Szabolcs Summary
Szabolcs
Summary
Summary
Szabolcs, one of the oldest Hungarian settlements, lies next to river Tisza, on the North-West edge of the Nyírség. Its area is 5.88 square kilometres, and it is bordering on the Bodrogköz, the catchment plain of the Tisza in the North. It has a loess type of soil, and a moderately warm and dry climate. Its surface is fragmented by the remnants of the Tisza bed, filled up now, and smaller marshy areas. The fields around the village used to be covered by large oak forests back in the XVIII century, and the banks of the river used to be lined with washland forests in a wide strap. Szabolcs had been a fishing village with some agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry until the anti-inundation work began at the end of the XIX century. By now, seventy-eighty percent of its fields is arable land.
The residential and farming buildings of the village were mostly made of the materials found in the washland, earth and adobe, and reeds were used as roofs in the settlement, which then only had one street.
By accident, and via archaeological excavation male tombs with rich, sabres with inlaid gold, and sabretaches covered with gilded silver plates, and female tombs with hair ornaments decorated with turul birds were explored in the vicinity of Szabolcs. Researchers conclude that probably the goldsmith’s workshop, which prepared these objects was right in Szabolcs in the first half of the X century. And as these are the richest funeral findings in the Carpathian basin from the X century, many think that the quarters of the Hungarian rulers could also be here. The graveyard (in Petőfi street) in Szabolcs, which dates back to the time of the foundation of the Hungarian state – the times of chieftain Géza and king Saint Stephen – was the burial place of the people living in the castle, built in the centre of the royal county named after this village.
The theoretical reconstruction of the capital of the county in the Arpadian age – a town in those times – known from legislative acts (the castle, the decanal church, the penitentiary, the store-houses, the prison, the christening church at the foot of the castle, the stables to accommodate run-away animals, the market-place) cannot be fully proven in Szabolcs. The provisions of the diocesan council, which had its meeting here chaired by kind (Saint) Ladislas on May 20, 1092, were outstanding creations in the Hungarian history of law, and came down in history as Code I by king Ladislas.
After the Mongolian invasion – with the disruption of the system of historic counties – the capital town of the county, having lost its role, was donated by king Béla IV to one of the Transdanubian lines of the Szentemágócs dynasty between 1245 and 1266. They took on the name of the place, and first called themselves Szabolcsi, and later Olaszi after a domain received in Zemplén county. With the extinction of the family in 1382, the estate partly went back to the king, who gave it to the Upori family from Zemplén county, and it partly remained in the hands of a family called by sources the Fügedi-Futó-Hegyaljai, and finally Kisfaludi family, which united with the Szabolcsi family by way of marriages. The Fuló part of the family sold their part to the Szakolyi family, who were landowners in Szabolcs county due to a murder committed by the Upories before 1445, and the part belonging to the Upories was confiscated by Matthias (Hunyadi) I with the extinction of the family.
The part owned by the Szakolyies remained in their ownership until the extinction of the family around 1735, and the part over which the king had a donation right was claimed by the female descendants of the Upories with bigger or lesser success. The Bátories and then the Rákóczies obtained the estate in Szabolcs on the principle of might goes before right at the time when one third of the village belonged to the Tokaj domain. Due to the ravage of the Turks, and the burdens of maintaining the castle of Tokaj, the settlement got depopulated by the end of the XVII century.
That is why the village had to be populated with partly Hungarian and partly Ruthenian serfs after the fall of the Rákóczi freedom fight (1711), and thus the village – probably by way of a pecuniary redemption – got to the hands of the Garai, the Tőrös and other families. They brought along their kinship as well, and thus, the village was owned by eight landowners at the beginning of the XIX century, who also settled to live here (the Szemere, Mudrány, Tőrös, Dobozy, Pető, Gúthy and Gogh families).
The village had a golden age again in the 1900-ies. Its medieval church was rebuilt at that time, receiving a new tower, and the village, converted to the reformed faith in the second half of the XVI century, also established a new school. All this was made possible by the last will of András Mudrány who donated his manor house to the reformed church for the purposes of a vicarage in 1892. The renting of his land donated to the church made it possible for the population of the village without land or with a small holding to remain, and not to seek their future in the New World.
The population of the village in 1880 was 651, which amounted to its peak of 831 in 1960. While in the first four decades of the XX century, the Tomory brothers – Zoltán, the landowner chief constable and Dezső the reformed priest – dominated the life of the village, after 1950, the co-operative became the main employer in the village. Its merger with the neighbouring timári, the autonomous administration in 1969, and the loss of the primary school in 1976 made the young generation leave the village and settle elsewhere to find jobs. Szabolcs has become the village of the elderly, and its population now is hardly 460 people.
True that war also marched through the village twice. At the end of July 1919, the soldiers of the Soviet Republic got involved in a fight here with the invading Rumanian troops, which caused serious damages to the building of the reformed church, the lodgings of the teacher, and the priest. And at the end of October 1944, a retrieving German military unit exploded the tower of the church. The medieval church building was fortunatelly not ruined, only damaged. At that time, the front-line was poised on the line of the Tisza for a month, the population was evacuated, and their possessions were used up by the invading Rumanian and Soviet soldiers.
Today, Szabolcs lives from its past. After the archaeological excavations started in 1969, the findings of the county capital from the XI-XIII centuries were built into the memory of first today’s Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg county, and later that of the whole country. Subsequently, the Normann style church with its three aisles founded in the XI century, was reconstructed as a monument (1975–80), and maintenance work was done on the earthwork, which remained in the best state in the whole of the Carpathian basin (continuous since 1992), and the former reformed vicarage was renovated (1978–80), and converted into a museum. These monuments attract the tourists today, although the village is only creating its infrastructure to welcome them. And there are the fabulously beautiful backwaters of the Tisza, the Kerek-tó (Round lake), which represent a significant natural value. The future of Szabolcs depends on how it can preserve them, advertise them and show them in a memorable way.
