Sigismund of Luxembourg's Pledgings in Hungary
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DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2018.10 Doctoral Dissertation “Our Lord the King Looks for Money in Every Corner” Sigismund of Luxembourg’s Pledgings in Hungary By: János Incze Supervisor(s): Katalin Szende, Balázs Nagy Submitted to the Medieval Studies Department, and the Doctoral School of History Central European University, Budapest in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval Studies, and for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2018 DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2018.10 Table of Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3 Chapter 1. Pledging and Borrowing in Late Medieval Monarchies: an Overview ......................... 9 Western Europe ......................................................................................................................... 11 Central Europe and Scandinavia ............................................................................................... 16 Chapter 2. The Price of Ascending to the Throne ........................................................................ 26 Preceding events ....................................................................................................................... 26 The Váh-Danube interfluve under Moravian rule .................................................................... 29 Regaining the territory .............................................................................................................. 37 Was it a pledging? ..................................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 3. The Royal Revenues in Hungary during King Sigismund's Reign ............................. 44 Ordinary revenues ..................................................................................................................... 44 Extraordinary revenues ............................................................................................................. 50 Chapter 4. How did Pledging Work? ............................................................................................ 56 The sources of pledgings .......................................................................................................... 56 On pledging ............................................................................................................................... 58 The process of pledging ............................................................................................................ 61 The content of the transactions ................................................................................................. 63 Transferring the pledge ............................................................................................................. 68 Redeeming the pledge ............................................................................................................... 71 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 73 Chapter 5. The Scale of Pledging, and its Place in Royal Finances ............................................. 75 Spatial analysis ......................................................................................................................... 85 The place of pledgings in the royal finances ............................................................................ 98 Sigismund’s Hungarian pledgings in a Central European context ......................................... 100 Chapter 6. The Object of the Pledging ........................................................................................ 104 The Pledging of Towns ........................................................................................................... 104 The Pledging of Castles .......................................................................................................... 117 The Pledging of Comitatus ..................................................................................................... 126 360 years in pledge. The pledging of the Spiš region* ........................................................... 135 Chapter 7. The Pledge Holders ................................................................................................... 150 Sigismund’s early years and the members of the league as pledgees ..................................... 150 Foreign pledge holders ............................................................................................................ 156 Sigismund’s new political elite ............................................................................................... 162 The ecclesiastical pledge holders and the burghers ................................................................ 165 The most important pledge holders ........................................................................................ 167 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 172 Chapter 8. The Spending of the Money ...................................................................................... 173 War financing and military expenditures ................................................................................ 173 Other expenditures .................................................................................................................. 201 CEU eTD Collection Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 207 Bibiliography .............................................................................................................................. 213 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................... 240 List of the pledgings ............................................................................................................... 240 Gazetteer of place names ........................................................................................................ 273 1 DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2018.10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am immensely grateful to my supervisors, Katalin Szende and Balázs Nagy for their guidance and for supporting me all the way. Without their continuous aid this study would hardly have been completed. I am also indebted to Judit Majorossy, Márta Kondor, and Norbert C. Tóth, for thoroughly reading parts of the present dissertation and for improving my work with their valuable advice. Furthermore, I would also like to acknowledge with much appreciation the usfeull comments and remarks of Professor Franz Irsigler. I would like to express my gratitude to Stanislav Bárta, Přemysl Bar, Antun Nekić for helping me understand texts related to the topic of the dissertation but written in a language I am unfamiliar with. Additionally, many thanks for sharing their much-appreciated thoughts on the present work. I enjoyed a lot and greatly benefited from our discussions with Petr Elbel about Sigismund of Luxembourg. I think of these discussions with great pleasure. Special thanks go to István Draskóczy for his useful advice and comments, and for his assistance in tackling the problems related the exchange of different medieval currencies. Finally, I am extremely grateful to Johanna Tóth, my most faithful reader, for all her continuous support and infinite patience throughout my PhD studies. CEU eTD Collection 2 DOI: 10.14754/CEU.2018.10 “Our Lord the King Looks for Money in Every Corner” Sigismund of Luxembourg’s Pledgings in Hungary Introduction “…and wherever he can bring people together, he does it, so that he can extract some money.” 1 This is how a town notary of Sopron characterized Sigismund of Luxembourg in 1421. The notary’s account was probably not just a far-fetched and biased portrayal of his king, because Sigismund’s special way of approaching finances was observed by other contemporaries, too. Even his close companion Eberhard of Windecke — who wrote a chronicle about Sigismund and his time — noted down some stories that are in line with the opinion of the Sopron notary. Perhaps the most revealing among these is the one related to his king’s visit to England. According to the account, at the end of the visit, the English ruler, Henry V (1413-1422) gifted various jewels to Sigismund, which were pawned by Windecke himself shortly after the visit. The king of Hungary commissioned Windecke with this task, and Sigismund relinquished the jewels with ease, but he was much more reluctant to get them back, so he decided to redeem them only as a result of Windecke’s entreat.2 Thus, the town notary’s account is remarkable not only for the information itself, but because it proves that the way Sigismund dealt with finances was not only known by the people around him, but it was a country-wide known open secret. Moreover, his reputation went beyond Hungary. In 1395, an envoy of Mantua reported to his lord that when Italian merchants arrived in Hungary, they were directed to the royal court, where they could arrange everything with their loans. However, when the time of repaying these loans arrived, their admittance to the 1 “… unser herr der künig der suecht all winkchel umb gelt und wo er die leut aneinander bringen mag, das tut