Original scientific paper
The Ugrinovići of Rog – a Displaced Family of the Noble Kindred of the Šubići of Bribir during the Ottoman Threat
Ivan Jurković
; Odjel za humanističke znanosti Sveučilišta Jurja Dobrile u Puli, Pula, Hrvatska
Abstract
The Ugrinovići of the noble kindred of the Šubići as displaced noblemen tried for six and a half decades, employing different strategies available to them, to ensure an adequate replacement for the lost patrimony in their native area. They tried to save enough money to buy such an estate in the safer and more protected areas in which they could live by their involvement in the military complement of the anti-Ottoman defence system. One of them, Guy, after a military career and marriage, turned to a less dangerous career – diplomacy. However, all the merits and acknowledgements that he gained at the royal court were forgotten soon after his sudden death. The problem lay in Guy’s exclusive engagement in and reliance on the diplomatic service as the only source of income for the family, which ceased to flow after his death. Moreover, the estate of Čičov, on which his family was accommodated, was impossible to keep, because the king had only granted it to Guy as a usufruct for life; therefore, after the futile struggle of his widow for the preservation of, at least, that estate for the family, the members of his closer family had to rely on the help of his brother John. The period from the loss of Rog (1522) until the acquisition of the estates in the County of Liptó (1586) was, regarding accommodation in the surroundings where they settled after searching for a new place to live, of only a temporary, that is, transitory, character. They did not have problems regarding acknowledgement of their noble status, either in Slavonia or in Hungary, but Guy had an unsolvable problem gaining an indigenat in Styria. Thus it is not strange that after a brief Styrian episode he very soon returned to the Hungarian and Croatian part of the Habsburg dominion, where he could hope that with his engagement he might receive an acquisition satisfying his needs. Such an approach to solving the problem resulted in the life of the second generation of the Ugrinovići on the volatile frontier with Ottoman Slavonia, the military profession and reliance on the nobility of the same cultural, territorial, and social circle. Thanks to that choice, the Ugrinovići finally achieved their desired goal – an estate in Upper Hungary on which they might continue their undisturbed life and try to strengthen their social and economic position. By means of such a risky policy, the Ugrinovići survived, in contrast to many other families who chose the same strategy of survival. Integration into the new surroundings was successfully achieved during the seventeenth century.
Keywords
nobility; impelled displacees; social status; anti-Ottoman defence system; Croatia; Austria; Hungary
Hrčak ID:
33610
URI
Publication date:
5.1.2009.
Visits: 3.053 *