THE PRICE OF FIDELITY

During his reign King Sigismund of Luxemburg(1387-1437) awarded the loyalty of his followers withdifferent types of privileges; coats of arms wereamong the most popular. Up to this point no approachfrom social history has been applied for this sourcecategory. The aim of this interdisciplinary researchis to study the phenomenon of granting nobles fromTransylvania with grants of arms. On the basis ofvisual and written source material and secondaryliterature the following questions are discussed:why was this privilege so popular who could receiveit and why how do the coats of arms look like andwhether it can be stated that this award could assuregood relations between royalty and nobility. Thefirst part of the work examines the structure of thegrant of arms focusing on the elements of royalpropaganda and on what kind of information can bederived from these documents. The following unit isdedicated to the grantees by setting up abiographical gazetteer. The last chapter gives ananalysis and heraldic description of the studiedcoats of arms and a brief introduction in thecharacteristics of the Hungarian heraldry.