The Szekler Tizes as an Autonomous Village District and Neighborhood Community

Abstract

AbstractThe Hungarian ethnographic group known as the Szekler people live in the Eastern Carpathians, a mountainous area that formed the eastern border of historical Hungary prior to 1920, and since 1920, with a minor interruption, the center of Romania. The traditionalist Szeklers designated those village districts that enjoyed ethnic autonomy by the name tizes (tenth). The author of the present study endeavors to illustrate, on the basis of written documents, the nature of the tizes as a Szekler village district and neighborhood community and how it functioned in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. In Szekler villages in the modern era, a village district was considered to be a genuine tizes if it had a tradition of self-governance and a variable level of autonomy, and if it was regarded as a self-governing unit of the settlement and society. The population of the tizes formed a local social, neighborhood group, whose sense of the tizes was consistent with the village-level consciousness of other, similar groups. From a settlement perspective, the village comprised several tizes, each one a unit of the settlement. In social terms, the village community was a combination of several tizes communities. In most cases, the Szekler tizes in the modern era had a distinguishing name, an elected leadership, property, basic self-governance, policing and penal jurisdiction, and its own records and administration. In the 17th to 19th centuries, the village districts and neighborhood communities designated by the word tizes may have owned property (e.g., forests, pastures, meadows), animals (bulls, boars), work-related equipment and objects (plow, drill, fire-fighting equipment, chest, stamp, documents), buildings and institutions (church, chapel, cemetery, school, cultural center, cross), and employees (bellringer, forester, herder). In most Szekler inhabited regions in the early 21st century, reminders of the former tizes are to be found only in the form of geographical names and vernacular data. The traditional form, role, and function of these historical autonomous village districts are best preserved in the region once known as the county of Csík in the former Kingdom of Hungary (now Ciuc, Romania). In the merged villages of Csíkszentgyörgy (now Ciucsângeorgiu, Romania) and Csíkbánkfalva (now Bancu, Romania) there are eight functioning tizes still in existence in the third decade of the 21st century. For this reason, the life of the tizes of Csíkszentgyörgy and Csíkbánkfalva has been chosen as the subject of the present study.