Until the beginning of the 16th century the viniculture of the Small Carpathian region recorded an increasing tendency and an all-round development in various aspects. In this period of a relatively calm development of viniculture and wine market, new institutions and legal rules came to existence, which fundamentally influenced the expansion of viniculture in the following centuries. In the submitted work we attempt to clarify the organization and administration of viniculture in the town of Saint George in the middle of the 17th century when the viniculture and wine market of the town was at its peak. The basic principles of the organization and administration of viniculture in the town of Saint George have been recorded in the vineyard regulation. The oldest preserved vineyard regulation of Saint George dates back to 1650. We attempted to clarify its origin, purpose and point out the content of particular paragraphs which we consider as the legal rules of the so-called vineyard law. The vineyard law was institutionally represented by the Saint George´s vineyard bureau. It was a council with certain characteristics of autonomy. However, according to our findings, there has never developed a completely independent council in Saint George. The development of organization and administration of viniculture in the town of Saint George was naturally connected with the expansion of the town´s city council which we will also briefly mention to help understand the issue better. The normative community in the town of Saint George were the townsmen or more precisely the city council governed by a port reeve and an alderman. The townsmen tried to protect their vineyards, to ensure the highest possible economic yield and moreover to legalize organizational, administrative, economical, but also neighbourhood and social relations related to viniculture and vineyards in their town and vineyard community.
Wine-production played an important role both in the economic structure and in every day life in the Late Middle Ages and in Early Modern times. The second Testamentary Book of the town of Bratislava includes 388 last wills from the period 1529−1557. Three-quarters of the testaments or wills (276 documents) contain orders about vineyards. The study analyses the sexual division, the trade and the property status of the owners. Moreover it provides insights on the real estate concentration and on the wine trade in Central Europe in the Early Modern period.
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