Accessoriness of the Early Modern Pledge

Abstract

Balázs Bodzási, who recently examined the accessoriness of pledge in detail, also in a historical context, concluded that the pledge of Early Modern Hungarian private law was a non-accessory construction, and even cannot really be called pledge according to our modern concepts. A similar opinion had previously been expressed by the jurists Péter Ágoston and Kornél Zalán. Nevertheless, these scholars did not rely on archival sources when formulating their conclusions, for example, they did not examine original contracts or judicial documents. Thus, it seems necessary to include these sources in the research, in addition to the theoretical works of 18th and 19th century jurists, in order to clarify the issue. In my study, I present my conclusions on the basis of my thorough research in the archival sources of the 16th and 17th century Transylvania. The typology developed by the German jurist Dieter Medicus and adopted by Balázs Bodzási serves as a framework for the analysis. According to this typology, accessoriness can be linked to the creation of a right, the scope of a right, the legitimation of the entitled, the foreclosure of a right and the termination of a right. In my opinion, contrary to the consensus in the literature so far, the pledge of the Early Modern era was in fact an accessory right, it was inseparable from the claim, which was secured by it, regarding its creation, existence and termination.