Meddig terjed Magyarország? Történelmi jogok és politikai realitások küzdelme Bél Mátyás Notitiájában [What’s the Extent of Hungary? Conflict of Historical Rights and Political Realities in Mátyás Bél’s Notitia] (With English Abstract) (original) (raw)

In his substantial historico-geographic opus, the Notitia Hungariae novae, Mátyás Bél (1684–1749) continuously shaped and modified his own concepts about the notion of contemporary Hungary, concerning its geographical and institutional boundaries. His views regarding Transylvania were ambivalent, being unsure how to include it in his opus; nonetheless he considered writing a Notitia Transylvaniae and he prepared a draft for it, which shows that he felt it his duty to describe this separated territory of the country. Croatia was not even considered, he planned however to present the counties of „new” Slavonia (that were created after the expulsion of the Turks) because he estimated it as the part of the Hungarian Kingdom. He prepared a thourough description of the Banat of Temes, disregarding the fact that it was ruled by the Imperial Court at the time, not the Hungarian Crown. Furthermore he wanted to include into the description of the Banat of Temes the new conquests of the 1716-1718 war – obviously due to the optimistic victorious athmosphere –, which covered the North-Serbian districts and the Banat of Kravoja, however this was only partially implemented, most likely due to lack of information. He wrote about the settlements on the territory of the Military Frontier and he indicated only sporadically that these places were entitled to special rights. With all this he seems to be willing to adjust to the viewpoint of the Hungarian estates since it was their claim to restore the conquered and reconquered territories of separate administration back under Hungarian jurisdiction. Furthermore Bél professed the standpoint of the so-called Hungarus-intelligentsia: the territory-driven patria concept and closely related to that, the research of Hungary’s historical rights and the restoration of its former borders.

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