Egy negyedévezredes vita az Aranybulla körül

Abstract

The Hungarian noble privileges (e.g. tax exemption) that existed until the mid-19th century restricted the Hungarian kings’ room for manoeuvre, and from the 16th century onwards they were regarded by the rulers as a forced burden. These prerogatives were based on the Golden Bull of King Andrew II of 1222, and from the second half of the 18th century onwards there was a serious legal and historical controversy about the justification of these noble rights. In these writings, which differed in quality, the classical Hungarian conception of law was sought to be challenged and defended. The present paper describes a political attack and the responses to it that took place some 240 years ago, which tried to attack the whole of the noble rights and the Golden Bull with historical and legal-historical arguments. Franz Rudolf Grossing’s work, published in Latin and German in 1786, argues at length and in various ways for the legal invalidity of the Golden Bull, and also suggests that it is in fact a later forgery, and thus invalidates all Hungarian noble prerogatives. Several anonymous and non-anonymous works opposed Grossing’s view, and the influence of Grossing’s work was still felt among Hungarians in the second half of the 19th century.