Modern life in increasingly heterogeneous societies has directed attention to patterns of interaction, often using a framework of persecution and tolerance. This study of the economic, social, legal and religious position of three minorities (Jews, Muslims and pagan Turkic nomads) argues that different degrees of exclusion and integration characterized medieval non-Christian status in the medieval Christian kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1300. A complex explanation of non-Christian status emerges from the analysis of their economic, social, legal and religious positions and roles. Existence on the frontier with the nomadic world led to the formulation of a frontier ideology, and to anxiety about Hungary's detachment from Christendom, which affected policies towards non-Christians. The study also succeeds in integrating central European history with the study of the medieval world, while challenging such current concepts in medieval studies as frontier societies, persecution and tolerance, ethnicity and 'the other'.

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This article addresses the relevance of theories of the frontier for medi eval history. Since Turner, 'frontier' has become a widely used concept, but its different meanings have not been separated and defined. Medi eval historians have studied the development of internal boundaries within kingdoms, political frontiers and frontier societies. Their exam inations included such divergent topics as agricultural expansion and interaction between societies, the latter in turn comprising everything from military confrontation to acculturation. After disentangling the various historiographical trends, the author proposes a distinction between 'frontier zone', a meeting-point of different civilisations, and 'frontier society', a political unit that incorporates two or more reli gions and cultures.

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Wrote Miklós Zrínyi (Nikola Zrinski) in the mid seventeenth century about those who died fighting against the Ottomans. The poet, who himself was engaged in both politics and war, defined Hungarian identity as Christian and premised on warfare unto death against Muslims.