I was particularly pleased to receive an email from a
descendant of the Karatsony of Hodos family, now living in Romania (although
the spelling of the name has been as usual very flexible over the centuries, I
shall use the most common academic appellation
throughout this article). At first it was an image of the Karatsony coat of
arms, without any text: clearly a cheeky reference to my earlier post on the
family (see here), in which I insisted that an ‘official’ coat of arms for the
Karatsony of Hodos does not exist. Clearly I was wrong. The Karatsony coat of
arms, as one can see, embodies the typical Hungarian noble attributes to its
very extreme. Its lion (crowned, as a special mark of nobility), grasping a
sabre, and its crest of an arm holding the same is quite enough to represent
the heroic credentials of a Magyar warrior. The inclusion of not one, not two,
but three severed Asiatic heads, however, appears gratuitous in the extreme.
Very rarely does Hungarian heraldry indulge in quite such sadistic aesthetics,
but it is certainly memorable. It must be added that members of the Karatsony
family did use coats of arms with slightly different charges – hussars etc. It
is the same family – it just shows the flexibility and imagination with which
Hungarian noblemen approached their personal and family insignia. The family
legend is that the lion in the shield is a Cuman lion, while the three severed
heads represent the three men whom the Karatsony ancestor killed to defend the
King of Hungary.
Even more interesting however is the complete family tree of
the Karatsony: from its very beginnings
until the 20th century. Although genealogical literature
considers Blaise Karatsony (Karachon Balas in the tree) as the founder of the
dynasty, and was mentioned in 1279 in a manuscript by Ladislas IV of Hungary,
the family historian has added several other early medieval individuals,
including Blaise’s father and grandfather, as well as great-grandfather. I am
not sure whether this is conjecture or is based on medieval documents. Whatever
the case, a very interesting element is the attempt to equate unusual names
with modern Latin of Hungarian ones. So Chepan, apparently the earliest known ancestor
(roughly from 1200 to 1279), is translated as Istvan. Even more interestingly,
the name of Karachun, which was a first name and only later did it give the
family its surname, is equated with Gratian. The latter name did have some
currency in that period, since Gratian’s Codex from the 12th century
is the central collection of canon law used in the medieval period. It would,
however, be surprising that the clerks writing the manuscripts, who were
without exception educated in church establishments, and who had pretty
adequate skills in writing medieval Latin, would scramble such a famed name
into a form such as Karachun.
The family tree shows two main branches which survived into
modern times; they were set up by Miklos and Janos, the sons of Gyorgy,
mentioned in 1380. The line of Janos stayed in Hodos, their original feudal
seat. It is probable therefore that Janos was the senior line. However, this
original Hodos line died out around 1650, as the tree shows. The other line,
that of Miklos, married into a Rethe noble family: his probable son, Gyorgy, married
Ilona Markus of Rethe in the 16th century. This marriage was the
beginning of the Karatsony in Rethe, and in fact the origin of all subsequent
members of the family.
From this important point the tree follows the fortunes of
Karatsony family lines: some which stayed in Rethe; one line moved to Kecskemet
in the 18th century, with Adam Karatsony, who was a reformed rector.
His descendants, variously moved to Budapest, or even Kesmark (Kezmarok), and
have been followed to the 20th century.
Another line, that of Istvan (born 1833, married to Urbanovics
Rozsa), moved to Budapest and Levoca/Leutscha (Janos).
The second major line to have separated from the main Rethe
family is that of Andras, who in the 17th century married Mariska
Hegyi of Hegy, and moved with her to Puszta Fodemes (today Puste Ulany, a
village in the Senec district). This branch became prolific and later moved
into various counties. Their marriages became far more prestigious than the
local county nobility from which they had sprung, and their spouses included
the following families: the Podhradszky de Podhragy, a medieval family from
Trencsen county; the Sandor de Slavnicza, a family of magnates who later
achieved the very rare title of Prince; the Thurzo de Nositz, who included
eminent scholars; the Burian de Rajecz, who provided a foreign minister for
Austia-Hungary during World War I; and the Mocsary de Bocsar, an illustrious
family who descends from the 13th century Count Bocsar – members were
magnate landowners, took part in the Wesselenyi Magnate Conspiracy, the Rakoczi
War of Independence, and Lajos Mocsary was one of the most important Hungarian
politicians of the entire 19th century.
hodosi Karacsony Sandor, 1898, Hosszufalu
The line of Sandor (born 1810 in Puszta Fodemes), survived
to the present day and lives in Romania. Notable of this line is another Sandor
(born 1865), who rose to become the Royal Chief Forestry Advisor of the Kingdom
of Hungary. The descendant of this line, Eliana Tipurita, apart from very
kindly allowing me to see the family tree, has also sent a photograph of Sandor
Karacsony de Hodos, took in Hosszufalu (Glanzendorf) in the district of Brassov
(Kronstadt) in Transylvania in 1898. The descendants of this line settled in
Romania, where after the fall of the monarchy they became Romanian citizens.
