Birtoköröklés és leánynegyed. Kísérlet egy középkori jogintézmény értelmezésére
Inheritance of Landed Property and Filial Quarter: An Attempt for Interpretation of a Medieval Hungarian Legal Institution

Summary/Abstract: The main purpose of the paper is to describe the development and functioning of a peculiar Hungarian legal institution, the so-called filial quarter from the thirteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth century. Filial quarter was a kind of compulsory share due to noblewomen from the landed properties of their fathers. They were not to receive their quarter in landed property, however, since customary law prohibited land donations to women. This prohibition was principally due to the special hereditary system of the Hungarian nobility, in which every member of the kindred had hereditary rights in the estates that were inherited from their common ancestor. This system strongly prohibited the alienation of estates, and, consequently, land donations to women, since the estates given to them would have passed to another kindred with their marriage. The filial quarter appeared abruptly in the sources in the first half of the thirteenth century, first in a royal decree from 1222, and a few years later in charters as well. It had a strong customary character already at that time, which seems to imply that its formation had begun earlier. Several suggestions have been made with regard to its origins, from the possibility of an origin in Roman law to the idea that it was the result of the internal development of Hungarian customary law. In the absence of earlier sources, however, neither of these suggestions can be corroborated or rejected.[...] It not only allowed but actually preferred the consent of the parties or arbitration to judicial decision. Disputes were settled by consent or arbitration in the majority of the filial quarter cases. The actual interests and needs of the parties influenced the result to a great extent. The most important of these interests and needs was probably familial affection: the father wanted to provide for his descendants, his daughters as well as his sons, even if this injured the “solidarity” of the kindred and the interests of his collateral relatives. The results of the present study have two main implications. The first is that the "solidarity" of the kindred was not as strong as customary law and traditional historiography suggest. As recent social historical researches have also shown, the collective hereditary rights of the kindred were often limited by other interests of the individual members. In order to understand better the structure of medieval Hungarian nobility and the changes in this structure, these modifying factors should also be taken into consideration. The other important implication is that our view of the social position of medieval noblewomen must also be modified. The inheritance and the possession of land apparently secured some power for women, and this power has never been examined by historians; the practice of giving out the quarter in land would indicate that women were not always in such a subordinate position in their families as has previously been assumed.

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