engleski

The poor of medieval Zagreb between solidarity, marginalisation and integration

In this article, the authors deal with the urban poor of late medieval Zagreb, especially with the concept of integration of individuals within medieval urban society. Zagreb was at late medieval period the most important free royal city in the kingdom of medieval Slavonia. The city population was gathered from four “ethnic” groups in the sources styled as linguae (Theutonici, Hungari, Latini and Sclavi), but similar in its life-style and culture. Furthermore, Zagreb was situated in the area connecting Central Europe with the Mediterranean, yet mostly belonging to the continental type. Special attention is placed upon questions of integration and/or marginalization of the poor, bearing in mind the existence of the wide networks within the community, those of family and kin, professions and position, space and place in the city. The analysis is based on the sources of normative (royal privileges to the city), theoretical (treatises of fourteenth-century bishop of Zagreb, Augustin Kažotić) and legal-private documents (court and finance records and cadastral books of the city magistrate). The problem can be perceived at several different levels – first of all, one can find mentioning of the poor in the Golden Bull of king Béla IV in the part that explains regulations concerning ius testamentaria. Then, the poor are seen through the functioning of charity expressed through last wills and testaments. The individual poor known by name are also mentioned in Zagreb sources and documents show, that on the one hand some of them were completely integrated into urban community and, on the other hand, that there were professional beggars belonging to the marginal part of that community. There were several hospitals in the area of Zagreb (both in its civil and bishop’s part), out of which three were general ones and one was a leper house situated outside of the town. Finally, poverty can be one of the concepts which entire community used in numerous ways in the various correspondences between themselves and the king(s). To conclude all of the above, the poverty in Zagreb reflects relativity of notions of being poor and being perceived as poor by others.

poor, Zagreb, city, medieval period

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