Orsolya Varsányi

New Light on Byzantine Military Science – A Landmark Edition in Hungarian Byzantine Studies

Péter Illik

Review on Introduction to Numis- matics written by Márton Kálnoki-Gyöngyössy

Éva Teiszler

Princesses of the Árpád-Family and the Mongol Invasion (1241–1242). Reasons for the Marriages of Béla IV’s Daughters

In 1247, King Béla IV wrote to Pope Innocent IV, claiming that he had to marry off his three daughters to men of lower social status due to the Mongol threat. These assertions have become deeply ingrained in historical literature and have significantly influenced interpretations of Béla IV’s foreign policy during the Mongol invasion. This study aims to clarify whether the Hungarian king’s letter should be interpreted so categorically and determine whether Béla IV’s statements necessarily and fundamentally shaped Hungarian foreign policy in the 1230s and 1240s.

Béla IV, Mongol invasion, Saint Kinga, Blessed Constance, Anna of the House of Árpád, Bolesław V, Poland, Halych, Danilo Romanovich, Rostislav Mikhailovich

Attila Restás

Ladislaus Bartholomaeides, the Historiographer of Gömör County and his Works

Ladislaus Bartholomaeides (1754–1825) was a Lutheran pastor, deacon of Gömör and a prominent scholar and historiographer of his native land, County of Gömör. He was educated at the University of Wittenberg in the Josephine era. After returning home, he began publishing some smaller historical treaties about his native land and its inhabitants. His main work was a description of County of Gömör (Notitia historico–geographico–statistica, 1806–1808.) The adjective ’statistica’ in the title of his book indicates that all factors are discussed, relevant for the state and economy policy (society, churches, population, mineral sources etc.) which contemporary German scholarship called Staatsmerkwürdigkeiten. Also his paternal ancestors were pastors of Hungarian noble origin, and his mother’s family was belonged to the welthy landowners in Upper Hungary, Ladislaus Bartholomaeides was a native Slovak speaker, and he only learnt Hungarian in his youth, when he was employed as a cantor, i.e. as a Hungarian schoolmaster in the southern part of his county where the Hungarian language was mostly spoken, before his academic peregrination to abroad. He is not known to have written any significant work in Hungarian, as he wrote all his textbooks, scholarly works or religious writings in Latin, German and Slovakized Czech. This kind of identity is called Hungarus identity which united the inhabitants of the multi-ethnic Hungaria before the national awekening of the 19th century. In my paper I focus the connections of the emerging premodern national ideologies and the multi-cultural local society in Bartholomaeides’ life and works.

geography and historiography, Upper Hungary, Gömör County, 18th century, 19th century, Hungarus intellectual, neo-Latin literature

Edmond Malaj

Der antiosmanische Krieg und die Beziehungen zwischen Georg Kastrioti Skanderbeg und Johannes Hunyadi

The article focuses primarily on Skanderbeg’s relations with John Hunyadi. Both Hunyadi and Skanderbeg are among the most significant leaders of the anti-Ottoman struggle in the fifteenth-century Europe. In later centuries, they came to occupy central roles in the national identities of their respective peoples: Skanderbeg as the national hero of the Albanians, and John Hunyadi as a key figure of Hungarian identity. In addition, the article briefly addresses Skanderbeg’s relations with Hunyadi’s son, Matthias Corvinus, who later ascended the throne as King of Hungary. In this aspect, I provide key information drawn from a wide range of historical studies as well as from original documents. My research results are presented both in contrast to Pálosfalvi’s article ‘Skanderbeg and the Hunyadis: Myth and Reality’ and an addition to his findings.

Skanderbeg, Johannes Hunyadi, The Anti-Osman Front, Battle of Jalomitsa, Battle of Niš, Battle of Warna, Pope Pius II, Wladislaw II, George Branković, Sultan Murat II.