Wladislaus II

In September 1490 king Wladislaw II (1490–1516) spent almost two weeks at Székesfehárvár in order to have himself crowned in accordance with tradition. The author, describing the preparations of the ceremony with the help of contemporary sources, establishes the exact date of the coronation, which
was neither 18 September, generally accepted sofar, nor 21 September given by the contemporary Antonio Bonfini, but the 19th day of the same month; on the other hand, he tries to reconstruct the first acts of the new ruler on the basis of the available charter evidence.
The acts reconstructed from sparse evidence throughout the charters as well as a description of Bonfini prove beyond doubt that parallel to the coronation a general assembly was held at Székesfehérvár, at the end of which, before 1 October, the king confirmed the decrees accepted. They can be divided
into four major groups: 1. confirmation of former legal documents securing noble privileges (such as the golden bull of Andrew II); 2. some of the articles of the decree issued by the royal council after the death of king Mathias (1458–1490), with of course modified deadlines (amnesty, obligation of returning estates
unjustly occupied since the death of the king) – a decree whose existence was also proved by the present article; 3. the conditions of election consented to by Wladislaw in the so-called treaty of Farkashida on 31 July 1490 (among its articles the one concerning the preservation of the Holy Crown could be clearly
identified, others partially reconstructed); 4. articles aimed at making the kingdom fit for a war on several fronts (division of the counties according to the prospective enemies, Germans, Poles or Turks, the obligation of equipping one mounted archer after each 20 peasant plots, convocation of another assembly for 22 May1491.).
Although most of these acts were codified again in1492, after the wars had ended, it could be proved that the great lawbook of 1492, which has been handed down to us by the Corpus Juris as the first decree of Wladislaw II, was in fact only the second, and cannot be regarded as a coronation decree.

The aim of the program is to take stock of Hungarian documents of
studia humanitatis with 1526 as a milestone. The census intends to register predominantly the use of (school)books in Hungary in teaching grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy.

The present study examines the internal political situation of the Kingdom of Hungary between 1493 and 1496 through the example of a conflict opposing the two most powerful magnates
of the realm, palatine István Szapolyai, count of Szepes (today Spiš, Slovakia), and János Corvin, illegitimate son of king Matthias and then duke of Liptó. At the root of the conflict between the two
aristocrats lay a promise whereby upon the death of his father (6 April 1490) Corvin, still in the hope of obtaining the royal throne, had engaged himself to reimburse Szapolyai, then captain-in-chief of Austria, for the expenses and damages he had incurred in the defence of Vienna and the Duchy of Austria. Yet reimbursement failed to come along, and thus late in 1493 the count decided to take by way of force the castles of the Duchy of Liptó, which lay in the vicinity of his own estates and had been ascribed to him by the duke as a cover for his debts. The author devotes a separate chapter to the emergence of the Duchy of Liptó. This area in the northwestern corner of the Kingdom of Hungary had originally been held by the Polish Peter Komorowsky from the 1450s, with the comital title after 1468/69, until its confiscation by king Matthias in 1474. By 1479 at the latest Corvin had been accorded the ducal title. The Duchy comprised before all the castles of Likava (today Likavka and Árva (Oravský Podzámok), and the ispánates of Liptó and Árva counties. In the 1480s king Matthias also granted to his son the castles of Szklabinya (Sklabina) and Bajmóc (Bojnice), and the ispánates of Turóc and Nyitra counties that were attached to them. This territory which thus extended to four counties was administered in the name of Corvin by Máté Kiss of Cece as governor of the Duchy until his death in 1490.

Since after 1490 the duke was pressured by the growing burden of his debts into mortgaging three among his castles there to his own retainers, the palatine set about the validation of his claims
by taking Bajmóc in Nyitra county at the turn of 1493/94 in a way described minutiously in the present study. Through an analysis of the consequent events and the baronial groupings which played a role therein the author has come to the conclusion that early in 1493 a strong aristocratic opposition was formed against king Wladislaw II, who aimed to cut short his dependence from the
old barons of Matthias. The new coalition was headed at first by István Báthori, who had been removed from the voevodship of Transylvania at the beginning of 1493, and, after his death in June
1493, by Szapolyai himself, whose strongest allies were duke Lõrinc Újlaki and the renowned captain of king Matthias, Pál Kinizsi, then ispán of Temes. Under intense pressure from his baronial oppponents, the king’s rule ushered in a crisis in 1493–1494, one of the symptoms of which was the series of private wars which were fought then. This lay in the background of the secret treaty that Wladislaw II entered into with his own brother, the king of Poland, in the course of the Jagiellonian summit held at Lõcse (April-May 1494), which was directed in general against their respective disobedient subjects, but probably more concretely targeted at Szapolyai, whose lands lay along the
border between the two kingdoms. In order to buttress his own position at home, the king launched a brief campaign against the Ottomans in the autumn of 1494, and, upon hearing the news of
Kinizsi’s death, turned his army against the southern castles of duke Lõrinc Újlaki, the closest ally of palatine Szapolyai (November 1494–March 1495). The defeat inflicted upon the duke left palatine Szapolyai completely isolated, and with no other choice than to make peace with the king, which in fact happened in May 1495. The domestic political situation was consolidated thereby, and the palatine remained faithful to the ruler until his death in 1499.

Although in May 1495 the king did acknowledge the acquisitions and claims of Szapolyai with regard to the Duchy of Liptó, Corvin, who back in the summer of 1494 had been forced to ascribe the
castles of the Duchy to Szapolyai, profited from the weakening position of the palatine to withhold the castles of Likava and Árva. In the second half of 1495, fearing that the palatine would take the
two castles by assault, Corvin recruited mercenaries in Poland to thus strengthen his castles. Yet in the ensuing conflict the king took sides with Szapolyai, and launched an expedition against the ducal castles in Liptó on account of the induction of the Polish mercenaries. The expedition was led by the palatine himself, whose troops joined battle with the Poles sometime before 2 March 1496. Although the palatine emerged victorious, the castles continued to be garrisoned by Polish soldiers. Since in
the meantime duke Corvin had begun to intrigue against the royal court in Croatia, Wladislaw decided to suspend the operations in the north, and soon entered into a temporary settlement with
Corvin. Consequently, the two castles did not pass onto the hands of Szapolyai. The Polish mercenaries were eventually indemnified and paid by two retainers of Corvin, András and Mihály Horvát of Lomnica, who thereby retained the two castles by right of pledge. Likava and Árva were finally redeemed from the Horvát brothers by the widow and sons of István Szapolyai after the death
of Corvin and with the permission of his widow, Beatrix Frangepán, after 1505.

The De modo epistolandi was published once only (in 1495), and has no modern issue. It is a short and simple manual teaching letter-writing in a clear structure. After the general description of the genre, it follows the train of thought in book four of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and presents the various rhetorical devices, and finally gives thirteen letters in Latin as positive examples.

This study takes a look at the history of the castle of Tata in the decades after the death of king Matthias (1458-1490). The history of the castle at that time was closely linked with the history of Komárom: before his death king Matthias mortgaged the two castles to his illegitimate child Prince John Corvin, which was confirmed by the parliament in 1490 and thus the new king Wladislas II (1490-1516) was obliged to accept it. The author
- contrary to the previous theories - concluded that the prince owned the two castles until March 1493 but then he gave them over for free, as part of a political deal with king Wladislas II, who found it important to take over Tata and Komárom castles personally.
The castle of Tata had its second heyday during the reign of king Wladislas: the monarch stayed in Buda much more than his predecessors and quite often visited Tata and its surroundings especially for recreation and hunting. So far we have information about 10 of his visíts and although the only time that he stayed for months was during the parliamentary session in 1510, presumably he did not only visit the castle in transit but sometimes spent one or two weeks there. The monarch’s affiliation towards Tata is indicated by the renovation of the castle as well. Further studies will probably increase the number of visits later on. As far as we know right now King Wladislas
II’s son Louis II (1516-1526) only stopped by at the castle twice during his travels. The management of the two castles was not the responsibility of the provisor of Buda Castle - as opposed to the earlier practice - but of the king’s confidents, the castellan of both castles who were the comes of Komá­rom County at the same time. The political gravity of the two castles was augmented by the fact that the number of royal castles had dropped by the Jagiellon era. Their manors, on the other hand, gained significant importance for the court. The study also introduces the reeves of Komárom and Tata in the era. The most influential were the two Korlátkövi’s, Osvát and his son, as
well as seneschal Peter, one of the key figures of the politics in the era. They ruled the castle for almost three decades (1498-1526). The renaissance coat of arms carving in the castle museum of Tata, which is dated between 1498 and 1515 by the author, is a token of their presence.
The three appendices at the end of the study are about Prince John Corvin’s itinerary between 1490 and 1493 and the two Jagiellon kings’ stays in Tata as well as the great reeves of the era.

The aim of this study is to explain the reasons of the governmental reform, which took place in January 1493, when Hungarian and Bohemian King Wladislaw II and his court decided to replace the leading dignitaries of the southern border defence system of the Hungarian Kingdom appointed by King Matthias (or at least reduce their power by appointing a partner for every dignitary). At first he launched an extensive political campaign against Stephen Bátori, Voivode of Transylvania, who was the most powerful baron of the kingdom and the hero of the wars of succession (1490–1492). The official explanation of the royal propaganda – invoking the libel of the Szeklers – was that Bátori often abused his power: the author therefore presents the events of Bátori’s campaign
against the Szeklers (in autumn 1492).  Wladislaw appointed two new voivodes, then he  dismissed the Ban of Slavonia, too. According to a letter issued in May 1493, he tried to reduce the power of Paul Kinizsi,  comes  of Temes and general captain of the Lower Parts as well. The author assumes that a league of barons led by Bátori, then Palatine Stephen Szapolyai managed to avoid this attempt. Wladislaw could overcome this league of barons only after the death of Kinizsi in 1494/1495.