ABSTRACT
It is a particular and characteristic feature of medieval Hungarian urban development that foreign guests (hospites) contributed to a great extent to the creation of towns, once the necessary level of economic and social development was reached. In fact, municipal liberties in Hungary grew out of the privileges of the hospites, who were placed outside the realm’s normal administrative and judicial machinery. Since the guests enjoyed a number of privileges already in their original homelands, these were respected, and in many cases expanded, by the Hungarian kings. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries these settlers came primarily from Flanders, northern France (Walloons), Lorraine and Lombardy. Since they were Romance-speaking people, the Hungarian sources in the Latin language referred to them as Latini, Gallici and Italici. They were followed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries by Germans (Teutonici and Saxones). From the second part of the thirteenth century, German ascendancy became obvious in most of the towns of the Hungarian Kingdom. The presence of the Latin guests, however, cautions us that town laws in Hungary should not be regarded as a pure German law, and in the evolution of Hungarian urban liberties and laws a variety of impacts can be traced.1
