hrvatski

Una communitas varie “lingue”. Multiethnic character of the urban settlements in medieval Slavonia

The foundation of the urban settlements of medieval Slavonia, which was part of the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, is connected with the wider European process of colonization and economic transformation, as well as with the interests of rulers and secular or ecclesiastical lords, and they reflected Central-European pattern of development. Their population mostly consisted of merchants and artisans, who came in these settlements searching for business opportunities and better life. Because of that, these urban settlements were the melting pots of settlers of different origin (there were settlers from the closer surrounding of the city, but also from other parts of present-day Croatia ; from Italy, German lands, Hungary). The paper tries to demonstrate how the multiethnic character of these settlements influenced the life in them and how their population in the same time shows particularities grounded in the ethnic origin and unity grounded in common life. The main emphasis of the paper is placed on the free royal city of Gradec (part of present-day Zagreb), the most important of these settlements, in which this diversified composition of the population received its embodiment also within the organisation of government, even though only for a shorter period (1377 till 1437), when the city magistrate was divided in four linguae (lingua Sclavonicali, lingua Hungaricali, lingua Latinorum and lingua Thetonicorum). But, on the example of Gradec, as well as the other Slavonian urban settlements (in first place Varaždin), it is also demonstrated how these groups were not segregated, which may be seen from the fact that they intermarried, became friends and worked together, and how they all made a urban community, which acted as one both on the internal and external plane.

urban settlements, Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia, medieval Slavonia, Middle Ages, multiethnic character, immigration

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