A pozsonyi társaskáptalan kanonokai 1425-ben : az egyházi archontológia készítésének módszertana és gyakorlata

The current paper wishes to provide a methodological mainstay to the practice of drawing up church archontologies with the example of the St. Martin collegiate chapter of Bratislava. The choice feli on this community not accidentally. The hostility between the canons and the new prevost appointed in 1421, László Sóvári Sós became continuous after 1422. As a result of this the body took legal action in 1424 before the vicar of Esztergom against its prelate. The trial concluded on the 20th of January 1425 with the decision of the judges appointed by the archbishop of Esztergom and archbishop György Pálóci's confirming charter dated on the 30th of March. Dealing with the trial the identification of the canons involved in the discord and the compilation of their prosopographic database became necessary. As such database was not available, the author himself had to compile it. During this work it became obvious, that for learning all canonicat-wearing people's name in a given year (it means 14 people in the case of the chapter of Bratislava), the period of data collection had to be extended to the previous and following years. In this case the author has examined the sources from 1408 till 1437. TTius all 14 members of the chapter in 1425 could be identified and additionally the archontology of the canons and officials (such as custos, decanus) of the collegiate chapter was compiled (see the appendix). Sharing somé "regularities" promoting identification understood during this work, however, is inevitable to support further research. First of all: as there are more canons with the same first name who occur in the same charter, then they are noticeably distinguished in a way. The same is observable in most - and more frequent - cases when prebends with the same first name arise in different charters: a distinctive sidename or a name referring to the place of origin is indicated. Moreover, as driven from the current experience a full reconstruction of the body in a given year requires the examination of the sources dated at least ten years prior to and following the date aimed. The reason for this can be easily explained: the politically inactive majority of the canons usually enjoyed their benefice for an extensive period, mostly until their death, nevertheless their names are mentioned in the sources infrequently. Relying on the database we could demonstrate, that in Bratislava the average time spent by one in the same benefice is approximately 15 years, though spendig 30 years was alsó common