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Hungarian Customary Law and Protestant Natural Law in Hungarian

A magyar szokásjog és a protestáns természetjog magyarul

Author(s): István Tringli / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: customary law; natural law; translation

The Hungarian translation of the Tripartitum, the first summary of Hungarian customary law, was finished in 1565. By 1610, the work of François Raguel, a compilation of Biblical passages with a legal relevance, had also been translated into Hungarian. None of the two translations was used frequently by the Hungarian law courts. While the Tripartitum was cited from the Latin original, Raguel’s work was probably read by pastors and town councillors. There existed in the sixteenth century a Biblical natural law, which was rooted in the Scripture. Both the treatise on the Ten Commandments that was written by the Tripartitum’s author in 1524 and Raguel’s book belonged to this tradition.

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Churchmen on the Lower Table of the Hungarian Diet, 1608–1688

Egyháziak a magyar országgyűlések alsótábláján, 1608–1688

Author(s): Zsófia Kádár / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: Church; diet; lower table; seventeenth century

The paper explores the churchmen who sat on the lower table of the Hungarian diet between 1608–1688. It is organised into seven major parts. 1. Sixteenth-century preliminaries 2. Delegates sent by the cathedral and collegiate chapters: alongside the (arch)provosts with no episcopal title, mostly the major canons were commissioned 3. Titular abbots and provosts invited individually (15-25 persons). 4. The number of lower clergy on the lower table 5. Their place and activity at the diets, participation in the work of the Royal Table, of the compilers, committees and delegations, as well as in legislation and backroom negotiations 6. The presence at the diets of Pauline, Benedictine and Jesuit monastic leaders 7. The churchmen on the lower table as a representative group of the Hungarian middle clergy.

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The Execution of the Hungarian Abolition of Peasant Serfdom and its Historiographical Perceptions

A magyarországi jobbágyfelszabadítás végrehajtása és történészi percepciói

Author(s): Gergely Krisztián Horváth / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: historical narrative; abolition of peasant serfdom; quantification; local research; social history

The first part of the paper surveys the historiographical discourses about the abolition of peasant serfdom. While the examination of the abolition of serfdom in a local context only started in the early 1960s, the preceding decades had been dominated by three influential narratives. From the 1890s to the 1930s the historical syntheses argued that the great losers of the abolition were the former lords, while the winners were the former serfs. From the mid-1930s a more balanced judgement emerged, in which both parties were thought to have suffered the consequences of the dissolution of the old order and the market transition. After 1945, parallel to the sovietisation of Hungary, the exclusive dominance of historical materialism meant that, from the perspective of the peasantry, the balance of the abolition of serfdom became clearly negative. The quantitative analyses of the 1960s gradually nuanced the picture, and, as a result, by the 1980s the balanced judgement of the 1930s had been basically justified. The second part of the paper attempts to organise the evidence of the quantitative analyses into a database. The result, however, is that while the 52 researches that could be involved in the analysis contain information about more than 2200 settlements, only a tiny fragment of these are detailed enough to be of any help in reconstructing the balance of the abolition of serfdom on a national level: how much arable, pasture and meadow remained in the hands of the former serfs, and how much they lost. Accordingly, the author proposes a new, regionally and socio-historically representative research in order to answer the question.

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”… more fools have to be produced for the state”. The Physiological Limits of Stalinist Social Engineering, 1952

„… mennél több bolondot kell termelni az államnak”. A társadalom alakíthatóságának élettani határai, 1952

Author(s): Gabor Csikos / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: Stalinism; social transformation; history from-below; psychiatry

This study examines the psychological effects of Stalinist social engineering in Hungary in the early 1950s through the memoirs of a former warden and the patient files of the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology. The life stories reveal pathogenic factors such as overwork, identity rupture, abrupt social mobility, and the politicization of everyday life. The experiences of psychiatric patients as a minority also provide insight into the conflicts of the majority within society. An important finding of the study is that not only did the obvious victims show symptoms of mental illness, but even the most privileged leaders found that Soviet voluntarism encountered not only economic obstacles or even social resistance but also a more elementary limitation: the limits of their own physical and mental capacity.

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”The Countryside is our Playground”. Ecclesiastico-political Struggles, Catholic Social Organisation and the Problems of Provincial Hungary in the late Nineteenth Century

„A vidék a mi terünk”. Egyházpolitikai harc, katolikus társadalomszervezés és a vidék problémái a 19. század végének Magyarországán

Author(s): Máté Gárdonyi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2022

Keywords: modernisation; political Catholicism; social Catholicism; agrarian policy

The ecclesiastico-political struggles of the late nineteenth century made it inevitable for the Hungarian Catholic church to reconsider its relationship with both state and society. Thus came into focus the ”land-labouring people”, first as a potential social basis of political catholicism, then as one of the targets of social initiatives. While no break between the ecclesiastical elite and the liberal political one took place, Catholic social organisation remained on the agenda. In the field of agrarian policy, improving the situation of the landed peasantry was a clear priority, but attention was also directed to the problems of the argarian proletariat. Thanks before all to the works of Ottokár Prohászka, a new view about the role of the Church in the new modern society was founded on a solid theoretical basis in the ecclesiastical press.

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The Integrative Archaeogenetical, Archaeological and Historical Examination of East-Central Europe, AD 400–900

Az 5–9. századi Kelet-Közép-Európa integratív archaeogenetikai, régészeti és történeti vizsgálata, Kr. u. 400–900.

Author(s): Walter Pohl,Johannes Krause,Tivadar Vida,Patrick J. Geary / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: ancient DNA; isotopes; Late Antique-Early Medieval population; Carpathian Basin; HistoGenes

Few parts of Europe witnessed so many population shifts in a few centuries as the Carpathian Basin in 400–900 AD. In this macro-region along the middle Danube, Pannonians, Romans, Goths, Gepids, Longobards, Avars, Bulgars, Slavs, Franks and many others came and went. This is an intriguing test case for the relationship between ethnic identities constructed in texts, cultural habitus attested in the archaeological record, and genetic profiles that can now be analysed through ancient DNA. What was the impact of migrations and mobility on the population of the East-Central Europe? Was the late antique population replaced, did it mix with the newcomers, or did its descendants only adopt new cultural styles? To what degree did biological distinctions correspond to the cultural boundaries and/or ethnonyms in the texts? If pursued with methodological caution, this case study will have implications beyond the field. HistoGenes will analyse c. 6,000 samples from graves with cutting edge scientific methods, and contextualize the interpretation of these data in their archaeological and historical setting. The rapid progress of aDNA analysis and of bio-informatics now make such an enterprise viable. However, the methods of historical interpretation have not kept pace. HistoGenes will, for the first time, unite historians, archaeologists, geneticist, anthropologists, and specialists in bio informatics, isotope analysis and other scientific methods. A wide range of particular historical questions will be addressed from an interdisciplinary perspective, and fundamental theoretical and methodological issues can be explored. HistoGenes will not only advance our knowledge about a key period in European history, but also establish new standards for the historical interpretation of genetic data. The six-year HistoGenes Synergy Grant was launched on May 1, 2020.

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The Medieval Hungarian Royal Coronation in European Context

A középkori magyar királykoronázás összeurópai kontextusban

Author(s): Ráhel Gloviczki / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Middle Ages; royal coronation; coronation ordo; Egbert ordo; Pontificale Romano-Germanicum

The paper explores the medieval Hungarian royal coronations and the ordines that were used on these occasions. The coronation ritual was fixed everywhere in Europe: the procedure is revealed by the coronation ordines. At first, the 82 extant European coronation ordines are examined comparatively, and secondly the coronations of the individual kings of Hungary are examined in the context of the ensuing results as well as in the light of the previous scholarly literature. It is the coronation ordines of Kings Stephen, Solomon and Louis I that are analysed in detail; for in these cases new perspectives and possibilities emerged in the wake of the examination of the ordines.

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When the Tax is a Redemption. Redemption of Military Service and Extraordinary Taxation in the Early Years of King Matthias’s Reign (1458–1464)

Amikor megváltás az adó. Katonaságmegváltás és rendkívüli adó Hunyadi Mátyás uralma elején (1458–1466)

Author(s): István Kádas / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: tax; extraordinary military tax; militia portalis; King Matthias

Extraordinary taxation levied in the first half of King Matthias’s reign was mostly justified by military necessities and generally put to the financing of military campaigns. The amount and administration of the tax, then generally collected under the name of contributio, varied from year to year and from levy to levy. On top of the countrywide taxes, however, there also existed regional levies, with one or more counties offering taxes for particular military ventures. Moreover, the scholarly literature also reckons with a extraordinary military tax, called taxa exercitualis, that would have been levied in redemption of the so-called militia portalis. A detailed examination of extraordinary taxation, and of the connections between taxation and military service, has clearly proved that there was no separate tax for the redemption of military service, distinct from the contributio, and nor is this distinction supported by the terminology. Rather, as had been the case before, it was the personal military service of the nobility that could be redemeed through the paying of the contributio. Accordingly, this tax could not be collected from the tenants of the nobility who served in person.

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An Unusual Demographic Phenomenon and its Background in the Territory of Sancak of Szeged. The Sudden Transformation of Mikla into a Town in 1578

Egy szokatlan demográfiai jelenség és háttere a szegedi szandzsák területéről. Mikla puszta hirtelen várossá válása 1578-ban

Author(s): Miklós Fóti / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: sancak of Szeged; Ottoman peasant-soldiers; Vlachs; seminomadic population

In 1578, a deserted place called Mikla (nahiye of Solt) was suddenly turned into a town by the influx of Hungarian reayas from three surrounding villages. The kadi of Kalocsa decreed that the missing population in these villages should be covered by pastoralist nomads (haymane) from two deserts belonging to the nahiye of Szabadka. The study explores the background of this semi-nomadic population, which was unregistered in the surveys of the sancak, thus remained almost invisible for the researchers. It examines the role of the haymanes in the organisations of peasantsoldiers of the Ottoman Empire, among the yürüks and voynuks. It reveals the Vlach origin of the semi-nomadic population in Southern Hungary, and their migration from the Vlach areas of the Northern Balkans.

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Typical and Idiosyncratic Features in the Career of a “Hungarus” Intellectual. The Forgotten (Auto)biography of Matthias Bel

Egy hungarus értelmiségi pályafutásának tipikus és egyedi vonásai. Bél Mátyás elfeledett (ön)életrajza

Author(s): Gergely Tóth / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Matthias Bel; Jakob Brucker; autobiography; self-representation; “Hungarus” intellectual; pietism; Hungarian pietism; Hungarian Lutheran church; Rákóczi war of independence

Matthias Bel (1684–1749), Hungarian historian and geographer was as renowed that he could see his own long biography in his life, which was published in 1746 by Johann Jakob Brucker and Johann Jakob Haid in two languages, and two separate series, but of identical content in the fifth volume of their Pinacotheca scriptorum nostra aetate litteris illustrium in Latin, and Bilder-sal heutiges tages lebender, und durch Gelahrtheit berühmter Schrifftsteller in German. With arguments based on both style and content, the present paper at first demonstrates that the text in question is in fact an autobiography. Next, it examines the roles in which Bel chose to present himself, in other words, the self-representation he used in the text. The major roles are the following: 1. the unfortunate student and reformer teacher; 2. the prosecuted pietist pastor; 3. the patriotric intellectual. Finally, the paper explores the extent to which the career of Bel was typical or idiosyncratic if placed in the context of the living conditions of the contemporary Protestant “Hungarus” intellectual elite. The concusion is that while his school years, university studies and early career presents several common features with the curricula of other contemporary Hungarian men of letters, Bel’s immense scientific production and its very high level was far from ordinary, and was not exclusively rooted in this “Hungarus” scientific world. Consequently, it may be misleading to regard Bel as a typical “Hungarus” intellectual. Emphasising the necessity for a new, modern biography of Bel, the paper also outlines its plan as conceived by the author.

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Between “Obsolete” Anti-Judaism and Modern Racism. The Grey Zone of Anti-Jewish Argumentation of Catholic Authors

Avítt antijudaizmus és modern fajelmélet között. Katolikus szerzők zsidóellenes argumentációjának szürke zónája

Author(s): Márta Hantos-Varga / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: anti-Judaism; antisemitism; Jewish question; Catholic Church; 20th century; Béla Bangha

This essay focuses on a rare topic: when the “Jewish question” emerged for the first time at the end of the 19th Century in the discussions of public and political life of the Austro–Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, the traditional Christian anti-Judaism based on religious reasoning was amplified not only by social and economic arguments in Catholic rhetoric, but a sort of “racial factor”. It is important to emphasize that the latter was not similar to the modern racial ideology, although Catholic discourses in relation to Jews contained from the 15th Century a contemptuous thinking about their unchanging nature inclined to evil and predisposed to perfidy. In certain representations, new converts were considered unassimilable people with negative characteristics. The article analyses the oeuvre of one of the most influential person in Hungarian Catholic Church between 1912–1939, a reputed jesuit, Béla Bangha, from the angle of this grey zone of anti-Jewish narrative scattered with “racial” prejudices. Not insignificant that Catholic teachings and the Church’s declarations condemned racial antisemitism, however they asserted the “justifiable” or “ethical” antisemitism like a “self-defense”. This essay outlines the history of anti-Judaism, addresses then its 20th century context with similar manifestations abroad and contrasts this with the minority opinion refusing antisemitism in the Catholic Church in France and Hungary.

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History of the Chervenka Exhumations

A cservenkai exhumálások története

Author(s): Tamás Csapody / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: forced labour; Holocaust; Bor; Chervenka; mass murder; World War II; exhumation

During World War II, some 6000 Hungarian citizens were deported to the Serbian town of Bor for forced labour. On their return journey to Hungary, about 3000 forced labourers reached the brick factories of Chervenka in the Western Bácska region. In the night of 7 October 1944 about 700 to 1000 Jewish forced labourers were killed there by German soldiers with the assistance of Hungarian troops. Among the surviving labourers a further 400 were killed by the Germans on the way from Chervenka to the border of present-day Hungary. In the brick factories and along the roads the corpses remained unburied. The local people and the representatives of both the old and the new regime did make efforts to inter the dead, but these only yielded partial results. Of those killed in the brick factories, which have been continuously functioning ever since, as well as of those slain along the march, some fifty percent still rest on or near the very spot wehere they were killed. The only registered Chervenka mass grave, that in the Jewish cemetery of Zombor, contained the remnants of about 700 Jewish forced labourers of Bor.

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The Integration of 1956 Hungarian Refugees in Bavaria

Az 1956-os magyar menekültek beilleszkedése Bajorországban

Author(s): Rita Kiss / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Bavaria; 1956 Hungarian revolution; refugees; humanitarian aids; schooling

The contribution of Bavaria to the transfer of 1956 Hungarian refugees was considerable: 90.000 Hungarians crossed the Austrian-Bavarian border, most of whom headed for another European or overseas country. More than 15.000 people travelled by plane from Munich to the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Norway, which was made possible by the refugee-aiding action labelled Sicherer Hafen (Safe Haven). The German Federal Republic hosted some 14 500 Hungarians, 1541 of whom were located in Bavaria. Bavaria played a major part in the German aid for the Hungarians as well, for it was from here that the humanitarian transports departed for Hungary and the Bavarian-Austrian border. In Bavaria, the refugee Hungarian schoolchildren could continue their studies in Hungarian, with the Hungarian Realgymnasium located in the building of the former Benedictine monastery at Burg Kastl. The Bavarian state contributed significantly to the licensing and funding of the school. The Hungarian university alumni were assisted in continuing their studies by state scholarships.

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Database of Churchmen Attending Seventeenth-century Hungarian Diets

Adattár a 17. századi magyar országgyűléseken szereplő egyháziakról

Author(s): / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: Church; diet; lower table; upper table; First Estate; seventeenth century

The present database and the related analysis (Churchmen on the lower table of the Hungarian diet 1608–1688. Történelmi Szemle 66 (2022) 203–249.) brings to light an important, ecclesiastical group of the early modern Hungarian political elite. The database consists of two parts. The first contains, diet by diet, the churchmen who were invited to and appeared on the lower chamber of the Hungarian diet between autumn 1608 and 1687/1688. The second part lists, by name, in alphabetical order, the churchmen who were invited to the said diets, or appeared there. This second list also includes the prelates who sat on the upper chamber. The summary presentation of the individual careers (studies, offices) is followed by the data related to the activity at the diets (warrant of invitation/ appearance, activity as a compiler, member of the Royal Table or a parliamentary committee, role played at coronation etc). The database can be a starting point for the (collective) biographical analysis of the middle and upper layer of the seventeenth-century Hungarian ecclesiastical society.

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The History of Győr’s Monography from the Era of Dualism until Today

Győr város monográfiáinak története a dualizmus korától napjainkig

Author(s): Balázs Varga / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2022

Keywords: monography; city history; free royal city; millenium; local power; local press

On the occasion of the 750. anniversary of Győr’s declaration to a free royal city, in 2021, two monography volumes came out of the publishing house. One of them is the first part of the series elaborating the history of the city, while the other one is an independent industry historical piece of work. In the study, following the brief overview of the above mentioned pieces of work – principally based on the articles of the local press – I am outlining the history of Győr’s monography, from the era of dualism until today. I am presenting on what occcasions and for which reasons monography research started, who stood in the frontline of the scientific work, how local power, public opinion and the public related themselves to the works which were being written and which were already published. Moroever, which reasons and factors were in the background of the attempts, which ended with falls many times.

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Fictional Parables of István Széchenyi’s Hitel. Two Stories from the 1830s

A Hitel fikciós példázatai. Két elbeszélés az 1830-as évekből

Author(s): Sándor Hites / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: credit; Széchenyi’s Hitel; didactic literature; economics; social production of knowledge; Jewish emancipation

The paper looks at two Hungarian short stories, one by Pál Csató and one by Mihály Táncsics, from the 1830s. In each, the plot centers on credit relations and both stories feature a Jewish creditor. Alongside their evidently didactic intentions, they are also interconnected by a set of social and economic issues that they both tackle, such as the mutuality between financial rationality, efficient economic management and moral renewal, the reform of economic infrastructure and education, the opposition of landed wealth and capital, of past and present, the relationship between identity and property, and the prospects for social justice and national integration in a market society. The paper argues that literary texts of this kind (didactic economic fictions) may be fruitfully discussed within the history of political economy as a discourse as far as they contributed to the social formation of economic knowledge. It is in this sense that these novellas may be approached as literary commentaries on István Széchenyi’s economic and political reform program: while mediating it in a popular narrative form, they also problematized its viability.

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Debtors and Creditors. The Common Purse of the Károlyi Family in the 19th Registers

Adósok és hitelezők. A Károlyi család közös kasszája a 19. századi kimutatásokban

Author(s): Adrienn Szilágyi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: estate administration; debt management; creditors; debtors; Károlyi family; 19th century

Based on the registers of loans and debts made by the joint estate administration of the Károlyi family, the paper explores the evolution of debt management within the joint family purse and the personal network of the creditors and debtors. Their strategy, moreover, is compared with the credit policy pursued by the joint purse of the Harruckern heirs. The case study highlights the differences between the Károlyi and Harruckern joint purses on the one hand, and the separately administered funds belonging to the Károlyi family and György Károlyi on the other, thereby nuancing our view of the local credit market.

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The Places of Authentication Assisting the Palatinal Congregations from the Beginning to 1435

A nádori közgyűléseken közreműködő hiteleshelyek a kezdetektől 1435-ig

Author(s): András Ribi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: palatinal congregations; authentication; scholarly literature; Middle Ages

Since the 19th century it has been accepted by the scholarly literature as solid fact that the palatinal congregations were also regularly attended by the delegates of the collegiate chapter of (Székes)fehérvár as official testimonies. Yet research into the charter material has revealed several pieces of evidence attesting that the testimony present at the congregation and sent on mission therefrom was by no means always a member of the Fehérvár chapter. Indeed, a case-based research has demonstrated that such exceptions were far from scarce up to the end of the fourteenth century. The paper accordingly explores the causes of such cases, and analyses the practice as it had developed by the first third of the fifteenth century, seeking connections with the emergence of the chapter of Fehérvár as a place of authentication of national competence.

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Miscounted Millions or Overdriven Centralisation? Why Did the Other Lajos Batthyány Resign?

Elszámolt milliók vagy túlhajszolt centralizáció, avagy miért mondott le az a bizonyos másik Batthyány Lajos?

Author(s): Ágnes Ordasi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: Fiume; Hungaro–Croation coast; commercial; governor; state authority; 19th century

In the period of the Austro–Hungarian monarchy Hungaria state authority in the city and district of Fiume was exercised by the governor of Fiume and Maritime Croatia, who was at the same time president of the Hungarian Royal Maritime Authority. As such his competence in naval and commercial issues encompassed the entire Hungaro–Croatian coast. The dual position of the governor was reflected in the government structure as well: while as governor he was directly subordinated to the prime minister, as president of the Maritime Authority he was responsible to the minister of agriculture, industry and trade (and later to the latter’s official successors). The present paper explores the extent to which this dual position helped or hindered the activities of the individual governors, while also drawing attention to the dissonances inherent in the centralising efforts and power strategies of the Hungarian state. Another aim of the author was to reveal the main causes that led to the resignation of the successive governors, thereby contributing to a more nuanced view of their roles and activities.

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On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the 1972 Petition. The National Reorganisation of the Hungarians of Transcarpathia after 1944

Ötvenéves az 1972-es beadvány. A kárpátaljai magyarság 1944 utáni nemzeti újraszerveződése

Author(s): Natália Váradi / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2022

Keywords: protection of national minorities; petition; Transcarpathia; Soviet Union

Urging for the resolution of the problems of the local Hungarian population, fifty years ago, in 1972 the Hungarian intelligentsia in Transcarpathia drafted a petition for the protection of minority rights and sent it to the leadership of the Soviet Union. Signed by nearly 2.000 persons, the document complained about the deprivation of the Hungarian minority of their rights and their treatment as second-rate citizens. The authors itemitzed the most urgent problems, for the resolution of which they demanded immediate remedies. The paper explores the preliminaries of the Petition and the circumstances of its preparation.

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