The study argues that the maternal role was central to the identity of early modern aristocratic women, their wifely duties notwithstanding. Drawing on a close reading of the rich family correspondence, it claims, furthermore, that an intimate relationship and close ties between aristocratic mothers and their adult daughters were possible despite the collective nature of contemporary letterwriting and uses of space. In addition to the nuclear and the lineage family, the cultural context of the mother-daughter relationship was the female court, which created horizontal and intimate ties between women as well as spaces for action. Though the mother-daughter relationship was influenced by the dominant cultural concepts of the loving mother and the dutiful daughter, the relationship was shaped to a large extent through everyday negotiations and the interactions of power and emotions.

Nincs absztrakt.

The study seeks answer for a question that is basically one of source criticism: Did those witnesses who were ordered to appear before the ecclesiastical court in the 1518 Körmend monastery case speak honestly and freely, or under pressure? The question cannot be evaded, since background power relations were extremely one-sided: the witness interrogation record was the product of an investigation in which Tamás Bakócz, archbishop of Esztergom, stood against those Hungarian Augustine monks who were removed by him a year earlier with reference to their lifestyle regarded as unworthy for monks. For such reasons it is definitely worthwhile to examine more thoroughly what made witnesses unanimously condemn the monks – which coincided with the interests of the stronger party. Our methodology goes as follows: we seek for similarities and differences between reality and narrative, foremost by the analysis of form and content of the stories (that we regard as products of remembrance and group communication) told about the monks.