Suburbs of Medieval Košice: Origin, Topography and Population *

A particularly understudied topic concerning the medieval city of Košice in the Hungarian kingdom is the development and size of its suburbs. Only a few historians have dealt with this issue so far, as most of the research attention has focused on the walled area. In the course of the current preparatory work on the Historical Atlas of Košice, it has therefore become necessary to explore this issue much more comprehensively than hitherto. The author of this study re-identifi es the location of individual suburban streets and adjacent religious buildings and defi nes their legal relationship to the city. Based on fragmentary tax registers, he also attempts to determine the number of taxpayers and inhabitants outside the city walls.


Introduction
Košice (present-day eastern Slovakia; Hun.Kassa, Ger.Kaschau) grew as a town in the second half of the thirteenth century, during the great wave of the founding of urban and rural communities in the Kingdom of Hungary.Before that, there existed a probably small settlement in the Košice cadaster, which did not belong to the category of early medieval military-administrative or ecclesiastical seats of the country.It has not yet been possible to prove the site of this pre-urban village with a church, which is mentioned in a single reference from 1230. 1 In the 1240s, King Belo IV settled German settlers in Košice, to whom he granted self-governing privileges.Košice was placed near the northern border of the kingdom, a factor that soon contributed to its successful urban development.The economic importance of the road that passed through Košice from Hungary to the Polish lands grew rapidly in those times.In the late Middle Ages, Košice, as a free royal city, was one of the most signifi cant and populous centres of trade and crafts in the Hungarian kingdom. 2 The city was surrounded by walls at the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 3Its population continued to grow, but not to such an extent that the walled area had to be enlarged again (up to 3,000 inhabitants of the inner town at the end of the fi fteenth century).The same boundary between the fortifi ed city and its suburbs existed until the demolition of the walls at the beginning of the nineteenth century.Late medieval Košice enjoyed a long period of peace, which was only disturbed by the siege of the Polish army in the winter of 1490/1491.The city withstood it.Most aff ected by the military campaign was the population, houses and other properties in the suburbs. 4Košice recovered from this damage, but broader economic factors led to a reduction in the city's relevance in terms of international trade from the turn of the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period onwards.The political instability and military confl icts in early modern Hungary did not benefi t the business of urban society either.However, Košice retained its leading economic and political position among the cities in the northeast of the country.After the Ottoman invasion of Hungary and consolidation of the Habsburg rule over the rest of the kingdom, Košice became an important city fortress and the seat of new royal administrative and military institutions in the second half of the sixteenth century. 5espite the signifi cance of Košice within the urban network of the Carpathian Basin, some fundamental research problems concerning this city have remained unsolved for a long time.In other nearby cities, similar issues have already been investigated over the last half-century.A particularly understudied topic is the development and size of the suburbs of medieval Košice.Only a few historians have dealt with this issue so far, most of the attention having been focused on the walled city.In the course of the current preparatory work on the Historical Atlas of Košice, it has therefore become necessary to explore this issue much more comprehensively than hitherto.This has led to a reassessment of previous assumptions about the origins of Košice's suburbs and to new fi ndings about their topography and size, all of which are presented in this study.

Primary sources, historiography and research issues
There are several obstacles that have prevented a truly thorough understanding of the development of the former suburbs of Košice.The fi rst factor is the fragmentary state of the medieval and early modern written sources, in which the suburban settlement may have been mentioned in more detail.There are only occasional brief references to cases involving the suburbanites in the municipal court books, which survive, with few interruptions, since the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries.Key historical sources, such as suburban tax registers, are widely scattered.We know part of the western suburban streets from the register of 1480.Several tax registers of other streets date from the early sixteenth century.Thus, there is only one medieval register that lists the entire city and its suburbs, from sometime between 1522 and 1524, which was unfortunately a period when Košice was struck by an epidemic.As a result, the census recorded a temporary decline in taxpayers. 6Other complete tax registers of the whole city and its suburbs have been sporadically preserved from the 1630s onwards. 7he oldest maps of the surroundings of Košice date from the eighteenth century.More detailed maps of the city centre and suburbs come from the fi rst half of the nineteenth century. 8It was a period of stable development of the city.In the earlier sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, nevertheless, there was a partial decline in the population of the suburbs, which can be attributed to both military and economic factors.In addition, in the last third of the sixteenth century, the city walls were rebuilt in the form of a massive Renaissance fortifi cation, which was subsequently improved over time until the beginning of the eighteenth century.These construction works as well as the supposed reservation of open ground in front of the new bastions probably led to the destruction and relocation of the nearest suburban buildings, which process, however, was not frequently mentioned in contemporary documents.After all, only part of the names of medieval origin were recorded on modern maps.No relevant archaeological fi nds are available yet.The whole area of the former suburbs of Košice was rebuilt in the twentieth century without archaeological research.Archaeological excavations have been intensifying in the last two or three decades, but they have been concentrated in the area of the city centre, once surrounded by walls.Only in some places, close to the former medieval fortifi cation, have a few outbuildings been found.No suburban church, nor even a single house, has yet been archaeologically uncovered. 9n the case of Košice, there has also been a long-standing lack of systematic historical research in which several scholars have participated in parallel.Thus, the suburbs have remained a little-studied topic on which only a few historians have commented.In his pioneering study of the economy and society of Košice at the end of the Middle Ages, Erik Fügedi was the fi rst to try to calculate the population inside and outside the walls.In this respect, he did not work directly with archival sources, but with an older edition that made available selected tax registers without commentary.As a result, Erik Fügedi was mistaken.He considered the published register of part of the western suburban streets from 1480 to be an inventory of the entire suburban settlement.Therefore, the number of 246 taxpayers in the suburbs (converted to 1,171 residents) 10 that he found is, in fact, incomplete.
During the second half of the twentieth century, it was mainly Ondrej R. Halaga who, in several of his monographs and numerous articles, dealt with the medieval history of Košice.He was the fi rst to identify the sites of most of the suburban streets.However, even this historian did not avoid making a few mistakes.On the one hand, he did not realize that some suburban streets had been given more contemporary names alongside earlier ones, so he counted them twice.On the other hand, a few other streets were left out of his calculations.In his analysis of tax records, in many cases he did not distinguish between houses and farmsteads, or even between house owners and tenants or lodgers.He increased the data from the early sixteenth century a little due to the consequences of the siege of the city in 1490/1491, but without explaining his methodology, giving an estimated number of 567 houses and 726 taxpayers in the suburbs for the period around 1480.As he noted, there were more houses in the suburbs than in the inner city by the end of the Middle Ages.This ratio was reversed in the Early Modern Period, when the suburbs suff ered more from military confl icts.It is suspicious that Ondrej R. Halaga applied a high coeffi cient of 5.15 inhabitants to each suburban taxpayer, derived from the conditions in the second half of the eighteenth century.This led him to declare there being nearly 3,800 inhabitants of the suburbs around 1480 (and almost 5,000 inhabitants in the inner city with 439 houses, according to his calculations). 11Apart from some distortions, it was mainly non-standardly chosen coeffi cients that led Halaga to the thesis of an enormous decline in the city's population in the Early Modern Period, counting a loss of up to several thousand inhabitants.This calculation was not accepted by Slovak and Hungarian historiography, because it was obviously too high.However, no detailed correction has been made for the period at the end of the fi fteenth century since then.
In his last monograph on the history of Košice, Halaga dealt with the question of the origin of suburban streets, too.He concluded that several of them were originally 9 RUSNÁK, Košice v stredoveku.10 FÜGEDI, Kaschau, eine osteuropäische Handelsstadt, 187-188.11 HALAGA, Právny, územný a populačný vývoj, 41-43, 53-56.ordinary villages, related to the emerging city only economically.Eventually they became administratively controlled by the city, but the suburban settlements were said to have independently elected their own judges and priests up to the Early Modern Period. 12wo subsequent historians analysed the tax registers of Košice from the fi rst half of the sixteenth century according to the modern methodology as in other European countries.In her research on the city's demography, Miloslava Bodnárová distinguished coeffi cients for house owners and lodgers in the inner city.No exact coeffi cient could be identifi ed for the suburbs.Due to the fragmentary nature of the suburban registers, she evaluated one of them in particular, from the years 1522-1524, which originated during the epidemic.Bodnárová considered, therefore, the then number of 444 houses and 45 farmsteads with about 1,712 inhabitants in the suburbs to be a minimum in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. 13Even Bodnárová did not notice the duplication of names of some suburban streets.Parallel to her research, György Granasztói comprehensively dealt with similar issues of Košice society in the middle of the sixteenth century.However, he examined in detail only the population of the inner city.According to his calculations, less than 2,500 members of the urban society lived inside the walls then.For the year 1480 Granasztói estimated the population of the inner city to be about 2,800 inhabitants and the population of the suburbs to be about 1,700. 14n recent years, it is the author of this study who has dealt with the issue of suburban church buildings, streets and the administration of the city in his several papers. 15One of the new fundamental fi ndings is the fact that previous historians did not thoroughly know the system of medieval tax registers of Košice.For this reason, earlier works on the topography and settlement of suburban streets contained some ambiguities or errors.Given the fragmentary state of the tax registers, it seemed to historians that the streets outside the walls were recorded rather haphazardly, sometimes more of them, sometimes less.In reality, however, the suburbs were not recorded in one or two tax registers at the end of the Middle Ages, but in as many as four separate registers, each assigned to one of four stable and well-defi ned suburban sectors.This coincided with the system of keeping tax registers for the walled city, which was divided into four districts (quarters). 16The boundaries of the inner-city quarters extended beyond the walls, so that beyond each inner-city quarter there was one suburban quarter.For the purpose of the annual tax collection, a separate register was prepared for each quarter, so a total of eight registers for the entire city.Only a fraction of the once large number of these sources has thus survived.While the inner-city quarters of Košice were named numerically (I-IV), the tax registers of the suburban quarters were named according to the fi rst, and usually also the largest, taxed street. 17Now it is possible to proceed to more comprehensive research of the suburbs of medieval Košice.In the next part of the study I re-identify the location of individual suburban streets with adjacent religious buildings and defi ne their legal relationship to the city.Based on fragmentary tax registers, I also attempt to determine the number of taxpayers and inhabitants outside the city walls.

Natural morphology and road network around the city
Before delving deeper into the issue of suburban streets, it is useful to briefl y explain the natural conditions and roadways that infl uenced the development of settlement around the city walls.The cadaster of Košice has been located on the border between the plain (south) and the hills (west, north and east) that were mostly covered with vineyards and forests in the Late Middle Ages.It is crossed by the Hornád River, which slowed down and meandered here in the past, as recorded on maps from the turn of the eighteenth century.Thus, there was not much suitable space for a settlement in the Košice cadaster, either in the case of an early medieval village, the site of which is still unknown, or even more so in the case of the town, which has existed here from the mid-thirteenth century onwards.The core of the town was founded in the lower parts next to the river on a slight elevation, through which the Čermeľ (or Črmeľ) brook fl owed.The river meanders, to which an embankment for mills was eventually added, preventing the emergence of a denser suburban settlement on the eastern side of the walls.Due to the morphology of the urban core, whose axis was formed by the main elongated street serving as the market square, the most space was left for the development of the suburbs on the western side, where their extent was limited by the stretching hill, and slightly less space was left on the southern and northern sides of the walls.
The main roads led into the city from the same three sides -south, west, and northwhich corresponded to the three oldest city gates.The most signifi cant road (magna via) came here from the south, from the centre of the kingdom.From Košice it went to the north to the County of Šariš and further to Poland. 19Previous historiography did not emphasize that this road crossed the Hornád River just within the Košice cadaster.
Local river crossings were therefore important here.North of the city there were fords.As can be seen on the First Military Survey of the 1780s, there were a number of roads leading to these fords, so they were still in use during that period.These fords had probably been used since the earliest times.The local name Three fords (Tri brody) has been preserved there to the present day.But a bridge had to be used to cross the river safely.According to the First Military Survey, the magna via was diverted to the river even below the city (outside the Lower Gate).The road crossed the Hornád on the only wooden bridge that then existed on the main course of the river in the Košice cadaster.There had been hardly any more bridges there in the Middle Ages.
The fi rst known mention of a bridge on the Hornád River in the cadaster of Košice dates back to 1403.Noted is a new bridge, over which lay burgher vineyards (vineam infra novum pontem ultra fl uvium Harnad situatam). 20In the eighteenth century, there were still vineyards on the slope in the eastern part of the city's cadaster (below the village of Košická Nová Ves), so it is obvious that the oldest documented bridge stood in approximately the same place as at the time of the First Military Survey.At the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries, therefore, there already existed roughly the same network of main roads in the cadaster as in the eighteenth century.
However, it is still possible to hypothesize that the magna via originally passed directly through the city.Such an assumption is supported by looking at the morphology of the city core with its widened main street.It might be assumed that the main street (market square) in question was founded on the most signifi cant road leading through the cadaster.The second clue for such a hypothesis is the characterization of the bridge from 1403 as a "new" one.In the case of a simple building reconstruction, such a designation would not make proper sense.Rather, it is more likely that the previous bridge was located at a greater distance from the newer one.It is possible, therefore, that the bridge had originally stood to the north of the city, near the fords, and that it was moved downstream in the fourteenth century.As will be mentioned below, records from the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries attest to a developed suburban settlement to the north and northeast of the walls, which may also have been related to the presence of locally important roads.It is remarkable that the location of the bridge east of the city walls took into account the already developed economic conditions in Košice in the late Middle Ages.There lay estates of the citizens (meadows, vineyards etc.) above the left bank of the Hornád at that time, to which effi cient access from the city was necessary.From the neighbouring County of Zemplín there was another road coming here, the importance of which increased, as it can be assumed, with the growth of the city's signifi cance.The name "new bridge" may have been applied for some time before 1403.
Due to the natural conditions and the road network, the suburban settlement of Košice developed in three directions from the city walls -in the south of the city along the most important road (magna via), in the west of the city on the largest open space available for housing, and in the northeast of the city along the local roads leading to the Hornád River and the magna via.

Origin and topography of the suburban streets
According to the oldest descriptions of the city boundaries from the second half of the thirteenth century and the fi rst half of the fourteenth century, it was the city community that was always mentioned as the user of the city cadastre.Thus, there were no other settlements apart from the city within this territory, which would have had a kind of separate legal status.In a privilege from 1347, the king decreed that no real estate transactions could take place in Košice and its suburbs without the consent of the city council.This is the fi rst known, albeit only general, mention of the local suburbs.However, it is clear from it that the suburbs was subject to the authority of the city. 21poradic written reports about settlements just beyond the walls of medieval Košice can be found in the city's pragmatic documents -in court books from the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries and in tax registers from the turn of the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards.The individual streets are listed below according to their order in the tax registers at the end of the medieval period.

Spitalgasse
This street lay in front of the city's Lower Gate. 22The short-lived presence of the emperor's citadel in this area at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries broke the continuity of the existence of this street, although the hospital itself and the church remained standing in the new fortress. 23After the citadel was demolished at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the street was restored.It was recorded on modern maps, certainly roughly in the area of the former medieval settlement.
In 1283 a hospital was mentioned in Košice for the fi rst time.In its oldest phase of existence, Hospitallers were probably involved to some extent.After the thirteenth century, they were no longer mentioned here.In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period it was the main city hospital with the adjacent Church of the Holy Spirit.Its estates were administered by the city council. 24As can be deduced from modern maps, the hospital was built on the most important road leading to the city.Even since its foundation, the hospital was probably standing at such a distance from the city that it did not have to be moved because of the expansion of the city fortifi cation in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Times.
The earliest record of the adjacent street is from 1394, in which a local farmstead of a prominent burgher is mentioned. 25There are entries about similar civil (property, fi nancial) cases, occasionally also criminal cases, in other city court books. 26Hospital Street was characterized in the medieval municipal documents as a Gasse in German, or as a vicus, but more often as a platea in Latin texts. 27It was certainly one of the fi rst suburban streets, and probably the oldest ever.

Bindersdorf
Modern maps of Košice no longer record a settlement with such a name.The fi rst mention of this street dates back to 1466, when a house owned by a burgher from the inner city stood there (in der gassen Bindersdorff el). 28The city court and tax documents then continued to refer to the settlement by its German name in the sense of a village, but since the very end of the Middle Ages it was more often referred to as a street. 29he name of the settlement Bindersdorf or Binderdorf has been literally translated by Slovak and Hungarian historiography as Cooper Village or Street (Slov.Debnárska Ves/ ulica, Hun.Bodnár utca). 30According to Ondrej R. Halaga, the name of this settlement was derived from the predominant occupation of the residents of the old local village, which the city eventually put under its administration.It is noteworthy, however, that its German name was usually written down with the possessive suffi x "s".In cases where the name of a street in medieval Košice was undoubtedly derived from the activities of the people living there, the genitive plural was used.For instance, Butcher Street, placed in the walled area, was always recorded as Fleischergasse (Platea carnifi cum) in municipal documents. 31The letter "s" in the name of the suburban settlement was thus a possessive suffi x of a personal name.Accordingly, the name Bindersdorf was not derived from the occupation of its inhabitants, but from the name of the owner of a particular property, probably a farmstead formerly existing there (as is evident in the case of another suburban street, mentioned below, called Richtersdorf ).This person can even be identifi ed in medieval written sources.In the 1380s, Peter Binder used to be a member of the Košice city council. 32Some immovable properties of this burgher or his son (with the same name) are mentioned in a court record from 1397 in relation with a debt to the merchant John Lublen. 33The most probable explanation is, therefore, that the foremost burgher Peter Binder owned a farmstead in the outskirts of Košice, after which the adjacent emerging settlement was named.This was formed here only at the end of the fourteenth century.
After the mid-sixteenth century, this street was not mentioned any more in the lists of the suburban judges. 34It did not disappear, however; it just shrank for a time: the street was recorded again in the tax register of 1635 (as Bodnar ucza). 35ubsequently, from the second half of the seventeenth century to the present, the street of Žriedlova ulica has been mentioned in this area (Hun.Forrás utca).Thus, the medieval Binder's Village was situated near or directly in the position of the latter street.Previous historiography has located this settlement in a slightly diff erent place, on today's Štúrova ulica, near the winter stadium. 36aulgasse (St.-Leonhard-Gasse)One of the largest suburban streets, stretching beyond the western city gate (Rotten Gate).It was probably one of the oldest settlements under the walls.For the fi rst time in 1401 a house is mentioned there (extra civitatem ante portam Fawlgas). 37Other references have also been made to this street in relation to the fi nancial and property aff airs of the local, or the inner-city population. 38In the fi rst half of the fi fteenth century this area was still called "in front of the Rotten Gate". 39Soon the name Rotten Street came into use, 40 i.e. the same name as for the street inside the walls.In the tax register of this part of the Košice suburbs from 1522, however, Rotten Street was no longer mentioned.St Leonard Street was recorded instead.It was the same settlement, as evidenced by comparing the taxpayer names of the two streets, as well as by the presence of the local St Leonard's fraternity house. 41Since the 1520s, only the name St Leonard Street was permanently used here (as platea, Gasse, utca). 42This medieval street, formerly called Rotten Street, can therefore be located directly in front of the Rotten Gate, on the site of today's Šrobárová and Floriánska ulica. 43Since the eighteenth century it has been called Floriánska Street.
The name St Leonard Street was prompted by the presence of a suburban church with a leprosarium.Both objects were mentioned here from the mid-fi fteenth century.Their origin can be put at least half a century earlier, when leprosaria with chapels or churches of such dedication appeared in other nearby royal cities (Prešov, Bardejov), too. 44So it took some time for the dedication of the church to displace the original street name.Burghers of Košice remembered this suburban church and the poor in the nearby leprosarium (sichen) in their last wills.A will of 1476 appointed a local chaplain.From the end of the fi fteenth century, the priest (plebanus) of St Leonard's was mentioned explicitly several times, but there is no indication that the church became independent from the city parish.The church and the leprosarium with their assets were subject to the administration of the city council, which appointed an administrator (Kirchenvater, Verweser) from among its members for this purpose. 45While in the second half of the fi fteenth century the object of this second Košice hospital was sometimes specifi ed as a house for lepers, in the fi rst quarter of the sixteenth century it was usually characterized generally as a poorhouse (domus pauperum).Perhaps such a terminological shift refl ected a real functional change as leprosy receded in Europe at the turn of the Middle Ages.
According to the tax registers of St Leonard Street from the 1520s, the hospital was the tenth house, while the priest of the respective church occupied the 21st house. 46he taxation apparently started at the city gate, so the hospital and St Leonard's Church must have stood close to the city walls.This is confi rmed by the fact that the Church of St Leonard was demolished in 1566 for the construction of a bastion. 47It is currently the only known written report that informs us about the destruction of a part of the suburban street as a result of the construction of the new city fortifi cation in the Early Modern Period.Despite the silence of the written sources, however, similar demolition works along the walls may have taken place in other parts of the suburbs as well.After that, there is no record of the local hospital either, which was therefore also demolished due to new fortifi cations.

Knoblochsdorf
The next taxable settlement was Knoblochsdorf or Knoblochdorf, being mentioned until the seventeenth century.It was fi rst documented in 1399, when a local resident failed to take the oath she was supposed to take before the city court. 48In the municipal documents this settlement was referred to as a Dorf, but from the end of the Middle Ages it was referred to as a Gasse, and more and more often also with a translated Hungarian name. 49In addition to the tax registers, other court book entries refer to this street as well. 50he name Knoblochsdorf has usually been translated as Garlic Village in previous historiography.Ondrej R. Halaga concluded that it was a pre-urban village, which subsequently supplied the city with agricultural crops until it became an ordinary suburban street. 51However, a toponym related to such a crop is rare in this geographical area.Rather, an analogy with Binder's Village is suggested.And indeed, in the 1380s, when Peter Binder was acting in the Košice city council, Michael Knobloch was his colleague, followed by Ladislaus Knobloch in the 1390s. 52Members of the Knobloch family are mentioned several times in the oldest preserved court book, from 1393-1405.They certainly maintained contacts with Cracow in (Little) Poland. 53Therefore, it can be assumed that this family owned a farmstead in the suburbs at the end of the fourteenth century, by which a new settlement called Knoblochsdorf grew.
Previous literature has situated Knoblochsdorf in the area of the current Žriedlova ulica. 54Nevertheless, the late medieval tax registers always recorded this settlement as the last street before the First Inner Quarter.In the seventeenth century this street already had common judges with Judge's Street. 55The two streets therefore had to be adjacent.If we assume the continuity of this settlement up to modern times, from which detailed maps of the city and its surroundings come, it was probably located where the street of Kakas utca (now Škultétyho ulica) existed in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century.

Richtersdorf
The nineteenth-century maps place Judge's Street in area near today's Vojenská ulica. 56The earliest references to this settlement indicate something more about the genesis of similar "Dörfer" in the suburbs of medieval Košice.According to a court record from 1398, the then Košice judge Leonard pledged his village (obligavit villam suam) to the merchant John Lublen because of a debt of 242 fl orins. 57The settlement was not specifi cally named, but this fact points to its existence in the city's cadaster.In 1401, John Kulik of Cracow declared a lien on all the properties of the weaver Stanislaus, who used to live on the farmstead of the Košice judge (arrestavit omnia bona Stanislai lanifi cis morantis in allodio iudicis). 58A year later, an entry about the debt of Hannus of Judge's Village was entered into the court register. 59It can be concluded that all three references were to the same settlement. 60Ondrej R. Halaga identifi ed these reports with one locality, too.
In addition, Halaga assumed that Judge Leonard had once acquired a certain older village near Košice, after which its original name became extinct.But from whom outside the urban community could Leonard have bought a village so close to the city walls?Rather, it was his large farmstead that formed the nucleus of the local new settlement, and which led to its designation as a Dorf.It is clear from other reports about Judge's Village that its inhabitants were subject to the jurisdiction of the city council. 61he settlement was continuously called Richtersdorf in the fi fteenth century. 62rom the 1520s, records with the addition of "street" appeared. 63In parallel, the older designation "village" persisted for the longest time among other such names of suburban settlements around Košice.
The naming of Judge's Village is notable because of its derivation from an offi ce rather than a personal name.One may consider whether it was not a property belonging to an infl uential burgher family, from which several Košice judges came. 64A more correct explanation, however, is that the settlement got its name as a result of the conditions that prevailed here at the end of the fourteenth century, when Leonard held the offi ce of the city's judge on several occasions. 65. Leonhardsberg and Terra sancti Leonardi (Nova platea) These settlements followed immediately behind Judge's Village, where the terrain rose.They are fi rst documented by a tax register from 1480 (Therra sancti Leonardi, Auff Synt Leonhartberg). 66Tax registers from the early sixteenth century record St Leonard Land and New Street here (Neue Sacz, Nova platea).In the 1520s only New Street is mentioned in this area. 67The two older settlements have thus disappeared or merged with the newer street.Such changes may have been prompted by damage during the siege of the city in 1490/1491.Later in the modern times the name of New Street was changed, but the reasons are not yet known.All these streets lay somewhere in the area where the so-called Otto's plan of Košice from the fi rst half of the nineteenth century recorded Makay Corner (Máczka szugoly), Saddened Street (Szomoru utza) and where Floriánska Street (Sz.Florian utza) also extended at that time.
The previous historiography has suggested that the suburban Church of St Leonard existed on the hill named after it. 68However, as explained above, the church in question must have stood closer to the walls on Rotten Street.The names St Leonard Hill and St Leonard Land were probably derived from the local estates of the named church.It is noteworthy that after the disappearance of the names of these streets at the turn of the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries, the name of the suburban Rotten Street was changed to St Leonard Street.This can only be explained by the fact that the aforementioned church stood on it.

Auf dem Graben (Platea Kiskapu)
At the end of the fi fteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth century, this street was named after the moat, so it lay just outside the walls. 69The newer name Small Gate Street (Platea Kyskapw) from the 1520s 70 makes its location a little more precise.There was a small pedestrian gate in the middle of the western section of the walls. 71Later on, this street was not mentioned any more.It was probably fl attened as a result of the building of the new fortifi cation in the last third of the sixteenth century.

Sichelsdorf (Ziegelgasse)
According to the nineteenth-century maps, Brick Street was situated on what is now Magurská and Zádielská ulica.Originally it had a diff erent name.From the year 1400 onwards, it was mentioned several times as Zichelsdorff or Sichelsdorf in the fi rst municipal court book in connection with the debts of the local inhabitants, or, conversely, with their claims. 72But later, since the turn of the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries, it was recorded in the city court and tax documents as Czigelgasz. 73The name change was pointed out by Ondrej R. Halaga, who was using the name Sickle Village for the earlier period, and later Brick Street.He derived the initial name of the settlement from the local production of sickles.According to Halaga, it was a kind of linguistic interaction in the late medieval German-Slovak environment of Košice that caused the change of the original name of the settlement. 74But such an interpretation seems to be unconvincing.
There are numerous records of brickmakers (czigler) in the court book from the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries, 75 so the name Sichelsdorf could not really have been derived from brickmaking at that time.However, the naming of the settlement is again a case of a composition with a singular noun.A more likely explanation is that, as in the case of all the "villages" (Dorf, villa) examined so far, it was the name of the owner of the estate with a farmstead there.Since we do not know any mention of such a Košice citizen, however, we cannot reject another, now unknown, reason for the given street name.
The change of the street name to Ziegelgasse at the end of the fi fteenth century may have been caused by a distortion of the original name by Košice's citizens after some time, or by the local production of bricks (town accounts from the mid-sixteenth century mention a brickworks, 76 but a map from 1720 records Zugelhütten in a diff erent spot, up on the hill above the western suburbs). 77Anyway, the initial naming of the street lost its meaning over time.

Čermeľ
This street stretched directly out from the Upper Gate, in the southern part of what is now Komenského ulica, where modern maps have also recorded it.Its name came from the stream that fl owed through the local suburb as well as further through the main square of the city.Chermele is the most frequently mentioned suburban settlement in the oldest city court book (mentions from 1399 onwards).This indicates a signifi cant size of the local population.As in the case of other suburban streets, such court records were related to debt obligations of the local inhabitants or properties. 78Medieval Košice notaries usually referred to the given settlement by its one-word name, never as a village, and rarely as a street or vicus. 79Due to its location just beyond one of the three oldest gates, this settlement must have been established in the fi rst phase of the formation of the suburbs of Košice.

Platea nova
According to the tax registers of the northern suburban quarter from 1504 and 1515, one part (side) of Čermeľ had been taxed fi rst, followed by New Street, and fi nally the remaining part of Čermeľ was taxed. 80So New Street met at some point with Čermeľ Street, from which it was probably formerly separated.The tax register of the 1520s did not mention New Street, but it was consistently recorded in other early modern registers. 81In the course of time its name had to have been changed, because New Street was no longer marked there on the maps from the nineteenth century.It is not yet clear which of the subsequent or current streets it can be identifi ed with.It may have been on the site of today's Garbiarská ulica.

St.-Ladislaus-Gasse
This settlement is fi rst documented in the tax register of the northern suburbs from 1504.The name of the street, however, refers to the local church, which is mentioned in written sources a century earlier.St Ladislaus Street was consistently specifi ed in city documents from the sixteenth century as platea, Gasse. 82The municipal court noted some local properties and residents. 83 city charter from 1408 mentions the Chapel of St Ladislaus at the Upper Mill (oebirstin moel bye senthe Lazla Capelle gelegin an dem wassere daz man dy kunra nennet). 84The mill in question stood on Mill Embankment (named, in the Middle Ages, after the river as Hornád, Ger.Konrad) outside the northeastern corner of the walls.It is noteworthy that the chapel was not related to any hospital and did not stand directly outside the Upper Gate, which made its function and location diff erent from those of the other two suburban churches (directly ouside the Lower and Rotten Gates).The deviation certainly took into account certain circumstances of the time.It is also worth mentioning here that the site and dedication of the church, which existed in the pre-urban village of Košice, still remains unknown.The Chapel of St Ladislaus could therefore be a candidate for this unidentifi ed church, which may have survived for a time in the suburbs of the founded city.But it seems unlikely that the St Ladislaus Chapel had such old origins.In such a case, its parish function would probably have persisted and it would have been characterized as a church from the fi rst reports.
In 1482, the vicar of Eger's bishopric authorized the establishment and consecration of a cemetery near this building, already referred to as the Church of St Ladislaus.His decision was preceded by some unspecifi ed dispute in Košice.Such a confl ict could have arisen between the city's parish priest and the local priest or the population for whom the chapel (church) served.It is signifi cant that, according to the wording of this deed, even after the consecration of the cemetery, the rights of the parish priest of the inner-city Church of St Elizabeth, which is explicitly mentioned as a parish church, were not to be violated.The chapel was thus subject to the city parish.It can therefore be rather assumed that it was built as a suburban chapel, perhaps in the second half of the fourteenth century, when the suburbs of Košice were expanding and when the cult of St Ladislaus was supported by the Angevin royal dynasty.It may have served the residents of the suburbs from the beginning.After the consecration of the cemetery, it was always explicitly mentioned as the Church of St Ladislaus (ecclesia, Kirche), which had a priest (plebanus) living on the street in question.There are no reports of its secular administrators.However, it was the city council that in 1533, at the time of the coming Reformation, sold several vineyards of the Church of St Ladislaus. 85eports about this church disappear after the middle of the sixteenth century.The reasons for its demise may have been similar to those of St Leonard's in the western suburbs, which was demolished to extend the fortifi cations.It is not clear from written records on which side of the embankment the Church of St Ladislaus stood.Ondrej R. Halaga placed it on the right bank, close to the walls. 86t Ladislaus Street certainly extended on the left bank, east of the Upper Mill, where the nineteenth-century maps locate it.The street and the church probably formed a compact settlement unit.In the tax registers from the beginning of the sixteenth century, the house of the local priest was listed as the fi rst in the respective street, so the church stood at the very beginning of the order of houses.87 Therefore, it is more likely that the Church of St Ladislaus was placed on the left side of Mill Embankment.The so-called Chunert's plan of Košice from 1807 recorded a suburban square on this side of the embankment, next to Upper Mill with a bridge, on which there was a kind of undeveloped small elevation.According to the maps that described the city fortifi cations in detail in the eighteenth century, there was no fortifi cation element here.Therefore, it is possible that a church with a cemetery once stood on this site.This location, and the origin of the Chapel (Church) of St Ladislaus in general, must one day be verifi ed by archaeological research.Thus, in the case of the above-mentioned site, the church did not hinder the construction of the early modern fortifi cation, but was placed close to the walls, which would explain the reason for its demolition.
Maps from the fi rst half of the nineteenth century record St Ladislaus Street further east of the walls.At that time, only the extreme part of the former medieval street was probably so called.Originally, the street in question likely started at Mill Embankment, where Slov.Záhradnícka ulica / Hun.Kertész utza (today's Masarykova ulica) was recorded in the nineteenth century.As on maps from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, probably also in the Middle Ages, local roads branched off from St Ladislaus Street -one heading north to the ford, the other heading south to the bridge.The Chapel, later Church, of St Ladislaus thus stood on an important local road and at the same time roughly in the centre of the northern suburb, which may be an explanation for its unusual position to the side of the Upper Gate.
86 HALAGA, Právny, územný a populačný vývoj, 22-23.I also adopted such a localization in a previous paper: MAGDOŠKO, K vzniku a správe predmestí, 607, 616.87 There were houses next to the chapel as early as the end of the fourteenth century.In 1383, the Košice burgher John, brother of the abbot of the Benedictine monastery in nearby Krásna, bought a house (curia) in the suburbs of Košice from a widow: AMK, Schwartzenbachiana, no. 9.The suburban tax register of 1515 records an abbot's house (domus abatis) next to the house of the priest from St Ladislaus: Taxa 20.Despite being made more than a century apart it is likely that the two reports refer to the same house.

Platea furis
This small street is mentioned only in the tax registers of 1515 and 1522-1524 (Lat.Platea furis, Hun.Fyer wcza); 88 otherwise there are no other reports about it.Although its Latin name can easily be translated (fur = a thief), the origin of such a naming remains unclear.Street names in medieval Košice derived from characteristics of local inhabitants were usually formed in the plural (Fleischergasse/Platea carnifi cum, Windischegasse/Platea Sclavorum in the inner city; Venetiae/Platea Venetiarum in the suburbs).There is currently nothing to suggest that this could have been related to executions.The place for beheading, for instance, was near a city gate, probably in the southern suburb. 89he exact site of Thief Street is unknown, but it was probably an extension of St Ladislaus Street.Perhaps it lay at the very edge of the northern suburbs, in a place known in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century as Cabbage Street.Ondrej R.

Niclosdorf (Venetiae)
The fi rst reports about Nicholaus' Village (Niclosdorf, villa Nicolai) come from the oldest court book (from 1396) and refer to judicial (both civil and criminal) matters of the local inhabitants dealt with by the city council. 91Then, similar reports are absent for a century.The only other medieval report can be found in the tax register of 1515, which mentions Platea sancti Nicolay. 92ndrej R. Halaga made a sweeping assumption based on this last known record.In the inner town there was a Franciscan monastery with the Church of St Nicholaus (the present Seminary Church of St Anthony of Padua) from the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries.Halaga, however, assumed that this church was preserved from the early medieval village of Košice, such that the Franciscans would not have built it, but only have taken it over.In his opinion, Nicholaus' Village was a remnant of a pre-urban settlement that once extended up to this church. 93he dedication of St Nicholaus was truly atypical among the Franciscan churches in medieval Hungary. 94But all currently known historical, architectural and archaeological fi ndings date the construction of this church to the end of the fourteenth century, when it is mentioned for the fi rst time in written sources. 95As presented above, the origins of those suburban settlements in Košice, which were characterized as villages in the Middle Ages, most probably date back to the farmsteads of some of the wealthier burghers.On the contrary, settlements named after the dedication of local churches were always referred to as streets in municipal documents (platea, Gasse).In their names the word "saint" was never omitted (St Ladislaus Street, St Leonard Street, but also St Leonard Hill, etc.).The single occurrence of the name "St Nicholaus Street" is therefore suspect.It may have appeared because of a distorted opinion of Košice's citizens at the end of the Middle Ages, when the origin of the street name from a personal name was already forgotten.The use of a fi rst (family) personal name for a street name is otherwise an oddity compared to the " villages" mentioned above.However, a municipal court record from 1398 mentions another such a case, villa Clementis, which has not reappeared since then. 96he previous historiography has situated the settlement named as Venice, mentioned for the fi rst time in 1463 (domum in suburbio huius civitatis in Veneciis), 97 somewhere in the vicinity of Nicholaus' Village.Later on, Venice was recorded in the tax registers of the years 1515 and 1522-1524 (Platea Venetiarum, Platea Weneze).Halaga linked its existence to the Italian population that may have settled here sometime after the construction of the fi rst walls. 98A Venice also existed in the town of Oradea, 99 and even a village in the County of Šariš was thus named. 100In fact, persons of Italian or broader Romanesque origin were mentioned several times in medieval Košice. 101he origin of this Košice toponym is, however, better explained by a parallel from the nearby city of Prešov.Its southern suburb outside the walls was usually called Fossatum (after the moat) in late medieval writings, but in 1433 the term Venice was exceptionally used for it. 102Both Venices, in Prešov and Košice, were therefore not related to the ethnicity of the population at the time of the foundation of the streets, but to the these settlements being situated near watercourses, which was the natural environment that prompted the establishment of their specifi c name.
The taxes of Venice in Košice (Platea Venetiarum) were recorded at the end of the register of 1504 without any mention of Nicholaus' Village. 103At the end of another surviving tax register of the northern suburbs from 1515, Nicholaus' Street without Venice is noticed in the same place.Yet, despite more than a decade separating the two registers, several names of taxpayers of the two localities match. 104Nicholaus' Street and Venice were thus the same (small) settlement with two variants of the name, the latter of which was more recent.
It is noteworthy that the tax register of 1522-1524 does not mention either of the two variants of the name of this street.Instead, a small Platea Thyma wcza was registered in the relevant suburban area (Hun.Timár utca; Eng.Tanner Street).It was probably the third name of this settlement, where a few tanners were actually registered in the 1520s.There are only a few other mentions of this street from the sixteenth century.As there were not many taxpayers living there, the street did not have its own judges.But a detailed tax register from 1635 recorded taxpayers on St Ladislaus Street together with Tanner Street (Szent Laszlo ucza az Gerber uczaval). 105he two streets were thus adjacent.The name of Tanner Street has survived to the present day, but it is possible that it does not correspond to the location of the medieval Nicholaus' Street (Venice) and the early modern Tanner Street.Currently, Tanner Street lies on the right side of the former Mill Embankment.It can be assumed, however, that the medieval street with the names listed above was situated mainly on the left side of the Mill Embankment, next to St Ladislaus Street (today's Tyršovo nábrežie). 106The First Military Survey recorded there several watercourses fl owing between the Hornád River and the aforementioned embankment.

Ludmannsdorf
All the streets lying south of the walls were demolished for the construction of the citadel in the 1670s.After the destruction of the citadel at the beginning of the eighteenth century, settlement soon resumed. 107In the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, Great Ludmann Street and Small Ludmann Street existed southeast of the city centre. 108The former lay on the northern section of today's Jantárová ulica, the latter roughly in the area of today's Palárikova ulica and part of Jantárová ulica.Ludmanská ulica still exists today, but it lies a little to the west of the two streets called Ludmann's in the nineteenth century.
The fi rst reports about Ludmann's Village are contained in the oldest court book, starting in 1394.They concern debts of persons from this settlement, but more often local properties (houses) owned by the burghers from the walled city. 109Similar reports come from other municipal court books from the end of the Middle Ages. 110Until the turn of the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries the city notaries characterized the settlement as a village (villa Ludmani, Ludmansdorf ), but since then mostly as a street (platea, Gasse). 111ccording to Ondrej R. Halaga, Ludmannsdorf could have been an old village, which eventually joined the city's cadaster.The name "Ludmann" was given by Halaga in relation with an alleged local church, built on the initiative of the city, whose dedication replaced the original name of the village. 112However, there is no evidence of a church on this street in the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period.A more correct explanation of this naming would be, thus, that Ludmann's Village was preceded by a farmstead belonging to a Košice burgher with this name, although we do not know about the person in question from city documents. 113

Kleine Spitalgasse (Kleine Gasse)
This street is fi rst documented at the turn of the 1470s and 1480s (Clein spitel gas).114Among the surviving medieval tax registers, only one has recorded it, namely that of 1522-1524, which was exceptionally drawn up for the whole city with its suburbs.This street was listed there as the last taxable unit (Kysch hyspital hycza).It was also known as the Small Street in medieval as well as in early modern times. 115hen describing the medieval outskirts of Košice, it is common in historiography to apply a geographical perspective on the southern, western and northern suburbs.Ondrej R. Halaga therefore concluded that Small Hospital Street was the last settlement north of the walls.At the same time, he assumed that another "small" hospital stood there. 116Nevertheless, this view also needs to be corrected.In the Middle Ages, the suburban streets of Košice were divided into four quarters for tax purposes.In view of this fact, the last streets recorded in the tax register of the 1520s were those existing beyond the Fourth Inner Quarter, i.e., to the southeast of the walls.Thus, Small Hospital Street extended from Lower Gate, next to Hospital Street, compared to which it was smaller.The two streets belonged to diff erent taxing quarters, so they were recorded separately in the tax records.This is confi rmed by the lists of suburban judges, according to which Gros und Kleinspitalgaß had common judges from the end of the sixteenth century. 117These streets therefore had to be adjacent.
After the demolition of the citadel outside the Lower Gate at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the local suburban settlement was restored, but nineteenthcentury maps no longer record the toponym Small Hospital Street or Small Street here.

Population
After arranging the sequence of tax registers and identifying the streets outside the walls of Košice at the end of the Middle Ages, it is possible to proceed to the enumeration of selected numerical data now.Given the scope of this study, only one major issue will be addressed here, namely the number of houses and taxpayers.It is worth remembering that the fragmented state of the written sources only makes it possible to recognise a single moment in the life of the city, not even for all its quarters at the same time.We thus lose knowledge of a continuous development that was certainly dynamic and changeable as a result of migration processes. 118All this limits the explanatory value of static data from Košice.
The tax register of 1522-1524, which is the only one of the surviving medieval registers to record the entire city, contains a considerably lower number of taxpayers than was the case before that date.Compared to the situation at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the number of taxpayers in individual suburban districts dropped by at least about 13-23%, mostly in the south of the city.Several houses were listed as untaxed because of the epidemic, which was probably the cause of the temporary loss of taxpayers.And perhaps it was the exceptional situation that prompted the city community to prepare this register in unusual manner for all city quarters together.The register of the 1520s also diff ers in the system of taxation. 119he following table therefore summarizes the data from the scattered registers from the early sixteenth century.They date from the stable period of the city's development after the siege of 1490/1491.The payments listed were probably compiled according to the uniform tax system applied at the end of the Middle Ages.Registers of this kind are missing for one (the fourth) suburban quarter.As a result, the city-wide register of the 1520s was used for this case, from which the number of taxpayers was increased by 20%.It was the smallest suburban quarter, consisting of only two streets, so such a correction does not have a major impact on the overall statistical result.121 In future research into the tax registers of Košice and other towns, particularly for the walled area, it may also be useful to distinguish between tenants and lodgers: MUSÍLEK, Majitelé -nájemci -podnájemníci.
The vast majority of suburban taxpayers (90%) occupied their own houses.It is reasonably assumed in historiography that suburban houses were only wooden at that time. 125Written sources do not specify their building material.Tenants and lodgers were present in the suburbs in small numbers (10%), both in houses and farmsteads owned by inner-city burghers, and sporadically also in the houses of suburban residents.Most farmsteads, however, did not have taxpayers.The contemporary farmsteads were thus usually small holdings, which could be looked after by paid workers or servants belonging to the burgher's household.Almost half of the farmsteads (19) were placed in the area south of the city (from Ludmann's Street to Binder's Street).Miloslava Bodnárová stated that suburban taxpayers belonged to the lower layer of the urban society in the fi rst quarter of the sixteenth century.There were a small number of artisans who were engaged only in basic crafts. 126The upper and middle layers of townspeople were concentrated in the walled city.According to György Granasztói's fi ndings, the suburban population did not have rights of fully-fl edged citizens at that time. 127nfortunately, there are currently no known coeffi cients that would be useful specifi cally for calculating the suburban population of Košice at the end of the Middle Ages.Such we know only for the inner city in the 1550s. 128In the case of the nearby city of Bardejov, Alžbeta Gácsová calculated for the suburbs at the end of the Middle Ages a coeffi cient of 4.88 for house owners and a coeffi cient of 2 for lodgers. 129Unlike Košice, the suburbs of Bardejov, which had a relatively small urban core, were home to a part of the middle layer of townspeople.It is therefore possible that there was a slightly lower number of persons (coeffi cient) per house owner under the walls of Košice at that time.Around 1510, about 2,500-2,600 people could have lived in the suburbs of Košice together with the residents of the adjacent churches and hospitals.
The earliest tax registers of Košice, mainly concerning the inner city, come from the last quarter of the fi fteenth century, so the aforementioned historians tried to calculate the city population at least around 1480 as the earliest date for which any statistically usable sources have been preserved.Ondrej R. Halaga pointed out that the siege of the town in 1490/1491 caused a temporary decline in the suburban population, after which the number of houses in some places returned to its previous state only around 1520, just before the decline resumed.The only data for the period before 125 HALAGA, Právny, územný a populačný vývoj, 42.
129 GÁCSOVÁ, Spoločenská štruktúra mesta Bardejova, 45.  the sixteenth century survived from the second suburban quarter, lying west of the city walls, for which a register from 1480 still exists.Coincidentally, it was the largest housing quarter outside the city walls and was home to a third of all suburban taxpayers at the end of the Middle Ages.With caution, therefore, discernible changes in the local population may also point to similar processes taking place in other suburbs at the time.Moreover, there is no indication that the tax system in Košice changed between the end of the fi fteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.These data can be, thus, compared with each other.There were 17% more taxpayers recorded in this suburban quarter in 1480 than in 1509.The diff erence was due to the higher number of tenants and lodgers, who made up a quarter of the taxpayers there at the end of the fi fteenth century, compared to only 7% at the beginning of the sixteenth century.It can be assumed that in the same period there was a slight decrease in the number of taxpayers in other suburban districts as well, especially in the category of tenants and lodgers.Of course, the above calculation is hypothetical, since in reality there hardly occurred the same changes in the settlement pattern of each suburban quarter.Nevertheless, it is evident that around 1480 the suburbs of Košice had more taxpayers than at the beginning of the sixteenth century.The number of inhabitants can be tentatively estimated at around 2,800-2,900.
Even from the Early Modern Period, the tax registers of Košice have been preserved only very sporadically.They show a decrease in the number of taxpayers compared to the ratios at the end of the Middle Ages.However, caution is needed in their assessment.As a result of increasing military confl icts (especially between the mid-seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century) and, of course, occasional epidemics, which were not absent even in the Middle Ages, there were signifi cant short-term fl uctuations in the number of taxpayers.Moreover, no historian has yet thoroughly assessed whether all the working poor in early modern Košice were taxed as they were at the end of the Middle Ages.
For the rest of the sixteenth century a single register of suburban taxes from 1561 is known, but only for the settlements north of the walls (Čermeľ Street, New Street and St Ladislaus Street).132Two former medieval streets (Nicholaus' Street and Platea furis) are no longer mentioned there, but Brick Street from the neighbouring suburban quarter had already been added.In the meantime, the tax districts of the suburban streets had changed that these streets were now collectively referred to as the Upper Suburbs (Ober forstath).Compared to the ratios around 1510, the register of 1561 records a 40% drop in taxpayers.This was a temporary phenomenon.From the 1630s, when Košice was in a phase of stable development, some registers of the entire city with its suburbs have been preserved.This detailed source seems suitable for comparisons with an earlier period, but it deserves once more thorough analysis in this respect.According to Ondrej R. Halaga, 477 taxpayers were registered under the city walls at that time. 133This was c. 15% less than around 1510 and c. 30% less than around 1480.The fi rst statistically accurate register, of 1762, recorded 288 houses and 1,415 inhabitants in the suburbs.134

Conclusions
Research on the suburbs of Košice is limited by several circumstances (the fragmentary nature of written sources, the existence of thorough maps of the city only from the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the current absence of archaeological research).It was the historian Ondrej R. Halaga who did a lot of meritorious work for the knowledge of the history of medieval Košice; however, the actual research deviates from his views on the issue of suburbs.Now a fundamentally diff erent interpretation of the origins and administration system of the streets under the city walls has been put forward.
The development of the medieval suburbs of Košice is still only roughly known, but it could be divided into three phases.The existence of the oldest settlements can be assumed directly outside the city gates: Hospital Street beyond Lower Gate, where a hospital with a church had been built already in the second half of the thirteenth century, Čermeľ Street near Upper Gate and another settlement outside Rotten Gate, which was called Rotten Street.These can be regarded as the fi rst phase of the formation of the suburbs of Košice.Their names, which in some cases became permanently established later, referred to nearby city buildings (a hospital, a gate, later local churches) or to a water stream.All the settlements mentioned used to be referred to as streets, or rarely, in the identical sense, as vicus, in municipal documents.
The gradual development of the oldest suburban streets was followed by another phase of increase in the inhabited area beyond the city walls in the second half of the fourteenth century.At that time a considerable number of inhabitants lived on farmsteads of the leading Košice burghers, which is why they began to be called villages.Such were Ludmann's Village to the south of the walls and Nicholaus' Village in the northern suburbs.In the last quarter of the fourteenth century, several similar settlements were established beyond the western city walls: Binder's, Knobloch's, Judge's and probably also Sichel's Village. 135There could have existed even more similar farmstead-villages in the vicinity of the walled city at that time, which subsequently merged with other nearby settlements or disappeared.For instance, there is a rare mention of Clemens' Village (villa Clementis) from 1398. 136Next to the farmsteads, additional population gradually settled, as a result of which they became classic suburban streets.Almost until the end of the Middle Ages, however, they continued to be referred to as villages (Dorf, villa), which diff ered from settlements with other origins (platea, vicus, Gasse).This distinction began to be erased in the city documents at the beginning of the sixteenth century, since the former "villages" were more and more often, until permanently, recorded as streets.Over time, the knowledge about the origin of the naming of villages from personal names was lost, as a result of which some nomenclature changes also occurred: Sichelsdorf / Ziegelgasse, Nicholaus' Village or Venice / (rarely) St Nicholaus Street.The literal translation of names into diff erent languages was eventually also practiced: Knoblochsdorf / Fokhagyma utca, Bindersdorf / Bodnár utca.These newer (translated) names with the term street can continue to be used in historiography to describe the early modern, or overall development of Košice's suburbs.But for medieval period, it is more appropriate to prefer primary names (Knobloch's Village or Street, etc.).
All ten settlements mentioned above lasted until the beginning of the early modern period.Up to half of them probably originated from farmsteads.Two churches and one other hospital (leprosarium) were built on the older streets near the gates on the western and northern sides up to the beginning of the fi fteenth century.
The fi fteenth century can be considered the third phase of the growth of the suburbs of Košice.The trend from the second phase continued, as only one new street was founded outside Lower Gate and two or three other streets outside Upper Gate, but up to three or four new streets arose in the western suburbs then.None of the newer settlements were characterized as a "village", but always as a "street" (or as a "hill", etc.).Their names were based on local contexts (Small Hospital Street, St Leonard Land, New Street, etc.).
From the point of view of secular administration, the suburban population and suburban properties were subject to the jurisdiction of the city council.In this respect, the court records have the same meaning throughout the late Middle Ages, from the time of the fi rst court book from the turn of the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries onwards.Tax registers, which have been preserved since the end of the fi fteenth century, testify to a common system of taxation for the urban and suburban population.
The names of tax collectors in suburban quarters were usually listed at the beginning of these registers.In all cases, they were citizens of the inner city, primarily members of the city council or the outer council, that is, not representatives of the suburbs.From the perspective of preserved written references, there is no observable diff erence between the administrative status of suburban "streets" and "villages".The location of such large farmsteads in close proximity to the city was probably the reason why their independent administrative development did not occur.It can be assumed that the farmsteads changed private owners over time and other houses were built near them.A specifi c group of leading burghers, who once used such estates for their economic activities, has probably also disappeared.In the fi fteenth century, these suburban "villages" were already ordinary suburban streets, fully subject to the city council.
Sporadically from 1518 and more frequently from the 1560s, the city notaries entered the names of the elected judges of the large suburban streets (Dy vorstetter Rychter) in the city books, to whom the remaining, smaller streets were also subject.In the years 1518 and 1520, the judges of 11 streets (out of a total of around 15 streets) were appointed.It was usually two men living in the assigned street.Their election took place in January, soon after the election of the new city council. 137No other circumstances are known.But nothing confi rms an older assumption, according to which these suburban judges were elected by the local population, as a relic of the former separate legal status of those villages. 138Considering the fi ndings mentioned above, and also the parallels with other Hungarian cities, for instance Buda, it is reasonable to assume that it was the city judge and the city council who elected suburban judges in medieval Košice.The number of two such men for each entrusted suburban street was the same as the usual number of councillors, who were annually elected to the posts of city offi cials, that is, administrators of city property at that time -for villages outside the city's cadaster, wage payments, mills, scales, etc. 139 The posts of Košice's suburban judges were therefore a regular part of the structure of the city administration.As can be assumed, these men exercised lower judicial powers delegated to them by the city judge and the city council.As a result of such empowerment, as well as due to the signifi cantly smaller property of the suburban population compared to that of the inner city, only a few cases concerning persons residing outside the walls came before the city council, and thus into the city's court books.In such court cases, one of the parties was often a person from the inn er city. 140uburban judges likely dealt with judicial and administrative tasks in entrusted streets.The division of the suburbs into four quarters was, as it seems, only for tax purposes.Due to the large city core, a compact dense street network did not emerge around the walls, instead of which there were scattered streets that only met in some places.There are no reports of any kind of fortifi cation of the suburbs in the Middle Ages.
In the late Middle Ages, one church or chapel stood not far from each of the three most important city gates.In front of Lower Gate was the Church of The Holy Spirit with the main city hospital, in front of the western Rotten Gate was the Church of St Leonard with leprosarium, and east of Upper Gate was the Church of St Ladislaus.Although there were permanent posts of priests in these churches at the end of the Middle Ages, they all remained part of a single city parish.There is no mention of any kind of territorial limitation of the scope of such suburban churches.The assets of these churches and hospitals were subject to the supervision of the city council.Two of these churches (and also the leprosarium) were demolished due to the construction of a new fortifi cation in the early modern period, which probably also aff ected the nearest suburban houses in a similar way.
In the case of medieval Košice, thus, the written sources refer to suburbs that were formed only after the foundation of the city.One day perhaps archaeology will fi nd out more about the origins of the streets beyond the former city walls.Further research into early modern writings could also contribute to the knowledge of the development of those settlements and to a more precise localization of some of them.
The inhabitants of the suburbs of Košice belonged to a lower property category.Around 1510, there were c. 570 taxpayers, which together with the staff of churches and hospitals may have formed a population of c. 2,500-2,600 persons.Before that, in the fi fteenth century, the suburbs of Košice had slightly more residents.Around 1480, there were c. 670 taxpayers, which may have been part of a population of around 2,800-2,900 people.The number of inhabitants of the inner city was similar at that time.In the 1630s, c. 30% fewer taxpayers were registered in the suburbs than around 1480.Meanwhile, the number of inhabitants outside the city walls decreased, but not to such a dramatic extent as part of the older historiography assumed.141For a more precise calculation of the demographic development in the suburbs of Košice in the fi fteenth to seventeenth centuries, it would be necessary to apply more adequate coeffi cients and to examine early modern written sources more thoroughly.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Košice according to the First Military Survey, 1782-1784 Having this knowledge, it is possible to organize the fragmented tax registers now.Beyond the First Inner Quarter there lay suburban streets to the southwest of the city walls, which were recorded in the tax registers of 1511 and 1522: Hospital Street, Binder's Village (Cooper Street), Rotten Street (St Leonard Street) and Knobloch's Village (Garlic Street).For the western suburbs, placed beyond the Second Inner Quarter, the largest number of tax registers have survived, namely those of 1480, 1501, 1506, 1507, 1509 and 1522.These recorded Judge's Village, St Leonard Land, St Leonard Hill (New Street), On the Moat (Small Gate Street) and Brick Street.Of the medieval tax registers of the streets in the northern (northeastern) suburbs, i.e. beyond the Third Inner Quarter, only the registers of 1504 and 1515 exist.There we fi nd Čermeľ Street, New Street, St Ladislaus Street, Nicholaus' Street (Venice) and Platea furis.The tax register of some of the years 1522-1524, which exceptionally recorded the entire city, contains entries for the southeastern suburban streets too: Ludmann's Street and Small Hospital Street.These lay beyond the Fourth Inner Quarter.No other tax records of this last suburban quarter are known. 18

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: The western part of the suburbs according to the so-called Otto's plan of Košice around 1841

Figure 3 :
Figure 3: The northern part of suburbs according to the so-called Chunert's plan of Košice from 1807

Figure 4 :
Figure 4: The southern part of the suburbs according to the so-called Otto's plan of Košice around 1841

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: Suburban streets of Košice at the end of the Middle Ages (roads and watercourses according to the First Military Survey from 1782-1784) 21 MAGDOŠKO, Samospráva mesta Košice, 36, 208.22A small (unpublished) archaeological study uncovered a medieval object in this area: RUSNÁK, Košice v stredoveku, 40.

Table 3 :
Houses and taxpayers in the suburban streets, c. 1510

Table 4 :
All houses and taxpayers in the suburbs, c. 1510

Table 5 :
Houses and taxpayers in the second suburban quarter in 1480

Table 6 :
Taxpayers in the suburbs with a hypothetical fi tting for c. 1480