Székesfehérvár is a city in central Hungary, located around 65 km southwest of Budapest. It is inhabited by 104,059 people (2001), with 138,995 in the direct vicinity, and is the centre of the Fejér county.
Its name means "royal white chair/throne/castle", and its translation to other related languages (German Stuhlweißenburg, Croatian Stolni Biograd, Turkish Istolni Belgrád) means "the white city of/with the chair/table/castle". The word szék meaning chair is related to its important role in the first centuries of Hungary: székhely means a capital of something, székel means (for a king) to reside somewhere. The first kings of Hungary were crowned and buried here, so Székesfehérvár was a capital city of the country. The other capital was Esztergom.
History
The place was inhabited since Roman times, the settlements were called Gorsium and Herculia. In the Middle Ages, its Latin name was Alba Regalis/Alba Regia.
It is historically famous as the ancient coronation and burial place of the kings of Hungary.
The chapter members were recruited from the chief families, and were once about forty, but in 1543, during the invasions of the Turks, the chapter became extinct, though the provosts and canons were yet nominated.
From 1380 to 1527 Stuhlweissenburg was both coronation and burial place for the Hungarian kings.
Among his successors are Joseph Kopácsy (1821-1825), afterwards Archbishop of Gran; Vincent Jekelfalussy (1866-1874), the first Hungarian bishop to promulgate the dogma of the infallibility without previously asking the royal consent (placet regium), and for which he was rebuked.
The Ofen community suffered much during this siege, as did also that of Stuhlweissenburg when the imperial troops took that city in September 1601; many of its members were either slain or taken prisoner and sold into slavery, their redemption being subsequently effected by the German, Italian, and Turkish Jews.
On March 19 the populace of Presburg, encouraged by the antipathies of the citizens—who were aroused by the fact that the Jews, leaving their ghetto around the castle of Presburg, were settling in the city itself—began hostilities that were continued after some days, and were renewed more fiercely in April.
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