Journal Analele Banatului N.S. Archaeology-History

Dragoș-Lucian Țigău

PROPRIETĂȚILE ARDELENE ALE ABAȚIEI CISTERCIENE DE LA IGRIȘ (SECOLELE XIII–XVI)

Jan. 1, 2022

Abstract

This study analyzes a poorly investigated issue related to the existence of the Cistercian Abbey in Igriș (Timiș County). The usefulness of this step is given by the fact that all real estates and non-land income ensured the daily living of the monks' community and, in certain periods of time, the prosperity of the monastic settlement. The abbey was founded in March 1179, with the approval of Hungarian King Béla III. The monastery was provided in it’s early period of existence with several estates, but the time of donation and their location is unknown. It is only known that before 1224, King Andrew II made an exchange of estates, offering the abbey several estates instead of those he took from it. The first record of an estate (Mănărade, near Blaj) dates back to 1205, but this reference is doubtful, because neither the judicial court that requested the proof in 1367 (during a trial of the abbey) nor any modern historian has actually seen it. The estates of Igriş Abbey are definitely mentioned starting with 1315–1320. The four villages (Cenade, Mănărade, Soroștin and Țapu) were located in Târnava Region, two of them on the right side of the river (Mănărade and Țapu), and the other two being more secluded, a few kilometers far from the first ones. All four localities still exist today. The available testimonies are inconsistent and thus can only point out, in an uneven manner, issues regarding the material, social and spiritual life of the Transylvanian villages, during the three centuries in which they were ruled by the monks in Igriș. However, the discretion of sources cannot hide the fact that the location and the environment favored the development of the abbey’s settlements. The "four good and rich villages", estimated as such in a 1552 report, were always populated by settlers from West and by serfs. The inhabitants of these estates often showed their aspirations for freedom, constantly fighting to defend violated rights and protesting against abuses by authorities, nobles and even by their own master – the abbot of Igriș. The long distance between the abbey and its estates (about 350 km) was one of the reasons why the monks benefited too little from the Transylvanian villages. The same remoteness, associated with the vicinity of the Saxon Seats, made the abbey estates have a special legal status. The abbot’s authority was weak, while the leaders of the Seven Saxon Seats constantly sought to extend their influence over these estates, with the ultimate intention of permanently encompassing them, institutionally and territorially, into the Transylvanian Saxon University (Universitas Saxonum). The royals maintained, for a long time, a balance between the abbey and the Saxons; on the one hand, they observed the property rights of the Cistercian monastery and sanctioned all abuses of the Transylvanian authorities and nobility towards these estates; on the other hand, they gave the Saxons the right to include the villages of the abbey in their fiscal, military, and later religious system, considering that it was the price of an effective protection against intrusions by neighbors. The royals also decided the destiny of the monastic estates, namely the incorporation of the abbey with all its patrimony into the Bishopric of Cenad (1502–1503). This epilogue highlights, once again, the connection between the history of the Cistercian monastic settlement in Igriș and that of the villages it ruled in the Târnava Valley for three centuries.