Pacta conventa (Croatia)

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Pacta conventa (Lat. agreed accords) was an agreement between the king Coloman of Hungary and the Croatian nobility in 1102 (age is disputed, various authors claim a range from 1100-1110). It started the union of Croatia and Hungary that would last until 1918. The dynastic strife that followed the catastrophe at Mohacs field 1526 did not really change the legal nature of the pacta after the throne was occupied by Ferdinand I.

[edit] Circumstances of the agreement

After Petar Svačić, the last Croatian king of Croat descent, was killed on the battlefield in 1097, the Croatian army was still strong. It destroyed the Hungarian garrisons and the short-lived Hungarian hold over Slavonia and reestablished the border on the river Drava. But then the Croatian nobles decided to conclude the agreement called Pacta conventa with Coloman in 1102.

The agreement was disadvantageous for the Croatian party, which nevertheless believed it was a great political success. The Hungarian king offered "an agreement as pleases them" to the greatest Croatian nobles from the families of Kačić, Kukar, Šubić, Svačić, Plečić, Mogorović, Gušić, Čudomirić, Karinjanin and Lapčan, Lačničić, Jamometić and Tugomirić.

[edit] Content of Pacta conventa

The agreement determined that Croatia and Hungary would be governed by the same ruler as two separate kingdoms. When he was crowned in Biograd na Moru, Coloman promised all the public and state rights to the Kingdom of Croatia and some additional rights to the Croatian nobility. The Croats acknowledged Coloman as the king of Croatia and Dalmatia and promised they would help him in war, at their cost on the Croatian side of Drava and at his cost on the Hungarian side.

Coloman and his successors were invested with all the rights of kingship over the Kingdom of Croatia: to appoint the ban, to issue privileges and land grants, to certify the laws voted by the Croatian Parliament, to collect taxes and duties, to own the "royal land" (terra regalis) of the extinct Croat royal dynasty, to have supreme command over the Croatian army and to make foreign policy.

[edit] Dispute about the validity of the document

Since the 19th century, a small number of historians have claimed that Pacta conventa was not a genuine document. Some claim that the document is a forgery found in the Zagreb diocese and published in 1960; Pacta Conventa was written with an idiom used three centuries after its supposed origin, i.e. in the 14th century; Hungarian sources do not mention any "personal union" between Hungary and Croatia. In Hungarian historiography the "forgery theory" is generally accepted. A Croatian proponent of the forgery theory is the controversial Croatian historian Nada Klaić. Though the validity of the document is argued, all historians agree that there was at least a non-written agreement that regulated Croatian - Hungarian relations approximately the same way and which is evident in the maintenance of Croatia as a separate crownland and the retention of it's institutions such the sabor and the ban.