History and Society in Central Europe, vol. 2, Nobilities in Central and Eastern Europe: Kinship, Property and Privilege.

This is the second volume in a series of English-language occasional papers on East Central European social history, sponsored by the "Istvan Hajnal Circle" [Hajnal Istvan Kor], named after the prominent Hungarian social historian, Istvan Hajnal (1892-1956). The first small volume (98 pp.) of the series appeared in 1991 under the title: History and Society in Central Europe: Vienna - Budapest: Studies in Urban History, edited by Vera Bicskai of the University of Budapest [ELTE]. It contains four studies on the period between 1780 and 1944, which deal with such diverse topics as the making of a modern family in Vienna (Josef Ehmer, University of Vienna), housing and households in Budapest (Tamas Farago, University of Miskolc), use of public space in Budapest (Gabor Gyani, Historical Institute, Budapest), and residential mobility among Orthodox Jewish merchants in Budapest (Aniko Prepuk, University of Debrecen). In their introduction to the first volume, the founding editors stated that "the volumes in this series will address specific aspects of social development in medieval and modern Central Europe ... [focusing] on the region between the German lands and the Byzantine-Russian world ... [with the intention to] explore similarities and differences in this area ... [and] to foster modern methods and approaches of social history." (p. 3) They tried to pursue these goals with the above mentioned four studies, all of which are thought-provoking and done with the above goals and within the above-mentioned guidelines.

Although the editors' original intention was to initiate an annual publication series, the second volume under review had to wait three years and had to be published with the help and cooperation of the Medium AEvum Quotidianum Society of Krems, Austria. Being about twice as bulky as its predecessor, this volume contains eight studies that stretch over nine centuries and cover a wide variety of topics concerning the social history of Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Bulgarian, and Austrian nobilities during the medieval and early modern periods. Four of the studies are by Hungarian historians (three of whom are already deceased), and four by non-Hungarian scholars, who represent the scholarly worlds of Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Canada. They are introduced as far as possible in a chronological time sequence, although their topics tend to overlap chronologically.

The first article is by Joseph Zemlicka of the Czech Historical Institute (Prague), and it deals with the transformation of the Czech elites from tribal aristocracy to landed nobility in the period of the Premyslide dynasty (9th c.-1305). The author demonstrates with several examples how the appointed ducal officials had transformed the castle-estates under their jurisdiction into hereditary landed property by the end of the 13th century.

This is followed by an article on the development of the Hungarian nobility in medieval Transylvania (at that time part of Hungary) by Elemer Malyusz (1898-1989), one of Hungary's great medievalists and the father of the so-called "Ethnohistory School" of Hungarian historiography. Originally written in 1947 and first published in Hungarian in 1988, this study draws a parallel between development of the Transylvanian and the non-Transylvanian Hungarian nobilities, and points to some of the differences derived largely from the "missionary zeal in defending the realm," which characterized the former, but not the latter of these nobilities.

The third article is by one of Malyusz's pupils and a prominent medievalist in his own right, Erik Fugedi (1916-92). It concentrates on the role of kinship and privilege in the social interrelationships within the ranks of late medieval and early modern Hungarian nobility, especially as expressed in the customary law incorporated into Istvan Werboczy's Tripartitum (1514). The author supports his conclusions by specific examples from the family history of the Elefanthy clan.

This is followed by two shorter articles on Bulgarian and Polish history. The first of these is by Kiril Petkov of the University of Velikov Trnovo, who discusses several terms applied to thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Bulgarian nobility - some of them based on wealth, and others on royal service. But he does so without being able to come to definitive conclusions about their specific use. The other article on Polish developments is by Jan Pakulski of Copernicus University in Torun. It deals with the development of clan names in medieval Poland. Pakulski concludes that "in the early stages of clan formation, clan names were not used.... It was only in the fourteenth century that clans began to give themselves names. This applies both to older clans of twelfth century provenance ..., and to new ones.... Some of the smaller clans never evolved a clan name." What is perhaps even more revealing and shocking to some readers, than the lack of clan names for smaller Polish clans, is the assertion that "even the Piast dynasty was labeled 'Piast' [only] by chroniclers of the sixteenth century." (p.93)

The sixth article is by Karin J. MacHardy of the University of Waterloo. It is a heavily documented study that concentrates on social mobility and conflict within the ranks of early seventeenth-century Lower Austrian nobility, as represented by the rivalries between its Catholic and Protestant factions and by the Habsburg dynasty's efforts to introduce confessional conformity and thus transform the province's elite into a pliable tool of Imperial policy. The author suggests that the turmoil within the ranks of the Lower Austrian nobility is an excellent case study for the complexities of social change among early modem European social elite in general.

The seventh article by Istvan M. Szijarto of the University of Budapest [ELTE] examines the social interrelatedness of three distinct levels of the non-titled Hungarian "common nobility" [koznemesseg], whose ranks included the wealthy gentry [bene possessionati], the middle level propertied gentry [birtokos koznemesseg], and the petty nobility [kisnemesseg, curialistak] - the latter of these being either landless or owning only small plots of land. By looking at their marriage customs in Somogy County in Western Hungary, Szijarto recognized that the petty nobility married only locally, the middle level gentry intermarried with similarly ranked families from within the whole county, while the bene possessionati arranged marriages with families from much of Western Hungary, and even from Lower Austria and Carinthia. He believes that this custom clearly demonstrates that the notion of a uniform nobility [una eademque nobilitias = one and the same nobility] was indeed a legal fiction, because in practice even the non-titled nobility was divided into several layers of divergent economic and social importance.

The last article is by the namesake of the "Istvan Hajnal Circle" himself, which was written and published in the early 1940s, and which deals with the process and nature of transformation of an "estate society" into a "class society." The editor of this volume asserts that, even though written fifty years earlier, Hajnal's study can still serve as a model for "doing" good social history. I have no reasons to disagree with him.

All in all, this book on the nobilities of East Central Europe is a worthy volume that deserves the attention of all Western historians who are interested in the region's history. It is hoped that the series will continue with more frequently published substantial volumes.

Steven Bela Vardy Duquesne University