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Contributions to the Venetian-Hungarian Alliance and Anti-Ottoman War of 1501–1503
59–72Views:87In my research, I examine the diplomatic relations between Venice and the Kingdom of Hungary during the Jagiellonian era. Through Venetian narrative sources, my study presents the anti-Ottoman war of 1501–1503, a period during which both parties were engaged in conflict against the Sultan. In my work, I devote particular attention to the writings of Girolamo Priuli, a diarist who is less known to the international scientific community. Hailing from a merchant family and working as a banker, Priuli was a member of the Venetian Great Council (Maggior Consiglio), which allowed him to receive first-hand information regarding the news influencing the state’s foreign policy. In his diaries, he made detailed and relatively accurate entries that contain a wealth of information concerning the Kingdom of Hungary. His eight-volume diary covers the period between 1494 and 1512, an exceptionally active era for both countries.
In this study, I intend to present the diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and Venice through the accounts of Priuli and the well-known Marin Sanudo from 1500–1503. In this context, I will address the financial subsidies provided by the Republic to Vladislaus II for the maintenance of troops, as well as how the Venetians evaluated these Hungarian military operations. To this end, I will utilize source fragments that have hitherto escaped the attention of historical scholarship.
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Marktstädte in Ungarn an der Grenze zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit: Die ungarischen Marktstädte
229-260Views:171In the late Middle Ages, two principal types of market and agrarian towns can be distinguished in the Kingdom of Hungary: on the one hand, the lowland settlements, characterized by extensive animal husbandry and the possession of large tracts of land; on the other, the viticultural towns situated in hilly regions. The transition from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century – particularly the watershed moment of the Battle of Mohács in 1526, when the Ottoman advance brought about the military and political disintegration of the medieval Hungarian kingdom – had comparatively little immediate impact on most of these urban centers, especially those oriented toward pastoral production. Indeed, the sixteenth century largely reinforced their established developmental trajectory.
The pattern proved more complex in the case of viticultural market towns. Syrmia (the hilly region around Fruška Gora, in present-day Serbia), which constituted the most important wine-producing area of medieval Hungary, was transformed into a frontier zone of the Ottoman Empire and thereby exposed to recurrent incursions. The ensuing insecurity prompted a significant outmigration of vintners and wine producers from the region into the interior of the kingdom. As a consequence, viticulture in Syrmia declined, while other centers, most notably the Tokaj region, experienced rapid expansion. From the sixteenth century onwards, Tokaj emerged as a leading center of Hungarian wine production, ultimately eclipsing Syrmia in both productivity and reputation.
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Europäische und ungarische Peregrinatio academica im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert
193-212Views:232This study explores the evolution of academic peregrination in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with a particular focus on students from the Kingdom of Hungary. It examines how the expansion of universities and the impact of the Reformation reshaped student mobility across the continent.
In the fifteenth century, the rise of regional universities led to a decline in international student migration, although Italian institutions like Padua, Bologna, and Ferrara remained popular for legal and medical studies. Hungarian students, lacking domestic universities, pursued education abroad, primarily in Vienna and Krakow, and also in Italy and France.
The sixteenth century brought significant changes due to confessional divisions. Protestant students increasingly attended newly founded or reformed institutions such as Wittenberg, Marburg, and Heidelberg, while Catholic students gravitated toward Jesuit-led universities like Graz, Dillingen, and Ingolstadt. Confessional loyalty influenced university choice, with restrictions imposed by rulers to ensure ideological conformity.
Hungarian academic peregrination mirrored broader European trends. While Wittenberg became the leading destination for Hungarian Protestants, Vienna and Padua remained important centers for Catholic students. The study draws on extensive archival sources, including rectoral registers and academic databases (RAG, RAH), to trace student movements and institutional preferences.
Ultimately, the research highlights how geopolitical, religious, and cultural factors shaped the academic journeys of Hungarian students within the dynamic landscape of early modern European higher education. -
A Strange Year: 1513 viewed from the East
67-82Views:187Years that come before (in particular) or after an annus mirabilis as usually neglected, even though it stands to reason that major events have both origins and impact that exceed strict chronological limitations. 1513 is one of those years: “the eve” of the crusade/rebellion that spread through the eastern parts of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1514. The developments outlined in this short essay are potentially indicative for the policies of the three major neighbours of Jagiello Buda: Vienna, Krakow and Constantinople. Two “events” stand out in this regional framework ad annum 1513: an invented Ottoman-Tartar-Wallachian invasion of Transylvania and a failed – Habsburg-sponsored – Moldavian princely wedding. After crushing the opposition in Asia Minor, Selim I was asserting his power in Europe. Sigismund I Jagiello had to secure his borders against perils from all sides. Maximilian I of Habsburg still attempted to be Christendom’s “unifying spider”. In-between theme, Wladislaw II Jagiello had more down-to-earth concerns. The same applied, for Bogdan III, the vassal in fact of four mentioned monarchs (even though he did not accept Sigismund as suzerain and Maximilian was only de iure co-king of Hungary). Bogdan had one major problem (which had led to war between him and Sigismund, as his and Wladislaw’s youngest sister, Elisabeth, had not become his wife): the lack of a prestigious spouse. This is what Maximilian attempted to sort precisely at a time when Wladislaw’s envoys were claiming, outside of the Hungarian kingdom, that “the Wallachian” too had invaded Transylvania.
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Arbeitnehmer der Niederländischen Ost-Indien Kompanie (1602–1799) aus dem Königreich Ungarn
237–314Views:68The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC), a colossal enterprise for its time, employed a vast number of workers. The problem, however, was that two-thirds of the people died either during the journey or shortly after arriving in Asia. Scurvy, starvation, shipwrecks, clashes with the indigenous population, or with rival Spanish or Portuguese competitors were the usual causes of the high mortality rate. The loss of life on the outward journey alone was 15–20%. Upon arrival in Java, tropical diseases – particularly the dreaded malaria, typhus and dysentery – awaited the survivors. The VOC therefore constantly needed a fresh supply of a significant number of people to replace the workers who had died. Even in the seventeenth century, the Netherlands was a small country with a population of just 1.5 million. In the seventeenth century, the VOC had approximately 30 000 employees, of whom around 25 000 were in Asia. It soon became clear that, with such a small population, the Netherlands could not meet the VOC’s long-term staffing requirements. The labour shortage forced the directors of the trading company to recruit workers not only in the Netherlands but also abroad. In this article, I examine VOC workers from the Kingdom of Hungary. From the preliminary inventory, we can therefore conclude that they mostly (87%) held the lowest-ranking positions in the Dutch company and served for an average of six years. Just under 21% of the Hungarians survived the tropical adventure, and only 17% were able to return to Europe. It must be noted that most of them were assigned to lower-ranking positions. They had no formal education, so they were confined to poorly paid jobs (sailor, soldier). They were largely left to fend for themselves, and their mortality rate was much higher than that of the average VOC employee.
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Dániel, Bihari, A Tatárjárás - Magyarország élet-halál harca (The Mongol Invasion: Hungary’s Struggle for Survival) Budapest, Mandiner Kiadó, 2025. ISBN 978-963-341-306-7
342–347Views:74Nearly eight centuries ago, the Kingdom of Hungary experienced the most devastating catastrophe in its history up to that point, when the Mongol Empire – the largest contiguous land empire ever to have existed – invaded the Carpathian Basin from multiple directions, defeated the royal army, and laid waste to a substantial portion of the country. In Hungarian historical discourse, the defeat at Muhi is regarded as commensurate with the tragedies of the Treaty of Trianon and the Battle of Mohács (it is even alluded to in the national anthem), and consequently a wide range of questions, assumptions, and misconceptions continue to surround it.
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René d’Anjou in the Twilight of an Era: Last Prince or a “Roi Imaginé”
21-30Views:243The launch of the Italian campaigns and the entry of Charles VIII into Naples in 1494 is a traditional political turning point in French history, on the border between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. This foreign political expansion was, of course, due to a number of things, one of which was the takeover of the Angevin inheritance, paved by the death of René of Anjou in 1480. However, the lord of Anjou and Provence was not only a great prince of this period, but his life’s work often crossed the sometimes blurred line between reality and imagination. The kingdoms of the dynastic legacy of the past, never possessed or long lost by the end of the fifteenth century, were revived again in his hands but in many ways for the last time. The presentation will seek to explore the imaginative elements of René’s figure and the extent to which these were perpetuated for a new, “unified” kingdom of France. As he proudly stated in his title: was the King of Jerusalem, Sicily and Hungary really one of the last counts of medieval France or was he already the prince of a new world?
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The Ethnic and Social Background of the Military in Szeben (Sibiu) and Brassó (Brașov) during the Second Half of the Fifteenth and First Half of the Sixteenth Centuries
73–92Views:70Transylvania was one of the most highly militarized regions of the late medieval Kingdom of Hungary. This study examines the military organization of two Transylvanian Saxon towns, Szeben and Brassó, as well as the ethnic and social composition of their urban military forces in the second half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth century. The findings indicate that the two towns employed different mobilization systems. Most soldiers were recruited from the local Saxon population, though Szekler and Wallachian individuals were also present. In both towns, a significant proportion of the soldiers were originally craftsmen.
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Wirtschaftliche Ungleichheit oder ausgewogene Beziehungen. Das Königreich Ungarn im europäischen Wirtschaftssystem
261-276Views:183The economic division of labour in Europe from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards is clearly visible. Western European historiography focuses primarily on the Atlantic region and Western Europe in its portrayal of the globalising economic system, while Central Europe is very often treated as peripheral. However, this cannot be confirmed by the relevant historical sources. The regions of the Carpathian Basin participated in the continental economic cycle mainly with raw materials, live animals and semi-finished products. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the early modern period, Central Europe and the Hungarian regions were indispensable partners of the Western European regions rather than vulnerable markets.
The period from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the seventeenth century was the last period of (early) modern history in which a more or less balanced system of relations still connected the regions above mentioned. This does not, of course, contradict the part of the classic centre-periphery model that states that the regions of Western and Central Europe had different production profiles from the fifteenth century onwards. While the former had a clear advantage in craft production, the latter concentrated mainly on agricultural products and mining raw materials. Nevertheless, it should be emphasised that in the first half of the early modern period, every region was still able to participate in multilateral trade with numerous goods that other regions needed. None of the regions became the exclusive consumer market for the other. Mutual dependence can be demonstrated in almost all bilateral interregional relationships.