Reponse to criticism

Last week I had received a letter as a response to one of my blog posts that was critical of me calling myself a "Count". I shall repost the letter and respond to it: 

Dear Sir,

I find it very good that you are a beliver in monarchy. But as a half -transylvanian, who also is a desendent of the Bánffy-Decsey link you described I should inform you that is highly unappropiate for you to use the name COUNT. I can assure you that it is not true, althoug som member of the Decsey family was a comes at some time. That is an office and a title to be worn only during the holding of such an office. The title of count was brought to Transylvania by the Habsburgs and all those families are known. They also have a patent of countship saying that this would be a hereditary title. All of them are inscribed in the királyi könvek. (royal books)If you are interested in a very serious way about your ancestry, you should contact Mr. András W. Kovács, who operates a site on the transylvanian history and genealogy. He will be able to produce something of the proud decsey family. But please stop calling yourself count. You will embarras yourself and your family in front of real transylvanian nobleman. (of whom I know quite some)

best regards

Olivier T. 

Dear Olivier,

I thank you for your concern about my use of the title Count but I can assure you, I have a hereditary right to use such a title, along with the title Baron as well.  I think you are confusing two separate Hungarian titles that both translate as Count in English and Comes in Latin but were entirely different in Hungarian in function and rights.  The title you are referring to when you mentioned "That is an office and a title to be worn only during the holding of such an office." is ispán, or more commonly főispán (count) and alispán (viscount).  These titles were functional offices of realms the size of a county or royal county and amounted to a governor.  These titles were NOT hereditary and were usually appointed by the King of Hungary, the Prince or Vajda of Transylvania or elected by Peers.

The title I am by right allowed to use is gróf, which, incidentally, also translates as Count and Comes.  The difference is, gróf is a hereditary title.  Once earned, it may be passed down from generation to generation.  Unlike ispán, the title of gróf did not grant a governorship or office, but granted personal land, peasants, and honors much in the same way that the Austrian and German Graf (from which the Hungarian gróf derives) would have bestowed personal land and honors.  And yes, you are correct, there were times when the House of Décsey held ispán office.  But this is an office, not a rank.  The title of gróf is a rank, not an office.

As for me, I hold Letters Patent that were passed down since 1300, 1413, and 1497 respectively.  My Great Grandfather Géze even had the dog-skin that represented his rank.  Unfortunately, he was the last Count (gróf) of Décsey prior to Communist regime taking power in 1947.  A lot of precious things were lost during the brutal totalitarian communist regime, but since its fall, it has been left to me and some of my cousins to pick up the pieces and carry the torch for the proud Décsey family.

While I do not feel in any way personally insulted by your letter, I do think it is an insult to my ancestors that fought against the Ottoman hordes centuries ago and earned their rank and status.  Perhaps they were not on the same level as the Bánffy or Báthory families, they certainly have their place in Transylvanian history.  And yes, I also know my share of modern relatives of many important noble families from Transylvania.  I have contacted Mr. András W. Kovács but I don't think he'll be able to provide more information than I already have.  Please feel free to look at some of my sources or even travel to the Hungarian National Archives in Budapest for more information.

Best Wishes!

Common Ancestor with Royal House Stuart

It's amazing what one can discover with the knowledge of one common ancestor and some genealogical research tools.  One of my favorite web-based tools for genealogical research, Genealogics.org, has one of the best sources for nobility and royalty heritage research.

Also, it is through the female line that one can really discover some great connections to world nobility and royalty.  My common ancestor that has lead me to the discovery of relationships to various royal and noble houses is Fruzsina Décsey de Marosdécse, who was born 1486 and married in 1505 to Count Stefan (István) Bánffy de Losoncz.  From here, again continuing down the female line, we get to Princes and Counts of Italy, Germany, and the Royal House of Stuart.  Sadly, it is very difficult to find information on female lines since often they were not considered important in particular to one's own noble house, but provide a vital link to other noble and royal houses.

I don't have much information on other female lines in my noble house, the daughters of Décsey, but I will continue my research.  I will continue my research to see if the link to Royal House Stuart continues on to link to the Royal House of Windsor and HRH Queen Elizabeth II.

Wikipedia Article

I've started a Wikipedia article for the Décsey family, though it is far from finished.  It currently has only some basic information, such as a brief origin of the family, some notable members and a black and white Coat of Arms.  Look for updates in the near future to the article.

Letters Patent - part I

Today I was able to get some scans of one of my family's Letters Patent from the late 15th century.  These are only in black and white, but I will in the near future make full color scans of all the Letters Patent (there are three of them).  All three letters patent are written in medieval to late-medieval/early Renaissance Latin, as most at the time were.

In case you are wondering "what are letters patent"? and "why are they important"? the answers are that first, Letters Patent are official royal documents granted to an individual entitling them to nobility, both in title and in land.  Most of the time, they either created new nobles or gave land grants to existing nobles (as in the case of my family).  Second, the importance of these documents are that they are proof positive of noble title and land as well as at times granting the right of Arms to individuals and families.  They are almost always granted by a King, and in the case of these documents, they were granted by King Matthias Corvinus (on the document as "Mathias Rex" in Latin).

Here are some of black and white scans:

The family Castle in Aiud

Of course no ancient noble house would be complete without some sort of fortification to attest to the accomplishments and the power of the residing noble family. In our case, it is the castle fortress in Romanian city of Aiud that is now a bit of a tourist attraction. The fortress would built back in the early 1300s to defend the lands against the invading Ottoman Turks. Also, the city of Aiud was originally part of the City of Décse, but is now known as Enyed by Hungarians and of course Aiud (pronounced "aye-OOD") by the Romanians.

It is truly a beautiful thing to observe, as it is pretty massive. It's smaller compared to the castles one might be familiar with in Ireland or Great Britain, but it is indeed large and beautiful.

Here are photos of the family castle:

Gone a little while... back with great news

I've been gone from blogging the past couple of months, but not without good reason.  I've spent a month in Europe, mostly Romania, Hungary and Austria.  This vacation gave me the opportunity to visit my family's ancestral lands in Transylvania (Hungarian: Erdély, German: Siebenbürgen). These lands are mostly villages, with the main one being gently nestled between the giant hills of the Carpathian mountains.  This village, Maros-Décse (Decea in Romanian) is the most significant.  These village is where my ancient ancestors lived and ruled and fought against the Turks.  It was their village.

Much of the knowledge that my family had about the Décsey family had been lost because of communism in Romania.  For some reason, the Décsey family did not flee the country as other noble families did to escape communism.  They chose to stay and, as a consequence, lost all of their last and much of their written history and documents.

Fortunately for me, the Hungarian communist government wasn't quite as destructive as the Romanian or Soviet ones were.  Documents and Peerage books were still readily available for those that knew where to look.  After having spent several years researching, I found several books chronicling the Décsey family, their lands and their exploits since the 14th century.  A wonderful source was a series of Peerage books from a Hungarian herald and scribe named Nagy Iván.  In this book, a monument to Count Balthasar Décsey was revealed to exist in the village of Maros-Décse (Decea Romania) inside the Hungarian Reformed Church.

Hoping that this writing was true (it was written over 150 years ago), my wife, my cousin, and I went to Decea to see for ourselves.  There we met a wonderful Priest of the Church and he was kind enough to speak to us about the family, the history of the village and the Church and of the monument to Count Balthasar Décsey.  We also rediscovered the small city of Aiud (Hungarian: Enyed), which contains a castle that once belonged to my family.  The whole city of Aiud in fact once belonged to my family.

The amount of history was simply breathtaking!  The village, the Church, the castle... built in the early 1300s -- these things were three times as old as the United States.  Also, the National Archives in Budapest has two large boxes full of documents and letters from my family dating back to medieval times, perhaps as early as 1000 AD.  The collection includes three Letters Patent (the documents from Kings proving nobility with rank and land) and other priceless documents.

I was very fortunate indeed to have done to proper research to come across all of these.  My family once thought all of these documents were long destroyed by communists.

I shall write more about what was discovered and my progress in reclaiming these properties.

Décsey family crest and Coat of Arms in color

Description:

Déczey, Déczy and Décsey von Décs from Maros-Décs in Siebenburgen in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Transylvania, Romania). Arms of Count Balthasar Deczey from a gravestone in the Church of Maros-Décs, dated 1591.
Arms: Argent, growing from a mount in base vert, a dead tree entwined with a serpent proper, crowned or.
The helm ducally crowned.
Mantling: Dexter, or and azure; sinister, argent and gules.

Family Coat of Arms from Nagy Iván vol. III

Décsey noble family pedigree

Here is a partial pedigree of the Décsey de Maros-Décse et Nagy-Doba noble family since 1575.  It is noted in Iván Nagy's catalog of Hungarian noble families (Nagy Iván, III, pp. 264-68) that the family is "original nobility" and is quite old, perhaps dating to the formation of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1000 AD.  It is also noted that Péter Décsey in 1413 was already an important figure in the Principality of Transylvania (Siebenbürgen; Erdély).  Fruzsina (either his daughter or sister) married István Bánffy de Losoncz.  This marriage ultimately led to (a little bit further down the Bánffy de Losoncz line) to producing a King of Poland as well as very high-ranking nobility.

Queens and princes are for children in a fairytale world.

"... Republics and freely elected heads of state are for adults."

You can find these comments from this article that I submitted on socialmonarch.com. I must admit I am a bit annoyed by the arrogance of the author of this article.  This argument made by republicans is not new, however.  I'm sure we've all heard this before.  Kings and Queen are for fairy tales and bed-time stories.

If that is so, then politicians and "freely elected" heads of state are the stuff of nightmares and by which you scare children.  Want to scare your child?  Tell them they will be forever paying taxes simply to subsidize the interest alone on their republican national debt.  The American Republic's national debt to private bankers and foreign bond owners now exceeds $9 trillion USD.

Want to frighten your children some more?  Tell them to be prepared for corruption and demagoguery - they won't have any real choices - Democrats or Republicans.  Demoplicans or Republicrats.  Choose A or B, but forget about C,D,E,F ... etc.  Tell your children about their "freely elected" heads of state and government will take - at every opportunity - their God-given rights.  The politicians will spit on their laws, customs and constitutions for personal gain and power.

Prepare your children for communism and fascism, as republics ultimately degenerate into one of these totalitarian regimes.  Look at the situation now in Nepal.  The Monarchy has been abolished and now petty squabbling has erupted and the power struggles have begun.

This is what your children have to look forward to: a dystopia - perhaps even a police state that will give them the false illusion of choice.

So do yourself and your children a favor:  keep telling them those fairy-tale bedtime stories... perhaps they will dream of kings and princes, of times when freedom reigned and justice was upheld.

Breaking News: Supremes Strike Down D.C. Handgun Ban

Two of the biggest Supreme Court cases of the term, whose rulings were reserved for the last day of the term, both split along ideological lines. The Court has ruled, in a 5-4 (right-left) vote, to invalidate the so-called Millionaire’s Amendment to McCain-Feingold that was at issue in Davis v. Federal Election Commission. (Here’s the opinion, via Scotus blog, whose amazing live blog feature has enabled the LB to expedite this week’s Scotus news.)

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the hotly-anticipated case over the D.C. gun ban, a 5-4 majority affirmed the D.C. Circuit’s ruling that the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns violated the Second Amendment. The majority opinion was written by Justice Scalia. Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote dissents. (Here’s the opinion.)

FULL ARTICLE from the Wall Street Journal

Gun control in the United States is officially dead.

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FACTBOX:Where are the world's remaining monarchies?

(Reuters) - Nepal's 239-year-old Shah dynasty became the latest monarchy to tumble on Wednesday, after its ruling Hindu royals were outmaneuvered by a decade-long Maoist insurgency and displaced by a mass pro-democracy movement.

Here is a list of some of the world's remaining monarchies and their royal heads of state:

Full Article

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Poll: Which era do you wish you could live in?

~ flexiPoll: free online web poll ~

District of Columbia versus Heller - Update

Judging by who is writing the majority opinion, Justice Scalia, of the Supreme Court for the DC vs Heller case, it seems to me that all is in favor of individual rights for the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.

If you don't know what DC vs Heller is about, you should, because the Supreme Court's opinion on this particular matter will affect gun control laws across the country and possibly have affects elsewhere as well.  What it means is that finally the language in the Second Amendment will have an explanation and an official interpretation rather the speculation that has been going on since early in the 20th century and the founding of the National Guard.

Gun control advocates will argue that reasonable restrictions are permitted by the Second Amendment and other clauses within the US Constitution on individual ownership of firearms.  I don't think an outright ban on just about all firearms in Washington DC would constitute reasonable.

This is exactly what the case is about.  Is the "...right to bear arms" an individual right or a collective right enjoyed solely by the federal government, states and localities?

What does seem reasonable to me is that individual ownership of arms has been a right since medieval times, most notably in Anglo-Saxon-dominated England not long after the fall of the Roman Empire.

The Second Amendment does not grant the right to bear arms but rather reiterates the restriction on the government from hindering the right to bear arms that Parliament used to love to do with sporting laws for hunters.

Full Article

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U.S. Economy: Consumer Confidence, House Prices Slide (Update1)

It's no mystery, the US economy is in deep trouble and so is the government for that matter, being deeper than $9 Trillion US in debt to the Federal Reserve and foreign governments like communist China.  Oil, gasoline and natural gas prices in the United States have hit record levels and relief doesn't look like it is coming any time soon.  The people, at least the lower and middle-classes, are getting squeezed:  Laborers, farmers, small businesses, white-collar workers at al. are all in the "squeeze".

What's worse, if you invested in American real estate, you've probably lost some money rather than gain it -- the real estate/housing bubble has burst.  The US being the largest consumers in the world are now spending far less on just about everything and stretching an inflated dollar as far as they can.

Full Article

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