The first issue of World History (Világtörténet) for 2015 is a thematic issue dedicated to the topic of „Medieval Diplomacy and the Holy See” edited by Renáta Skorka has been published.

The official and documented form of the relationship between states existed already in the Middle Ages. The envoys sent out in order to protect the persons and wealth of subjects, to settle armed conflicts, or to establish formal alliances, and in the meantime collecting news and information, acted in the medieval period upon ad hoc commissions, and their tasks were related not to geographical regions but to actual tasks. The foreign policies of medieval powers were entrusted to such occasional diplomats, prelates, monks, merchants, intellectuals or lay aristocrats, who were naturally expected to be familiar and comply with the legal, traditional, cultural and ceremonial rules of diplomatic protocol. It is far from surprising that in the 13th to 15th centuries the most widespread diplomatic relations were nurtured by the Papal state, which frequently intervened on the behalf of individuals or states as a protector, mediator, arbitrator or intriguer. All of these roles are either exemplified or at least hinted at in the papers which appear in this second medieval issue of the review Világtörténet.

CONTENTS

Medieval Diplomacy and the Holy See (Renáta Skorka)

Studies

Gábor Barabás: Duchess Viola of Opole and Coloman, Duke of Slavonia. Contribution to a Historiographical Dispute

Ágnes Maléth: Some Remarks on the Itinerary of Cardinal Gui de Boulogne in Hungary

Dorottya Uhrin: The Dog-headed, Cow-footed Men. Mongolian Words in the Historia Tartarorum

Attila Györkös: “After long and mature deliberation, he accepted the alliance.” Franco–Hungarian Diplomatic Relations in the Late Middle Ages (1457–1490)

Judit Csákó: A Hungarian Master at the Head of the French Heretics? Some Remarks on the Narrative Sources of the Movement of the Pastoureaux in 1251

Workshop

Bence Péterfi : Diplomatic and Political Relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Duchy Bavaria in the 15th and 16th Centuries

Echo

Pál Lővei: King Sigismund in Konstanz, 2014

Book Review

Old “Egregii” (Szabolcs Varga)

Converting to the Context (Andor Kelenhegyi)

Estates and Defence in Croatia and Slavonia in the 16th Century (Szabolcs Varga)

The journal World History is published by the Institute of History of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The four volumes of World History contain essays by Hungarian and foreign scholars on various topics pertaining to world history, as well as reviews on the secondary literature published in Hungary and abroad. The language of the journal is Hungarian, but each article includes an abstract in English.
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