Hospitals in Medieval and Early Modern Hungary Judit Majorossy and Katalin Szende Introduction *1 The concept of hospitals as shelters for travellers and others in need had its roots in the institutional framework of Western Christianity in the tenth–eleventh centuries, almost at the same time that the statehood of Hungary emerged and the Christianisation of its population took place. The country’s irst king, St Stephen (1000–1038), is said to have founded three or four hospitals himself, but all of them served pilgrims outside his own country: in Constantinople, Jerusalem, Rome, and perhaps Ravenna 2 . The emergence of hospitals in the Carpathian Basin itself was a slower process, which bore its irst fruits in the late twelfth century, and reached the peak of its development about three hundred years later. The framework of the comparative approach of the volume and the applied questionnaire do not permit us to present a detailed analysis of the hospitals of medieval Hungary as individual institutions. Instead, the focus will be on a general overview of some key questions, to give an estimate of the approximate number, distribution and characteristics of hospitals in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary and its successor states in the Early Modern period. While relying on and summarising the results of the few works of earlier * The authors express their special thanks to Ágnes Flóra for providing information on the Transylvanian source material. 1 Medieval Hungary extended to the territory of several present-day countries in the Carpathian Basin, there- fore the usage of geographical names (historical or modern) always poses a problem. For uniformity’s sake the au- thors have decided to use the Hungarian forms in the main text and the overview map (Fig. 9.), and provide a gazet- teer at the end of this article with the various other forms (historical German and Latin denominations as well as the modern toponyms). – Abbreviations: AMB = Archív mesta Bratislavy [Town Archives of Bratislava]; Anjou.Okm. = Anjoukori Okmánytár [Cartulary of the Angevin Era] 1–8, ed. Imre NAGY–Gyula T ASNÁDI NAGY (Budapest 1878–1890, 1920); ANR Alba Iulia = Arhivele Nationale Romania [Romanian State Archives], Directia Judeteana a Arhivelor Nationale Alba [Departmental Archives of Gyulafehérvár]; ANR Cluj = Arhivele Nationale Romania [Romanian State Archives], Directia Judeteana a Arhivelor Nationale Cluj [Departmental Archives of Kolozsvár]; FEJÉR, CD = Georgius FEJÉR, Codex diplomaticus Hungariae ecclesiasticus ac civilis (Buda 1829–1844); HÁZI = Sopron szabad királyi város története [The History of the Free Royal Town of Sopron], ed. Jenő HÁZI (Sopron 1921–1943); MOL = Magyar Országos Levéltár [Hungarian National Archives]; SVL = Győr-Moson-Sopron Megye Soproni Levéltára [Town Archives of Sopron]; ZsO = Elemér MÁLYUSZ et al, Zsigmondkori Okmánytár [Cartulary of the Sigismundian Era] (Budapest 1951–1958, 1993–2004; ongoing). 2 György GYÖRFFY, István király és műve [King Stephen and His Work] (Budapest 1977) 301–304.