page_title: Hungarian nobility
section_title: Golden Bulls
hierarchical_section_title: Hungarian nobility / Middle Ages / Golden Bulls
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Zmiana rozmiaru 1920x2560 - 18:50 (CEST), 20 maja 2006 Jurbox
context_page_description: The Hungarian nobility consisted of a privileged group of people, most of whom owned landed property, in the Kingdom of Hungary. Initially, a diverse category of people were mentioned as noblemen, but from the late 12th century only the high-ranking royal officials were regarded as noble. Most aristocrats claimed a late-9th-century Magyar leader for their ancestor; others were descended from foreign knights; and local Slavic chiefs were also integrated in the nobility. Less illustrious individuals, known as castle warriors, also held landed property and served in the royal army. Most privileged laymen called themselves royal servants to emphasize their direct contact to the monarchs from the 1170s. The Golden Bull of 1222 enacted their liberties, especially their tax-exemption and the limitation of their military obligations. From the 1220s, the royal servants were associated with the nobility and the highest-ranking officials were known as barons of the realm. Only those who owned allods – lands free of obligations – were regarded true noblemen, but other privileged groups of landowners, known as conditional nobles, also existed.
context_section_description: Only the court dignitaries and ispáns were mentioned as noblemen in official documents from the end of the 12th century. The aristocrats had adopted most elements of chivalric culture. They regularly named their children after Paris of Troy, Hector, Tristan, Lancelot and other heroes of Western European chivalric romances. The first tournaments were held around the same time.
  The regular alienation of royal estates is well-documented from the 1170s. The monarchs also granted immunities, exempting the grantee's estates of the jurisdiction of the ispáns, or even renouncing royal revenues that had been collected there. Béla III was the first Hungarian monarch to give away a whole county to a nobleman: he granted Modrus in Croatia to Bartholomew of Krk in 1193, stipulating that Bartholomew was to equip warriors for the royal army. Béla's son, Andrew II, decided to "alter the conditions" of his realm and to "distribute castles, counties, lands and other revenues" to his officials, as he narrated in a diploma in 1217. Instead of granting the estates in fief, with an obligation to render future services, he gave them as allods, in reward for the grantee's previous acts. The great officers who were the principal beneficiaries of his grants were mentioned as barons of the realm from the late 1210s.
  Donations to such a large scale accelerated the development of a wealthy group of landowners, most descending from high-ranking kindreds. Some wealthy landowners could afford to build stone castles in the 1220s. Closely related aristocrats were distinguished from other lineages through a reference to their (actual or presumed) common ancestor with the words de genere ("from the kindred"). Families descending from the same kindred adopted similar insignia. The author of the Gesta Hungarorum fabricated genealogies for them and emphasized that they could never be excluded from "the honor of the realm", that is from state administration.
  The new owners of the alienated royal estates wanted to subject the freemen, castle warriors and other privileged groups of people living in or around their domains. The threatened groups wanted to achieve the confirmation of their status as royal servants, emphasizing that they were only to serve the king. Béla III issued the first extant royal charter about the grant of this rank to a castle warrior. The royal servants' privileges were enacted in Andrew II's Golden Bull of 1222. They were exempt from taxation; they were to fight in the royal army without a proper compensation only if enemy forces invaded the kingdom; their cases could only be judged by the monarch or the palatine; and their arrest without a verdict was prohibited. According to the Golden Bull, only royal servants who died without a son could freely will their estates, but even in this case, their daughters were entitled to the daughters' quarter (that is one-quarter of their possessions). The final article of the Golden Bull authorized the bishops, barons and other nobles to resist the monarch if he ignored its provisions. Most provisions of te Golden Bull were first confirmed in 1231.
  The clear definition of the royal servants' liberties distinguished them from all other privileged groups whose military obligations remained theoretically unlimited. From the 1220s, the royal servants were regularly called noblemen and started to develop their own corporate institutions at the counties' level. In 1232, the royal servants of Zala County asked Andrew II to authorize them "to judge and do justice", stating that the county had slipped into anarchy. The king granted their request and Bartholomew, Bishop of Veszprém, sued one Ban Oguz for properties before their community. The "community of the royal servants of Zala" was regarded a juridical person with its own seal. 
  The first Mongol invasion of Hungary proved the importance of well-fortified places and heavy-armored cavalry in 1241 and 1242. During the following decades, Béla IV of Hungary gave away large parcels of the royal demesne, expecting that the new owners would build stone castles t
caption: Árva Castle (now Oravský hrad in Slovakia), one of the royal fortresses built after the Mongol invasion of Hungary
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