The royal forests of the Árpáds in the eleventh and twelfth centuries

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper deals with the royal forests in the kingdom of Hungary. Few sources have survived from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and it is therefore difficult to find any references to the forests of the Árpád dynasty. For this reason, research on medieval royal forests in Western Europe informs the interpretation of what information there is and shapes a comparison with the situation in the kingdom of Hungary. The ways in which royal forests are mentioned in medieval sources has allowed some of them to be identified in the context of dynastic estates, along with royal foresters or hunting servants. Isolated references to the regale, the monarch's exclusive right to hunting and fishing, also illuminate the study.