Hungarian Diet of Estates

Estates Assemblies were in the Hungarian kingdom 1222-1848 until the representatives of Parliament established in June of 1848 and reestablished in 1867. In addition to the lords and church leaders, the Hungarian nobility and representatives of the free royal cities also had a seat in the Estate 's assemblies. The monarch convened, introduced and ratified the laws, but they were already discussed by the Estates.

Pre-Assemblies

The leaders and kings of Hungary called upon assemblies sometimes if the ruler had to request the support of the people of the country but these were sometimes and mostly the nobility(the free warriors of the country) took a part of these. There were the infamous assembly during the regime of Bela II. in Arad, in 1141 where:

Queen Ilona,[wife of Bela II. the Blinded] having consulted with the king and the nobles, called a general assembly in Arad. On the day of the assembly, when the king was sitting on the throne, the queen came with her sons, sat down next to the king and said to the people: ‘My faithful, nobles, old and young, rich and poor, listen here! God has given you all the gift of sight, I want to know why your king is deprived of it? By whose advice did this happen? Tell me, and then take revenge on them, and finish them off.’ Hearing these words, the whole people attacked the lords who had taken part in blinding the king. Some were tied up, others were beheaded. Sixty-eight evildoers were cruelly killed there, and even their relatives on the male and female lines were massacred.

The most important Assembly was in Fejérvár(Székesfehérvár) where the Golden Bull, the first Hungarian " Bill of Rights" of the nobility declared in 1222.

From the 13th century, legislation was a joint right of the king and the Assemblies . This remained the basic principle of the later constitution of the orderly society. After the extinction of the Árpád dynasty(1301), the king was elected by the Assemblies(or lords who ruled them) in several cases (the right of free election of the king).

The Assemblies after the middle of 1200's was initially composed of the lords and the archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic church.

Official titles

During the Middle Ages, the most common Latin name for the assembly for internal use was Congregatio Generalis, i.e. general assembly. Congregatio Generalis was the dominant name for Hungarian state assemblies from the end of the 12th century until the beginning of the 16th century, occurring only in Latin-language documents intended for official domestic use.

Although very rarely, the name Parlamentum Publicum / Parlamentum Generale was also in domestic use in Hungary from the beginning. However, it is worth knowing about parliament that this became the exclusive name from the beginning only in diplomatic or foreign correspondence, so that the term more common in Western Europe served for easier understanding. So the word parliamentum is of Latin origin, but the French mediation was decisive in its spread in the political and legal sense. The word comes from the classical Latin form parlamentum, which is formed from the verb parlare (“to speak, to discuss”). In ancient times, it originally meant "conversation, consultation, debate."

French mediation in our Latin legal language: from the 12th century in France, the term referred to the French royal or regional judicial and advisory bodies called Parlement (e.g. the Paris Parlement, which served mainly to authenticate royal decrees).

The latest term, Diet, which began to flourish from the Jagiellonian era, is also a word of Latin origin (in ancient times, "diaeta" meant "agenda, meeting, lifestyle"). However, the term Diet spread to Hungarian legal language through German influence and mediation - the term came from the practice of the Holy Roman Empire (Reichstag "Diät").

From the 13th century, the term "dietas imperiales" ("imperial meetings") often appeared in Latin-language imperial documents, or the phrase "Reichstag Diät" was common in German-language documents. Kurfürstliche Diät - assembly of electors, German name for regional meetings of the order. Stände- oder Landdiät – provincial, local estate assemblies; e.g. with the participation of a provincial nobility and cities.

In Jagiellonian Hungary, the term Diet was therefore not directly official as the original classical Latin word, but rather as a Latin term adapted through German imperial patterns.

Also in the Jagiellonian era - simultaneously with the term diet - the word "országgyűlés" began to appear and then spread in early Hungarian-language correspondence and written sources.

Development of the Assemblies

In royal Hungary, by the end of the 15th century, during the development of feudal society, social groups with equal rights and obligations, the "orders", gradually separated: first 3 estates (nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie), then with the division of the noble order into two, 4 orders were created by the 1606: high nobility(and clegry) in "Upper House"(House of Lords), common nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie "House of Down" (House of Commons), and this order stratification persisted until 1848.

The legislature of the estate state was the estate (parliament) assembly, which, unlike before, included not only the lords and church leaders, but also the representatives of the Hungarian nobility and the free royal cities.

The estate assembly was convened by the ruler, and he had the right to dissolve it. He submitted and ratified the laws, but they were already discussed by the estates. The estate parliament was not an institution that met continuously every year. The rulers called or did not call a parliament depending on the political situation, their interests, and the pressure of the estates, and there was often no parliament for years. In the Hungarian estate parliaments, the nobility played the decisive role among the estates, while the role of the clergy and especially the bourgeoisie was more of a supplementary one.[3]

An important basis for the parliamentary system was the noble county, the county self-government institution of the nobility that emerged from the 13th century, whose members won their office through elections.

The single-tabled estate parliaments (from the late 1400s – 1608)

Until the 15th century, the members of the Hungarian Diet continued their deliberations together, “at one table” (figuratively “at one table”). Later, within the unified nobility, the high nobility (princely nobility; princes, counts, barons) and the common nobility gradually separated, and the common nobility acquired its own right to send envoys. At the same time, the Royal Council, which met during the Diet, had already outlined the upper table, which became permanent from the 17th century: in practice, the two deliberations increasingly functioned as two tables of the Diet. These negotiations were also conducted separately according to location. In 1526, the Diet of Székesfehérvár was held under the open sky by the orders, the lords in the provost's building, and in the Diets of Pest in 1559 and 1565, the lower table session was held in the Franciscan monastery, and the upper table session was held at the primate's.

In 1608, the parliament was finally officially divided into "two boards(tables)", at which time the parliament of the estates became bicameral.(House of Lords and House of Commons).

After the Ottoman occupation of Buda in 1541 and the fall appart of the country into three parts, the parliaments of royal Hungary under Habsburg rule were most often convened in Pozsony (Pressburg or since 1918 Bratislava or occasionally in Sopron).

Separate Transylvanian asseblies were held in the Principality of Transylvania since 1437 by 3 nation: Hungarians, Seklers and Saxons, and then in Transylvania, which was separately governed by the Habsburgs from the 18th century. Romanians demanded to receive position in these assemlies.

In the territory under Ottoman rule, the country was governed according to the system established by the Ottoman Turkish Empire but they were not able to prevent the local reprrsentatives to travel to Pozsony.

Introduction of a two-chamber parliament (1608)

In 1608, the bicameral system was introduced in the Hungarian parliament, separating the Upper House and the Lower House (House of Commons). The members of the Upper House were the nobles and high priests, by birth or office. Delegates elected by election at the sessions of the House of Commons represented the other estates mostly the lower nobility.

Only members of the county nobility, who made up 5% of the total population of voting age, and delegates from free royal cities, who made up 5%, were eligible to vote for county delegates in the lower parliament.

The number of delegates was not proportional to the population either: each county was entitled to one vote from the county nobility, while the delegates from the free royal cities, the clergy, and the districts only had one vote each.

Thus, the majority of the lower house of the estates consisted of representatives of the county nobility. They were elected by the county nobility in the county hall, after a courtier campaign, in the county elections. The candidates were accompanied and assisted by professional courtiers. For the final decision, a crowd of nobles supporting the candidates gathered at the county hall: most of them listened to the noise outside through the open windows and supported their candidate with cheers from time to time according to the signals of the courtiers standing in the window. The noble crowd that entered the assembly hall engaged in a loud debate, which was accompanied by cheers and hooting led by the courtiers. The final decision on the candidates was made, according to the traditional rule, based on the opinion of the majority: there was no vote counting, but the majority was estimated based on the volume of the shouting of the (noble) crowd supporting the candidates.[2] The elected county envoy was given instructions and could be recalled.

The parliament of the Kingdom of Hungary in the 17th–18th centuries usually consisted of about 500 people.

The operating principle of the Diet

At first the local counties' assemblies made decisions and that was obliged to vote by their representatives in the House of Commons where they voted the issues. The House of Commons forwarded its decision in the form of a message to the Upper House (House of Lords) and they accepted or sent it back for reconsideration, an unlimited number of times if they did not like the proposal. If the Upper House accepted it, they sent it to the king who had to accept as well or refused and sent it back for modification an unlimited number of times. If everyone accepted the proposal in this line it was ratified as an Article in the law system of Hungary.

This greatly slowed down the decision-making process, because the lower and upper boards exchanged messages (in the form of inscription and transcript proposals) until a common position was reached.

The end of the parliamentary system of estates

During the reforms of 1848, Act V of 1848 introduced the individual, single-round, relative majority electoral system, in which Hungarian men over the age of 20 who met the property census had the right to vote. The age limit for eligibility was 24 years, and the condition was Hungarian citizenship and knowledge of the Hungarian language.

Further reading

• Diet of Hungary

Bibliography

• Dobszay, Tamás: A rendi országgyűlés utolsó évtizedei (1790–1848) (Országház Könyvkiadó, 2019) ISBN 9786155948060
• Amikor Sopronra figyelt Európa. Az 1625. évi soproni koronázó országgyűlés; szerk. Dominkovits Péter, Katona Csaba, Pálffy Géza; MNL GYMSM Soproni Levéltár–BTK TTI, Sopron–Bp., 2020 (Annales Archivi Soproniensis)
• Egy elfeledett koronázás a reformkorban. Az utolsó pozsonyi uralkodókoronázás 1830 őszén; szerk. Soós István; MTA BTK Történettudományi Intézet, Budapest, 2017 (Magyar történelmi emlékek. Értekezések)
• Hende, Fanni: Politikai reprezentáció a magyar országgyűléseken 1687 és 1765 között; Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Bp., 2021
• Szijártó M. István: A diéta. A magyar rendek és az országgyűlés, 1708–1792; 2. jav. kiad.; Balaton Akadémia, Keszthely, 2010
• Szijártó, M. István: A 18. századi Magyarország rendi országgyűlése. Budapest, Országház Könyvkiadó, 2016
• Pálmány, Béla: A magyar rendi országgyűlések történeti almanachja, 1790–1812, 1-2.; Országgyűlés Hivatala, Budapest, 2019
• Rendi országgyűlés, polgári parlament. Érdekképviselet és törvényhozás Magyarországon a 15. századtól 1918-ig; szerk. Dobszay Tamás et al.; Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár–Eszterházy Károly Egyetem. Budapest–Eger, 2020
• Fazekas István-Gebei Sándor- Pálosfalvi Tamás: Rendi országgyűlések a Magyar Királyságban a 18. század elejéig. Budapest, Országház Könyvkiadó, 2020
• Szijártó, M. István: A diéta II. A 18. századi politikai elit társadalom- és kultúrtörténeti megközelítésben; Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár, Budapest, 2021