Ajándékok az ifjú párnak Bátori István és felesége, Zsófia mazóviai hercegnő nászajándékai

Abstract

While the surviving historical sources at least occasionally inform us about the dates of aristocratic marriages, they almost completely keep silent about the wedding presents that were exhanged on such solemn occasions. This paper accordingly presents a document, as yet unique of its kind, which also sheds light on the gifts that were offered to the married couple on the occasion of their nuptials.
The marriage of István Bátori, palatine of the Hungarian
Kingdom, and Sophie, duchess of Mazovia from the Polish royal Piast dynasty, is one of the best documented such ceremonies from the medieval period. Alongside the date of the ceremony, we also know the marriage contract, and even some at least of the invitations issued for the later postponed wedding have come down to us. Likewise known is the date of the nuptials that were eventually celebrated two years later, in February 1523, and the names of some of the participants.
All that was missing to round out the picture was a list of the wedding presents that the invited guests offered to the married couple. A recently discovered source, while not containing all such gifts, at least makes us know a major group of them. According to the charter in question, the second husband of duchess Sophie, 'Master of the Table'
Lajos Pekri accused in 1550 András Bátori, magister tavarnicorum of having robbed from the castle of Dévény a great number of valuables, itemized in the document, altogether worth forty-six thousand florins, belonging to Lajos himself, his late spouse duchess Sophie, and his stepdaughter Anna. Fortunately, the list of stolen pieces, garments and jewellery, also contains those presents that had been given to the duchess on the occasion of her first marriage to palatine István Bátori. The uniqueness of the case narrated by the charter sufficiently justifies its publication here in extenso.