Feldebrő Summary
Feldebrő
Summary
Summary
Feldebrő lies in the Tarna valley, in the east part of Mátraalja. This river valley, which connected the Great Hungarian Plain and the hills, has dominated the history of the village for thousands of years. Its vicinity was populated as early as in the middle part of the prehistoric age, and it is also rich in relics from the Bronze Age and the Avar period. Next to the Avar population, a significant Slavic ethnic group also lived here during the Hungarian Settlement.
The northern peripheral areas of the Plain, together with the land of Feldebrő were most probably invaded by the Kabar tribe, as the eighth tribe joining the Hungarians before the Settlement. The ancestors of the landowner Aba dynasty were also to be found among the Kabars. The dynasty received its name after King Aba Sámuel, who was the person with the most authority among the relatives.
The name of the village was first mentioned in the form of monasterium Debrev in 1219. The settlement, however, is much older. Its church was probably built in the age of Saint Stephen, or right after his death. It was certainly erected after 1018, because according to the Papal tithe list between 1332-37, its protective saint was the Saint Cross, and this was also the time when King Stephen received a cross relic from the emperor of Byzanthium. It can be assumed that the owner of the area, palatine, and later king Aba Sámuel had it built to become the monastic church of the dynasty, and also a burial place – as suggested by the existence of the crypt.
The location name Debrő – that used to be the name of the settlement before Aldebrő was established (1743) – etymologically meant a broad, flat, extended valley in the old Hungarian language. This word also appears in the Slavic languages with a similar meaning.
The Debrői family of the Aba dynasty played a decisive role in the first centuries of the village. The first four members of the family, known by their names were Becse, Makján, Apos, and Makján II, who was the palatine in 1286. Debrő must have been a rich settlement in those times, and managed to retain its character as a domanial centre. According to the Papal tithe list of 1332-35, the parish priest of Debrő was a subdeacon, and was able to pay an annual average of 37 and three quarters of a farthing.
The Debrői – or else the Debrei – family’s glory was fading during the XV century. King Sigismund confiscated the estates of István Debrői, who got entangled in a conspiracy.
In 1438, King Albert donated Debrő and the villages belonging to it to Imre Debrő, gave its other half to Péter Rozgonyi, the bishop of Eger, István Rozgonyi, comes and his son, János. The Rozgonyi family had a castle built next to Debrő – before 1461 – to protect their properties. The military significance of the castle was negligible, it rather served as a domanial centre. The owners of Debrő changed frequently at the end of the XV century: György Kanizsai, Tamás Bakócz, the bishop of Eger, and then Bertalan Bélteky Drágffy, the voivode of Transylvania followed each other.
The occupation of Hatvan by the Turks in 1544, and then the siege of Eger in 1552 came as a turn in the life of Debrő and its vicinity, when the region got almost fully depopulated, and the Turks ruined the castle of Debrő.
After 1560, Debrő – together with the Országh-Perényi estate around Parád – became part of the domain of Ónod.
In 1603, Zsigmond Rákóczi, former commander of the castle, later the prince of Transylvania (1607-1608) bought the castle of Debrő with all its assets, and thus it became the property of the family for more than a hundred years.
The inhabitants of the village paid tax to two lords, to the state and the landlord. The hell of the fifteen year war depopulated the area. Both in 1601 and 1647, only two plots of land, and in 1621 only seventeen serfs were found. The number of the population only started to increase in the 1670-ies, until the times when the wars to recapture the village cast away the people of Debrő once again.
After the emperor’s court declared Ferenc Rákóczi II. disloyal, the village was donated to count Mihály Althan, the lord ruling the settlement in 1710.
After the Turks were expelled, the village was repopulated. According to the property register of 1712, there were twenty serfs with land, and twenty plots of land.
The situation of the domain of Debrő underwent a basic change when baron Antal Grassalkovich, royal Chief Justice, one of the most talented people in XVIII century Hungary bought the domain in 1740. He organised the life of the domain, and had several buildings constructed, among others he also reconstructed the church. The large-scale spending of his off-spring, and the lack of economic expertise contributed to the fall of the domain after an unsuccessful credit deal of two million forints. His estates were placed under guardianship, and later they were bought by count György Károlyi in 1847.
György Károlyi established an estate fail first born, which was confiscated from Mihály Károlyi, his grandson in 1921. Part of the domain started to be controlled by the state, and another part was distributed by way of a redemption in 1925. The people of Feldebrő could redeem a total area of 251 cadastral acres and 995 square-fathoms.
The mini estate under five holds was typical of the property system in the thirties-forties of the XX century. The farming area of Feldebrő of 746 estates under five holds constituted 23.4 percent of the total entail property, while estates with five-hundred holds made 56.8 percent of it.
The growing of tobacco and grapes had an important role in the life of the village for many centuries. In 1997, the wine called Debrői Hárslevelű became protected.
After the Middle Ages, Feldebrő became part of the administrative area of Heves county. After Eger was recaptured (1687), it belonged to the Tarna district of Heves and Outer-Szolnok counties, and later after 1871, it became part of the Central-Tarna district, and then after 1883, it was part of the district of Eger. In February 1, 1950, it was re-assigned to the district of Füzesabony.
The village preserved its medieval settlement structure. Originally it had one street, which broadened out in the middle, around the church, and became a square. Thus, the line of houses embraced the church from two sides, and also the graveyard around the church in the Middle Ages. Today, it is bordering on a road in the north, and has small streets in the south.
Its population started to decrease gradually from the second half of the XIX century. From 1785 (1175 people = a hundred percent) throughout the following 210 years until 1995, the population of the village only grew by 56 people (1231 people, 104.7 percent).
The population of Feldebrő throughout its history could be considered to be purely Hungarian. Only few German and Slovakian families moved in until today. The majority of its people follow the Catholic religion.
The ordinary looking baroque church standing on the small elevation in the middle of the village, next to the main road, hides a building, which is unique in Europe. The remains of the unparalleled central baroque church from the XI century, and its contemporary crypt decorated with frescos from the XII century, still intact and beautiful, are almost unique in Norman style architecture.
The infrastructure of the village had a jump-like development in the past decades. Several public buildings (school, library) and public utilities were built from own budget and with state grants. Since 1990, the water supply pipeline system reached almost all places. As a result of the gas investment started in 1993, 70 percent of the population could use this heating material by the end of 1997. In 2000, already three-quarters of the apartments were connected to the crossbar telephone system.
