Pacta conventa (Croatia): Difference between revisions
Croatian historiography doesnt generally accepts Pacta Conventa as authentic! |
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'''Pacta conventa''' ([[Latin language|Lat.]] ''agreed accords'') was an alleged agreement between King [[Coloman of Hungary]] and the [[Croatia]]n nobility in 1102. It started the [[Croatia in the union with Hungary|Union of Croatia and Hungary]] that would last until 1918. The dynastic strife that followed the [[Battle of Mohács]] in 1526 did not change the legal nature of the pacta after the throne was occupied by [[Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor|Ferdinand I.]]{{Fact}} |
'''Pacta conventa''' ([[Latin language|Lat.]] ''agreed accords'') was an alleged agreement between King [[Coloman of Hungary]] and the [[Croatia]]n nobility in 1102. It started the [[Croatia in the union with Hungary|Union of Croatia and Hungary]] that would last until 1918. The dynastic strife that followed the [[Battle of Mohács]] in 1526 did not change the legal nature of the pacta after the throne was occupied by [[Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor|Ferdinand I.]]{{Fact}} |
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The document titled Pacta Conventa that was supposedly signed in 1102 but not saved was claimed by leading Croatian historians to be a contract stipulating personal union of Hungary and Croatia.<ref name=Oxford>{{cite book|author=Ana S. Trbovich|title=A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2008|isbn=9780195333435|page=87}}</ref> However, even if its authenticity were accepted the document would still not represent anything more than a contract between the |
The document titled Pacta Conventa that was supposedly signed in 1102 but not saved was claimed by leading Croatian historians to be a contract stipulating personal union of Hungary and Croatia.<ref name=Oxford>{{cite book|author=Ana S. Trbovich|title=A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2008|isbn=9780195333435|page=87}}</ref> However, even if its authenticity were accepted the document would still not represent anything more than a contract between the ruler of Croatia, [[King of Hungary]] [[Coloman of Hungary|Coloman]] and his Croatian nobility, so it would not be perceived as an interstate agreement in domain of public international law.<ref name=Oxford/> |
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The earliest text concerning the alleged agreement comes from the second half of the 14th century<ref>Van Antwerp Fine, p. 70</ref> and this version is preserved in a [[Budapest]] museum. Various items of the text seem anachronistic, however, these could be reworkings of a text of an actual agreement.<ref>Van Antwerp Fine, p. 70</ref> |
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According to mainstream historians the validity of the document is questionable.<ref>Van Antwerp Fine, p. 71</ref><ref name=Oxford/> The Pacta Conventa is most likely a late medieval forgery, not a twelfth century source.<ref>Curta, Stephenson, p. 267</ref> Nevertheless, its source of inspiration must have been the political and social developments that had taken place over a 300-year period following the conquests of [[Ladislaus I of Hungary]] and [[Coloman of Hungary|Coloman]].<ref>Curta, Stephenson, p. 267</ref> The Croatian nobility retained its laws and privileges including the restriction of military service that they owed to the king within the boundaries of Croatia.<ref>Curta, Stephenson, p. 267</ref> But it is equally true that the conquest of Croatia transformed Hungary into a major power in the region.<ref>Curta, Stephenson, p. 267</ref> |
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== Circumstances of the agreement == |
== Circumstances of the agreement == |
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Revision as of 18:24, 3 March 2009
Pacta conventa (Lat. agreed accords) was an alleged agreement between King Coloman of Hungary and the Croatian nobility in 1102. It started the Union of Croatia and Hungary that would last until 1918. The dynastic strife that followed the Battle of Mohács in 1526 did not change the legal nature of the pacta after the throne was occupied by Ferdinand I.[citation needed]
The document titled Pacta Conventa that was supposedly signed in 1102 but not saved was claimed by leading Croatian historians to be a contract stipulating personal union of Hungary and Croatia.[1] However, even if its authenticity were accepted the document would still not represent anything more than a contract between the ruler of Croatia, King of Hungary Coloman and his Croatian nobility, so it would not be perceived as an interstate agreement in domain of public international law.[1]
The earliest text concerning the alleged agreement comes from the second half of the 14th century[2] and this version is preserved in a Budapest museum. Various items of the text seem anachronistic, however, these could be reworkings of a text of an actual agreement.[3]
Circumstances of the agreement
After Petar Svačić, the last Croatian king of Croat descent, was killed on the battlefield in 1097, the Croats had refused to surrender. To end this war an idea of agreement was born so that, in 1102, the Croatian nobles decided to conclude the Pacta conventa with King Coloman before his crowning as the Croatian king in Biograd.
The Hungarian king offered "an agreement as pleases them" to the greatest Croatian nobles from the families of Kačić, Kukar, Šubić, Svačić, Plečić, Mogorović, Gušić, Čudomirić, Karinjanin and Lapčan, Lačničić, Jamometić and Tugomirić.
Content of Pacta conventa
The agreement determined that Croatia and Hungary would be governed by the same ruler as two separate kingdoms. When he was crowned in Biograd na Moru, Coloman promised all the public and state rights to the Kingdom of Croatia and some additional rights to the Croatian nobility. The Croats acknowledged Coloman as the king of Croatia and Dalmatia and promised they would help him in war, at their cost on the Croatian side of Drava and at his cost on the Hungarian side.
Coloman and his successors were invested with all the rights of kingship over the Kingdom of Croatia: to appoint the ban, to issue privileges and land grants, to certify the laws voted by the Croatian Parliament, to collect taxes and duties, to own the "royal land" (terra regalis) of the extinct Croat royal dynasty, to have supreme command over the Croatian army and to make foreign policy.
Dispute about the validity of the document
We don't know for sure whether there really had been some sort of agreement in 1102, which produced the text we have or one (now lost) that was slightly or even greatly altered, or whether there merely was a tradition about some sort of agreement, which a forger from around the twelve most influential Croatian noble families exploited, or whether a Hungarian campaign had simply conquered Croatia.[4]
Since the 19th century, a number of Hungarian historians have claimed that Pacta conventa was not a genuine document. Some claim that the document is a forgery found in the Zagreb diocese and published in 1960; Pacta Conventa was written with an idiom used three centuries after its supposed origin, i.e. in the 14th century; Hungarian sources do not mention any "personal union" between Hungary and Croatia. In Hungarian historiography the "forgery theory" is generally accepted. A Croatian proponent of the forgery theory was the Croatian historian Nada Klaić.Though the validity of the document is disputed in Hungary, there was at least a non-written agreement that regulated the relations between Hungary and Croatia in approximately the same way, since Croatia remained a separate crownland and retained its chief institutions such as the Parliament and the ban.
The story about the document was important to support the Croatian position in the Habsburg Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when the Croats claimed their rights on the basis of the agreement.[5]
Footnotes
- ^ a b Ana S. Trbovich (2008). A Legal Geography of Yugoslavia's Disintegration. Oxford University Press. p. 87. ISBN 9780195333435.
- ^ Van Antwerp Fine, p. 70
- ^ Van Antwerp Fine, p. 70
- ^ Van Antwerp Fine, p. 71
- ^ Matjaž Klemenčič, Mitja Žagar (2004). The Former Yugoslavia's Diverse Peoples: A Reference Sourcebook. ABC-CLIO. p. 16. ISBN 9781576072943.
References
- John Van Antwerp Fine (2006). When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans: A Study of Identity in Pre-nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-modern Periods. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 9780472114146.
- Florin Curta, Paul Stephenson (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521815390.