Upper Nobility (Kingdom of Hungary) - The Rule of The Barons' Leagues

The Rule of The Barons' Leagues

Following the death of King Louis I, his daughter Queen Mary I (1382–1385, 1386–1395) acceded to the throne, but the majority of the nobles opposed her rule. In 1385, the young queen had to abdicate in favor of her distant cousin, King Charles II (1385–1386), but her partisans murdered the new king soon and thus she could ascend the throne again. However, the followers of her murdered opponent's son, King Ladislaus of Naples rose up in open rebellion and captured her; thus the realm stayed without a monarch.

At that moment, the prelates and the "barons of the realm" set up a council; they have a seal prepared with the inscription "Seal of the People of the Kingdom of Hungary" (Latin: Sigillum regnicolarum regni Hungariæ) and issued decrees sealed by it in the name of the "prelates, barons, notabilities and all nobles of the realm". The members of the council entered into a contract with Queen Mary's fiancé and elected him king; in the contract, King Sigismund (1387–1437) accepted that his

The contract also recorded that the king and his counsillors would form a league and according to their contract, the king could not dismiss his counsillors without the consent of the other members of the Royal Council. The contract suggests that the members of the Royal Council endeavored to strengthen the hereditary character of their position. The first league was led by the Palatine Stephen II Lackfi and the Archbishop John Kanizsai, but the latter could drive the former out of the power in 1397. However, King Sigismund favorized his counsillors of foreign origin (e.g., his favourite was the Polish Stibor of Stiboricz) which resulted in his imprisonment, in 1401, by the discontent members of the Royal Council led by the Archbishop John Kanizsai, but he managed to conclude a new agreement with some members of the Royal Council who set him free.

The public law of the kingdom also started to differentiate the descendants of the "barons of the realm", even if they did not held any higher offices, from other nobles: the Act of 1397 referred to them as the "barons' sons" (Hungarian: bárófi, Latin: filii baronum) while later documents called them "magnates" (Hungarian: mágnás, Latin: magnates). From the 1430s, the "magnates" received the honorific magnificus, an expression that had earlier been used only when addressing the "barons of the realm".

During his reign, King Sigismund granted several royal castles and the royal domains attached to them to the members of the barons' leagues; by 1407, the number of royal castles decreased from 111 to 66. The king, however, wanted to strengthen his position and for this purpose, in 1408, he founded the Order of the Dragon, a chivalric order whose 22 members (e.g., the Palatine Nicholas II Garai, count Hermann II of Celje and the Despot Stefan Lazarević) swore fidelity to the king, his queen and their future children.

Some signs of the increasing self-consciousness of the "magnates" appeared in the 1420s. Some of them commenced to use names that referred to the high office their ancestors had held; e.g., the members of the Losonci family started to call themselves Bánfi meaning the "son of a Ban" in reference to their forefather who had been the Ban of Dalmatia and Croatia. Other magnates clearly referred to their descent from former "barons of the realm" in their deeds or used noble titles (such as "count" or "duke") abroad following the example of the western nobility although the public law of the kingdom did not accept their claim to distinctive titles.

When King Sigismund's son-in-law, Albert I (1437–1439) was proclaimed king, he had to take a solemn oath that he would exercise his prerogative powers only with the consent of the Royal Council. Following King Albert's death, a civil war broke out between the followers of his posthumous son, King Ladislaus V (1440–1457) and the partisans of his opponent, King Vladislaus I (1440–1444). Between 1440 and 1458, the Diet was convoked in each year (with the exception of 1443 and 1449) and it was involved in the legislative process of law-making: the bills were passed by the Diet before receiving the Royal Assent. When the monarch (or the regent) convoked the Diet, he sent a personal invitation to the prelates, "barons of the realm" and "magnates" and they attended in person at the assembly, while other nobles were usually represented by their deputies. Consequently, the Diets were dominated by the "magnates" not only because of their personal presence, but also because of the tendency that the counties elected their partisans as their own delegates.

In 1445, the Diet elected seven Captains General (Hungarian: főkapitány, Latin: generalis capitaneus) in order to govern the kingdom during the absence of King Vladislaus I (who actually had fallen in the Battle of Varna). In 1446, the assembly of the Estates proclaimed John Hunyadi to Regent and he was to govern the realm in cooperation with the Estates until 1453 when King Ladislaus V returned to the kingdom.

John Hunyadi was the first temporal "magnate" who received a hereditary title from a king of Hungary: in 1453, King Ladislaus V appointed him the hereditary head (Hungarian: örökös főispán, Latin: hæreditarius comes) of Beszterce county (now Bistriţa in Romania) and thus he became a count in the sense similar to the title's usage in the western countries. Although, some of the immigrant "magnates" had already used honorary titles before and they were often mentioned even in official documents with a reference to their title, but their title was granted by foreign monarchs and the public law in the Kingdom of Hungary did not recognize any special privileges connected to it.