A Kesztölcről Fehérvárra menő hadút

Absztrakt

The military road from Kesztölc to Fehérvár

The oldest authentic linguistic record of Hungarian which survived in the original version was the Latin charter of foundation of Tihany Abbey (1055) which preserved a well-known Hungarian phrase indicating a place: ad castelic [-] & feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu. This paper makes an attempt to give the unambiguous localization of the denotatum of this fragment. The author demonstrates that the expression is undoubtedly related to a common section of two important Roman roads of the ancient province Pannonia still existing in the early Middle Ages. After identifying Fehérvár (with the ancient  Gorsium-Herculia in its neighbourhood) and the former castelic (Kesztölc, between Bátaszék and Szekszárd) by using lots of 19–20^th century microtoponyms, the author justifies the fact that the Fehérvár – Kesztölc military road formed part of the Sopianae – Aquincum Roman road, which joined up with a section of the limes road along the Danube to the north of Szekszárd. In the medieval period the Fehérvár – Kesztölc military road became a section of the international commercial and pilgrimage road (established by Stephen I around 1018) that connected Rome and Western Europe with Byzantium, and later with Jerusalem.