The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 06: (From Barbarossa to Dante)
Dante Alighieri · en
3. "That though the 'nobiles' and franklins shall be bound to do
military service at their own expense, it shall not be legal to force
them to cross the frontier of their country. In a foreign war, the
king shall be bound to pay the knights and the troops of the counties.
4. "The king has no right to entail whole counties and the high
offices of the kingdom.
5. "The king is not allowed to farm to Jews and Ishmaelites his
domains, the taxes, the coinage, or the salt mines."
The Golden Bull comprised thirty-one chapters, and seven copies were
made and delivered into the keeping of the Knights of St. John, the
Knights Templars of Hungary and Slavonia, the King, the Palatine, the
archbishops of Gran and Colocza, and the Pope. The thirty-first clause
gave every Hungarian noble a right of veto upon the acts of the king
if unconstitutional. This clause was, however, supposed to give an
undue power to the people, and was revoked in 1687.
Those magnates who, by the Golden Bull, were compelled to return the
land unjustly alienated by King Andrew, formed a conspiracy to
overthrow the monarchy, abolish the constitution, and divide the land
among themselves. The conspiracy was discovered in time to prevent its
execution, but Andrew lost courage and did not venture to insist on
his refractory nobles fulfilling their part in the conditions of the
Great Charter. He was, however, compelled to ratify it in a diet held
in Beregher Forest, in 1231, where the Golden Bull was signed and
sealed with all solemnity in the city of Gran.
Andrew married for a third time in his old age, Beatrice, daughter of
the Marquis d'Este, and died in 1234. During his reign the court was
first held at a fixed place of residence; it was not only composed of
prelates and magnates, but was frequented by learned men, educated at
the schools of Paris and Bologna, as well as within the kingdom. The
cities acquired importance about this period, and the condition of the
serfs underwent some amelioration.
RUSSIA CONQUERED BY THE TARTAR HORDES
ALEXANDER NEVSKI SAVES THE REMNANT OF HIS PEOPLE
A.D. 1224-1262
ALFRED RAMBAUD
Russia was for centuries the chief power of the Slavic race.
On its plains and amid the neighboring lands they
established a civilization and went through a development
not unlike those which transformed Western Europe during the
Middle Ages. Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman
civilization and Christianity from the South. The Northmen
had brought her an organization which recalls that of the
Germans; and under Yaroslaff, 1016-1054, like the West under
Charlemagne, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity,
while she was afterward dismembered and divided like France
in feudal times.