Apáti Andornok
Andornok of Apát

Summary/Abstract: In 1232, a group of lesser nobles – in contemporary terminology: royal servants (servientes regales) – from Zala county issued a charter about a possessory action they witnessed. The charter was first analyzed as a source for the 13th-century development of the county system, but recently more attention has been paid to the social historical aspects of the document. The paper makes an attempt to identify the person who, as a representative (pristaldus) of the royal servants, tried unsuccessfully to execute the sentence delivered in the case. It finds that the person mentioned by the name of Andornok from the village Apáti (Ondornuch de Apath) was a member of a landowner family living in the village Egyházasapáti, or as it is today called, Nemesapáti, who himself was one of the relatively wealthy, but not quite noble landowners of Zala county. His son, bearing the same name of Andornok, joined the landlords Kőszegis controlling the main part of West Hungary in the 1270s and thus became an adversary of King Ladislaus IV (1272–1290), but in 1274, he surrendered to the king and transferred the ownership of his castle to him. The castle, not named in the sources, can most probably be identified with the castle of Kemend, near Apáti, of which the first known mention is from 1328. But the history of the Apátis seems to suggest that the castle had already existed in 1274, and its founder could be the son of our Andornok mentioned in the 1232 charter, Andornok.

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