Upper Nobility (Kingdom of Hungary) - The Age of Chivalry (14th Century)

The Age of Chivalry (14th Century)

The estates King Charles I Robert acquired by force from the rebellious oligarchs made him possible to introduce a new system in the royal administration: when he appointed his followers to an office, he also granted them the possession of one or more royal castles and the royal domains attached to them, but he reserved the ownership of the castle and its belongings for himself and thus his dignitaries could only enjoy the revenues of their possessions while they held the office. During his reign, the 20 dignitaries who held the highest offices in the royal administration or in the Royal Household obtained the honorific magnificus vir that distinguished them from other nobles.

During his reign, members of new families attained the status of "barons of the realm"; some of the ancestors of the new families (e.g., that of the Drugeths) arrived from abroad and some of them were members of the lesser nobility (e.g., the ancestor of the Újlaki family), but the majority of the new families (e.g., the Garai, Szécsényi and Szécsi families) descended from clans whose members had already held high-offices in the 13th century.

The king introduced a new royal prerogative in 1332 when he entitled Margaret de genere Nádasd to inherit her father's possessions in contradiction to the costums of the kingdom prescribing that daughters can inherit only one-fourth of their father's estates and the other parts of the estates should pass to his agnates. Thenceforward, the monarchs could strengthen the financial conditions of their followers by using the prerogative of "putting her into a son's place" (Hungarian: fiusítás, Latin: præfectio) and thus entitling their wives to inherit their fathers' possessions. King Charles I Robert also set himself against the costums of the kingdom, when he granted landed property to his followers but he stipulated that the property could only be inherited by their descendants and thus he excluded their agnates from the inheritance.

King Charles I Robert endeavoured the implementation of the ideas of chivalry; in 1318, he established the Order of Saint George whose membership was limited to 50 knights. He also set up the body of "knights-at-the-court" (Hungarian: udvari lovag, Latin: aule regiæ miles) who acted as his personal delegates on an ad hoc basis. Thenceforward, most of the "barons of the realm" were appointed among the knights-at-the court. Before being knighted, children of the upper nobility could serve as pages (Hungarian: apród, Latin: parvulus) in the Royal Households, and when they grow up they became "juveniles-at-the court" (Hungarian: udvari ifjak, Latin: aule regiæ iuvenes). King Charles I Robert was the first king of Hungary who granted crests to his followers; the Hungarian word for coat-of-arms (címer) derives from the French expression for the crest (cimier).

In 1351, King Louis I (1342–1382) issued a new decree that modified the Golden Bull and introduced the entail system (Hungarian: ősiség, Latin: aviticitas) when regulating the inheritance of the nobles' estates; according to the new system, the nobles' real property could not be devised by will, but it passed by operation of law to the owner's heirs upon his death. During his reign, the members of the Bebek, Cudar and Lackfi families attained the status of "baron of the realm".