Felekezetiség és történelmi emlékezet : A Rákóczi-szabadságharc a 18. századi honi történetírásban = Confessionalism and historical memory : Rákóczi’s war of independence in the Hungarian historiography of the 18th century

Tóth, Gergely (2010) Felekezetiség és történelmi emlékezet : A Rákóczi-szabadságharc a 18. századi honi történetírásban = Confessionalism and historical memory : Rákóczi’s war of independence in the Hungarian historiography of the 18th century. TÖRTÉNELMI SZEMLE, 52 (1). pp. 13-36. ISSN 0040-9634

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Abstract

The historical reception of Rákóczi’s war of independence (1703–1711) in the 18th century has hardly been researched so far, inspite of the fact that Hungarian historians wrote rather frequently about the war in the 18th century – of course with regard to the official view of the royal court on the past –, and great differences appeared among them regarding the judgement about certain historical characters and events. Therefore, I summed up the historiography of the 18th century up to István Katona, and I also examined how the authors presented the period in question in their writings. As it seemed for me that the most important reason of the differences among the authors’ narrations was their confessional affiliation, I divided the subject according to it: first I dealt with the Protestant, then with the Catholic writers. From this point of view, the most significant author was Mátyás Bél (1684–1749) among the Lutherans: this excellent geographer and historian, who wrote remarkably much about Rákóczi’s movement in his great work Notitia, in which he describes about the country and its history as well. Partly by experience, he regarded the war of independence as the stoppage of development, chaos and decay. He criticized severely and, sometimes rudely, Ferenc Rákóczi II and Miklós Bercsényi: according to him the responsibility rested solely on them for what had happened. His attitude does not reflect only his own persuasion, but his adaptation to the official position as well. His narration often harmonized with those historic works which reflected the views of the Imperial Court of Vienna, for example with the biography of Leopold I, written by Franz Wagner, especially regarding the judgement on the two leaders of the war of independence. Finally, a third motive might have also contributed to Bél’s negative opinion about the two leaders in question. Other Lutheran and Calvinist writers, who wrote about the war of independence, such as Pál Okolicsányi, Péter Bod, Andreas Schmal, János Ribini, emphasized Rákóczi’s and Bercsényi’s responsibility and highlighted that they were both Catholic. Their deliberateness is obvious: this way they wanted to counteract the fact that there were also Protestant participants and people who took advantage of the movement. The more the Protestant writers accepted the Court’s negative opinion about Rákóczi and Bercsényi, regarding them as the scapegoats, the less the Catholics could agree with it. In one respect they must have felt exaggerated and unfavourable for themselves the negative criticism and absolute responsibility of the two leaders (because of Rákóczi’s and Bercsényi’s Catholicism), and they also must have missed the critique on the Protestants. For this reason the Jesuit Ferenc Kazy turned evidently against the attitude of the court in his work written about the history of the university of Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia): he put a rather good complexion on the prince and the chief general, and he definitely starts to “call the Protestants to task”, though without names. Gábor Kolinovics also gives a detailed description in his work about the occupation of churches and cases of injustice done by the Protestants. Later on the Piarist József Ince Desericzky followed his example while writing about the history of the episcopate of Vác and dealing with the issue of Protestant Kuruc soldiers looting Catholic churches. Furthermore, Desericzky and Ferenc Károly Palma, a Jesuit author writing about Hungarian history in a popular way, took every effort to save the prince (but they both “sacrificed” the other leader Bercsényi for that purpose). István Katona, also Jesuit, continued this practice further on in his great historical work, i.e. Historia critica. The Jesuit György Pray was the only person who conceded entirely the point of view of the court, in the emperor’s service and in the shadow of the French Wars. It was also important for the Jesuit historians to minimize Rákóczi’s responsibility regarding the issue of expelling the Jesuits during the war of independence, because they apparently realized that it would have presented them in a bad light if it had disseminated that a Catholic prince had driven them out. János Tersztyánszky, writer of the short history of Kassa (now Košice, Slovakia), blames exclusively the Protestants for the expulsion in his work, as well as Kazy, and he also describes the prince’s sympathy for the Jesuits through several pages. Miklós Schmitth, author of Episcopi Agrienses, tries to justify Rákóczi in this matter, too. István Katona had to undertake a demanding task: meanwhile, an anti-Jesuit indictment got published, fastened on Rákóczi, i.e. the Responsio, and he had to pulp it and refute Rákóczi’s authorship, what he masterfully accomplished. Consequently, in the 18th century the authors’ religion influenced the opinion about the war of independence to a great extent. The Catholic and the Protestant writers differed mainly in who was responsible for the defeated movement: the Catholic Rákóczi and Bercsényi, or the joined Protestant orders. This historical reception, influenced by religious conflicts and restricted by the Court’s uncomplying attitude from the outset, was replaced by real historical researches only in the 19th century, though they were prejudiced because of other aspects.

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