The Urbarium of Maria Theresa in the languages of the South Slavic peoples of the Hungarian Kingdom
The Urbarium of Maria Theresa in the languages of the South Slavic peoples of the Hungarian Kingdom

Summary/Abstract: It was the study of Slovakian and Rusyn (Ruthenian) handwritten and printed source documents of socage tenure regulation that led me to the Southern Slavic printed documents of the same regulation issued by Maria Theresa in Hungary. The urbarium of Maria Theresa which was introduced during the process of socage tenure regulation circumscribes all the potentially relevant aspects of the relationship between the landlords and the villeins. The document comprises nine chapters, or articles (punctom), which are further broken down to passages or paragraphs. For example the ninth chapter of the socage tenure regulations prescribed the ways available for submitting complaints and applications to the manorial court and appeals to the county court, and set the regulations for the election of village mayors, village notaries, and the village mayor’s counsellors. Below, I will give a general outline of the orthography of the socage tenure regulations in Southern Slavic languages dating from the time of Maria Theresa and I will also focus on the marking of a few so-called “critical sounds”. It is a known fact that the use of Hungarian orthography was fairly widespread and popular with our neighbors, too.

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