Fidelitate et fortitudine. A selection of the charters of the Batthyány family newly placed in the National Archives of Hungary

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Mediaeval coat of arms of the Batthyánys

The mediaeval patent of arms of the Batthyány family is one of the most valuable items in the family archives, which were transferred to the National Archives in the 1950s, as part of the material of the Körmend archives. In the charter, King Wladislaus II grants Boldizsár Batthyány and his brother Benedek the coat of arms painted at the beginning of the charter and described in the text. The coat of arms: in the blue field of shield with a rounded base, on top of a natural-coloured rock in a green nest sits a white pelican with its wings displayed, tearing its breast and feeding its three chicks with its own blood. A golden lion emerges from the rock from its waist up, holding a silver sword in its mouth. The shield is framed by a golden bordure with arabesque decoration. The family received further elevations in later years (title of counts in 1630 and of princes in 1764), but the charges of the shield of the coat of arms have remained unchanged over the centuries. The pelican symbolised the crucifixion of Christ, parental love and self-sacrifice, while the lion represented courage and valour.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Buda, 12 December 1500.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL-107672. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Majoratus series, Lad. 27. No. 21.)

Batthyány family tree

From the 17th century, many aristocratic families had their family trees drawn up. Several historians worked on the Batthyány ancestry on behalf of chancellor Count Lajos Batthyány. As a result, the family tree was reconstructed in several ways, and multiple painted depictions of it were produced. The present family tree fragment was edited by Ádám Rajcsányi in 1743. In the centre is the rock of Kővágóörs, from which the trunk of the family tree grows. The ancestor, Miske of Kővágóörs, is lying at the trunk. Above him is the Batthyány coat of arms, supported on both sides by griffins. The central part of the rock also features animals from the coat of arms: the lion and the pelican. The genealogy depicts the three most important settlements in the family’s history: the two oldest, Kővágóörs (today Felsőörs, Veszprém county) and the eponymous Battyán (today Szabadbattyán, Fejér county), and Németújvár (today Güssing, Austria), which was granted to the family in 1524. The exhibited work is the lower fragment of a larger, imaginative, illustrated family tree, the upper part of which is in the Dr. Batthyány-Strattmann László Museum in Körmend.

Photos related to the Batthyány Archives

The Batthyány family kept their archives in the Körmend castle. In the 1940s Béla Iványi, a former professor at the University of Szeged, organized them and made them accessible for research. In 1945 the family rescued a smaller part of their archive by relocating it to Vienna in advance of the Soviet invasion. The remaining archival material was scattered in the courtyard of the Körmend castle by the Soviet soldiers, and later evacuated to a secure location under the direction of János Kőszegi. The 200 running meters of archival material were first transported to Keszthely and then to the Central Archives. On the whole 10-15% of the mediaeval collection in the Batthyány archives got destroyed in 1945. This lends great importance to the 520 documents that were hidden in Vienna from 1945 until 2021.

1. The Körmend castle in 1908 (https://muzeumkormend.hu/batthyany-strattmann-kastelyegyuttes)

2. The Batthyány castle in Körmend after its damage during World War II

3. The photograph of János Kőszegi (1896–1966), who saved the Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family

4-5. The Batthyány Archives heaped in the lobby of the Balaton Museum in Keszthely

6. Carved wax pendent seals from the Batthyány Archives used by Soviet soldiers to polish boots (originally belonged to charters issued by King Louis II and Ferdinand II)

7. Fragment of a document from the 18th century, with a tree leaf stomped into it

The oldest charter

The oldest of the acquired Batthyány documents is the charter of King Béla IV (1235-1270) sealed with a pendent seal, dated to 1256, concerning the nobles of Pacsa-mellék (today Pacsa in Zala county). In it, on the basis of the verdict of judge royal Dénes, the king confirmed the sons of Jurke, Péter and Karachinus, and the sons of Máté, Mátyás and Máté, furthermore the son of Chuda, cleric Pál of Pacsa-mellék in their old nobility, as Balázs, the lieutenant of Zala and the castle serfs of Zala claimed the aforementioned as their fellow serfs. The charter also includes the verification of the borders (perambulation) of Pacsa, adjacent to the villages of Dusnok, Kál and Lengyel.

“…after this Dénes had told us that it had come to his knowledge that the said sons of Jurke, Peter and Karachinus, the sons of Máté, Mátyás and Máté, and the son of Chuda, cleric Pál, had been amongst the ranks of the nobles from the time of our ancestor, the most holy King Stephen ...we, who, by our royal office, are wont to shower our favours on all, preserving the liberty of the said nobles by our royal power, so that such liberty of our nobles, together with the boundaries of their lands, may, as the charter of the judge royal and count (ispán) of Zala, Dénes, states, remain permanent and unalterable... order the present writing to be corroborated by the protection of our double seal … By the hand of our faithful servant, the vice-chancellor of our court, the elected provost of Fehérvár, master Smaragd, in the 1256th year of the incarnation of our Lord, on September 22nd, in the 21st year of our reign.”

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Buda, 22 September 1256.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108771. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Heimiana series, No. 3.)

The latent manuscript of the Cuman laws

This document was unknown until now. It is the earliest copy of the so-called second Cuman law of King Ladislaus IV. The central topic of the Diet of Tétény in July 1279 was the conversion of the pagan Cumans to Christianity. After the Diet, King Ladislaus IV (the Cuman) (1272-1290) issued the so-called Second Law of the Cumans in a charter on 5 August, corroborated with a double seal. The law is an "extended version" of the so-called First Law of the Cumans of 23 June 1279, which was effectively enforced by the papal legate (envoy), Philip of Fermo. It decreed the conversion of the Cumans to Christianity, their resettlement, their way of life, and the Cumans’ obligation to return the ecclesiastical and secular properties they had forcibly and unlawfully occupied. It also defined the areas of the country they were to settle on, in return for which the Cumans were obliged to enlist in the king’s army.

"They will now go leave and withdraw from their tents and their felt houses, and, according to the custom of the Christians, will dwell and stay in villages, in buildings and houses built into the ground.... And that in our country and in our provinces, they shall wholly keep their hands from committing all violence and assault, and from killing Christians and shedding their blood. ... And because the abundant multitude of the Cumans called for a plenty of land, we have determined that those who settled with their clan by the rivers Danube and Tisza or Körös or between the rivers Maros and Körös or on both banks of the same river or between the rivers Temes and Maros or in the vicinity of these and not elsewhere, but by the same rivers or in the same places or on the same lands, over which all the clans were originally settled with their tents by the lord King Béla, our grandfather, the glorious king of Hungary of noble memory, should now also occupy and settle as aforesaid as nobles of our country."

No original copies of the royal charters preserving the laws of the Cumans have survived, so this copy, made in the last third of the 16th century, is of particular historical significance: its existence has disproved the theory that the text was drafted during the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-1780), when the Cumans and Jazyges were striving to have their collective noble status recognised by the monarch.

For further interesting facts see “Mivel a kunok bőséges sokasága bőséges földterületet kíván” [Because the abundant population of the Kuns requires a plenty of land] by Szilvia Somogyi in the Document of the Week series of the National Archives of Hungary.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Without place, 5 August 1279.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108775. (Archives of the Batthyány family of Körmend, Heimiana series, No. 9.)

Charter of Queen Elisabeth the Cuman

The mother of King Ladislaus IV, Hungarian queen consort Elisabeth the Cuman, Duchess of Mačov and Bosnia, grants the village of Kálmáncsehi (Kalaman chehy, today Kálmáncsa, Somogy county) to Panyit’s son Jakab once again. Queen consort Elisabeth also annuls the charter she had previously issued to the village settlers (hospes) of Csehi, evidently concerning the same grant.

The very small piece of parchment shows a fragment of the imprint of the obverse of the second double seal of the queen consort. The intact, fairly well-preserved double seal of the queen consort hangs on the charter under the reference code HU-MNL-OL-DL 63612. of the mediaeval collection of the Central Archives. It clearly shows the Queen consort seated on her throne with an open crown on her head, a sceptre in her outstretched right hand and with a left hand pressed to her breast.

The legend of the seal on the obverse ELISABET DEI GRACIA REGINA HVNGARIE ("Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of Hungary") and on the reverse with S(IGILLVM) VXORIS STEPHANI REGIS QVINTI QVARTI BELE ILLVSTRIS REGIS FILII ("seal of the consort of King Stephen the Fifth, son of the glorious King Béla the Fourth").

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Buda, 2 January 1281.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108776. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Heimiana series, No. 10.)

Charter of King Charles I

King Charles (1301-1342) commands the cathedral chapter of Fehérvár to send out one of their members to testify, and in his presence the royal bailiff Péter of Szentgyörgy, Imre son of Domonkos or Péter son of István should walk around the borders of the royal forest named Bakony (silva nostra Bakan vocata), and should forbid all neighbours to hunt in the royal forest or to derive any profit from it without the knowledge and consent of the count (ispán) of the Bakony.

The parchment charter preserved in the Himfi archives shows the partial imprints of a larger and a smaller seal: the document was originally closed with the wax imprint of the royal double seal’s obverse, then after the opening of it the dictate was resealed by the upper part of the seal (caput sigilli) of the Fehérvár cathedral chapter.

The “Bakony forest” (silva Bocon), the king's private estate in Bakony, Veszprém county, became a forest estate at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. Its territory, which did not form a coherent block, stretched in a west-east direction from the area around Pápa and Devecser to Márkó and even Várpalota, while in a north-south direction it extended from the regions of Bakonyszentlászló and Veszprémvarsány to Nagyvázsony. The forest estate was re-established around 1320 by Charles I, and the castle and estate of Hölgykő was established as its centre (in 1326 the castle of Csesznek was also added to it). In 1325, at the time of the royal order described above, László Himfi was the count (ispán) of the Bakony, and thus the lord of Hölgykő, and from 1326 of Csesznek.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Visegrád, 10 June 1325.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108797. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Heimiana series, No. 32.)

Charter of King Louis I

King Louis the Great (1342-1382), in recognition of the services of the sons of Pál Himfi, Benedek and János, soldiers of the royal court, grants to them and through them to their brothers Miklós Himfi, Péter, Pál and Balázs two uninhabited royal estates in Veszprém county, Jakóteleke (today Bakonyjákó, Veszprém county) and Erdőóvótelek (literally: forest warden’s plot of land).

The parchment charter is sealed with the obverse of the first double seal of King Louis I on its reverse: most of the wax has peeled off, but the head and chest parts of the seal's royal figure are exceptionally well preserved.

The forest wardens (in today's terms: forest guards) were servants living on royal, ecclesiastical or private estates, whose task was to guard and care for the forest. The forest wardens of the royal forest estates also performed the economic and administrative tasks related to the estates, hunted for the royal kitchen, fished and kept the creeks of the forest clean. The place names of Ardó (Ordó) (Végardó, Szőlősardó, Nyársardó, etc.) in the Carpathian Basin preserve the memory of the forest wardens. Ardó is known also as a family name.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Visegrád, 12 June 1351.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108814. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Heimiana series, No. 120.)

Charter of King Sigismund

King Sigismund of Luxembourg (1387-1437) orders the proclamation of his new seal in Vas county. He got the seal chiselled for the occasion of his election as King of the Romans (21 July 1411), and which he will use from this day on. At the same time, he annuls his previous minor privy seal, emphasizing that the letters of donation, privilege, etc. issued under his old seal remain valid without renewal.

Another version of this royal decree with the same date (29 September 1411), with identical text, addressed to Arad county, has been preserved in the archives of the Festetics family: this charter is also kept in the Central Archives (Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 92397.).

The field of the king's new seal shows [in a golden field] a one-headed [black] eagle displayed and sticking out its tongue, associated with the title of the King of the Romans. The seal legend is divided into four equal parts by four small coats of arms: on the top [in a red shield] a [silver] double cross standing on a [green] trimount (Hungary), on the heraldic right a shield with eight [red and silver] stripes (Hungary), on the heraldic left [in a rend shield] a rampant, double-tailed, crowned [silver] lion, and on the bottom in a shield with nine [silver and blue] stripes, a crowned, rampant [red] lion [armed with gold] (Luxemburg).

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Bratislava, 29 September 1411.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108579. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Memorabilia series, No. 9.)

The seal of the city of Buda

A deed of the city of Buda stating that Albert Rákos, Mihály Fekete and György of Ében have sold their house on Szombatpiac (today the area between Kapisztrán and Bécsi kapu squares), in the neighbourhood of the house of bowmaker Márton and furrier Pál, for 100 gold florins to the butcher András and his wife Ilona.

Buda's great double seal, the oldest known imprint of which is hanging from a privilege issued in 1292 (the reference code of its photocopy: HU-MNL-OL-DF 229963.), bears the striped coat of arms of the Árpáds on its obverse (referring to the ruler and protector of the city, the reigning monarch). On the reverse, as on the other one-sided city seals of Fehérvár, Bratislava, Zagreb, Sopron and many others, there is a schematic image of a three-towered castle or fortress. From the end of the 13th century until the 16th century, the city also used another, smaller, simpler seal, the imprint of which is shown on this document. The circular seal, 3,6 cm in diameter, depicts a triangular shield with eight stripes with two small peaked-towers on the top. The legend reads + S(IGILLVM) CIVIVM BVDENSIVM, meaning 'seal of the citizens of Buda'.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Buda, 26 March 1477.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108542. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Acta antiqua series, Alm. 5. Lad. 7. No. 157.)

A marriage contract from 1505

By the end of the 15th century, the Szapolyai family, which had gained power during the reign of Matthias Corvinus (1458-1490), had become the country's largest landlord and an inescapable political factor. István Szapolyai, Count of Szepes (palatine of Hungary from 1492 until his death in 1499) had married Hedvig (Piast), Duchess of Teschen in 1483, and had two sons and two daughters with her: János, later King of Hungary (1526-1540), György, who died at the Battle of Mohács in 1526, Krisztina (later wife of János Homonnai) and Barbara, who was the queen consort of Poland from 1512 until her death in 1515, at the side of Sigismund I the Old of the Jagellonian dynasty.

After the death of István Szapolyai in 1499, the future of the family was in the hands of his widow, Duchess Hedvig: she tried to win the hand of Anna, the daughter of King Wladislaus II (1490-1516) for her eldest son János, and tried to marry his younger brother György to Erzsébet, daughter of János Corvinus and Beatrix Frangepán, so that he could get possession of the huge Corvinus estate. The document on exhibition is the record of the negotiations between the two widows’ ambassadors between January and August 1505 regarding the proposed marriage of György and Erzsébet. While negotiating the marriage contract, Beatrix Frangepán was, among others, represented by Boldizsár Batthyány.

Ultimately, neither of the marriages that Hedvig had hoped for came to fruition: the royal couple refused the proposal of János, and in 1506 Beatrix Frangepán managed to reach an agreement with Wladislaus II, who donated the inheritance of her husband to him and his daughter, with the exception of a few estates - so the widow was no longer in need of the support of the Szapolyais.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Without place, 1505
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108570. (Archives of the Batthyány family in Körmend, without reference code)

Testament of Lukács Szegedi, Bishop of Zagreb

"In the name of the indivisible Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lukács, Bishop of the Church of Zagreb, by the grace of God and the Apostolic See, to all believers in Christ who are present and have read the testament signed with my own hand, may you find salvation and mutual love in the Lord."

This is the opening of the will of Lukács, born in Szeged around 1470, who had a distinguished secular and ecclesiastical career during the course of his life. He was employed at the chancellery and later as a financial administrator, he worked as a treasurer from 1492 to 1494, as the chief justice of Hungary from 1501 to 1502, as a bishop of Bosnia and Cenad, and finally as a bishop of Zagreb from 15 April 1500 until his death in September 1510.

Very few testaments of prelates of the late mediaeval Kingdom of Hungary have survived. The contemporary copy of the previously unknown will of the Bishop of Zagreb, dated 12 March 1510, was preserved among the unmarked miscellaneous papers of the Batthyány Archives. The survival of the will in the archives is easily explained: the bishop appointed Boldizsár Batthyány (1452-1520), vice-ban of Slavonia and later deputy judge royal, as one of the executors of his will. At the time of the testament’s execution Battyhány’s son of the same name, Boldizsár the younger, was engaged to the bishop's niece, Katalin Erhard.

For further interesting facts see „Zágráb egyházának a fénye”. Szegedi Lukács zágrábi püspök 1510. évi végrendelete a Batthyány-levéltárban [The testament of Lukács Szegedi, bishop of Zagreb in the Batthyány Archives, 1510] by Viktória Kovács in the Document of the Week series of the National Archives of Hungary.

Date: Čazma, 12 March 1510.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108543. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, without reference code)

The carrying of the bloody sword around the Kingdom of Hungary on the eve of the Battle of Mohács

"The letters [...] deserve even more attention because if we read them in succession, if we may say so, they can take us back to the sad atmosphere of the weeks preceding the disaster. Starting from Buda, Érd, Adony, Paks, Tolna, Kesztölc, Báta, Újfalu are all stations of the gloomy calvary of the child-king, who, in letters of ever increasing forlorn spirit, asks for help, orders first every fifth, then every second, and finally every serf to rise up, the enlistment of plague patients and the monks cito, cito, citissime..." - wrote Elemér Mályusz, who copied the documents of King Louis II in the archives of the Batthyány family in Körmend, and then in 1926, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Mohács, he published the royal charters concerning mobilisation prior to the battle on 29 August 1526.

Two of these royal charters are commands from Louis II, dated 31 July 1526 from Adony. The piece presented here is addressed to the nobility of Croatia and Slavonia: the king instructs them that as soon as they receive his letter and see the bloody sword (gladius cruentatus) he has ordered to be carried around due to the threat of the country's doom, they are to rise up under the burden of disloyalty, together with half of their peasants, and join the ban. The second charter was addressed by Louis II to the Ban of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, Ferenc Batthyány, who was, amongst other things, ordered to have the bloody sword carried around: "faciatis circumferri gladium cruore tinctum", i.e. "carry around the sword dipped in blood".

Fortunately, both documents survived the partial destruction of the Batthyány Archives and since 2021 they are part of the pre-Mohács collection of the Central Archives.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Adony, 31 July 1526.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-DL 108761. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family, Memorabilia series, No. 69/11.)

Letter of denunciation from Simon Erdődy

In early January 1536 Simon Erdődy, Bishop of Zagreb wrote from Dombró to the wife of Ferenc Batthyányi (1497-1566), Katalin Svetkovics. In his letter (“I write this neither out of envy nor out of spite” – so the bishop), he thoroughly exposed her husband's affairs in Vienna. Ferenc Batthyány was in Vienna for the Diet, which had been convened in Bratislava on 19 November 1535 and then assembled in Vienna from the second half of December until the beginning of January 1536. The bishop reported that “my lord Ferenc” spent his time with a certain Lady Borbála instead of attending the Diet: “he dined more times in the castle ... with Lady Borbála, than instead in the city among the lords”.

For the full text of the letter and further interesting information see “Apró ember mit mívelsz?” [Little man what are you doing?] by Éva Künstlerné Virág in the Document of the Week series of the National Archives of Hungary.

ElőzőKövetkező

Date: Dombró, 11 January 1536.
Reference code: HU-MNL-OL-P 1313-I.-5.-67.-13. (Körmend Archives of the Batthyány family of, Memorabilia series, No. 67/13.)