Básztély (genus)

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Básztély (also Vasztély) was a Hungarian clan (gens) from which the Rozgonyi family later rose. Their lands were in Básztély/Vasztély in Esztergom County; today the site is a borough of Csabdi in Fejér County. Some scholars think the clan came from France. They built a tower in the village that gave the name Básztély to the family and place. They were royal servants and freemen who owned property and answered only to the king.

The first known member is Reynold I, mentioned in 1222 by King Andrew II as a loyal servant. He may have come with Queen Yolanda. He worked as a royal bailiff (pristaldus). His son Andrew stayed at Básztély to manage the family estates, while his brothers Solomon and Ladislaus were sent to the court of Ban Stephen Gutkeled and received lands beyond the Drava in 1263. They had no descendants. All Básztély brothers (except Denis) fought in the Battle of the Marchfeld in 1278.

Andrew had a dispute over Bajna with the Zoárd kindred and attended his daughter’s wedding before dying. His sons became minor nobles or “robber knights” during the feudal chaos around the turn of the 13th to 14th centuries. One son, Nicholas, attacked Zoárd lands around 1300, and the king confiscated the family’s lands. By 1342, only a small portion of the Básztély lands remained among Andrew’s descendants.

Reynold II appears in records in 1259. He was part of the “royal youth” serving Duke Stephen, who ruled Transylvania for Béla IV. He married twice, producing Ladislaus (the first Rozgonyi) and Peter with his first wife, and Julius, Solomon, Denis, and a daughter Anne with his second wife. The Básztélyi line stayed among the minor nobility in Transdanubia and died out by the end of the 14th century. Julius later served the powerful Amadeus Aba.

The Rozgonyis rose again in the early 1400s under Sigismund. In 1270 Reynold II received large lands from Stephen V—Rozgony (Rozhanovce in today’s Slovakia), Rasfölde, Lapispatak in Abaúj County, and other villages in Szabolcs and Zemplén Counties—making him one of the region’s great landowners. It’s likely that Reynold or his son Julius built Csicsva Castle around the turn of the 13th–14th centuries.