ABSTRACT
Medieval accounting books kept at the court of the Hungarian rulers were destroyed in 1526 after the battle of Mohács. Except two fragments of accounts from the years 1525 and 1526 only one volume of the register of income and expenses is currently at disposal – register from the years 1494–1495. This study is a complex content analysis of this accounting register. Three main questions were necessary to be asked: 1. What is the manuscript (circumstances of its origin)? 2. What did the structure of the income of Hungarian kings look like? 3. Which of these royal incomes were registered in the surviving register? Concluded, the register from the years 1494–1495 is not the product of a continuously maintained accounting agenda. In fact, it is a compilation of various accounting registers, compiled by officials of the Hungarian royal treasury in association with the investigation of the royal treasurer Sigismund Ernuszt, accused of financial embezzlement. Only some kinds of income and expenditures of the Hungarian king were recorded on the pages of this account book. The numerical data offered by the accounting source can therefore not be accepted separately and uncritically.
