A kolozsmonostori konvent fejedelemség kori levélkeresői
The "Requisitors'' of the Convent of Kolozsmonostor in the Age of Principality

Summary/Abstract: Beginning with the end of the twelfth century, the more important collegiate and cathedral chapters had undertaken the task of compiling charters and diplomas concerning private legal transactions. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Benedictine, Premonstratensian and knightly orders also participated in the emission of documents and diplomas. Social need for the preservation of documents guaranteeing rights and privileges led to the practice of placing a copy of the emitted diploma or a summary of its contents in the archives of the issuing institutions. Thus, the archives of these so-called „places of authentication” have preserved copies of diplomas and signatures. These copies, in the form of volumes, contained the abbreviated or complete text of the documents issued. Until the secularization in 1556-57, the activity of charter emission had remained largely unchanged, in accordance with medieval Hungarian practice. In his study, the author analyzes the activity of the place of authentication from Kolozsmonostor (Cluj-Mănăştur), in the period following the secularization based on the registers or protocols which preserved the copies and/or the regesta of the documents. Zsolt Bogdándi presents and analyzes the activity of the personal of these institutions, the requisitors (“letter searchers”). He succeeded to collect almost all the important data concerning those, who made the institution of the Convent operational. He concluded that requisitors had served as the prince's familiars, and their service as custos of the archives was remunerated with the grant of estates and – after 1575 - with a regular, established stipend. The requisitors usually had other part-time jobs; some of them were notaries of Kolozs (Cluj) county, others have worked in the administration of the city of Kolozsvár (Cluj). Bogdándi concluded that the „letter searchers” were an important factor of the intellectuality of the Transylvanian principality. Presenting the carrier of these persons we’ll hopefully succeed to understand better the way the Transylvanian state functioned from the second part of the 16th century until the end of the 17th.

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