[6] For his loyalty, Denis was granted the villages Széplak and Gyeke in Kolozs County (present-day Goreni and Geaca in Romania, respectively) by Andrew II in 1228.

[9] After 1228, Denis Tomaj gradually developed a good relationship with Duke Béla, who took power in the royal council after another wave of dissatisfaction in that year, when Andrew II was forced to authorize his son to revise his previous land grants throughout Hungary.

Andrew II regained influence over the royal council in 1231, expelling the partisans of Duke Béla from the government.

[10] Former historiography incorrectly claimed that Denis Tomaj is identical with that namesake baron, who served as Voivode of Transylvania between 1233 and 1234.

[3][11] However, historian Attila Zsoldos proved that Béla's loyal partisan and childhood friend Denis Türje held that office in the same period.

There is also an alternative argument that Andrew II, with the appointment of Denis – whose person was seen as a compromise between father and son –, sought to ease the transition and moderate Béla's anger towards the king's loyal supporters.

Nevertheless, Denis avoided political purge and persecution, unlike many others, after Béla's ascension to the Hungarian throne in September 1235.

[17] In the first half of the 13th century, Denis Tomaj issued proportionately the most number of palatinal diplomas until the institutional reform of Roland Rátót.

[19] Several members of his bailiffs originated from the gens (clan) Rosd, a network of relatives evolved within the professional staff.

[22] During his judicial tours, Denis appeared in the settlements of a neighborhood at predetermined times so that plaintiffs and defendants could find him, as evidenced by a lawsuit in 1236 in Zala County, involving the future prelate Zlaudus Ják.

"Denis' Valley") along the stream Tugár (Tuhár) at the namesake village (present-day Slovakia), northwest of the lordship of Losonc.

The General Chapter of the Cistercians instructed Szepes Abbey (or Savnik) to send monks to the newly erected monastery in 1240.

Almost all his men were cruelly killed by arrows and swords; he had escaped with a few and come to report what had happened.Following the sack of Kiev and the disintegration of the Kievan Rus' in December 1240, the Mongols gathered in the lands bordering Hungary and Poland under the command of Batu Khan.

The Mongols demanded Béla's submission to their Great Khan Ögödei, but the Hungarian king refused to yield and decided to fortify the mountain passes along the eastern border.

Roger of Torre Maggiore's Carmen miserabile narrates that Denis sent couriers to the meeting, who arrived in early March 1241 and reported that the Mongols reached the Verecke Pass and demolished the barricades, and the palatine would not be able to withstand them in an open battle with the small troops he had received from the king and the army of the surrounding counties.

On 12 March 1241, the main Mongol army led by Batu and Subutai stormed into Hungary after they forcibly demolished the wooden barricades with their forty thousand Russian axe-men, according to Thomas the Archdeacon's Historia Salonitana.