Urban Space and Urban Society: Comparative Investigation of the Usage of Space, Social Topography and Social Networks in Western Hungary (1400-1550)

Representations are social facts and are also symbols which operate, literally or symbolically, with space. Consequently, as carriers of meaning they are the deposits of a broader field of social networks, an essential part of a system of power relations. Thus, the investigation of the settings of the rites of power can lead us to a definition of the usage of the civic realm in a given town. At the same time, if the "realm of a chosen social group" can be defined with different, in the region of the investigation more often indirect methods, despite the lack of direct sources more can be revealed about the role that the given social group played within the community.

The research project, on the one hand, investigates the late medieval and early modern urban elite of a chosen urban community – Pressburg (hung. Pozsony, lat. Posonium, today Bratislava) –, primarily the spatial presence of the economic and political elite within the town in order to facilitate knowledge about the different social groups from which the leaders were recruited. On the other hand, it intends to examine the realms of everyday life (boundaries of the parishes, religious and secular processions, etc.) as well as to reconstruct the late medieval system of plots and its owners. Combining all the above issues, the primary goal is to provide an overall analysis on the usage of urban space by the contemporary burghers.