Az ország nádora

The office of the palatine was one of the earliest among the offices of the royal court, and the development of its Latin name reflected the changing role of its incumbent. Its history is basically divided into two consecutive periods by the Golden Bull of 1222: before, the palatine had been an officeholder of the royal court and the royal household, from which his separate jurisdiction developed in the course of the 12th century, and gradually became one of the most important courts of justice. The highest secular office-holder after the king, the palatine had been appointed by the ruler right from the outset. This practice, which apparently reflected the dominance of the royal will, changed, at least according to Vilmos Fraknői, during the brief reign of Albert of Habsburg. The second article of the law enacted by the diet and sanctioned by the king in 1439 declared that henceforward the palatine should be appointed at the diet through consensual election by king and nobility. It meant, of course, that from a royal office-holder nominated by the king (comes palatínus regis!palatínus), the palatine was to be transformed into an office-holder of the realm (regni Hungarie palatínus), elected via consensus with the estates. In accordance with the traditions of the age, a transformation of this scale certainly reflected itself in the use of titles. Indeed, such a change of the palatine's intitulatio did take place, but not in the middle of the 15th century; it was roughly a hundred years before, after the death of palatine Vilmos Drugeth (Sept 1342), that his successor in the office, Miklós Zsámboki/Gilétfi, first used the new title (15 May 1343). From this time on he and his successors in the office continuously used the title of regni Hungarie palatínus. Consequently, the palatine's court of justice definitively became a central judicial forum, and the palatine himself was set politically on the course from which he finally emerged as a mediator between the ruler and the estates. What may have been evident for from all this to contemporaries in 1342 was that the election of the palatine should take place at the diet thereafter, and, as a consequence of this election and of the suppression of the palatine's country court, he was consequently palatine of not only the king but also of the realm