András W. Kovács the History of the Wass De Czege Family This Work Was Carried out in the Research Institute of the Transylvanian Museum Society
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András W. Kovács The History of the Wass de Czege Family This work was carried out in the Research Institute of the Transylvanian Museum Society www.eme.ro The translation of this work was partially financed by the Pro Renovanda Cultura Hungariae Foundation, Budapest (In memoriam Kuno Klebelsberg programme) © Copyright András W. Kovács (author) Ágnes Baricz (English translation) Edmund Siemers-Stiftung [email protected] All rights reserved András W. Kovács The History of the Wass de Czege Family Translated by Ágnes Baricz Copyedited by Matthew Suff Hamburg 2005 Maps and digital processing of pictures by István Karácsony On the cover: The extended coat of arms of the family on the letter patent of title donaton from 1744 (National Archives Cluj County Branch, Transilvanian National Museum Archives, Wass Ottília Collection). Responsible publisher: Dr. Andreas Graf Wass von Czege ISBN 3-00-016411-1 Printed by the Misztótfalusi Kis Miklós Printing-house Director: István Tonk Technical editor: Lajos Bálint Page-setting: Éva Kőváry Gens Vasiana suos antiquos ducit ab aevo natales, longo veteranas ordine ceras ostentat, patrios inter radiatque quirites, ut socias inter palmas micat ardua palma utque pares inter stellas fulgurat astrum (An eighteenth-century poem praising the Wass. Carmen Sapphicum ... in honorem Samuelis Vas de Tzege ... decantatum. Claudiopoli, 1769) Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................................................7 Symbols and Abbreviations ....................................................................................9 Part I. The Family Archive ..................................................................................21 Part II. The Family Historian András Huszti ....................................................33 Part III. The Wass Family of Cege in the Middle Ages ....................................43 The beginnings ...............................................................................................43 The fourteenth century .................................................................................51 The Transdanubian branch ...........................................................................65 Development of landed property ...................................................................70 The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ...........................................................78 Material heritage .............................................................................................85 The coat of arms of the Wass in the Middle Ages ........................................87 The Wass in Transylvanian society ...............................................................88 The evolution of the family name .................................................................96 Part IV. From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century .....................................99 György Wass (†1594) .....................................................................................99 Descendants of György Wass until the end of the seventeenth century ...104 The diarists: György Wass and his son László............................................ 114 The acquisition of countship (1744) .............................................................122 The nobility’s way of life in the first part of the nineteenth century ......... 136 Dániel’s line................................................................................................... 138 Szentgothárd ................................................................................................. 155 Miklós’s line .................................................................................................. 161 Birth and death in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries .................... 171 Evolution of landed property ....................................................................... 175 Part V. The Letter Patent of Countship of the Wass of Cege ......................... 185 Appendix .......................................................................................................187 Gazetteer of Geographical Names .................................................................... 193 Illustrations Family Trees Acknowledgements he present volume has at its base the following four studies published recently in Hungarian: 1. “A cegei Wass család a középkorban” [The Wass family of Cege in the Middle Ages], Erdélyi Múzeum 66, no. 1–2 (2004): 1–40. 2. “A cegei gr. Wass család a 16–20. században” [History of the comital family of Wass of Cege from the sixteenth to the twenti- eth century], Erdélyi Múzeum 66, no. 3–4 (2004): 1–56. 3. “A levéltárrendező és családtörténész Huszti András” [The family historian András Huszti], in Emlékkönyv Kiss András születésének nyolcvanadik évfor- dulójára [András Kiss memorial volume in honor of his 80th birthday], ed. Sándor Pál-Antal, Gábor Sipos, András W. Kovács and Rudolf Wolf (Kolozsvár: Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2004), 261–274. 4. “A cegei Wass család grófi diplomája 1744-ből” [The letter patent of countship from 1744 of the Wass family of Cege], Református Szemle. Az Erdélyi Református Egyházkerület, a Királyhágómelléki Református Egyházkerület és az Evangélikus–Lutheránus Egyház hivatalos lapja 96, no. 6 (In memoriam Tonk Sándor) (2003): 790–806. The aim of this book is to contribute further information to the stud- ies on the development throughout the centuries of the Transylvanian political élite, that is, the Transylvanian nobility, by tracing and present- ing the history of one family, the Wass. This would also mean a contribu- tion to Transylvanian social history writing, as modern social historio- graphy tends to form general conclusions based on the cluster of individual cases; thus individual examples and case studies serve not as mere illus- trations but as the starting point, and at the same time the data base of the analysis. The archive of the Wass family, which has been continually developing throughout eight centuries, offers a great opportunity for the writing of a historical case study. According to the evidence of histori- cal demography, it is rather infrequent for a family not to die out in the male line after this many centuries, and what occurs even more rarely is that its archival documents survive as well, in spite of a certain amount of damage on several occasions. In consequence, these documents deserve our attention, as they span such an extended period of time; furthermore, the archive stands out from among all the other Transylvanian family ar- chives by having preserved a considerable amount of medieval (pre-1542) charters. It is mainly from this latter feature that the specific character of the Wass family archive results. 7 My work could not have been accomplished without the possibil- ity of consulting the material of the following archives and librar- ies: in Cluj/Kolozsvár: the National Archives Cluj County Branch, the University Library, the Library of the Protestant Theological Institute, the Library of the Romanian Academy and the Historical Museum of Transylvania; in Vienna: the Archival Collection of the Wass-Tarjányi Family; in Budapest: the Hungarian National Archives, the Széchényi National Library, the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Museum of Hungary. Hereby I thank the directorate of the Transylvanian Museum Society for making this research poss- ible, Edmund Siemers-Stiftung and Dr. Andreas Graf Wass von Cege (Hamburg), without whom this volume could never have appeared, as well as all those colleagues and professors who contributed with their help to my work. I launch this book with ardent hopes that it will serve for the benefit of Romanian, Hungarian and German historiography, all engaged in the exploration of Transylvania’s history. Cluj-Kolozsvár, Christmas, 2004 András W. Kovács 8 Symbols and Abbreviations * Born † Died = Married Áldásy and Czobor, Címereslevelek A Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum Könyvtárának címjegyzéke [Repertory of the Library of the Hungarian National Museum], II, Címereslevelek [Letter patent of nobilities], vol. 5, ed. Antal Áldásy and Alfréd Czobor (Budapest: privately printed by József Áldásy, 1939). AOkm Imre Nagy and Gyula Nagy Tasnádi, eds., Codex diplomati- cus Hungaricus Andegavensis. Anjou–kori okmánytár, Monumenta Hungariae Historica, Diplomataria (Budapest: MTA Történelmi Bizottsága, 1878–1920), 7 vols. Apor, Metamorphosis Transylvaniae Péter Apor, Metamorphosis Transylvaniae, ed. László Kócziány and Réka Lőrinczi (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1978). a. after b. before Bariţ Ioan Chindriş and Ferenc Kovács, eds., George Bariţ magyar nyelvű levelezése [The Hungarian correspondence of George Bariţ] (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1974). Berger Albert Berger, Ernst Wagner, Ioan Dordea, Ioan Drăgan and Konrad G. Gündisch eds., Urkunden-Regesten aus dem Archiv der Stadt Bistritz in Siebenbürgen, Schriften zur Landeskunde Siebenbürgens, vol. XI/1–3 (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1986– 1995). Balogh Jolán Balogh, Kolozsvári kőfaragó műhelyek. XVI. század [Stone- dresser manufactories in Kolozsvár in the sixteenth century] (Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti kutató csoport, 1985). Bethlen, Historia Wolfgangus Bethlen, Historia de rebus Transsylvanicis, ed. Josephus Benkő (Cibinium: Martin Hochmeister, 1782–1789), 6 vols. 9 B. Nagy, Reneszánsz és barokk Reneszánsz és barokk Erdélyben. Művészettörténeti tanulmányok [Renaissance and Baroque in Transylvania: Studies in art history] (Bucharest: Kriterion, 1970).