Mojs II
Mojs, also Moys, Majs or Majos (died September/December 1280) was a powerful Hungarian baron in the 13th century, who held various positions in the royal court since the early 1250s.
[1] The family background of the elder Mojs is unknown, but he definitely originated from a wealthy and notable kindred due to his marriage, which presumably possessed lands in Slavonia.
It is plausible that Mojs Sr. died before that,[2] and his political legacy was carried forward by his son, who first appeared in contemporary records in August 1245, when King Béla IV donated the village of Izdenc in Somogy County beyond the river Drava (present-day Zdenci, Croatia) to him.
[6] When tensions emerged in the relationship between Béla IV and his eldest son and heir Duke Stephen by 1260, Mojs plausibly remained neutral.
Mojs made further land donations to the monastery in 1272 and 1273, granting altogether 9 villages and 20 servant families from Tolna and Bodrog counties to the Cistercian friars.
The new monarch intended to reconcile with his late father's former partisans, in the midst of an ongoing crisis when his sister Anna, Duchess of Macsó and some Transdanubian pro-Béla lords fled Hungary and sought asylum in the court of Ottokar II of Bohemia.
[14] When the feud between Stephen V and Ottokar II escalated into a large-scale war, Mojs joined the royal camp and participated in the military campaign in the spring of 1271.
Stephen V, who unsuccessfully attempted to liberate his son, seriously fell ill. One of his last decisions was that he appointed Mojs as Ban of Slavonia on 3 August, in order to replace the treacherous Joachim Gutkeled.
[3] Queen Elizabeth returned the villages of Kazsok, Béc, Csap, Farnas and Ráksi in Somogy and Tolna counties to Mojs in that year.
According to the lord, Béla IV's late wife, Queen Maria Laskarina unlawfully seized the settlements – his patrimony – from him prior to that.
She first appeared in contemporary records in 1260, when King Béla IV permitted Mojs to be free to dispose of his inherited and acquired property to his wife and daughters, as he had no male descendants.
16th-century chronicler and court historian András Valkai claimed Mojs' unidentified wife was identical with a certain Sophia, alleged daughter of Emeric, King of Hungary.
[29] Jesuit scholar László Turóczi wrote in his work Hungaria cum suis regibus (1768) that Mojs "probably" married to Sabina, the daughter of Béla IV and Maria Laskarina.
Wertner argued Mojs' wife was related to the Árpád dynasty only on maternal side and had some degree related to Queen Elizabeth the Cuman, the spouse of Stephen V.[31] In his work Az Árpádok királyi vére Magyarország családaiban (1895), genealogist Bálint Kis de Baczka-Madaras considered Mojs' wife as a member of the senior branch of the Árpád dynasty, refusing Wertner's skepticism with examples of morganatic marriages of Hungarian princesses in previous periods and of the emphasis on conflicts within the dynasty, under which Queen Maria's move against Mojs could not have seemed unusual.
Bálint Kis refused Turóczi's theory regarding the wife's name, which could have spread through a local oral tradition (she owned Kisszeben, in Slovak: Sabinov).
Accepting the opinion of Gusztáv Wenzel, Bálint Kis considered that "Elizabeth" was the daughter of Duke Rostislav Mikhailovich and Duchess Anna of Macsó.
[30] Based on a last will and testament of a certain noble lady Leyphilt from 1312, historian János Karácsonyi claimed in his study (1923) that Mojs' widow was called "Sibylla" and she was the daughter of Anna, Queen Elizabeth's assumed sister.
Karácsonyi assigned Queen Elizabeth and "Anna" to the gens Kán and the person of Jacob Svetoslav,[32] but his whole theory was neglected or rejected by the later historiography.
[33] Emil Jakubovich, who also wrote a study in the same issue of journal Turul (1923), called Karácsonyi's paper "built on a whole chain of bold hypotheses".
[34] In her study (2005), historian Enikő Spekner emphasized the name Elizabeth and the person of Mojs do not appear in the earliest version of St. Margaret's legend.
[42] The fourth unidentified daughter married Henry Kőszegi, one of the most powerful oligarchs in the Kingdom of Hungary at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, who drew his suzerainty over Upper Slavonia and Southern Transdanubia, party through to the heritage from his father-in-law Mojs.
[43] Through their two sons, John and Peter respectively, Henry and his spouse were ancestors of the Tamási and Herceg de Szekcső noble families, which rose to prominence by the 15th century.
They also had a daughter, who married Turcho, a member of the maternal kinship of King Andrew III, strengthening the existing relationship with the royal dynasty.
[45] According to the document, his wife and daughters would have inherited together Igal, two villages named Pozsony, Borhod, Oszlár, a portion in Derecske and his estates beyond the river Drava – Rácsa, Musina, Bakva, Izdenc and Sudyn.
After he fell ill, he compiled his final will and testament on his deathbed on the basis of an oral communication on 26 September 1280 in the presence of Thomas, Bishop of Vác, who also functioned as chancellor of Queen Isabella, representatives of the collegiate chapter of Buda (which acted as a place of authentication in this case), the superiors of the Franciscans and Dominicans, along with others.
Legal historian Beáta Kulcsár attributed the technical term to Bishop Thomas and one of the members of his professional staff in the cathedral chapter of Vác, which recorded the document.
[47] Mojs' widow inherited Izdenc as a wedding gift and Rácsa, Uga in Tolna County, the marturina of three villages and twenty horses from her husband's stud due to "marital love".
Mojs bequeathed his Transylvanian properties of Zolun (Zólyom) and Meggyes (today Medieșu Aurit, Romania) to his son-in-law Nicholas Pok, who moved the centre of his domains to the province thereafter.
The Dominican nuns of Rabbits' Island gained Igal, two villages named Pozsony, Burkud, Aszlav, Ráksi, Kisbéc, Kazsok and Ecseny in accordance with his 1272 letter of intent, in which he granted them a right of usufruct over these estates.
[50] After a brief disagreement, when she refused to fulfill the will, the widow handed over Meggyes and Zólyom to Elizabeth and Nicholas Pok – because of this, Bachusz considers she was only stepmother of Mojs' daughter.
