Veres Gábor - Berecz Mátyás (szerk.): Hagyomás és megújulás - Életpályák és társadalmi mobilitás a végváriak körében - Studia Agriensia 27. (Eger, 2008)
R. VÁRKONYI ÁGNES: Végvár és mentalitás a végvártörténeti műhely negyedszázados története tükrében
Agnes R. Várkonyi BORDER CASTLE AND MENTALITY A Quarter of a Century of the Border Castle History Workshop At the heart of the title Border Castle and Mentality lies an issue as old as warfare itself. How did those directly involved in fighting in early-modern Hungary express the meaning of the lives they led, both individually and as a community? With what consciousness of their own worth were they prepared to put their lives at risk? To what extent were such people aware of the changes and events going on around them? Did they contribute in any way to the creation of generally held attitudes? How did those mental changes that took place manage to establish themselves? What similarities and differences existed between soldiers who frequently spoke different languages and came from different countries? Is it possible to talk about one dominant mentality covering two centuries ravaged by war, particularly when the notion of Respublica Christiana espoused by Erasmus was being replaced by a Europe that now included Hungary. Indeed, do the ways people interpreted the world and their position in it have any relevance to those living in the 21 st century? We are under no delusion that we can do anything but scratch the surface of an issue such as border castle and mentality. It is for this reason that one should look upon the contributions in castle history workshop papers as something of an opening gambit, and one which, with the help of a like-minded readership, will help us reach a greater understanding of the topic at hand. In the present study we only touch upon a limited number of topics. We look at the notion of mentality, the border castle system and its historical context, and the nature of the source material we have. We provide an outline of the myths that crop up within Hungarian historiography on the subject of the warlike mentality, and introduce readers to the methodology used by the castle history workshop and the avenues they are likely to open up. To finish we focus on the changes that took place in the mentality of those stationed at the border castles.
