[Immorals].

Abstract

The materials of this article were collected in the 1980s at the Archives of Szentes and of Hódmezovásárhely, both affiliated to the Csongrád County Archives. They are documents of 408 trials related with sexuality from the south region of the Great Hungarian Plane and from the period between 1723-1843. More specifically, they are partly from the Csongrád county and also from the estates of the Károlyi family. However, since the witnesses of the trials came from a larger area, the documents give information also from cities like Szeged, Szabadka (now Subotica-Vojvodina), Zombor (now Sombor-Vojvodina), Kecskemét, Félegyháza, Makó and some other places. The shelfmarks of the original manuscripts are as follows: Fond IV.A.1006. protocollum judiciale (Vásárhely), Fond IV.A.53. sedes dominalis Károlyiensis (Szentes) and Fond IV.A.21. sedria (i.e. sedes judicaris) (Szentes). Although these documents may attract the attention of scholars, no one has elaborated them yet, probably owing to their sexual character, no matter that their value could be compared to those documents of the witch-trials published by A. Komaromy, F. Schram and E. Pócs. Any kind of monographical elaboration may only be carried out by using different methods of a number of sciences. The author had to apply the methodology of history, demography, law, sociology, folklore, and in the aspect of medicine the accomplishments of diagnostics, folk-medicine and ethnology as well. These different approaches altogether provided a clue for a comprehensive presentation of the culture-historical characteristics, features of the way of life of Hungarian peasants in this period. ...