Pacta conventa (Croatia)

Pacta conventa (Lat. "agreed accords") was an agreement between King Coloman of Hungary and the Croatian nobility in 1102. 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 change the legal nature of the pacta after the throne was occupied by Ferdinand I.

In Hungarian historiography it is generally accepted that the document is a forgery while Croatian historiography generally accepts it as authentic; a Croatian proponent of the forgery view is Nada Klaić. Oldest surviving version of Pacta conventa is from 14 century and today this version is in Budapest museum.

Circumstances of the agreement

After Petar Svačić, the last Croatian king of Croat descent, was killed on the battlefield in 1097, the Croats has refused to surrender. To end this war idea of agreement has been born so in 1102 Croatian nobles decided to conclude "Pacta conventa" with Coloman before of his crowning for Croatian king in Biograd.

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.

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.

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. Though the validity of the document is disputed, there was at least a non-written agreement that regulated the relations between Hungary and Croatia in approximately the same way, since Croatia remained a separate crownland and retained its chief institutions such as the Parliament and the ban.