Scaunele de judecata din comitatul Timis / Judicial Courts in Timis County

Abstract

According to the historiography and to most of the documentary sources, Timişoara was, in the Middle Ages, the most important settlement in the Banat Plain. is can be easy understood not only due to the military importance and strategic situation of the citadel, but also because was here where the Judicial Court of Timiş County was functioning. is institution was intended to regulate and exercise judicial authority at a local level. e judgments performed by this institution referred to the county nobility, being the first court of appeal of the Hungarian kingdom’s judicial system. For the 14th – 15th centuries we managed to identify just over 100 meetings of this institution, where lawsuits were resolved and fines and citations were imposed. e documentary sources that we used in this research were solely acts of this forum, but kept randomly. erefore any statistics on the activity of the judicial court is relative, especially since some historians argue that these institution meetings were held weekly or monthly.