One of the characteristics of early modern society is that the categories of the estate system were more permeable than those in the late Middle Ages. The medieval urban network was transformed after the Ottoman conquests, and some of the former trading centres (Kassa/Košice, Nagyszombat/Trnava, Pozsony/Bratislava, and Győr) took the place of the captured cities of Buda, Pest, and Szeged. The country-wide military operations also brought about a significant movement of population: the inhabitants formerly living in Ottoman-conquered cities fled to new urban centers and the predominance of German burghers was diluted with Hungarians and noblemen. Cities began to allow newly established military and administrative headquarters to settle within their walls, and while the nobles working in administration became accustomed to the urban setting, the local burghers found new career opportunities in these offices. Burghers in administration became the first representatives of the Bildungsbürgertum educated in Western Europe, primarily in German-speaking territories, and their state employment provided opportunities to prove themselves and attain nobility. Enacted in the last decades of the seventeenth century, the state’s new urban policy placed leadership in the hands of new, educated, Catholic employees who were well versed in public administration and economy and were partially legitimized by the state. This new elite was closely affiliated with state administration and was soon largely comprised of civil servants rather than elected representatives. Made up of both noble-born civil servants and newly ennobled burghers, this municipal elite of a rather heterogeneous estate identity soon emerged as a new stratum of society.

Nincs absztrakt.

Nincs absztrakt.

Noble inhabitants of cities make up two groups: those who acquired nobility as city bourgeois (noble bourgeois) and those nobles who, by diverse means, gained possession of houses of the city (city bourgeois). The status of the city bourgeois in free royal cities was always questionable and their presence a constant source of conflict. Although during the 16th century a law was successfully introduced to formulate the local taxation of city nobles, the influence of the county still grew within cities. Moreover, noble house possession went along with much heavier consequences for free royal cities, for these belonged not under the city’s but under royal reversionary jurisdiction. Counties, on the other hand, were not successful in controlling the noble bourgeoisie – an in-between situation some of its members attempted to profit from. However, in their attempts the noble bourgeois rather protected their own interests instead of – hypothetically – denying their bourgeois identity and turning against their cities. Towards the end of the century, counties in some cases succeeded in imposing tax on the noble bourgeois and even obliged them to rise during Rákóczi’s War of Independence (1703-1711). The noble bourgeois, however, generally acknowledged the city and not the county as a responsible authority. All in all, it would be mistaken to think that if a bourgeois gained noble rank, he would give up his bourgeois activity.