Bishop John Vitez and Early Renaissance Central Europe

Front matter

AE E ICM Be o mnem rem nofcutit qgetimaos Akmena e p.

Beyond Medieval Europe

BISHOP JOHN VITEZ AND EARLY RENAISSANCE CENTRAL EUROPE by TOMISLAV MATIC

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 2: Remains of Székesfehérvar Basilica, the

Figure 3: Title page of Plautus’s Comedies bearing

Introduction

THE SUBJECT OF this study is the life, career, and public activities of John Vitez of Sredna (early 1400s-1472)—a politician, prelate, diplomat and one of the most influential personages in the history of Renaissance humanism in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. Vitez was a nobleman from medieval Slavonia, who had spent a large portion of his lifetime as the bishop of Oradea (1445-1465), and finished his career and his life as the archbishop of Esztergom and primate of Hungary (1465-1472). He is also the author of the only extant complete collection of letters from the late medieval Kingdom of Hungary. His life is relevant to the history of Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Poland, and the wider Central European area. This work studies the existing literature on John Vitez, presents new sources on his life and career, and attempts to create a complete image of him within the context of the tumultuous history of early Renaissance Central Europe.

By studying the lives, careers and actions of individuals or groups in a given historical period, we can draw conclusions on the causes, courses and consequences of historical events, which will in turn help us to attain a clearer image of a past society, its customs and its perception of reality. Such an approach makes history more “human,” as well as more understandable and interesting.! However, the fabric of reality is woven of human expectations, attempts, successes and failures, and their identification as such depends more on a historian's perception than on the data preserved in sources. That often makes one's conclusions uncertain.

Such uncertainty was often a problem during my study of John Vitez's life. The sources are often vague or, especially in the case of narrative sources, unreliable. Vitez's contemporaries, such as John of Thurocz (Thuróczy), Jan Długosz or Enea Silvio Piccolomini, often reported on events in a way that would serve the purpose they were trying to accomplish—to flatter a ruler, praise their religion, or self-aggrandize. As for the charters, they mostly present brief reports on the consequences of Vitez's actions, offering nothing in the way of his motives and the actions themselves. Therefore, it was necessary to avoid making (too many) poorly founded assumptions, basing conclusions on conditional statements, and outright guessing (although if we want to reach any conclusions whatsoever, the latter is sometimes unavoidable). It soon became obvious that the task would be impossible if I treated Vitez's life as an isolated phenomenon.

To alleviate this problem, I decided to focus on the context of Vitez's historical period, meaning the political, ecclesiastical and cultural events and developments contemporary to him, instead of studying his actions and making assumptions about his motives.” Sometimes this approach yielded very little, as I have often reached the same

| Bernard Guenée, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 6.

2 Such a method was used by Marianna D. Birnbaum in her biography of Janus Pannonius:

conclusions as other researchers had before. However, sometimes it led to findings different from the established narrative. Still, as the sources remain silent on many important issues, it proved to be impossible to altogether avoid assumptions based on the general tendencies of Vitez’s historical period. In other words, we still do not know why Vitez acted as he did, what he was trying to accomplish, or whether those actions were his to begin with or he was simply executing someone else’s will. Despite that, the assumptions based on the results of such a comprehensive approach are somewhat more reliable than they would otherwise be. In cases when the data on Vitez’s actions were insufficient, such as regarding his study in Vienna or his bearing during the Transylvanian revolt of 1467, comparing them to the actions of other Hungarian prelates made it possible to determine things that would otherwise be unattainable. Also, this procedure provides the benefit of offering a panoramic view on the elite social strata of the fifteenth-century Kingdom of Hungary and wider Central Europe.

Before laying out the results of my own research, | briefly summarize the state of the previous historiographic research of the topic treated in this book, as well as how literature and the relevant sources are treated in it. It should be noted that, due to his importance for Hungarian national sentiment, John Vitez is a very common topic in Hungarian historiography. In Croatia he was also studied, but nowhere near as much as north of the Drava. That said, it is surprising that so few works dealing exclusively with his life and career have been published. Right at the outset of my research, it became apparent that the study of John Vitez was sharply divided into two separate compartments. The first, which produced very few publications, deals with Vitez's political, ecclesiastical and diplomatic activities. The second, much more copious, deals with his role as a Renaissance humanist and patron of the arts and sciences.

The representative work of the first compartment is the first and, until now, only complete biography of Vitez: Vitéz János esztergomi érsek élete by Vilmos Fraknói, published in 1879.3 Although its historiographical value is enormous, it has many shortcomings, primarily due to its nineteenth-century understanding of history. Of other works by Fraknói, his article "Zrednai Vitéz János primás származása" deserves mentioning, as it revises his previous theory on the Sredna family.*

Of other authors, Vince Bunyitay studied Vitez's activities as a prelate in his monumental history of the diocese of Oradea, but he focused only on the time when Vitez was its bishop.? The next study dealing with Vitez as a politician did not come out until 1990—the article “Vitéz Janos, a politikus és államférfi (Pályavázlat—kérdójelekkel)" by Ferenc Szakály. It, however, follows Vitez's career only until the time of Matthias

Birnbaum, Janus Pannonius. Works listed in the Select Bibliography below are simply cited in a shortened form in these notes.

3 Fraknói, Vitéz János. 4 Fraknói, "Zrednai Vitéz.” 5 Bunyitay, A váradi püspókség, 3:269-93.

6 Ferenc Szakály, “Vitéz Janos, a politikus és államférfi (Palyavazlat—kérd6jelekkel),” in Vitéz Janos Emlékkönyv, ed. Bárdos et al., 9-38.

Corvinus’s accession. Andras Kubinyi devoted several articles to Vitez,’ but he mostly studied his career from the viewpoint of his work in the royal chancery, assessing other aspects of his life according to that.

Studying Vitez as a Renaissance humanist and patron of the arts has been much more appealing to historians. Fraknói himself published several works on that topic? In the second half of the twentieth century, Iván Boronkai devoted much effort to studying Vitez's writings from the viewpoint of history of literature.? He published the first modern edition of Vitez's letters, which also included his speeches and letters which were not part of the original Epistolarium compiled in 1452.!? Klara Csapodiné Gárdonyi published an overview of Vitez's book collection in 1984." Over the last few decades, Maria Prokopp published a number of works on Vitez's cultural activities,” while the largest number of works on that topic was published by Klára Pajorin, whose contribution to the study of John Vitez could be compared only to Fraknói's.??

In Croatian historiography too, Vitez was studied mostly as a Renaissance humanist and a patron of the arts. Olga Perić devoted several articles to his collection of letters! and Miroslav Kurelac studied his contributions to science, culture and political theory.? A semi-biographical novel about Vitez was also published in Croatian.'® More recently, a brief account of Vitez's life was published by Borislav Grgin in his book Počeci rasapa."

I started my own research of Vitez’s life and activities by studying his own writings—the collection of letters mentioned above, his speeches and other works. After this, I turned to contemporary narrative sources, such as the works of Antonio Bonfini (Rerum Hungaricarum decades) and Jan Długosz (Historia Polonica). The works of Enea Silvio Piccolomini proved to be most useful. Diplomatic sources, published and unpublished, filled in the gaps and cleared up some of the uncertainties. Of course, the narrative sources alone were not enough, especially when less publicly exposed details of

7 Kubinyi, “Vitéz János”; Kubinyi, “Vitéz János és Janus Pannonius”; Kubinyi, “Adatok.” 8 Fraknói, “Váradon írt Vitéz-codex”; Fraknói, “Vitéz János Livius-codexei.”

9 Boronkai, “Vitéz János diplomáciai”; Boronkai, “Vitéz János és az ókori klasszikusok”; Boronkai, “Vitéz János retorikai.”

10 Iohannes Vitéz, Opera, ed. Boronkai.

I1 Csapodiné Gárdonyi, Die Bibliothek des Johannes Vitéz.

I2 For example, Prokopp, “Az egyetemszervező”; Prokopp, “Johannes Vitéz, arcivescovo di Esztergom”; Prokopp, “The Scholarship of Johannes.”

13 For a list of her works regarding Vitez, see the Select Bibliography below.

14 Perić, “Zbirka pisama”; Olga Perić, “Tragom Ivana Cesmickog u pismima Ivana Viteza od Sredne,” in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 156-64; Perić, “Res privatae dans la correspondance de Iohannes Vitéz.”

15 Kurelac, “Kulturna i znanstvena”; Kurelac, “Ivan Vitez od Sredne i Jan Panonije (Ivan Česmički) između anarhije i tiranije,’ in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 222-46; Kurelac, “Ivan Vitez od Sredne, kanonik kustos zagrebački.”

16 Josip Paro and Olga Perić, Uspon mirnog čovjeka—lvan Vitez (Zagreb: Globus 1979). 17 Grgin, Počeci rasapa, 45-52.

Vitez’s life and career (such as, for example, his relations with his neighbours) needed to be dealt with. I therefore made extensive use of various legal documents and private letters, either preserved in manuscript form or published in collections.

When studying various aspects of Vitez's life, I would always start from the primary sources. They were given the most importance, but caution was paramount here as well. Generally, I always relied on legal documents and private letters, if they were available, more than on narrative sources. When treating narrative sources, I have always approached them as potentially biased or uninformed, and I point out wherever necessary in the text that a certain piece of information comes from a narrative source. Also, in cases when I found out that my study ofthe primary sources had nothing new to add to the existing state of research, I simply cited the most relevant literature on the subject. In cases when there was a conflict between my own findings and the previous researchers' theories, I pointed that out in the footnotes. In this manner I managed to offer a fresh perspective on the previously known sources, to add some previously unknown ones, or ones unused in this context, and to provide an overview of the relevant literature and the other authors' opinions.

Regarding the structure and contents of this book, it should be said that, as I strove toward presenting a complete image of Vitez's life, I observed every stage of it in the context of other persons of his status. To begin with, it was necessary to explain Vitez's origins. To achieve this, I had to study the history of his family, the nobles of Sredna. After this, I concentrated on the beginnings of Vitez's career, his first years as a prelate and his diplomatic and political activities. Regarding this, it should be noted that Hungarian prelates were magnates ofthe highest rank, who possessed considerable swathes of the kingdom. Therefore, Vitez's ecclesiastical career should not be understood purely as a religious issue, as his interactions with other prelates, with other lords, and the ways in which he managed his estates, were of equal importance. The next stage, Vitez's education, proved to be even less straightforward. While we do have some data regarding the Sredna family, on Vitez's student years we have almost nothing. However, as we know that Vitez enrolled in the University of Vienna, it proved to be worthwhile to study the activities of other contemporary prelates at that university, as well as its curricula. The results go a long way towards explaining Vitez's future interests.

To present a clear and coherent image of Vitez's life and career, the book's chronology is divided into two parts, the central point being King Matthias's accession in 1458. Vitez's political, ecclesiastical, and cultural activities before and after that point are studied in separate chapters. In this way, both the causality between events and different aspects of Vitez's life can be followed without losing track. It is important to note that although the book studies Vitez's life in the context of its time, it deals with events that were relevant from Vitez's point of view. Its scope expands and narrows with it, so at some stages it encompasses the entirety of Central Europe, and at others only the Kingdom of Hungary, or even less. His contemporaries are dealt with to the extent to which they or their actions interacted with Vitez, and they therefore disappear and reappear as they did in Vitez's life. The events that were relevant to his life and career are described in greater detail, while others are merely glossed over. Essentially, the intention here was to depict the world in which Vitez lived, but primarily his world.

Vitez’s Identity and Family Background

The name “John Vitez” has become so embedded in international historiography it is difficult to imagine that the person denoted by it never used it. It is one of many pieces of information about John Vitez of Sredna that are the result of several centuries’ worth of historiographical theories, which have with time become indistinguishable from facts. For example, authors usually state that he was born in 1408.!? This was an assumption made by Fraknói, and he himself admitted there is no evidence to support it? The earliest mention of Vitez that we know of comes from a charter issued in 1417, which Fraknói did not take into consideration while writing Vitez's biography. In it, Vitez's uncle Philip renounced the rights to an estate in favour of the Pauline monastery on Garié in the name of himself, his sons John (Iwan) and Jacob, his brother Dennis and Dennis's son John, who was our Vitez.” The charter does not say how old the latter was at the time.

Regarding John's family background, Fraknói was at first led astray by the surname “Vitez,” which means "knight." In 1888 he revised his account, as by that time the charters of the Gari¢ monastery were transferred from Zagreb to Budapest and in them Fraknói found numerous mentions of the Sredna family. It became obvious that the Sredna family indeed existed and that Vitez was a member of it.”

Why, then, do we not refer to him as John of Sredna? Fraknói thought that he must have adopted the surname "Vitez" from another Slavonian noble family, such as the

18 Csapodiné Gárdonyi, "Ime Ivana Viteza,” 441; Pajorin, "Antiturcica," 17; Pajorin, "I primordi della letteratura antiturca,’ 822. Boronkái simply stated that Vitez was born “around 1400": see Vitéz, Opera, ed. Boronkai, 11. Miroslav Kurelac claimed that Vitez was born in 1405 and his opinion filtered into Croatian historiography: see Kurelac, “Kulturna i znanstvena,” 21; Kurelac, “Ivan Vitez od Sredne i Jan Panonije (Ivan Česmički) između anarhije i tiranije,’ in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 222-46 at 222; Žarko Dadić, “Znanstveni i kulturni krug Ivana Viteza u Mađarskoj u 15. stoljeću,” in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 183-207 at 183; Grgin, Poceci rasapa, 45; Hrvoje Petric, "Was Janus Pannonius (1434-1472) Actually Born in Komarnica, Podravina?,” Podravina 1, no. 1 (2002): 75-82 at 76; Snežana BoZanié and Milica Kisi¢, “O UBany Butesy of CpeaHe y geny Rerum Ungaricarum Decades,” Istraživanja 23 (2012): 217-31 at 218. However, Kurelac himself came to doubt that, so in his last article on John Vitez he put his year of birth as 1405, but with 1408? in parentheses: see Kurelac, "Ivan Vitez,” 179. See also Perić, “Zbirka pisama,” 99.

19 Fraknói, Vitéz János, 9. 20 DL 35 447; digest in Elemér Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi középkori pálos kolostorok oklevelei az Országos Levéltárban: 8. Közlemény,” Levéltári közlemények 10 (1932): 256-86 at 258-59, doc. 150. See also Pisk, Pustinjaci, 100 and Ritoókné Szalay, Nympha, 27.

21 Fraknói, Vitéz Janos, 2ff. This theory was accepted and repeated by Marijanović: see Stanislav Marijanović, "Jan Panonije u svom vremenu—Janovo pravo lice,” in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 126-46 at 139.

22 Fraknói, "Zrednai Vitéz,” 571. Cf. Csapodiné Gárdonyi, “Ime,” 441. Today these charters are kept in the Croatian State Archives, but the National Archives of Hungary has photographs of them. See Silvija Pisk, "Prilog povijesti srednjovjekovnih pavlinskih samostana: prava i povlastice samostana Blažene Djevice Marije na Garicu (Moslavačka gora),’ Radovi: Zavod za hrvatsku povijest 43, no. 1 (2011): 149-85 at 156-57.

Vitez of Csév or the ones of Komarnica.? However, John himself never used the surname “Vitez,” and the surname "of Sredna" was applied to him by his contemporaries.”* The inscription on his tombstone, discovered in scattered pieces in the ruins of the medieval Esztergom Cathedral during the eighteenth century, reads:

This can be translated as: "Immortal ornament (of sciences?) and glory of all learning, honour of religion; here lies John, that excellent father of fatherland, whose brow was adorned with the mitre of Esztergom. He died on the sixth of the Ides of August."

An inscription on another monument found in the ruins reads:

This can be translated as: "Most reverend lord John of Zredna from the diocese of Zagreb, archbishop of Esztergom, primate, and permanent legate of the Apostolic See, who excelled in learning, was distinguished by his character, and was devoted to religion, died on the sixth ofthe Ides of August of the year 1472; may God have mercy on his soul."

The coat of arms shown on these monuments is halved horizontally. In the upper field is a lion passant and in the lower a fleur-de-lys flanked by two six-pointed stars. On the tombstone the escutcheon is supported by two dragons. This is the coat of arms that Vitez also used as bishop of Oradea.” Some thought it possible that this was actually the coat of arms of Janus Pannonius's family," and there were also attempts to link Pannonius with the Vitez of Komarnica family?? However, the evidence that he was a member of the Cesmica family is irrefutable.? As we will later see, Pannonius's family was connected to the Sredna family by marriage.

23 Fraknói, "Zrednai Vitéz,' 574. 24 Csapodiné Gárdonyi, “Ime,” 442-45; see also Bunyitay, A váradi püspökség, 1:283-84.

25 On the discovery of these monuments, see Máthes, Veteris Arcis Strigoniensis, 64-65. Both are today kept in the crypt of the Esztergom Basilica.

26 See a facsimile of Vitez's episcopal coat of arms in Bunyitay, A váradi püspökség, 1:292.

27 Csapodiné Gárdonyi, “Ime,” 446-47. Birnbaum argued that Vitez used the Garazda family coat of arms together with his own (Birnbaum, Janus Pannonius, 12), thinking that he was related to it. That opinion was, however, based on Fraknói's older version of Vitez's origins: see Fraknói, Vitéz János, 7. Two codices from Vitez's library do bear coats of arms of both Vitez and the Garazdas, prompting some researchers to try to establish the link between them. See Fraknói, Vitéz János, 7; Birnbaum, Janus Pannonius, 18-19. Cf. János M. Bak, "Janus Pannonius (1434-1472): The Historical Background,’ in Pannonius, Epigrammata, ed. Barrett, 29-45 at 30 and Marijanović, "Jan Panonije u svom vremenu—Janovo pravo lice,” in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 126-46 at 140.

28 Petric, "Was Janus Pannonius (1434-1472) Actually Born,’ 80. For the Vitez of Komarnica family, see Pálosfalvi, The Noble Elite, 164-73.

29 Ritoókné Szalay, Nympha, 26.

None of the contemporary writers refer to Vitez by that name. For example, Vespasiano da Bisticci simply called him meser Giovanni, Arcivescovo di Strigonia.? The first to introduce the name "Vitez" was Antonio Bonfini, who refers to John of Sredna in five places in his Rerum Hungaricarum decades as "Ioannes Vitesius” or "Vetesius."?! Csapodiné Gárdonyi thought that this novelty might have stemmed from a text by Galeotto Marzi, in which Galeotto mentions three Johns— bishop of Syrmia John Vitez of Komarnica, commonly known as "the Younger,” our Vitez, and Janus Pannonius. It is possible that Antonio Bonfini read this text and thought all these people were members of the same family.** Marzio indeed claims that "Archbishop John" (of Sredna) and "Bishop John" (Pannonius) were blood relatives (consanguinei) of John Vitez (of Komarnica). However, he made it clear that Vitez was the surname only of the latter John's family,” and he never referred to the former two Johns by it.**

John of Sredna was not a close relative of John Vitez of Komarnica.?? The latter was, however, a distinguished member of the Jagiellonian court during Bonfini's time (the 1490s), and it is possible he himself exaggerated his consanguinity with John of Sredna, as stressing a bond between himself and a distinguished rebel against Matthias Corvinus might have brought him the favour of the Jagiellonians.

It took several centuries for Bonfini's mistake to take root. It seems that even those familiar with Bonfini's work did not know that "John of Sredna" was one and the same as "Iohannes Vitesius.” The first who did was Elek Horányi in the late eighteenth century, who coined a new, composite name "Ioannes Vitézius de Zredna.” After that it became commonly used, and remains such even today?

This is unfortunate, as the Sredna family had a long history, going back to the time ofthe Arpadians. Its earliest known member was a certain Vecerin or Vecelin (this was probably a local variant of the name Wezelin), mentioned in 1257 as a castle-warrior of Gračenica county.?? He had three sons: Desiderius, Gymzina, and Dennis, all men-

30 Bisticci, Le Vite, ed. Greco, 1:319. See also Alfredo Reumont, "Commentario dei tre prelati ungheresi menzionati da Vespasiano da Bisticci/" Archivio Storico Italiano, ser. 3, vol. 20 (1874): 295-314 at 297.

3| Bonfini, Rerum Ungaricarum, 535, 562, 564, 593. The “Vetesius” version is used only once, on p. 519. 32 Csapodiné Gárdonyi, "Ime," 447-48.

33 Galeottus Martius, De egregie (2005), 178-81.

35 Pálosfalvi, The Noble Elite, 168-69. Cf. Birnbaum, Janus Pannonius, 12, Marijanović, "Jan Panonije u svom vremenu—Janovo pravo lice,” in Dani Hvarskog kazališta XVI, ed. Batušić et al., 126-46 at 136; and Petrić, “Was Janus Pannonius (1434-1472) Actually Born,” 78.

36 Pajorin, “Vitéz János vezetéknevéről.”

37 CD, 5:71ff, doc. 591. Castle-warriors (iobagiones castri) were, basically, the king’s soldiers who owned land in exchange for military service. See Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary, 20, 48-49 and 79ff and Erik Fügedi, The Elefánthy: The Hungarian Nobleman and His Kindred, ed. Damir Karbié, trans. Csaba Farkas (Budapest: Central European University Press,

1998), 37-38. Gračenica was an old Slavonian county that was absorbed by the Križevci county in the mid-fourteenth century: see Pisk, Pustinjaci, 63-64.

tioned in 1273.?? Dennis in turn had two sons, Desiderius and Germanus; they were the only ones to continue the family line, as Gymzina’s son George was killed around 1331 in a blood feud. Sometime before that, the surviving members of the family were elevated to the status of county nobles of Graéenica.*? Both brothers started their own family branches. They were last mentioned in 1340.*?

Desiderius's son Gerard was John Vitez's grandfather. His generation was the first to possess Sredna, or at least the first to possess it under that name. They were mentioned as its owners in 1365 and it seems they were newcomers there, as another family unsuccessfully contested their ownership of it, claiming it rightfully belonged to them.*! This was not the original estate owned by the family when they were still castle-warriors, as that one still existed, as royal property, in the fifteenth century and was called Vecherynfelde or Gemyzynafelde—Veécelin's land or Gymzina's land. It was still remembered that it used to be held by Vecelin, a castle-warrior of Gračenica, and his sons Gymzina and Dennis.” The last time some members of the family were mentioned to have a stake in that estate, located between the rivulets Sredna and Radslavcz, was in 1390, when it was simply called Gresencha,? probably because it belonged to Gračenica Castle.

Gerard was a rather adroit litigant. He represented parties in the Slavonian banal court,“ acted as a royal agent in serving a summons,? and investigated crimes in the service of the count of Križevci in 1386.*9 After this last case he was no longer mentioned as alive. His sons Dennis, Philip and Peter were represented by their second cousin George, son of Stephen in a court case concerning some of their posses-

39 CD, 9:546, doc. 443 and CD, 10:4, doc. 3. Germanus was in the service of the count of Gracenica in 1327: see CD, 9:347, doc. 288.

40 CD, 10:561, doc. 394. They were previously mentioned in 1338 (CD, 10:386-87, doc. 285). See also Pisk, Pustinjaci, 114.

4l CD, 13:447-48, doc. 324. Gerard's brothers Dennis and John and his cousins (Germanus's sons) Gregory and Stephen are also mentioned here.

42 AHAZU, 70: D I-CXL (Zbirka latinskih isprava), D-IX-33 and D-IX-35; digests in Jakov Stipišić and Miljen Šamšalović, eds., “Isprave u Arhivu Jugoslavenske akademije (Inventar)," part 1/3, Zbornik Historijskog instituta Jugoslavenske akademije 2 (1959): 289-379 at 362, nos. 1682 and 1684, and 363, no. 1688, and in Zsigmondkori oklevéltár, ed. Norbert C. Tóth and Bálint Lakatos, vol. 12 (Budapest: Magyar nemzeti levéltár, 2013), 101, no. 215; 109, no. 240 and 193, no. 502.

43 AHAZU, 97: Codices, I d 12, vol. IV, pp. 12-13; digests in Stipišić and Šamšalović, “Isprave 1,” 322, no. 1026 and 324, no. 1068.

44 CD, 16:148-49, doc. 133 and 182-88, doc. 159; see also Pisk, Pustinjaci, 104, and Ritoókné Szalay, Nympha, 27.

46 DL 35 279; digest in Elemér Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi középkori pálos kolostorok oklevelei az Országos Levéltárban: 6. Közlemény,” Levéltári közlemények 9 (1931): 284-315 at 298-99, doc. 25.

sion rights in 1400.*” This is when the family started using the surname “of Sredna."^? Although some of its members owned estates individually, it is apparent that Sredna had by then become the family seat, and that all of them had a stake in it.*”

Of the three sons of Gerard, Dennis was the most successful. He joined King Sigismund’s army during his invasion of Bohemia in 1403,°° and distinguished himself enough for the king to endow him and his brothers with the estate of RogoZa! He was in the king's presence on several other occasions during the next few years,” so it is possible he continued to participate in royal military campaigns.? He and his brother Philip were listed among people in the king’s confidence in 1413.5 Until 1425 Dennis was rarely involved in matters of his estates or their environs, so it is possible that he

47 DL 35 302 and 35 303, digests in Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi: 6. Közlemény,” 311, docs. 40-41. Fraknói thought George was their paternal uncle (see Fraknói, "Zrednai Vitéz,” 571).

48 It was first appended to George's name in 1395. The same charter contains the only appearance of his brother Michael: CD, 18:66-67, doc. 51.

49 DL 34 856 (digest in Elemér Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi kózépkori pálos kolostorok oklevelei az Országos Levéltárban: 3. Közlemény,” Levéltári közleménye 6 (1928): 87-203 at 118, doc. 80) identifies George as a frater condivisionalis of Gerard's sons. The term denotes a participant in joint ownership of an ancestral estate: see Fügedi, The Elefánthy, 5 and 20-21; see also István Werbóczy, Tripartitum opus iuris consuetudinarii inclyti regni Hungariae / The Customary Law of the Renowned Kingdom of Hungary: A Work in Three Parts, the “Tripartitum,” ed. and trans. Janos M. Bak et al. (Idylwild: Schlacks, 2006), 112ff.

50 See Baum, Kaiser Sigismund, 47-49.

5| DL 34 667; digest in Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi: 3. Közlemény,” 101, doc. 39. See also Kamilo Dočkal, “Srednjovjekovna naselja oko Streze: prilog našoj srednjovjekovnoj topografiji,” Starine 46 (1956): 145-202 at 191-92 and Ritoókné Szalay, Nympha, 27. The king’s donation was issued near the castle of Skalica; regarding Sigismund’s sojourn there, see Pál Engel and and Norbert C. Tóth, Itineraria regum et reginarum / Kiralyok es kiralynek itinerariumai (1393-1438) (Budapest: MTA Törtenettudomanyi Intezeteben, 2005), 80. For this type of donation to several brothers through one of them, see Werbőczy, Tripartitum opus, ed. Bak et al., 108-9 and Rady, Nobility, Land and Service in Medieval Hungary, 101.

52 DL 35 321, digest in Elemér Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi középkori pálos kolostorok oklevelei az Országos Levéltárban: 7. Közlemény,” Levéltári közlemények 10 (1932): 92-123 at 92, doc. 57; DL 34 669, digest in Mályusz, “A szlavóniai és horvátországi: 3. Közlemény,” 102, doc. 41. See also Dočkal, “Srednjovjekovna naselja,” 192.

53 According to DL 34 669, Dennis addressed the king personally in Đurđevac in November 1405, when Sigismund was returning from his campaign in Bosnia (see Engel and Tóth, Itineraria regum et reginarum, 84; regarding the war in Bosnia, see Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, trans. Tamás Pálosfalvi (London/New York: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 2001), 233-34). Dennis also conversed with the bans of Slavonia in Veliki Zdenci in June 1404, while they were on a military campaign (DL 34 668; digest in Mályusz, ""A szlavóniai és horvátországi: 3. Közlemény,” 101-12, doc. 40; see also Dočkal, “Srednjovjekovna naselja,” 192), so it is possible that he was in their army.

54 DL 38 115. See also Pisk, Pustinjaci, 77.

followed Sigismund to some of his wars, maybe to Bohemia, Bosnia,® or other places.57 The only exceptions occurred in 1407, when he was involved in some transactions,°® and in late 1414, when soldiers from a nearby fortress assaulted his sister Helen, pillaged his estates and abducted several of his serfs, so Dennis returned to personally accuse them in the county court.” This was the time when the kingdom was preparing for a great attack on Bosnia, which ended tragically in August 1415.9 Many Slavonian nobles were captured or had trouble returning home after the defeat, and their estates were often pillaged by their more fortunate neighbours.?' The fact that Dennis was present in Slavonia before the campaign might mean that he also took part in it.