Transdanubia does not belong to the Pannonian ethnocultural circle. But on the other hand, according to our way of thinking, firstly the Transdanubian territory (Hungarian: Dunántúl) belongs to this ethnocultural structure, and in addition many bordering territories and populations in every direction belong to the idea of Pannonia. I have made this clear, also in connection with Prof. Milovan Gavazzi, in two earlier articles.(1)

Secondly, we must see clearly that there is no continuity between the former Transdanubian Roman towns and fairs, because the early Hungarians did not settle on these old towns and market places to any greater extent than they settled in the nearest neighbourhood (cf. Aquincum, Úbuda, etc.). But there is an other good example for this in the Roman town of Gorsium, which was one of the most important merchant-settlement towns in the whole of Pannonia. It had no degree of continuity either with the later Hungarian settlements and fairs.

Thirdly we must also see clearly when considering medieval and late medieval commerce that the territory of Transdanubia was divided into two parts for the direction of the trade. The first branch was the south Transdanubian route (Pécs, Barcs, Szigetvár, Nagykanizsa, Lendva, Csáktornya, Maribor or Zagreb, Karlovac or Ormuz, Ptuj to Venice) and only this was the real classical Pannonian route for the exchange of goods. The second branch led through the northern part of Transdanubia (Buda, Esztergom, Párkány, Komárom, Győr, Mosonmagyaróvár, Bruck, Kismarton-Eisenstadt, Wien or Pozsony - Bratislava, Bfeclav, Brno, Praha or Munich, Nürnberg, etc.) and this route was quite different from the first, from ethnographic and other social-commercial aspects. The connections were not as truly Pannonian as in the first case.

Fourthly, I think that the fairs and markets ofTransdanubia wore more closely connected with the ecclesiastical and political estates, as they were in other parts of the land. We must not only bear in mind the Zrinyi-family (Csáktornya),the Batthyánys (Körmend) and earlier on the Nádasdys (Sárvár) and later the Eszterházys (Kismarton, Fertőd), or their belongings, but also numerous lesser families and estates. In their boroughs (oppidum) were very interestingly sited the fairs and the different forms of the exchange of goods, and we can even say the greater forms of commerce.

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