SPIŠSKÁ BELÁ / Szepesbéla / Zipser Bela is a town in the Zips region on the left bank of the Poprad river. The Belianske Tatry were named after Spišská Belá, which in turn was named after the Belá stream. The earliest document mentioning the town is a charter issued by King Béla IV in 1263. It is addressed to Germans, whom the king invited to settle in the region, which suffered serious losses in the Mongol invasion of 1241-1242. Spišská Belá was one of the 13 Zips towns mortgaged by King Sigismund of Luxemburg to King Władysław Jagiellon II of Poland. It belonged to the Polish Crown between 1412-1772. Trade and handicraft industry did flourish also during the Polish era. The most important historic monument of the town is the Gothic church of St. Anthony-the-Hermit, built in ca. 1264. The church, which came to be rebuilt many times, has a Romanesque portal. There is a Renaissance campanile close to it. The physicist József Petzval (1807-1891), inventor of the camera lens, and his brother, the mathematician Ottó Petzval (1809-1863), members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, were born in Spišská Belá, which had 2800 German inhabitants in the 1850s.

Bibliography: Jancsik, Marosi, Posewitz, Szepesi

THE ZIPS REGION / Spiš / Szepesség belonged to the historical territory of Hungary. It lies in a basin in the foreground of the High Tatras in the southeast. Still a wood-covered uninhabited area in the 11th century, it was settled by Hungarians of Gömör and Torna Counties at the turn of the 11th and 12th century. They were followed by two waves of German immigrants. The first group came from inside, from Abaúj County, in the latter half of the 12th century. The second, larger and foreign, group came from German-speaking areas after the Mongol invasion of 1241-1242. That the majority of the newcomers were Saxons is confirmed by the fact that Saxon law was adopted in the region. Later the influx of various Slav groups contributed to the steady increase of the population.

Autonomous institutions of the Saxons date from the 12th century. Their privileges were detailed in a charter issued by King Stephen V of Hungary in 1271. In 1317, King Charles Robert I of Anjou added new privileges to the old ones. The Zips Saxons, or Zipser, formed a mighty organisation, which was headed by a Landgraf, later called Count of the 24 Zips Towns. The Zips law, or Zipser-Willkür, was also effective in the villages that belonged to these towns.

The mortgaging of 13 Zips towns by King Sigismund of Luxemburg to King Władysław Jagiellon II of Poland in 1412 was a turning point in the history of the Zips region. The 11 towns that remained under Hungarian rule lost much of their territorial significance. Although Levoča and Kežmarok were granted the status of royal free towns, other urban settlements were bereaved of their privileges. The mortgaged towns were recovered for Hungary in 1772, after the first division of Poland. The recovered towns plus 3 other settlements were organised into an autonomous municipal authority, the Province of 16 Zips Towns, in 1778. The seat of the Province was Spišská Nová Ves. The autonomous local authorities of the region came to be united and integrated into Szepes County by the statute of 1876:XXXIII.

Bibliography: Kristó, Szepesi